Talk:Gender-equality paradox

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 September 2018 and 15 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Michael mech.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:41, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled

While the term "Gender Equality Paradox" most often is found in relation to the study by Stoet and Geary, it was not actually coined by them. Earlier revisions of this article contained references to usages of this term, which predate the study of Stoet and Geary by at least 8 years (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E577jhf25t4, which was originally referenced here). Thus, the reasoning that "There aren't other usages of this that I could find - all refer back to this one study." is simply incorrect. Also in some articles "Gender Equality Paradox" is used in a much broader sense (e.g. here), relating to all types of gender differences that increase when GGGI decreases. Thus, either this article should contain some mention of the broader picture, similar to the now removed "related studies" section or it should be renamed to "Gender Equality Paradox in STEM" to follow the paper title of Stoet and Geary or "educational gender equality paradox" to follow their actual nomenclature (given in italics in the referenced article).

2.203.218.211 (talk) 20:34, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Also, prior use is even cited in the article: Usdansky, Margaret L. (2011-09-01). "The Gender‐Equality Paradox: Class and Incongruity Between Work‐Family Attitudes and Behaviors". Journal of Family Theory & Review. 3 (3): 163–178. doi:10.1111/j.1756-2589.2011.00094.x. ISSN 1756-2589. This leads to a somewhat paradoxical situation that some of the articles that are provided as a criticism of the gender equality paradox pre-date the article which is referred to have coined the term. The article should be cleaned up such that such inconsistencies are avoided.

2.203.218.211 (talk) 20:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

There is a further predated article which would be interesting to incorporate: Maria Charles; Karen Bradley (1 January 2009). "Indulging our gendered selves? Sex segregation by field of study in 44 countries". American Journal of Sociology. 114 (4): 924–976. doi:10.1086/595942. ISSN 0002-9602. PMID 19824299. Wikidata Q43434795. — fnielsen (talk) 19:45, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

The analysis has been criticized on various points related to the study methodology . . . as discussed below.

Сriticism of the study's methodology is kind of questionable, I failed to find any reliable sources that could prove this statement. It should have been "discussed below" in more detail, however, the article text does not provide any further information to this. None of provided sources mention any criticism of methodology either. The blog article somewhat criticises the conclusions, drawn by the authors, by suggesting some alternative explanations for the effect, but this is not related to the methodology of the study. And the papers , that were provided, don't even cite the original paper, so there are no traces of such criticism there either. I suggest that the quoted phrase should be either backed up with a reliable source or removed completely. 2001:16B8:2C0F:A100:F80D:1B27:7070:F9A5 (talk) 00:52, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

References

Introduction needs to be changed

The introduction is highly misleading. It leaves the impression that this is a "one-study" issue, when in fact it is several very large studies showing the same phenomenon. I suggest moving all content related to the specific Stoet and Geary study to its own subsection. The focus on the STEM fields in the intro also seems misdirected since STEM proclivity is only one effect among many impacted by this. --Thorseth (talk) 09:03, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, this is rather terrible. E.g. UNESCO accepts this "paradox" as a given [1]. The valiant attempts at discrediting the study is rather feeble, e.g. the linked The Scientist article cites the authors claiming that the numbers are just contrived. I don't know why UNESCO and a host of other statistics bureaus would falsify the data, it sounds like a pretty fringe conspiracy theory. Ketil (talk) 17:35, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Discussion of change of name - i.e. Is this an article on criticism of a single journal paper?

I have difficulties with the way this article is being presented. The criticism of a single journal paper takes up something like half the article, while obvious supporting evidence is missing. When I pointed out that the term "Gender-equality paradox" has other uses than in this single paper the article was moved to "Gender-equality paradox STEM" without any prior discussion.

To me it is quite obvious that this subject is a broader issue found in other areas than just proclivity towards STEM, however most of my edits to this effect has been edited or outright deleted by User:Affied on the grounds of being "synthesis", even when the authors of the original paper Stoet and Geary explicitly mentions this connection.

I am not interested in an edit war, so I am hoping this discussion can happen here and not by deleting my edits. --Thorseth (talk) 07:50, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

The large majority of secondary RS covers the "Gender equality paradox in Stem", as opposed to "Gender equality paradox". As I mentioned in the edit summary, if you can provide secondary RS (not primary sources) showing notability for the gender equality paradox in general, then we will use that. Wikipedia determines notability using Secondary RS - from the wiki page on notability - "Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources. All analyses and interpretive or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary or tertiary source, and must not be an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors."

