Computers were fun to me because I played games and was motivated to maximize the meager capabilities of my IBM XT, and wanted to cheat in games. So I learned all sorts of things there.
In computer class, there was no exploration, no fun. Oregon Trail was cool, but didn't capture the imagination.
I hated Math in school for many years, but my grandfather tutored me. Then I discovered puzzles and how to apply math to problems that had some relevance to me.
This is just as important on the hardware side. As far back as I can remember, I had fun tearing apart electronics and computers. My junior high school had a computer club where we created Frankenstein machines out of discarded computers, and did whatever we had to to make them work.
You simply cannot have the same experience with a sealed, black box, computing device like an iPad, Surface, or Chromebook. I hesitate to even call them "computers" since they're so unlike the computers I built as a child.
Look at the message, it is about how computers are fun and empowering. Even with this general message, they still market to girls by simply showing how women and girls are involved with coding. The target of the campaign is girls, but the message is universal that girls don't feel like outsiders and even boys can tag along.
There are two problems that too often seem to be conflated as a single issue: (1) we need more STEM students/workers, because they will build the future, and (2) there is persistent discrimination (notably sexism) in some of the sub-specialties that can't be tolerated.
Is there a reason to suspect that tackling both of these at the same time (e.g., demographic specific initiatives) yields significant benefit over alternatives?
Yes, and I think the author is mistaken to make that conflation. To me it represents a willful blindness to your second issue. Yes, it would be great if our society was more gender-neutral, but it's not, and it never has been (in a historically relative sense, we've come quite a long way). I don't think we can just say "hey let's market toys to boys and girls equally and everything will just work itself out." Again, it's like sticking your fingers in your ears because you don't want to face the murkier, less tractable issues of human nature. The issue is real and it goes a lot deeper than gender norms promulgated by contemporary society.
Is there a reason to suspect that tackling both of these at the same time (e.g., demographic specific initiatives) yields significant benefit over alternatives?
If you treat a field as gendered in your recruiting of kids, the sum of your efforts may ultimately balance the scales more than they're self-defeating. But don't think for a moment kids are stupid enough to hear a gender-specific, or gender-targeted introduction/recruitment to some field and not walk away with some notion that a field is "for" a specific gender, or that one is "better" at it than another.
I really don't see the need to get more women in tech. Its obvious from school age that it just doesn't interest them as much. You never hear of the need to get more male nurses, or primary teachers and that is generally not viewed as a problem.
Edit: I stand corrected, apparently there are big movements to get males into the professions I mentioned. Just that I never heard about these movements.
>You never hear of the need to get more male nurses, or primary teachers and that is generally not viewed as a problem.
This actually is a common conversation within those fields, and is certainly viewed as a problem in wider society. Some researchers claim that one reason male students underperform in school is due to the lack of adult male role models in the form of teachers. As a male with some experience in education, I have seen first hand how much my very presence in the classroom can inspire young male students. They yearn for more male teachers, and they don't even know anything about education theory or developmental psychology.
Still, it's not nearly as much as the reverse campaign. I have never received any messaging through media etc. about such a campaign. It exists, in theory.
On the contrary, this is discussed frequently on HN: both the claim that there are no efforts to get men into nursing or primary teaching, and the fact that indeed there are. It gets brought up so often that it's almost a cliché, with people joking about writing bots for it and so on.
Yes, but only in the comments. That doesn't count. I'm saying it's never on the front page of HN because, duh, HN is a technology website. Why would HN care about nursing? Except as a strawman in the comments of course..
I'd wager that most people who read Hacker News spend at least twice the amount of time reading the comments as they do reading the actual articles. The discussion is one of the primary reasons for the site to exist!
Often the comments section is way more informative than the actual article.
Not sure about male nurses, but not having male primary teachers is a serious issue (at least in the UK). I keep hearing advice about guys getting into teaching kids (or really leading any kids activities) - "don't". Because the expectation is that you're likely a pedophile. Because doing something completely normal that gets some girl at school surprised will cost you time in court and being able to work with kids in the future. I'm not sure how often it really happens (anecdote != data, etc.), but I've heard enough stories of simple actions being misinterpreted with terrible consequences (I was going to teach some kids at the local sport club) that I really wish there were more male teachers. Just to break the idea that it's something unusual.
One of the local stories I heard was about a PE teacher who knocked on the girls' changing room and told them that whatever activities they were doing are starting. He didn't enter, just wanted to get their attention and shouted this through the door. Someone got scared by that, reported that he wanted to enter the changing room and that resulted in lost job - not sure if he was reported anywhere higher in that specific case. (it was mentioned in discussion between coaches, because the local club had changing rooms that had to be used)
Would the same thing happen if it was a female teacher? Probably not. Would it happen with female teacher and boys' changing room? I'd say highly unlikely.
