TargetTalk

A follow-up: Doing a little searching, I didn't happen to find anything published by Prof. Dornbusch on the relationship between better opportunities for women and the decline in public education, but it certainly wasn't hard to find material published by other reputable researchers. (I'm no economist or educator, so if I can spot this trend, it can't be that difficult for the experts in the field. :)

One particularly good article is "Low Pay, Low Quality" by Peter Temin, Professor of Economics at M.I.T., on the Hoover Institution's Education Next site. (The Hoover Institution is part of Stanford University.) Here were a few comments that caught my eye:

Teachers are thus underpaid in the sense that we are paying low salaries for low-quality teachers. If we wanted, we could reach a different point in the market, where we would pay high salaries for high-quality teachers. ... It has been hard to make this kind of radical change because of historical patterns in the workforce that once allowed schools to educate on the cheap.

Women once considered teaching a highly attractive profession because their opportunities were tightly circumscribed. Despite the low wages, teaching was a far better line of work than slaving away in a textile mill. However, the past half-century opened a vast new world of opportunities to educated women. The nation’s failure to accommodate these recent changes has kept teachers’ salaries artificially low.

The career choices open to women have expanded greatly in the past generation. This, coupled with the appearance of women with extensive experience in the workforce, has resulted in rising earnings for professional women. In addition, it has opened up jobs that are more interesting and challenging, careers that are more fulfilling.

Finding themselves with lower-quality teachers, school districts have imposed work standards on teachers to make sure they are doing their jobs. These restrictions on teachers’ creativity have made teaching an even less desirable job ...

The opportunities for women have expanded considerably, and their ability to get professional education has increased. In this new world, the brightest women go toward the best jobs. These jobs increasingly are not in teaching.

For decades the nation has been able to school its children on the cheap by exploiting a trapped workforce of educated women. Those days are long gone.

Another good, but somewhat more scholarly article is "Do Alternatives Matter? The Role of Female Labor Markets in The Decline of Teacher Quality" by Marigee P. Bacolod, at UC-Irvine's Dept. of Economics.

Interesting but not relevant for this board as it has nothing to do with shooting. Lets move on.

rtp wrote:Interesting but not relevant for this board as it has nothing to do with shooting. Lets move on.

I'm glad you decide what is and what is not relevant.

If its not relevant why don't you just move on, rather than continuing the discussion about it.

Nicole doesn't this actually go against your premise that women have fewer opportunities. I beleive this is saying that teaching is going down hill because women have more opportunities today.

Richard H wrote:Nicole doesn't this actually go against your premise that women have fewer opportunities. I beleive this is saying that teaching is going down hill because women have more opportunities today.

They have more opportunities than they had in the past and that is the reason why public education is declining. Without that captive workforce of smart women who didn't have other opportunities, the quality of talent available for teaching has declined.

But women still do not enjoy the same opportunities as men and there's reason to suspect that they may be losing ground. Marigee Bacolod, whose paper I cited re: women in teaching has written another very interesting paper, "Two Sides of the Same Coin: U.S. 'Residual' Inequality and the Gender Gap," which argues that much of the reason the gender gap in pay has been closing is because women are moving into jobs requiring higher cognitive ability at a faster rate than men and that, in addition, pay is rising in those professions while pay in others is declining.

The problem (not discussed in her paper, but something I've raised in email to her) is that many of those "higher cognitive" occupations, e.g., software and engineering, have been targeted by nations such as India as strategic to their escape from third world status. There's already been a huge influx of highly skilled, very smart young Indian males into the US high tech workforce and many of them are now managers. Given the size of the population in India, it should be obvious that many more are coming. But early socialization matters, and the socialization they bring with them tends to cause them to see what they expect to see, which is that women aren't really all that smart and make better caregivers than real "players."

Because getting involved in the problem amounts to choosing sides between minorities, an uncomfortable proposition at best for an employer, because non-Western male engineers already outnumber women engineers in many high-tech companies, and finally, because of the economic incentive to employers to hire talented engineers with lower expectations for salary and workplace conditions, I personally expect this problem to get much worse, not better, and for employers to turn a largely blind eye toward it.

So even though attitudes towards women in the workplace among Western-born males are dramatically more accepting than perhaps 50 years ago, and women's opportunities are certainly better today, this sea change in demographics suggests (at least, to me) that the US high tech industry is likely to become much less hospitable to women over the next decade or so. And because high tech and other "higher cognitive" occupations have been so important in helping to close the gender pay gap over the last 50 years, my guess is there's a chance of some erosion over the next decade of past gains made by women.