When using primary sources, be sure you have read WP:NOR, especially the part on using primary sources. As for your accusations that I have been "deleting" your edits, that is not true, most of the sourced information that you have added has remained in the article - just not the ones that were not sourced (For example, this edit was completely unsourced, which is why it was removed. ) and the others that used synthesis of primary sources.

Affied (talk) 14:14, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

→Also just to follow up on your accusation that this move was not discussed - it is proposed above by another user on the talk page, perhaps formatted incorrectly, but still a definite proposal - and has been not responded to for over a year. Since no one had responded to their proposal (including you, despite earlier posts on the talk page), I thought there were no strong opinions against it and I agreed with their logic and decided to Be bold - anyways this can always be reversed. I will preemptively note that anon correctly found one RS that uses the gender-equality paradox generally; however, one RS is not enough to determine notability of the usage of the phrase in that context. If you are able to find several secondary RS that use the term "gender equality paradox" (specifically that term) to refer to a wider set of behaviors, then feel free to add them to the discussion. Any addition of gender differences more broadly (that are not secondary RS and do not use the term "gender equality paradox") belong instead on different articles, for example Gender differences, or perhaps not on Wikipedia at all. Edit:Actually the best place would probably be the Women in STEM fields page Affied (talk) 20:46, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

All right, I might have been a bit heavy handed when I started editing, so some of what was cut was perhaps justifiable, I will try to step more carefully in the future. So I will try to argue that this is a broader issue and its notability here instead. I agree that the Stoet and Geary paper have garnered a lot of attention, however I have found a number of occurances of the term and closely related subjects, used to describe the wider phenomenon:

• There is this Norwegian documentary from 2010 discussing this very issue
• Then there is this book on the subject (Women held back from leadership positions by welfare states)
• This BBC article not using the term directly but mentioning "gender equality" and "paradox" many times
• Also there is Jordan Peterson on the Swedish television show Skavlan explaining the paradox to party leader Annie Lööf. I don't know what the criteria are for notability but this video has 11 million views.
• Here is a 2017 event organized by the UN Commission on the Status of Women discussing the issue in the context of the Nordic/Scandinavian countries.
• Here is a new study on scientific publications showing that for countries with more female first authors the disparities in gendered selection of fields are greater., indicating perhaps that with higher disparity comes greater success for women in the fields of their choosing.
• In this study of the "gender equality paradox" in professional tennis, the paradoxical aspect of equal treatment and segregated rules are discussed, which would be disconnected from most of the rest of the content of the article, I don't know how to fit that in here.
• It also seems that paradoxes abound, here Perugini and Vladisavljević show that women are more satisfied with their work, regardless of worse conditions.

--Thorseth (talk) 00:12, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the effort providing the sources - to note we are looking for several Secondary RS to prove the notability of the use of the gender equality paradox as a general term, as that is the criteria for the creation and scope of a wikipedia page. Due to that, primary sources, self published material, and user-generated content are not sufficient(from WP notability). Note that I am not arguing that these sources do not use the term etc. but instead that they do not meet the bare minimum of notability that Wikipedia uses to determine what gets an article. Based on that, in order:

• This is not a RS - youtube video not from official recognized source - and content from user generated sources are not reliable secondary sources as per WP:USERG
• primary source with no coverage in other reliable sources - the manhattan institute one is a self-published commentary, not a secondary RS
• Is an RS, but as you admit not for the direct use of the term, so not a secondary RS to establish notability that the term is used for this fashion
• Youtube again is not a secondary RS for use of the term, especially as it is a self-published video of a talk show appearance and is not an RS - video views do not matter
• Again self published - potentially a primary source if notability had already been established
• Primary source and not a secondary RS to determine notability
• Primary source and not a secondary RS to determine notability
• Primary source and not a secondary RS to determine notability - this is also a slightly different paradox as it does not talk about gender equality by country, but instead exposure to gender equality - regardless it does not matter

What we are looking for is reliable secondary sources - some of these would be useful if notability was already established for the use of the term. Apologies if I have misconstrued any of the sources - let me know! Affied (talk) 04:46, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the review. First of all I am not convinced that a somewhat scientific term has to be repeated verbatim in something like a BBC article, to be notable. It is after all someting like a counter intuitive statistic that is difficult also to even know what to do with for the average person. I have a few clarifications to the list, it gets more tricky because some of the sources are now in Swedish and Norwegian. I dont have time to go through all the list now, but I will post some more as I have time.