Edit: It's telling when people downvote a comment that is nothing but a relevant link. This is a situation in which you either have convictions and are willing to defend them, or are knowingly ignorant about the subject and are willing to try to learn and engage in discourse. If those options feel constricting, all you have to do is close the tab.
> Its obvious from school age that it just doesn't interest them as much.
[Citation needed]. What you're seeing in school is very likely the effect of early age socialization effects. Which can go both ways, if you look at other cultures, such as Iceland [1]. You may also want to familiarize yourself with the concept of "stereotype threat" [2].
> You never hear of the need to get more male nurses, or primary teachers and that is generally not viewed as a problem.
As a matter of fact, this is a source of concern in the relevant circles [3, 4]. For example, much has been written about boys not having enough male role models among teachers in schools. It just doesn't get much coverage in the media because, well, these are considered low-end jobs that few people other than those involved in nursing and teaching care much about. In fact, that is a major theme: If a type of job is dominated by women, it's likely to be poorly paid (stereotypically male jobs can go either way).
Not really. There have been monkey studies showing males like physical things like cars and girls like nurturing things like dolls. It's PC to deny genetic differences in play at this point, but it isn't scientific.
This is an often misquoted study [1]. The complete picture is actually different in that the male monkeys had an anti-plush toy bias, but the female monkeys had no clear preference for either wheel or plush toys (regardless of what you want to infer from that):
Mirroring the marked sex difference in infant interactions and children’s toy preferences, male monkeys interacted significantly less with plush toys than did female monkeys. By contrast, males and females interacted with wheeled toys comparably, displaying no reliable sex differences. As is the case with sex differences in children’s toy preferences, only male monkeys showed a significant preference for one toy type over the other, preferring wheeled over plush toys. Unlike male monkeys and like girls, female monkeys did not show any reliable preference for either toy type.
So the correct summery would be, male monkeys don't prefer (plushy) dolls.
Which doesn't seem to imply much, especially since many human males (and females!) tend to enjoy Warhammer-esque figures and action figures anyway. In point of fact, the evidence that humans prefer them for the intellectual qualities associated with them shows we have a higher intelligence which can deal with and ignore our primal instincts anyway.
The issues lies in that working with computers or technology is not "cool." Take a look at movies, television shows, etc. A person in tech is typically classified as a geek, a nerd, loser, etc. Middle school and high school are a big popularity contest, but that's also the age where they are very malleable. Until the negative connotations stop, people will continue to be afraid to enter the tech space.
Personally, I don't see any reason to get anyone into anyone. Ideally, people should choose what they want to do, whatever interests them. I chose computers because I couldn't get away from them when I was young, and they interested me more than most other things (sports, history, friends, ...). I see no reason why people should be asked to get into STEM. Should they have the opportunity? Of course! Fortunately, social perceptions about geeks are changing, thanks to shows like Big Bang Theory and because of fortunes made with technology (Facebook, Google, ...). But someone who is not passionate about being a programmer/scientist and is only in it for the money, will in average be less successful in it that someone who's passionate about it.
> Fortunately, social perceptions about geeks are changing, thanks to shows like Big Bang Theory
I'm not a huge fan of many new action movies, but I'm also quite happy seeing people who (in the past) claimed Tolkien or comic books are for nerds only, happily go to see the LotR and Marvel/DC movies now. Movies these days can be criticised for many things - but putting a strong female character in a sci-fi world from time to time is quite a welcome change. (yeah, I know it's not done properly every time, but the shift is visible)
I agree with the gist of your comment, especially the clause that someone who's not passionate about a field shouldn't be forced into that field. However, I'd like to address some other points.
>I chose computers because [...] they interested me more than most other things (sports, history, friends, ...)
This sounds very sad to me. How do you mean that computers interested you more than friends? I don't see how anyone could come to say this.
>social perceptions about geeks are changing, thanks to shows like Big Bang Theory
I think TBBT is doing more harm than good to the "geek culture", whatever you want to call the "geek culture". What it's doing is enforce and rehash the stupid "nerd stereotypes" of the old, but somehow present it as "being cool". The world doesn't need that. All cultures need less poseurs, not more.
I said that it "sounds sad to me". You escalated it pretty quickly into "my values are better than your values". Did you even read that one-line comment you just cited?
And I'm not talking about casual acquaintances, nor superficial "friendships". I'm talking about real, deep friendships with other human beings. The human race is a social species. This means that it is in our very nature to spend time with other humans and develop bonds with them. Being without friends i.e. lonely can even be detrimental to your physical health [1][2]. Kids at various ages react largely positively to close interaction with other kids [3]. Lack of friendship was also shown correlated with other life problems and behaviors [4].