Fifty years ago, women's opportunities were very limited. Today they're much better, but still not equal to what men enjoy. And there's reason to suspect their gains have crested, at least over the next 10 years or so.

Are women actually prevented from entering the Men's competitions? Have you tried doing that?

Otherwise, I would think that the first step would be to lobby to get women's shooting events on par with men's. If they start shooting 60 shots, then no one can argue that a women's performance or records are any different, and the sports will merge. Further, I don't see why you couldn't start doing "side matches" in the disciplines that aren't offered, and making the scores known. If women are scoring on par or within the range of men's competition, then it will be hard to ignore.

H.

Houngan wrote:Are women actually prevented from entering the Men's competitions? Have you tried doing that?

Indeed, I'd have felt like Emily Litella ("Never mind!") if, after all this whining, it had turned out that USAS would happily let me compete in men's events. So I did call and ask. And the answer is, no, women are not eligible to compete in men's events. Period.

The USAS Nationals Official Program lists the following pistol events:

10M Air Pistol Men
25M Rapid Fire Pistol Men
50M Free Pistol Men
25M Standard Pistol Men
25M Center Fire Pistol Men
25M Junior Sport Men
10M Air Pistol Women
25M Sport Pistol Women

That's 5 men's events (6 for junior men) and only 2 for women! The only entrance requirement is paying the fee and passing the drug test. You don't actually have to be any good. If your only experience with guns is watching Mel Gibson shoot Happy Faces in "Lethal Weapon," that's perfectly okay: Come on down! But you do have to be the right gender.

But just to confirm that, I called the number they list for the Competitions Division, 719-866-4883, a few weeks ago and I asked, "I'm a woman. Can I enter the men's free pistol event?" The woman who answered said she had to check, left the phone for a few minutes, then came back and said, no. They just don't do that.

This is a huge discouragement for women shooters. Georgia's just not my favorite vacation spot, so if I'm going to get on a plane and go there, (not to mention that I'd also have to go off the meds I take for a medical condition for a couple months) I want to do some shooting! Make it worthwhile! Two events, when I know the guys are getting 2.5x or 3x as many, just doesn't cut it!

I like Houngan's idea - up front, in your face with just a pinch of civil disobedience thrown in. That's also how Rosa Parks got people thinking.

The situation reminds me of the words of the great American patriot John Adams in response to the way the Continental Congress kept picking away at his initial draft of the Declaration of Independence. Apprarently Adams got fed up when his congressional colleagues had plucked out language from his original draft on the basis that it was too "contentious and hostile."

Adams replied, "Well we're going to have to offend someone. This is a revolution damn it"

I also remember watching on live TV a couple of black athletes who raised a fist while on the podium and who were later sanctioned severely for their "offensive conduct". Today, there's a statue of the pair on a university campus.

Back to shooting - it's about time someone just detonated a big stink bomb at a highly visible venue to shed some world attention on this situation.


By the way, I'm no feminist. I'm just a regular guy who hates to see patriarchal dinosaurs with outdated ideas running the show.

Of course, the other side of the coin is that there is going to be less interest in most shooting disciplines on the part of women, so someone at the organizer level has to make a go/no-go decision on whether or not to expend the resources necessary to host another division, when participation might be a fraction of the regular men's competition.

Frankly, I don't buy that. Being left-handed, I've seen firsthand how absolutely arbitrary and untested are people's assumptions about who does and doesn't want a particular product. Guns, guitars, and golf are the worst offenders, usually only offering 2-3% of the products for lefties as for righties. Needless to say, there is no inherent difference in desire to participate, nor ability, when we're talking about handedness. Why do I have to spend 130$ on a left handed grip? Can't you keep the friggin' rightie and send me a left?

So, for women's shooting, I'd say the correct fix is what we were talking about; open all competitions to women, because it's just dumb not to, and get the women-only competitions on par with men's. Of course, this would also bring in qualification to most events. I've always been a proponent of an even playing field, and think that there's no reason to keep women out of men's competitions provided they compete at the same level, in all respects.

H.

How about this for a proposal:

That USAS Shooting allow women to enter and compete in Prone, Free, Rapid and Standard (and Center unless it is concurrent with sport - same game, different gun) and maybe the men's only shotgun event(s) if there is such a thing.

Women will be allowed to win an award. (this makes it technically possible for 4 women to win Gold, Silver and Bronze and 1st leather and the 5th and 6th place shooters, being the men named to the national team)
but they will not be allowed to win a place on the US national team or team for an event such as World Champs.

And the finals will include the top 8 men and all the women who outscore the 8th man (so there may be more than 8 participating in the finals) (this keeps the mens finals at 8 in accordance with ISSF standards without kicking top shooting women out)

How does that sound?

