Sex differences in attaining the rank of professor in Sweden

[Cookiegod]

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full...9.2020.1723533

A standard claim proponents of so called "positive" discrimination often put out is that there's an entrenched male elite, the white patriarchy, which isn't acceptive of newcomers and rejects them even as they bring as much or more to the table as the white male competition. It would thus stand to reason that when countries, such as Sweden, strive to close the gender gap, the institutions would not lose out on qualified personnel, as it's not simply a divergence of life choices for the different genders resulting in fewer women choosing this career path, but rather about them being held down and oppressed by the patriarchy.
Not only does the former "theory" require a significant anti-female bias across the entire male population (without any evidence to support its existence) to work, but also, that the gender dimorphism somehow magically is completely limited to the body, and not to the brain, even as the preferences for different typse of jobs are plain and open and there for all to see.

So let's see which of the two sides this study from Sweden supports:

ABSTRACT

The proportion of women tends to decrease the higher the academic rank, following a global pattern. Sweden has taken comprehensive measures to decrease this gap across 30 years, and many countries are following a similar path. Yet today only 27% of faculty with the rank of professor in Sweden are female. A common explanation is that academia is biased against women. According to this hypothesis, women have to reach higher levels of scholarly achievement than men to be appointed to the same academic rank. Publication metrics when attaining the rank of professor were compiled from the Web of Science for samples of the whole population of 1345 professors appointed at the six largest universities in Sweden during a six-year period. Men had significantly more publications and citations in both medicine and in the social sciences, rejecting the hypothesis that women are held to a higher scholarly standard in this context.

Who would have thought. Colour me surprised.

Another juicy bit is the acknowledgements section right at the end:

Acknowledgements

Many scholars have helped improve the presentation of this study. We thank two anonymous reviewers who have given constructive comments on a previous version of this manuscript. For giving generously of their time to comment, we are likewise indebted to Edward Dutton, Michael Gruber, Bo Molander, Erik J. Olsson, Roland S. Persson, Charlotta Stern, Anders E. af Wåhlberg, and two scholars who wish to remain anonymous. The reason that this article is published more than three years since the data collection is the cumulative duration of the review process, at it has been rejected by six journals before it was submitted to Studies in Higher Education. Five of them eventually rejected it without review, stating that it was inappropriate for, or outside the scope of, the journal. One journal rejected it after a first round of reviews, where each of reviewers 1–4 provided increasingly negative and unspecific comments.

Normally acknowledgements are the least interesting part of any paper, but this one here serves as a stark reminder of the times we live in. Pseudo-progressives often like to ridicule those criticising wrong-thinkers for calling out the doxing, smears and censorship attempts, and yet here we are.

Feel free to go through the study. To put it bluntly, you can see the difference between a MSc (which psychologists tend to have) and a MA (most sociologists only have that) displayed right there. As far as I could see, the sampling etc. were done according to actual scientific standards, unlike so many papers out there that get published without problems and with good reviews, even as their factual basis is low or even nonexistent, as long as they fit a narrative. So yes, this one has a sample size much higher than 6

[Diamat]

I'm facing similar problems in my field. Publishing data-based studies that contradict dominant narratives is difficult. The reviewers won't even talk about or look at your data. Instead, they simply reject your argument and re-state the narrative. Science is supposed to be about falsification. If you don't allow us to falsify dominant frameworks, then how can knowledge progress? It doesn't matter if you agree with it or not, but if the data is sound and corresponds with the argument that is being made, then it should be published. /end rant

[alhoon]

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full...9.2020.1723533


Normally acknowledgements are the least interesting part of any paper, but this one here serves as a stark reminder of the times we live in. Pseudo-progressives often like to ridicule those criticising wrong-thinkers for calling out the doxing, smears and censorship attempts, and yet here we are.

Man, that was a brutal takedown of the "no, this is wrong-think, women are victims, VICTIMS. Studies that prove otherwise must be eradicated for apostasy" mentality. I am glad they had the balls to do what they did.

[conon394]

Flawed Study

"and decided to not consider co-authoring" because it would be hard - sad..

Problem is most papers especially hard science are not some one hit wonder out of some genius ass.

Only using first author invalidates the conclusions. My wife is a senior geneticist for the USDA she will have maybe 2 first author papers this year. But she will be co author on maybe 4 and maybe one in human genetics because she an expert in some fairly obscure population genetics statistical stuff and really good at ensuring rigorous study design and her collaboration and funding network calls her in to the bits they cannot. The USDA will count that as 7 papers but this study would cut that to 2. Thing is without her input or funding decisions the men who will be lead authors would not likely be publishing, it is interesting how much science can get done when you don't have dick waving ego to worry about.