This is not an issue of being introvert or extrovert. Saying that "computers interest you more than friends" just sounds very cruel and uncaring of others. It is in our nature to empathize with other humans: extreme lack of empathy is often understood as one of the primary symptoms and grounds fro diagnosis of psychopathy [5]. Of course, not to say anything close of the parent comment, but if you really do care about computers more than you do about your friends (and, I assume, implicitly about other human beings), it is maybe wise to think about why is that the case.
> I said that it "sounds sad to me". You escalated it pretty quickly into "my values are better than your values". Did you even read that one-line comment you just cited?
Yes.
Did you read the rest of your comment? you go on to cite a bunch of sources supporting your assertion that you should value friends above all else; then you go on to imply that people who have different values may be psychopaths.
I didn't imply that people who have different values are better or worse than each other. I said that, according to a source which is cited on the Wikipedia page for the topic of psychopathy, lack of empathy is often associated with the diagnosis of psychopathy. Lack of empathy doesn't translate directly into lack of dear friends, but my bet is that it's very deeply intertwined.
I still never implied that my values are better. Psychopaths, for example, often believe that their values and views of life are fine, and that the rest of the world is wrong. I can never say whether it's the psychopaths or the non-psychopaths who get it right. (Without rigorous testing, I can actually not reliably claim I am not a psychopath. For one, my empathy scores are moderately lower than male average.) If most of the world agrees that psychopathy should be treated, and the psychopaths say that it shouldn't, then it still doesn't mean that it ultimately has to be treated. I know this sounds like a ridiculous point, but no values can ever be said to be "better" than other values, because "good" is simply so ill-defined in that context. I'm not saying that the OP of the comment is a psychopath, far from it. What I am saying is that our nature instructs us to be empathic and care for our friends and family, and it's not clear to me what I would have to believe and feel to conclude that I care about computers more than I do about my friends.
Maybe computers were more interesting than friends because that person's friends weren't so great. I got really lucky in school with a good group of friends; my sister didn't get so lucky. One of the great things about going into a field (STEM or otherwise) and moving to a city of your choice is the opportunity to find like-minded people more easily.
A random collection of friends in a particular town may or may not be more compelling than computers. If the friends aren't so good, maybe you could be a little down on people for a while -- without being a psychopath.
Only if you seriously think you can use the psychopath diagnosis without judgment. I suppose that is possible? but it's pretty unlikely.
Even if you are using it in a value-neutral way (and I don't believe you are) you are making a huge jump. For example, some people try to de-prioritize friendships because they have been badly hurt by friends in the past; this is far more likely to happen to a deeply empathetic person.
I really don't see the need to get more blacks into the middle class. It's obvious from birth that they're just not interested in anything but subservient labor. Why, you can even look at the shape of their skull and see this plain as day.
The difference is that blacks may want to join the middle class. Most women (certainly the ones I have come into contact with) don't aspire to be techies.
That's just abolitionist propaganda trying to upend the proper order of things. These uppity blacks you're talking about? They've just been fed all sorts of wrong-headed ideas from other people. Envy is a sin, you know.
Well, first off, you're technically correct in the general sense that women don't need tech jobs, and that the tech industry doesn't need women specifically. But STEM does need more people since the number of applicants for STEM jobs is dangerously low in the USA, and our science literacy as a nation is dangerously poor. So since there's all these women on the planet, and they're underrepresented in the STEM field, it makes sense to increase the number of STEM jobs by taking that underrepresented population and moving it toward STEM. Getting more women into STEM helps everyone.
As for why you believe there isn't a demand for these things, it's basically confirmation bias. You don't personally hear a need for more people in these sectors so you assume the need doesn't exist. But in fact there's been a lot more need for nurses in the past decade, so male nurses would definitely be welcomed in terms of increasing the applicants for those jobs. Teachers less so because they have a hard enough time making ends meet with miniscule budgets without adding more teachers to the roles.
All these industries are different and have different motivators as to whom they try to get more jobs to. But behind any great push to get more people into an industry you'll probably find economic motivators, not a demand for social justice. So focus less on the fact that it's women, and focus more on the fact that it's half the population not going after STEM jobs.
Now, STEM is broad, and software development is a different thing. But a lot of people are surprised to learn that the median wage for registered nurses in San Jose ($122,990) is actually higher than it is for software developers in San Jose ($116,610). In San Francisco, dental hygienists earn 106K a year, only a bit less than software developers (110K a year). I don't really have any problem with this, I'm happy that these workers make good salaries, but it is remarkable that we talk about the urgency of getting more people into an field where there is a severe shortage when other fields in these high cost areas earn about the same amount, and perhaps with considerably better career security as you enter middle age.
