FWIS3

.....If it's politically incorrect.

What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

Systemic (even if unconscious) sexism in Science?. Don't like it one bit, but I have to admit it's been too tolerated for too long.

But this?

Over and over, Dr. Cheryan and her colleagues have found that female students are more interested in enrolling in a computer class if they are shown a classroom (whether virtual or real) decorated not with “Star Wars” posters, science-fiction books, computer parts and tech magazines, but with a more neutral décor — art and nature posters, coffee makers, plants and general-interest magazines.

I smell "micro-aggresion" BS. Sorry, won't wash.

Men sometimes scoff that if young women let such nebulous factors deter them from careers in physics or computer science, the women are exercising their own free choice, and if girls were tough enough, such exaggerated stereotypes and feelings of discomfort wouldn’t discourage them.

Yet I wonder how many young men would choose to major in computer science if they suspected they might need to carry out their coding while sitting in a pink cubicle decorated with posters of “Sex and the City,” with copies of Vogue and Cosmo scattered around the lunchroom. In fact, Dr. Cheryan’s research shows that young men tend not to major in English for the same reasons women don’t pick computer science: They compare their notions of who they are to their stereotypes of English majors and decide they won’t fit in.

So, all those guys that studied English are "metro-sexuals"? right, someone tell that to Yosh. IF it smells like BS and looks like BS....

What a pile of crap.


Edited for Clarity

It's been way too long since I went to Uni or taught at Uni so I'm not really in a position to make comment, but, I won't let that little fact stop me!
If changing the name of a course makes a 400% difference in attendance, it makes me wonder just how easily peoples minds are to external influence and how little they actually check the syllabus.
Maybe we should stop trying to look for and cater to the differences between the sexes and instead concentrate on teaching all of them to cut through the bullshit and think for themselves.

Boys like battles. Girls like relationships.

Yes, that is a sweeping generalization, and we all can come up with hundreds of exceptions, but at the very basis it's true.

My two kids fall in to those stereotypical categories. And you KNOW that I am not pushing them one way or the other. They are going to like what they are going to like. I just have to make sure to encourage them to pursue what they like, not disallow them from a stereotypical activity because I might not like it (like for Russter, dressing in pink every frickin' day), and emphasizing that there are no "girl" things or "boy" things.

One of our local museums has summer camps for tweens/teens that teach coding. One is coed, and one is marketed for girls only. They are the exact same camp. I am in a class with one of their employees, and she is planning a research project involving this camp. She is going to observe both camps and see the differences in interactions and learning outcomes when the girls are in the coed vs. girls only camps. I'm very interested in the results.

My point is: we can't be "gender-blind." Yes vendic, "stop trying to look for and cater to the differences between the sexes and instead concentrate on teaching all of them to cut through the bullshit and think for themselves" is very important. But we also need to get both genders in the door first.

I have a friend who is involved with women in science type initiatives (and has a MSc in astronomy, so definitely knows what the field is like), and is currently involved with getting women in science to interact with girls in high school. Why? Well it's pretty minimal to do, but it turns out from studies that one of the best things you can do to get any group involved in a field where they are a minority is show them there are other people like them in it.

So yeah, I'm not terribly surprised that girls are turned off by thinking you need to be an uber-geek to be in these fields, even though, of course, you don't have to be one to succeed in the field, and it's not like you are going to be a social hermit if you go off and do comp sci or what have you. I really don't think censoring anyone's interests is the answer here, but there is something to be said for programs like what my friend runs, which basically tells people who have biases they may not even be aware of "look! this can be an option for you too!" It's definitely not hurting anyone or anything, so why not?

^^^ What Rommie said, a thousand times over, IMO.

Not sure about astronomy myself; but from what I've seen in IT, the computer people are basically the "cool kids" now, and have their own cliquish thing going. I've seen it in action. We've basically reinvented our own form of social-jockeying exclusivity from the ground up, however much we deny it; and IMO, breaking that cliquishness up a bit is bound to be a good thing.

...

@Sigma

Re microagressions, I believe that's a real thing, though maybe not how you think.

Not sure if you were ever seriously, systematically bullied during middle/high school? If so: recall how, over the course of time, taking seemingly minor bullshit from people again and again built up into something really miserable? The death of a thousand cuts, right? If you got to see this, I'll bet you also remember that sometimes, people made you miserable seemingly without even trying...

The same applies in adulthood. When society has a hate-on for certain groups of people, that manifests through day to day interactions. People who are "unpopular" are made to feel it, day after day, from biases stacked against them in personal interaction.

IOW, I think it's basically the same cliquish tribal shit that you routinely rail against.

Our computer science classrooms are neutral in color and decor. The only things typically hanging on the walls are charts showing the paths to different Cisco or Microsoft certs, and some pictures of the faculty, both full and part time. There are also whiteboards and announcement boards.

I am an SI (supplemental instructor) for the intro to hardware and the intro to programming classes. I try very hard not to vary my behavior based on the student's gender, but if I do, I often find that it is in the other direction, encouraging the female students more than the males. Totally subconscious, until I realize that I am doing it.

pumpkinpi wrote:Boys like battles. Girls like relationships.

My point is: we can't be "gender-blind." Yes vendic, "stop trying to look for and cater to the differences between the sexes and instead concentrate on teaching all of them to cut through the bullshit and think for themselves" is very important. But we also need to get both genders in the door first.

Sorry about the late response. I had to find a way to best explain what I was meaning without writing a novel.

Encouraging != not discouraging != making something more appealing.

Most sane people acknowledge the differences between sexes. While there is some overlap, and some gender neutral roles, many roles are more appealing to one or another sex. I don't have issue with policy that tries to not discourage the non typical gender roles, I think it should be done. I think it's also great to encourage people to pursue their non typical gender roles.
Where I have difficulty is when people try to make fields appeal to other genders against their natural tendency for choosing that field. That to me is like convincing someone that something is better for them than something else. That can be a life long decision. Sure it will even up the ratio between males and females, but, is that going to make them happy, or just make us feel better about the statistics?
Classic example is a friend of ours who was a computer specialist. She is now at age 50 going back to school to study nursing because that is what she really wanted to do. That's a hell of a lot of years doing something that you don't like because someone convinced you at an early age that you can do it. She really got little personal satisfaction from her job even though she was successful.

It's a fine line that needs to be juggled and their are consequences of us pushing something that isn't a person's natural preference.
Which is what I meant when I wrote that we should teach them to think for themselves.