We are looking for ways to increase participation, this may not increase total body count at the nationals but would increase the number of events enters and at $95 per, the income to USAS. It does nothing to change the outcome of the men's results (except the added competition might drive scores up or the distraction and controversy drive them down?) For that matter, if there is controversy do you think it might cause a decrease in turn out for the nationals and a decrease in attendance?

Any thoughts? comments?

Poole

OK, here' s a humorous, tongue-in-cheek, solution to one ladies problem:

enter the women's events as Nicole

enter the men's events as Nick (don't wear a skirt on that day)

:)

Poole
(of course if "NICK" wins a place on the World Champ team, won't the official observer of the drug test be in for a surprise) :)

Bill,
In true equality how about men shooting AP40 and sport pistol then ? Lets keep the whole thing open to all sexes and not just open up the mens events as a free for all. That makes far more sense to me and doesn't then introduce an anti male bias.

Rob.

RobStubbs wrote:Bill,
In true equality how about men shooting AP40 and sport pistol then ? Lets keep the whole thing open to all sexes and not just open up the mens events as a free for all. That makes far more sense to me and doesn't then introduce an anti male bias.

Rob.

It's not necessarily an anti-male bias. Competing on a level field open to everyone is the truest form of fairness. The important thing is to remove handicapping women's events, so that the two are identical, and the argument goes away.

Alternately, to be truly equal, you would have a men's, women's, and open division. Or an AP80, 60, and 40 event, and the general public could decide which one was the "top" event.

I suppose what I'm getting at, re: your post, is that it makes sense to have handicapped events if people want to compete in them, but you can't restrict entry in the event that is considered the best or championship event without invalidating it.

H.

Bill Poole wrote:How about this for a proposal:

That USAS Shooting allow women to enter and compete in Prone, Free, Rapid and Standard (and Center unless it is concurrent with sport - same game, different gun) and maybe the men's only shotgun event(s) if there is such a thing.

Women will be allowed to win an award. (this makes it technically possible for 4 women to win Gold, Silver and Bronze and 1st leather and the 5th and 6th place shooters, being the men named to the national team)
but they will not be allowed to win a place on the US national team or team for an event such as World Champs.

And the finals will include the top 8 men and all the women who outscore the 8th man (so there may be more than 8 participating in the finals) (this keeps the mens finals at 8 in accordance with ISSF standards without kicking top shooting women out)

How does that sound?

We are looking for ways to increase participation, this may not increase total body count at the nationals but would increase the number of events enters and at $95 per, the income to USAS. It does nothing to change the outcome of the men's results (except the added competition might drive scores up or the distraction and controversy drive them down?) For that matter, if there is controversy do you think it might cause a decrease in turn out for the nationals and a decrease in attendance?

Any thoughts? comments?

Poole

The problem with implementing your proposal for this year's nationals is that it may get Nicole and a few other women shooters to attend, but it won't attract many women who have not trained for these 'new' events'. It also does not address the issue of allowing women to compete equally against men in AP and AR.
That said, how would one go about getting USAS to consider any proposal? I know that in the NRA there is a process for considering new proposals, rules changes. For all its faults, the NRA seems to be a more democratic organization - NRA officials get directly involved with members in discussions on Bullseye-L on rules changes, etc. Is anyone at USAS reading this discussion?

Actually, I prefer your second proposal.

- up front, in your face with just a pinch of civil disobedience thrown in. That's also how Rosa Parks got people thinking.

Get some news coverage of Nick being thrown out. What do you think, Nicole?

Fred

Nicole Hamilton wrote:

xeye wrote:beep...beeep....beep....

diminished credibility warning.............

My comment reflects an

*******observation******************


I'd made independently and, if that's all it was, I'd have kept it to myself or been more clear in identifying it as only my own personal opinion.

But at my 30th Stanford reunion in October 2003, I had an opportunity to attend a "Classes without Quizzes" lecture by Prof. Sandy Dornbusch, who's every bit the expert in education that I am not and is especially well known for his field research. His lecture was mostly focused on what his longitudinal studies had shown regarding effort and ability. But several comments he made suggested he also had noticed this relationship, so in a Q&A session afterward, I asked. He confirmed that he also

******************** believes****************

that it's beyond question that greater opportunities for women are largely responsible for the decline in quality of talent and, thus, the quality of results in public education. I have no idea if he's published on this relationship.