There are good reasons to want to do one or the other, but I certainly wouldn't say that the intangibles clearly break in favor of software development. Silicon valley leaders act like the shortage of STEM workers or software developers is a foregone conclusion. I'm not saying that there's no case to be made for it, but I the evidence suggests that salaries in software development are not remarkable on average, and there are considerable career risks long term.
We need to consider the possibility that avoidance of STEM is actually a very economically rational decision for a high talent student. It may be why Americans are avoiding the field, and it may be why women are avoiding it.
There are, in fact, some initiatives to try to get more men in to nursing for various reasons. For example, see this (http://www.minoritynurse.com/article/men-nursing). The article has a few references at the bottom which also make for interesting reading.
Of course we come across more articles about women in tech because we frequent tech forums. But the topic (of men in nursing, teaching etc) do come up on the relevant forums.
Our society markets cultural gender references to the extent that we instill into girls a dislike of “traditionally male” interests from early on.
So could one say that we do need to focus on girls, to the extent that we recognize the socialization they receive in a society where gender roles are a thing? I agree with the article in general -- though I don't see anything wrong with programs for girls who have already found themselves teenaged and without the resources to get the necessary programming/STEM experience, and/or being uncomfortable around teenage boys in a field that the boys have been taught is their turf.
The media should promote some more female STEM role models. It would make up for the years of degredation and exclusion of women in STEM on TV, in the movies, etc -- especially in kid's media, where girls and women are usually token side-characters when they aren't princesses (see reelgirl.com for thorough documentation). It'll never happen, of course, despite that it would hurt no one, because the necessary critical thinking, along with the knowledge of women's history, to keep ourselves from shouting "gender bias!!!" at anything helping women succeed, is absent.
I wonder if anyone has done a longitudinal study of children raised in environments where they were strongly incentivized (to put it mildly) to favor activities that we typically see taken up by members of the opposite sex. No IRB would approve this nowadays, but maybe someone started one back in the day?
Even without such a study it should be intuitive that steering neurotypical (in the broad sense) boys toward typically female preferences and activities, and vice versa, will end up being cruel along some margin.
(Just as it's certainly cruel for an atypical girl to be forced into typically female behaviors and preferences, which is what you're describing.)
NYU sociologist Emily Kane's book The Gender Trap documents the closest we'll probably get to a study that explores that notion, in this century. I highly recommend it http://nyupress.org/books/book-details.aspx?bookId=11234
The synopses of the book that are on the internet don't inform of the degree to which it's an actual study by a sociologist; it's not a pop-parenting book.
Given our ignorance, though, and the likelihood that along some margin or another this becomes a zero-sum game between the atypical and the typical, I'd rather see a little less swashbuckling from the more aggressive advocates of undoing gender expectations. Much of this looks like surgery by sledgehammer to me.
"Gender expectations" (in other words, gender) are killing and hurting women and always have. Gender needs to go, ASAP. Instead of getting all theory-of-oppression on you, here's some real examples I think about when I think about why.
You're thinking in partial equilibrium. I've no doubt that many women suffer under the yoke of gender expectations that are at odds with their biology. So do men. And even now, somewhere, there are women who suffer because of gender expectations you'd no doubt be in favor seeing made the norm.
But a world in which your vision ("Gender needs to go" == "your conception of gender norms needs to go") is realized is one where many more suffer similarly oppressive expectations. And anywhere in between we're making tradeoffs that are costly to someone on some margin.
Somewhat relatedly: "Theor[ies] of oppression" would be all the more compelling if the humanists and sociologists who peddle them for a living bothered (or had the training) to think in terms of general equilibria.
I have never heard of "training [] to think in terms of general equilibria". Where does one acquire such training? Is there a YouTube channel for that?
Men benefit directly from how women suffer under gender. Did you read any of the articles? The only reason any of that occurs is for the benefit of the men in the society. The demand is for girls/women to "make themselves sexy," sexy being defined as appealing to straight men's sexuality. The idea of "oppression" has always implied an oppressor class -- attempting to revise the idea as to not include you and I in the class is only expected, though. "Sociologists"? Try Marx.
I don't "favor" any gender expectations. I don't know what you're referring to. The worldwide conception of gender, facets of which is illustrated by the articles, needs to go -- you can read what this would be like in the short essay "Imagining a World without Gender" by Judith Lorber [1].
I don't think Lego can be blamed for Lego Friends. They made gender-neutral lego toys for years and years, and never made the kind of spectacular traction they got with girls through Lego Friends.
A LEGO block is sex-neutral, but the decades of marketing and LEGO character pieces certainly were not. LEGO can't take all the blame, given that many parents probably didn't buy LEGOs for their daughters given their own internalized stereotypes, but it could have recognized that this was a phenomenon and aggressively worked to include girls in their "neutral" toys.
As usual, the actual problem is deeper than symtomatic entities like LEGO. We will see the end of this issue when we see the end of the world's obsession with sex and sex stereotypes.
