For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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By Tall_Guy_In_a_PA28
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#1843479
mehreenabbass wrote:The aim of the research is to suggest that female initiatives are effective and may aid in lifting the gender disparity for the profession, however providing a balancing argument that women do or can progress without initiatives.


In academia it is conventional to conduct the research before coming to a conclusion! It would be better to say "The aim of the research is to determine whether female initiatives are effective..."

Of course, in the real world, there is a sponsor who wants their position to be supported (and the research is buried if not).

Good luck with the interesting research with relevance to my own field of engineering where we still have a "young woman engineer" award each year but no young man equivalent. I 'get' the purpose of positive discrimination, but it also makes me uncomfortable (not least because the subjects of the discrimination often feel likewise).
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By Genghis the Engineer
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#1843619
Tall_Guy_In_a_PA28 wrote:
mehreenabbass wrote:The aim of the research is to suggest that female initiatives are effective and may aid in lifting the gender disparity for the profession, however providing a balancing argument that women do or can progress without initiatives.


In academia it is conventional to conduct the research before coming to a conclusion! It would be better to say "The aim of the research is to determine whether female initiatives are effective..."


Or "to test the hypothesis that".

I'm not meself a big fan of hypothesis testing - I'd rather just go with "To find out the effects of", and make as few assumptions as possible. However, particularly in the social sciences, hypothesis testing is their preferred way of thinking.

G
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By Genghis the Engineer
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#1843717
No, but it's a lot less scientific than some might claim. We absolutely need a scientific measure to for-example, predict and manage population behaviours in response to a pandemic, to understand why some demographics are over or under represented in certain professions (or in poverty, or in ill-health). But there are always significant value judgments in that which would be highly suspect in the hard sciences.

When you consider what we know about CRM, that is basically applied social sciences, and really important. But, it's firmly bedded also into cultural paradigms - you don't teach a bunch of permanently irreverent Australians cockpit communications in the same way you do a bunch of firmly hierarchical Chinese.

When we talk about pollution, climate change, health - those are hard science, and need viewing through that prism. But how you then manage what you learned, and sometimes how you manage the questions can only be managed through the social sciences.

So in this case, how to fly aeroplanes is hard science, whether men or women genuinely are suited better (or not) to particular roles, is hard science. On the other hand whether as a society we are happy for 85% or so of the Engineering and Piloting professions to be male, and if we're unhappy what to do about it - that is social sciences. But, because it's relatively subjective, you may get multiple answers, depending upon how you ask the question.

G
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#1843753
I think it is often about perception of what you are doing.........Plenty of women I know are fabulous cooks/bakers; which involves chemistry, measuring, mixing, reactions etc. Also a lot of needlecrafters who deal with properties of materials, cutting, joining methods and design to fit a purpose - sounds like an engineering description to me. But hardly any woman I ever meet thinks that they do "technical stuff"!
#1843789
It's an interesting topic. Would the OP (@mehreenabbass ) be willing to identify the purpose of doing this research? Is it an academic project? At what institution? Is there a commercial sponsor? Maybe providing this information would elicit a better response - I'd be just as willing to complete a questionnaire for a 6th form project as for a PhD project, but I'd like to know which. I'd be less willing to respond to a covert marketing questionnaire, even anonymously.

Only a small proportion of men become pilots and an even smaller proportion of men become commercial pilots. The proportion of women who do so is also small, just smaller. The same questions could be asked about the reverse situation in nursing or primary school teaching, for instance.
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By leiafee
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#1843805
Flyingfemme wrote:I think it is often about perception of what you are doing.........Plenty of women I know are fabulous cooks/bakers; which involves chemistry, measuring, mixing, reactions etc. Also a lot of needlecrafters who deal with properties of materials, cutting, joining methods and design to fit a purpose - sounds like an engineering description to me. But hardly any woman I ever meet thinks that they do "technical stuff"!


At the last Hacio’r Iaith (A Welsh language tech conference) I led a sess on crafts-as-hacking/tech for all those reasons!