Nicole, you have an engineeering background, which requires a grounding in "hard science" I am guessing. Observations, ie anecdotal evidence, are not "arguable". They may be interesting, they may be correlated they may even be groundbreaking truths or Eureka moments but they are well below the level of hypothesis. Such "observations" may result in fallacies of scientific method known as "numerator analysis".

My problem with your original opinion and your source (which I only had time to briefly scan I admit) is that it seamed as though you had made a leap of faith that "quality" of instruction is only achieved through and directly variable with the "intelligence" of the teacher. I am confident that if you look back on your (perhaps) 20 years of formal education you may recall many instructors that were intellectually brilliant and reknown researchers and yet made lousy teachers.


(I felt I must defend the intellectually challenged gene pool of which I am a member)

regards.

xeye wrote:Observations, ie anecdotal evidence, are not "arguable". They may be interesting, they may be correlated they may even be groundbreaking truths or Eureka moments but they are well below the level of hypothesis. Such "observations" may result in fallacies of scientific method known as "numerator analysis".

My problem with your original opinion and your source (which I only had time to briefly scan I admit) is that it seamed as though you had made a leap of faith that "quality" of instruction is only achieved through and directly variable with the "intelligence" of the teacher.

You're right, I am trained as an engineer and scientist, so I try pretty hard to examine my evidence or authorities before drawing a conclusion or making a statement, even if I don't always state what that examination involved. (My original remark was, after all, intended only as a passing comment.)

I trust that the citations I've provided have satisfied you that there's more than just anecdotal evidence to support my contention that better opportunities for women are largely responsible for the decline in public education. If you need more citations, just say so. Once I found a couple, it was like pulling on a loose thread on a sweater to find a bunch more.

[it seamed as though you had made a leap of faith that "quality" of instruction is only achieved through and directly variable with the "intelligence" of the teacher.[/quote]



I trust that the citations I've provided have satisfied you that there's more than just anecdotal evidence to support my contention that better opportunities for women are largely responsible for the decline in public education. If you need more citations, just say so. Once I found a couple, it was like pulling on a loose thread on a sweater to find a bunch more.[/quote]


Originally you said "smart women". Rather than exercising my limited comprehensive skill on volumes can you direct me to one of your sources that has empirical evidence that shows women teachers posessing high IQ are ipso facto better teachers?

I would actually be interested. I would expect at a minimum a population of known intelligence compared to some non subjective measure of teaching excellence.

Regards,

xeye

wrc wrote:Olympic 3P smallbore Rifle was coed until Margaret Murdock (my hero! :^) pretty well cleaned the clock of the Europeans at Montreal 1976 (and elsewhere I'm sure). The image of Lanny Basham offering to share his place on the Gold podium with Silver Margaret is a classic Olympic moment.
Scuttlebutt was that the Euros didn't like to see more women beating their men, so they were at the forefront of the segregated events movement. USA ladies (remember the USWIRO, anyone?) helped the segregation along by supporting the concept of "more events equals more medal chances for women". Double-edged sword, that. And the shot disparity was simply another way to keep direct men vs women's comparisons at bay.
Maybe separate but equal helps the grassroots, but at the highest level, perhaps a final of best men AND women would make for some good publicity. ;^) But definitely, the best shooters of either or any gender certainly deserve equal prizes.

The history that I have read about the sport is that at one time men and women did shoot together. When I took the coaching class, the instructor told me the reason they segreated the sports was because some man from some European (if true so much for their public bragging for being enlightened people) or Arab country didn't like being beat out by a women. However, the offical reason was to give women more opportunity, but their is some inconsistent applications if that was the reason.

randy8745 wrote: The history that I have read about the sport is that at one time men and women did shoot together. When I took the coaching class, the instructor told me the reason they segreated the sports was because some man from some European (if true so much for their public bragging for being enlightened people) or Arab country didn't like being beat out by a women. However, the offical reason was to give women more opportunity, but their is some inconsistent applications if that was the reason.

Funny, but in this part of Europe the 'stories' a little bit different. But hey it doesn't matter, we aren't doing a 19th century history lesson we are meant to looking forward and not trying to blame somebody else.

Rob.

xeye wrote:Originally you said "smart women". Rather than exercising my limited comprehensive skill on volumes can you direct me to one of your sources that has empirical evidence that shows women teachers posessing high IQ are ipso facto better teachers?

I said smart, not high IQ. And I never claimed that being either smart or high IQ makes one "ipso facto" a better teacher, though I think the papers I cited make clear that I'm not the only one who thinks there might be a correlation. But since you seem to believe differently, and it's a point that's of more interest to you than me, why don't you do your own research and get back to us.

And we're back to bashing European men, thanks for that randy8745.

Why does america hate European men?