It really all starts with Lego IMO. Give all children male/female a box of Lego on their first birthday. Either they'll take to it or they won't. Problem solved!
...maybe I should also add: A doll and a hair ribbon or something, too.
Hey, while not dolls, I had great fun with my teddy bears as a kid. Served up some mean teddy bear picnics. With the participation of my sister, made some teddy bear magazines for them to read. My mother baked them some miniature cakes. Of course, the bears went parachuting and such too.
Actually, I remember now, before Lego I had some large wooden bricks. Building towers and bridges was pretty neat. Playing physics based puzzle games is still great fun!
I think focusing on children is the right way to tackle this issue. Per the author's point she works in an environment with an equal mix of male/female. Teaching kids from an early age that their gender doesn't limit the career they pursue will make this more the norm than not.
> Teaching kids from an early age that their gender doesn't limit the career they pursue will make this more the norm than not.
I believe this is one of the main issues. We tell kids they can "be whatever you want to be", and then look at a girl funny when she wants to be an engineer or make fun of a boy for wanting to be a nurse. Society has ingrained certain ideas into what a person in a given career looks like that people are deterred (consciously or subconsciously) from that career if they don't fit the norm.
For example, what is the first image that pop's into your head when you think of a nurse? This seems to be one of the fields that has been pushed so hard into a female career in our societal consciousness, that an entire genre of porn exists around this single occupation (I want my male naughty nurse Halloween costume, damn it!).
It's at a point where societal norms would need to be broken down from the ground up, with regards to gender roles and careers, starting with kids.
If you reduce STEM to its most fundamental trait in a child, it would be something like "the love of taking things apart and/or assembling things together." Obviously Lego is one activity that appeals to this trait however their are other less obvious ones such as taking apart Barbie clothes and reassembling them - sometimes exchanging various limbs and heads. Also deconstructing food dishes to their component ingredients before reassembling a better recipe in the Easy Bake oven. Are these not STEM traits that are somewhat gender biased but still cultivates the necessary curiosity to excel in STEM later in life? Needless to say my daughter is this child and yet shares nothing of her brother's passion for Legos, Mindstorm robotics, programming games, etc. Yet as a parent I'm not concerned because as long as this desire to deconstruct/reconstruct is present, STEM is always an option.
I don't think that's it. The differences in percentages between men and women in STEM are just too big to attribute them to "early conditioning" anymore, esp. after so many years of campaining [1]. Either men are masochists and choose jobs that are "not fun", or men find STEM more fun than women. I believe, at least in Europe, there is no lack of exposure to STEM subjects.
The idea of interwoving them sounds a little bit silly: a sci-fi text will bore a student who is literature-oriented in the same way that a mathematical model of romance will sound cheesy to a math nerd.
It's called the gender equality paradox. The more supposedly 'equal' the opportunities between genders are, the more the outcomes seem to diverge. Scandinavian countries have strong gender-based career divergence as well.
Make no mistake, there are plenty of literature-oriented sci-fi novels. Frankenstein was one of them that's taught regularly in schools, but there are plenty of modern examples as well. And I remember very recently a handful of stories on HN describing mathematical dating models. The problem is that the literature teachers aren't trained enough to discuss the STEM parts in any real depth; they're trained to think that readers are just supposed to accept the sci-fi assumptions in order to generate an interesting narrative conflict. And while that's partly true, it also results in throwing out a lot of really interesting discussion.
Years of campaigning means nothing if society hasn't notably changed as a result. It really is our entertainment, half of all television shows for children show men (boys) being innately superior in intelligence [1]. Even worse, there are no children's shows with primary female genius characters (they are all male), and when they do show up as non-primary characters their intelligence is often overshadowed by their feminine attributes.
It's even worse in teen TV, where the smart female characters are more often portrayed as being love interests for male characters over being smart.
And lets not even get into the rampant sexism in most mainstream video games (and their communities), even more important for software engineering and computer science since modding/making/playing video games seems to be a common factor for many male entrants, and relatively uncommon among female entrants to the field (at least in my recent but anecdotal experience).
This all leads to a situation where computers, engineering, science, and math are more often seen as male disciplines. We may have cleaned up a lot of blatant sexism, especially in modern workplaces, but our media is still teaching our children gender bias, often with a detrimental effect for both genders (for example decreasing college rates for males, how many male teen characters care about getting into college, have their shit together, etc).
> Years of campaigning means nothing if society hasn't notably changed as a result
It may mean that what the campaign thinks is right is not what people want. It doesn't help that social sciences research on the subject is kind of taboo.