[Diamat]

Lol, this is not genetics. This field does have considerable single-authored studies. Just click on "latest articles" and you can see that there are a bunch:
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cshe20/0/0

Only using one author invalidates nothing. Falsification invalidates, period.

[alhoon]

Flawed Study

"and decided to not consider co-authoring" because it would be hard - sad..

Problem is most papers especially hard science are not some one hit wonder out of some genius ass.

1. The same can apply to male researchers. A man that co-authored a paper with his female professor and gets 2nd place would ALSO not be included while his female professor would.
2. In many cases in the fields I work with, the papers were not some wonder altogether. We built on something, we add one more stone on work already done by others, tweaking processes that were made by others etc. I.e. even the first author is not some genius trailblazer but a PhD student or post-doc that publishes his findings or a solution to a localized problem that worked. Stuff like "We used the process X et al 2018 used in Hawai to deal with a similar problem in the Azores and it worked. Here is our study!" gets published and that's fine because that's how you find what works and what just worked once.

[Cookiegod]

Flawed Study

"and decided to not consider co-authoring" because it would be hard - sad..

Problem is most papers especially hard science are not some one hit wonder out of some genius ass.

Only using first author invalidates the conclusions. My wife is a senior geneticist for the USDA she will have maybe 2 first author papers this year. But she will be co author on maybe 4 and maybe one in human genetics because she an expert in some fairly obscure population genetics statistical stuff and really good at ensuring rigorous study design and her collaboration and funding network calls her in to the bits they cannot. The USDA will count that as 7 papers but this study would cut that to 2. Thing is without her input or funding decisions the men who will be lead authors would not likely be publishing, it is interesting how much science can get done when you don't have dick waving ego to worry about.

First of all, you can ask your wife about the worth of anecdotal evidence. Spoiler alert: Very little.
Secondly while yes, some scientists do more lead authorships and others more more co authorships, you can expect it in the grand scheme of things to even out, and have little to no effect on a large enough sample size, unless your hypothesis is that one gender is more prone to the former and the other more to the latter (I don't see any grounds for that, but if you think that's the case, feel free to elaborate).
Third: You can expect the lead authors to have done the lead share of the work done. As for coauthors, there's not much of a bar as to how much one needs to contribute for his name to be put there. Often times it's almost nothing. It's therefore a very reasonable choice to limit yourself to lead authorships. That choice does not make the study itself flawed.
Fourth: There are lots and lots of garbage "studies" out there which do all kinds of statistical errors, this isn't one of them. Sample size is very solid, as far as I saw. As I said in the OP, feel free to go through the study and find me any tangible issues that you can find. Merely claiming that it's flawed is not good enough. Especially when you have the means to back up your claim right there in front of you.

[Aexodus]

Good God. It’s depressing that journals are rejecting research just because it doesn’t fit their political worldview. Likewise, the two anonymous scholars and two anonymous reviewers is quite chilling.

I imagine Swedish academia is worse for this sort of orthodoxy, but it exists in the wider Western academic field too.

I have to say progressive articles make for much for aggrandising reading. I’m a part of the elite white patriarchy? Why that sounds much nicer than what I read in the Newsletter today.

Anyway, when societies cancel out the social differences, the innate natural ones are allowed to manifest themselves as people make individual career choices.

This is called the gender Equality paradox, but really it’s nothing of the sort. Equal freedom is equality is equality, no matter the outcome of people’s choices.

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/03/14...r-science/amp/


https://www.universityworldnews.com/...61212121515275

The report, Education and Scientific Development in Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Countries 2016, was published by the Turkey-based Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries or SESRIC.

It was presented at the8th Islamic Conference of Ministers of Higher Education and Scientific Researchheld under the theme “Higher Education: Quality and suitability” in Mali’s capital Bamako from 14-15 November.

Women’s participation

The report indicates that women researchers represent around 36.5% of the total number of researchers in six countries located in North Africa including Tunisia (47%), Egypt (42.3%), Sudan (40%), Algeria (34.8%), Morocco (30.2%) and Libya (24.8%).

This means that the share of women researchers in the North Africa region is above the world average of 22.5 %, the European average of 33% and the developed country average of 26%.

With more than 40% of women researchers, Tunisia, Egypt and Sudan are close to achieving gender parity. With 47% female participation, Tunisia also tops the Arab list.

The SESRIC report is in line with UNESCO's Engineering: Issues, challenges and opportunities for development, which shows that the percentage of women engineers in Arab countries such as Tunisia and Egypt ranges from 24% to 50% – substantially higher than the global average, the United States figure of around 15% to 20% and the United Kingdom’s 8%.

The impact of increased female participation.

He said quick analysis showed that the impacts of the scientific outcomes of North African women were weak. The list of the 100 most powerful Arab women in 2016 boasted just eight scientists at universities including only three from North Africa.