• I don't understand the objection on the documentary, is the question whether this program: Hjernevask was produced and aired by the National Broadcast Company of Norway NRK1, because it was. The fact that the original broadcaster has taken the video off line is not really relevant here, the YouTube link was given as a courtesy.
• The Jordan Peterson - Annie Lööf interaction was covered in Norwegian and Swedish media, including mention of the gender equality paradox (jämställdhetsparadoxen). In this article Peterson's interpretation of the gender equality paradox is fact-checked by the Swedish public radio., (result: partly true).

I have moved the page back - there are at least 2 RS (the arts technica and factcheck article), maybe more with the documentary - note that the dagbladet and expressen sources were not secondary RS as they were not primarily or substantially about the gender equality paradox (I couldn't find jämställdhetsparadoxen in either article, but I only gave a quick look), instead about the talk show interview. The fact check was a secondary RS and is now in the article. If you can provide some secondary RS about the documentary, then it can be added.

When adding content, I am going to caution again that you should stick to what secondary RS say about the topic and keep synthesizing of primary sources to a minimum. Use secondary RS over referring to the primary source and do not push conclusions that are not reflected in secondary RS. A helpful hint would also be to refresh your knowledge of WP:NPOV. Also since the vast majority of the RS are still about the STEM paradox, the article should reflect that in its content and not violate WP:UNDUE. I have added in a section of the different uses of gender equality paradox in the literature as the way it is used differs from study to study. As there are no secondary RS for these, I don't think it should be expanded beyond that.

Affied (talk) 11:58, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarifications, I am used to develop articles on technical subjects, and there secondary RS will sometimes be difficult to find. When complex matters are discussed by RS media the technical terms are sometimes rephrased, and so have to be found from context, this would be especially true for non-English media. Ill keep your advise in mind. --Thorseth (talk) 12:38, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! Regardless wiki is here to report on what secondary RS (primarily) say - so that is what we stick to. You have provided 2 solid RS, so stick to what they say - even though more information exists, it clearly is not notable in the eyes of wikipedia and will be removed if secondary sources aren't confirming it. This also helps avoid your own bias (and mine) and reduces cherrypicking of information, such as taking quotes from the paper out of context to create a narrative. If a notable narrative exists, it will be reflected in the RS

Affied (talk) 15:55, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

References

Meaningless conclusion

Under the summary of findings of the chief report, it said:

'More girls entered STEM degrees than graduated.'

This statement applies to *every* group of people entering *every* degree where the graduation rate is less than 100% (i.e. nearly all degrees).

If such a statement has become part of the summary it calls into question the validity of the author's summary per se. 2A01:4C8:D20:AB17:1:1:3E9E:FFB2 (talk) 11:56, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Brenda et al (2020) as the solution to the paradox

I'm somewhat dubious of the use of Brenda et al (2020) as a full blown solution to the paradox as the wikipedia article seems to presents it. Reading the article, Brenda et al uses PISA math data from 2012 to first come to the conclusion that there is a paradox in PISA math scores, but second, that this is explained by gender stereotypes in STEM.

Before Brenda et al (2020) however, Geary and Stoet (2015) found that PISA math sex differences were unrelated to gender equality in the 2003, 2006 and 2009 batteries of the test. Since gender stereotypes in math were unlikely to develop suddenly between 2009 and 2012, this calls into question Brenda et al (2020)s' results.

Given that this wikipedia article itself is quite critical of Geary and Stoet (2018)s' conclusions (which is totally justifiable mind you). I think this would present a good criticism of Brenda et al (2020) without completely disregarding its results.

Bibbloti‬ (talk) 08:55, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

article：

The second piece of evidence is based on alternative measures of gender-math stereotypes that can be constructed both in 2003 and 2012 using questions available in PISA both of those years, making possible a study of the joint evolution of these stereotypes and other outcomes. Most of the relationships between the country-level evolutions of stereotypes and economic development or inequalities are small and not statistically significant over the period 2003–2012, likely because this period is too short to induce substantial changes in the measured outcomes. However, the few relationships that are significant provide some support for our main interpretation as we find that countries that grew the most between 2003 and 2012 in terms of GDP also developed more than others horizontal gender norms. 103.115.87.141 (talk) 07:43, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough, it looks like I haven't read the article correctly. Bibbloti (talk) 13:29, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

References

Wiki Education assignment: Psychology of Gender

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 January 2024 and 28 April 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Eraut1, Zisha68 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Zisha68 (talk) 02:33, 29 April 2024 (UTC)