Fair enough. But towards the original point, dismissing a solution to a problem because of the relevant campaigning, and not the relevant changes seems like a pretty poor argument. Additionally, you could also take my statement as meaning, "if the campaigning isn't succeeding, perhaps trying to change the message will help". Which, encouraging STEM for all children, would be a new message that would also likely increase the number of women in STEM (eventually). This is actually a pretty common shift in the "women in STEM" movements as of late.
As a counter argument: There has been lots of campaigning on fixing the problem of limited numbers of women in STEM, but relatively few changes to the media portrayal of women in STEM or education of children to fix the problem. Perhaps more importantly, a vast number of STEM fields are in high demand, and our education system seems to be poorly equipped at encouraging students (in general) to enter (any) STEM field. So perhaps we can hit two birds with one stone and change how we teach STEM to be a more integral part of school, like the original post suggested with a relatively provocative title.
>Either men are masochists and choose jobs that are "not fun"
Another possible explanation is that perhaps there is cultural pressure on middle-class men to make a lot of money, regardless of how much pain is involved in getting said money. If you are only getting an undergrad degree, a STEM degree is probably the most remunerative course of action you have open to you.
Now, my perception is that society puts a lot less pressure on middle-class women when it comes to making money... but I'm not a woman; it is quite possible that my perception here is in error.
you're all idiots. mandating sexism is not a solution to sexism.
the "ONLY" way??? "Boys too"??? well, i'm a "boy", and i got into STEM without this "way".
how about you start supporting STEM by not stipulating a logical statement that is easily provably false. logic is the core of STEM, and you're shitting on it.
I have a controversial view of this. That is, why are so many men forced or pressured to go into a STEM career? This is the exact same question, just framed from the perspective that there are plenty of other jobs that pay well enough and are easier.
Computer science for instance is sitting behind a desk all day every day more or less constantly using your brain and concentrating. This is kind of a bad choice of occupation even though it appeals to some and has some upsides.
We know from the "pay gap" that women's lower pay is balanced by fewer hours, shorter commute, better environment, and other benefits of that kind; there's essentially no actual discrimination for the same work. This makes me wonder whether women are choosing this result, or whether men are steered away from working easier, less well-paying jobs.
It could be that women aren't going into STEM in equal numbers simply because they have subjectively better choices available. If that's the case, then programs to equalize the numbers will doubly discriminate against men by being forced into it in the first place and then getting less compensation in the second.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadComputers were fun to me because I played games and was motivated to maximize the meager capabilities of my IBM XT, and wanted to cheat in games. So I learned all sorts of things there.
In computer class, there was no exploration, no fun. Oregon Trail was cool, but didn't capture the imagination.
I hated Math in school for many years, but my grandfather tutored me. Then I discovered puzzles and how to apply math to problems that had some relevance to me.
You simply cannot have the same experience with a sealed, black box, computing device like an iPad, Surface, or Chromebook. I hesitate to even call them "computers" since they're so unlike the computers I built as a child.
Look at the message, it is about how computers are fun and empowering. Even with this general message, they still market to girls by simply showing how women and girls are involved with coding. The target of the campaign is girls, but the message is universal that girls don't feel like outsiders and even boys can tag along.
Is there a reason to suspect that tackling both of these at the same time (e.g., demographic specific initiatives) yields significant benefit over alternatives?
If you treat a field as gendered in your recruiting of kids, the sum of your efforts may ultimately balance the scales more than they're self-defeating. But don't think for a moment kids are stupid enough to hear a gender-specific, or gender-targeted introduction/recruitment to some field and not walk away with some notion that a field is "for" a specific gender, or that one is "better" at it than another.
Edit: I stand corrected, apparently there are big movements to get males into the professions I mentioned. Just that I never heard about these movements.
This actually is a common conversation within those fields, and is certainly viewed as a problem in wider society. Some researchers claim that one reason male students underperform in school is due to the lack of adult male role models in the form of teachers. As a male with some experience in education, I have seen first hand how much my very presence in the classroom can inspire young male students. They yearn for more male teachers, and they don't even know anything about education theory or developmental psychology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_nursing#Increasing_numbe...
On the contrary, this is discussed frequently on HN: both the claim that there are no efforts to get men into nursing or primary teaching, and the fact that indeed there are. It gets brought up so often that it's almost a cliché, with people joking about writing bots for it and so on.
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=men+nursing#!/comment/forever/0/me...
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=male+nurses#!/comment/sort_by_date...
I'd wager that most people who read Hacker News spend at least twice the amount of time reading the comments as they do reading the actual articles. The discussion is one of the primary reasons for the site to exist!
Often the comments section is way more informative than the actual article.
Would the same thing happen if it was a female teacher? Probably not. Would it happen with female teacher and boys' changing room? I'd say highly unlikely.
I'd appreciate if you'd read something: http://reelgirl.com/2013/11/im-not-a-pilot-im-a-pilots-wife-...