And what are the potential reasons for higher female representation?

“Overall, these countries may promote collectivism over individualism, gender label STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] fields as ‘masculine’ less-so than other countries, and their developing economies may shape choice.”

And for some reason they want to still want to increase the amount of female researchers in MENA countries?

“Research suggests that by providing social networks and peer support, we can increase the number of women participating as professionals in the science and medical fields.” This, Dajani said, would create a new generation of women scholars and promote multidisciplinary and multi-cultural research that combines all fields of science.

[alhoon]

It is abominable that scientific journals reject good research because it doesn't fit the narrative.

That said:
Anonymous reviewers are the norm. I am an anonymous reviewer for 3 journals. In one of them, I think we have the option to tick a box to let the authors know of our identity after the review is completed and the decision made, but not before. It would be really bad if the authors knew who the reviewers were. Some authors are professors in universities and can hold a grudge. Some authors work for organizations that control funding. Some authors could well be the reviewers for your next paper.
And then: Bribery in all kind of forms. "Give me a good review and I will include you in the next paper \ put you in the next research project" is a well known practice in case the reviewer identities get leaked.

Anonymous scholars now... that's different. That indeed has to do with "X and Y helped me, but they're afraid how the SJWs and Feminazis will react if they learn of their involvement in this heretical work. They are hiding to save their careers from the Progressives, as the intimidation tactics with good professionals losing their jobs or not getting contracts are working well and silence the opposition."

About the narrative now...
I work with coal, I have done good research in coal, using geostatistics.
Coal is against the narrative though, so even if my work doesn't directly promote the use of the most polluting of fossil fuels, journals have in the past outright rejected papers from our team within days, without undergoing review with "Not fit for the journal."
When my professor asked some from the editorial board of the journal in question (editor identities are known), he got a "well, it was coal. Coal is dirty. That's why we rejected. Try Coal Geology, the low impact factor coal journal." In the end, we managed to publish in a high impact factor journal after changing the article to focus on the geostatistics and reserve estimation methods and much less on the "Case study" part.
First round of reviews for that high impact factor paper were:
"Accept!"
"Minor edits of the language, here and here"
"Reject. While it is good work, it is coal. Go for coal geology" <=== and that's why reviewers are anonymous.

As such, yes, I know how hard it is to work against the narrative.

[Heathen Hammer]

Scientific progress takes a dive when ideological narratives are enforced by the establishment as priority over actual studies. It seems that Western scientific community is struggling with neo-Lysenkoism, where anything that contradicts the desired narratives must be suppressed, even if factually correct.

[Diamat]

I wouldn't say that this suppression is always the case, but it can be frustrating at times. As scholars, we naturally have an inclination for the new and unorthodox. It excites us to see studies that challenge existing paradigms. I'm not sure why especially in recent years scholars, on average, have become more closed-minded. Perhaps the quality of scholars has decreased, particularly in the humanities? It's baffling to me when I submit an article for review with journal X, the reviewers reject the paper because they disagree with the argument (not with the evidence), yet in journal Y, the reviewers find the article "refreshing" and "in need of almost no revision." It makes me lose faith in my field.

But perhaps we can actually detect the decline in the quality of scholarship by looking at the work of graduate students. I have noticed, by commenting on grad students' papers during workshops and conferences, that maybe 2% of the papers I see actually show promise. The rest tend to be purely theoretical and couched in theoretical language, hiding their lack of original empirical research by reinterpreting data via popular theoretical frameworks (e.g., Foucault, Bourdieu, feminist theory, queer theory). This has a lot to do with grad courses, which tend to be overly theoretical and often fail to teach basic research skills. Foreign language abilities are also often lacking, which is why these students cannot collect new data. In essence, grad students are trained the wrong way around - they learn theory first, and then they gradually learn how to actually do research. This naturally results in theory-driven research that is biased and boring to read.

[Axalon]

Personally, I don't see any problems with "Sex differences in attaining the rank of professor in Sweden". Its not like there are any (credible) doubts that bright and merited enough women could handle such positions - would they be available for it. As it stands they are (usually) not or in short supply in most cases - in Sweden anyways. The only reasonable conclusion should thus be that fewer (Swedish) women are indeed available (and interested) at that level of academia - due to generally having other priorities in life, for whatever reasons.

Appointing qualified personnel is what should matter, not their gender as such. Gender is not a (serious) quality or even a viable aspect in matters of science (or most other things for that matter). To the best of my knowledge, there are not a single field of (serious) science were gender (as such) is a viable or relevant factor. Anywhere. If there are fewer women around, as the relevant paper suggests - in that given context - then so be it. Its not an actual problem for science anyways. Only the usual feminist- and PC-morons would suggest otherwise, me thinks...