Edit: It's telling when people downvote a comment that is nothing but a relevant link. This is a situation in which you either have convictions and are willing to defend them, or are knowingly ignorant about the subject and are willing to try to learn and engage in discourse. If those options feel constricting, all you have to do is close the tab.
[Citation needed]. What you're seeing in school is very likely the effect of early age socialization effects. Which can go both ways, if you look at other cultures, such as Iceland [1]. You may also want to familiarize yourself with the concept of "stereotype threat" [2].
> You never hear of the need to get more male nurses, or primary teachers and that is generally not viewed as a problem.
As a matter of fact, this is a source of concern in the relevant circles [3, 4]. For example, much has been written about boys not having enough male role models among teachers in schools. It just doesn't get much coverage in the media because, well, these are considered low-end jobs that few people other than those involved in nursing and teaching care much about. In fact, that is a major theme: If a type of job is dominated by women, it's likely to be poorly paid (stereotypically male jobs can go either way).
[1] http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1032361...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat
[3] http://www.edutopia.org/male-teacher-shortage
[4] http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2013/02/21/is-the-short...
Mirroring the marked sex difference in infant interactions and children’s toy preferences, male monkeys interacted significantly less with plush toys than did female monkeys. By contrast, males and females interacted with wheeled toys comparably, displaying no reliable sex differences. As is the case with sex differences in children’s toy preferences, only male monkeys showed a significant preference for one toy type over the other, preferring wheeled over plush toys. Unlike male monkeys and like girls, female monkeys did not show any reliable preference for either toy type.
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/
Which doesn't seem to imply much, especially since many human males (and females!) tend to enjoy Warhammer-esque figures and action figures anyway. In point of fact, the evidence that humans prefer them for the intellectual qualities associated with them shows we have a higher intelligence which can deal with and ignore our primal instincts anyway.
There are many citations in there. I don't remember who the researchers were though.
I'm not a huge fan of many new action movies, but I'm also quite happy seeing people who (in the past) claimed Tolkien or comic books are for nerds only, happily go to see the LotR and Marvel/DC movies now. Movies these days can be criticised for many things - but putting a strong female character in a sci-fi world from time to time is quite a welcome change. (yeah, I know it's not done properly every time, but the shift is visible)
>I chose computers because [...] they interested me more than most other things (sports, history, friends, ...)
This sounds very sad to me. How do you mean that computers interested you more than friends? I don't see how anyone could come to say this.
>social perceptions about geeks are changing, thanks to shows like Big Bang Theory
I think TBBT is doing more harm than good to the "geek culture", whatever you want to call the "geek culture". What it's doing is enforce and rehash the stupid "nerd stereotypes" of the old, but somehow present it as "being cool". The world doesn't need that. All cultures need less poseurs, not more.
I didn't think I'd ever cite Maddox on HN, but I agree with him spot on. Take a look: http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd
"Your values are different from mine, and that is sad, because my values are better than your values."
And I'm not talking about casual acquaintances, nor superficial "friendships". I'm talking about real, deep friendships with other human beings. The human race is a social species. This means that it is in our very nature to spend time with other humans and develop bonds with them. Being without friends i.e. lonely can even be detrimental to your physical health [1][2]. Kids at various ages react largely positively to close interaction with other kids [3]. Lack of friendship was also shown correlated with other life problems and behaviors [4].
This is not an issue of being introvert or extrovert. Saying that "computers interest you more than friends" just sounds very cruel and uncaring of others. It is in our nature to empathize with other humans: extreme lack of empathy is often understood as one of the primary symptoms and grounds fro diagnosis of psychopathy [5]. Of course, not to say anything close of the parent comment, but if you really do care about computers more than you do about your friends (and, I assume, implicitly about other human beings), it is maybe wise to think about why is that the case.
[1]: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/conditions/07/27/moh.heal...
[2]: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/study-dont...
[3]: http://www.aboutourkids.org/articles/do_kids_need_friends
[4]: http://psychcentral.com/lib/the-importance-of-friendship/000...
[5]: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/j...
Yes.
Did you read the rest of your comment? you go on to cite a bunch of sources supporting your assertion that you should value friends above all else; then you go on to imply that people who have different values may be psychopaths.
I still never implied that my values are better. Psychopaths, for example, often believe that their values and views of life are fine, and that the rest of the world is wrong. I can never say whether it's the psychopaths or the non-psychopaths who get it right. (Without rigorous testing, I can actually not reliably claim I am not a psychopath. For one, my empathy scores are moderately lower than male average.) If most of the world agrees that psychopathy should be treated, and the psychopaths say that it shouldn't, then it still doesn't mean that it ultimately has to be treated. I know this sounds like a ridiculous point, but no values can ever be said to be "better" than other values, because "good" is simply so ill-defined in that context. I'm not saying that the OP of the comment is a psychopath, far from it. What I am saying is that our nature instructs us to be empathic and care for our friends and family, and it's not clear to me what I would have to believe and feel to conclude that I care about computers more than I do about my friends.