- A

[alhoon]

The problem is that if you try to say that in the conclusions of your paper, it won't be published and if you say that in Google, you lose your job.

[Muizer]

On the other hand, it may actually just be bad science. I suspect the paper was rejected not because the data was unsound, but because the conclusions drawn from it are rather speculative. I haven't read the whole thing, but as far as I can tell the data falsifies that women who became professors were held to higher standards than men in terms of publications. For all we know, that's because women in a male dominated world aren't held to the same standards as men. Perhaps the ones that make it do so because they know how to handle men. From my few years in academia, that wouldn't surprise me the least.

[Sar1n]

On the other hand, it may actually just be bad science. I suspect the paper was rejected not because the data was unsound, but because the conclusions drawn from it are rather speculative. I haven't read the whole thing, but as far as I can tell the data falsifies that women who became professors were held to higher standards than men in terms of publications. For all we know, that's because women in a male dominated world aren't held to the same standards as men. Perhaps the ones that make it do so because they know how to handle men. From my few years in academia, that wouldn't surprise me the least.

Now, how about you read the study and then make a conclusion like a scientist, rather than the other way around like a politician?

[Muizer]

Now, how about you read the study and then make a conclusion like a scientist, rather than the other way around like a politician?

lol, funny person ..

The last sentence of the discussion:

The present study can only conclude that no bias against females in attaining the rank of professor in relation to their publication metrics occurred for the years 2009–2014 in Sweden, and suggests that females have, on the contrary, been preferentially hired during this period.

And that is literally the only conclusion that can be drawn from that data. The problem with the discussion is ironically that it assumes women are treated equally in equal circumstances. If you do not assume this, then you cannot use publication counts. It's all pretty circular. If you do assume this, however, how on earth does demonstrating that women are hired for the wrong reasons count against the idea that academia is hostile to women? The analysis is incredibly one-dimensional, which if anything demonstrates how blinkered the authors are.

[Sar1n]

And that is literally the only conclusion that can be drawn from that data. The problem with the discussion is ironically that it assumes women are treated equally in equal circumstances. If you do not assume this, then you cannot use publication counts. It's all pretty circular. If you do assume this, however, how on earth does demonstrating that women are hired for the wrong reasons count against the idea that academia is hostile to women? The analysis is incredibly one-dimensional, which if anything demonstrates how blinkered the authors are.

Are they? The premise seems sound.

Publish or perish. I'm sure you know the principle. Authorship, while not perfect, is the best available measure of one's scientific ability. The premise is that if women had more difficult time attaining the rank, those who managed it would display higher average ability than their male peers, because they'd have to prove themselves more, and the other way around. Naturally, to mitigate the problems of individual variances, the sample size would have to be large. And the study does just that.

It's not circular. You're assuming a strong causal link between the bias against hiring women to these positions and bias against women publishing. But the peer review process is designed to, besides verifying the results, eliminate these kinds of biases.

[Muizer]

The premise is that if women had more difficult time attaining the rank, those who managed it would display higher average ability than their male peers, because they'd have to prove themselves more.

The assumption is that male and female professors would be judged differently according to the same metric. What they demonstrate is that on this metric, female professors perform worse. Does that mean it is easier for women to succeed in academia? Only if they are indeed judged by that metric and everything else being equal. The problem is that you can't assume this. And because you cannot, a whole plethora of alternative causes becomes compatible with the data. The authors betray a certain dogged single-mindedness in trying reason these problems away, but they don't back it up. They really overshoot what the data permits them to conclude by quite some distance.

Finally, yes I am playing 'devil's advocate' here. That's because at least I'm open to alternative explanations. It does not mean I have bought into SJW doctrines. I am trying to set aside the equally ridiculous male chauvinism that most certainly isn't dead.

[Heathen Hammer]

On the other hand, it may actually just be bad science. I suspect the paper was rejected not because the data was unsound, but because the conclusions drawn from it are rather speculative. I haven't read the whole thing, but as far as I can tell the data falsifies that women who became professors were held to higher standards than men in terms of publications. For all we know, that's because women in a male dominated world aren't held to the same standards as men. Perhaps the ones that make it do so because they know how to handle men. From my few years in academia, that wouldn't surprise me the least.

Problem is that there is no such thing as "male dominated world", at least in case of Western Europe and North America.
Bad science is typically result of government telling scientists to "look the other way" to avoid coming up with conclusions that would contradict desired political narrative. What is happening to current Western scientific community is typical example of Lysenkoism.

[Aexodus]

I don’t have a lot of faith tbh in academia at the moment. My own Aunt quit a lucrative career in biomedical science research due to what I would frankly call corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, as if your research doesn’t benefit the companies and isn’t what the journals want, you won’t get funding. She refused to sell her integrity, thankfully.

Then I see this, the Noah Carl business, the grievance studies scandal...