A random collection of friends in a particular town may or may not be more compelling than computers. If the friends aren't so good, maybe you could be a little down on people for a while -- without being a psychopath.
Only if you seriously think you can use the psychopath diagnosis without judgment. I suppose that is possible? but it's pretty unlikely.
Even if you are using it in a value-neutral way (and I don't believe you are) you are making a huge jump. For example, some people try to de-prioritize friendships because they have been badly hurt by friends in the past; this is far more likely to happen to a deeply empathetic person.
Very poor comparison.
As for why you believe there isn't a demand for these things, it's basically confirmation bias. You don't personally hear a need for more people in these sectors so you assume the need doesn't exist. But in fact there's been a lot more need for nurses in the past decade, so male nurses would definitely be welcomed in terms of increasing the applicants for those jobs. Teachers less so because they have a hard enough time making ends meet with miniscule budgets without adding more teachers to the roles.
All these industries are different and have different motivators as to whom they try to get more jobs to. But behind any great push to get more people into an industry you'll probably find economic motivators, not a demand for social justice. So focus less on the fact that it's women, and focus more on the fact that it's half the population not going after STEM jobs.
At the graduate level, the RAND institute concluded that the American aversion to STEM degrees is rational and market-driven:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html
A professor at the University of Washington, William Zumeta, reaches a similar conclusion
http://www.issues.org/19.2/p_zumeta.htm
Now, STEM is broad, and software development is a different thing. But a lot of people are surprised to learn that the median wage for registered nurses in San Jose ($122,990) is actually higher than it is for software developers in San Jose ($116,610). In San Francisco, dental hygienists earn 106K a year, only a bit less than software developers (110K a year). I don't really have any problem with this, I'm happy that these workers make good salaries, but it is remarkable that we talk about the urgency of getting more people into an field where there is a severe shortage when other fields in these high cost areas earn about the same amount, and perhaps with considerably better career security as you enter middle age.
(see http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings)
There are good reasons to want to do one or the other, but I certainly wouldn't say that the intangibles clearly break in favor of software development. Silicon valley leaders act like the shortage of STEM workers or software developers is a foregone conclusion. I'm not saying that there's no case to be made for it, but I the evidence suggests that salaries in software development are not remarkable on average, and there are considerable career risks long term.
We need to consider the possibility that avoidance of STEM is actually a very economically rational decision for a high talent student. It may be why Americans are avoiding the field, and it may be why women are avoiding it.
Of course we come across more articles about women in tech because we frequent tech forums. But the topic (of men in nursing, teaching etc) do come up on the relevant forums.
So could one say that we do need to focus on girls, to the extent that we recognize the socialization they receive in a society where gender roles are a thing? I agree with the article in general -- though I don't see anything wrong with programs for girls who have already found themselves teenaged and without the resources to get the necessary programming/STEM experience, and/or being uncomfortable around teenage boys in a field that the boys have been taught is their turf.
The media should promote some more female STEM role models. It would make up for the years of degredation and exclusion of women in STEM on TV, in the movies, etc -- especially in kid's media, where girls and women are usually token side-characters when they aren't princesses (see reelgirl.com for thorough documentation). It'll never happen, of course, despite that it would hurt no one, because the necessary critical thinking, along with the knowledge of women's history, to keep ourselves from shouting "gender bias!!!" at anything helping women succeed, is absent.
Even without such a study it should be intuitive that steering neurotypical (in the broad sense) boys toward typically female preferences and activities, and vice versa, will end up being cruel along some margin.
(Just as it's certainly cruel for an atypical girl to be forced into typically female behaviors and preferences, which is what you're describing.)
The question is, where's the margin?
The synopses of the book that are on the internet don't inform of the degree to which it's an actual study by a sociologist; it's not a pop-parenting book.
Given our ignorance, though, and the likelihood that along some margin or another this becomes a zero-sum game between the atypical and the typical, I'd rather see a little less swashbuckling from the more aggressive advocates of undoing gender expectations. Much of this looks like surgery by sledgehammer to me.
http://phonaesthetica.com/2014/02/21/heres-how-it-ends/
http://sodisarmingdarling.tumblr.com/post/34106027759/what-i...
http://www.metafilter.com/121190/teenage-girls-they-havent-b...
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-25138455
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/jan...
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/14/report_many_girls_view_sexua...
But a world in which your vision ("Gender needs to go" == "your conception of gender norms needs to go") is realized is one where many more suffer similarly oppressive expectations. And anywhere in between we're making tradeoffs that are costly to someone on some margin.
Somewhat relatedly: "Theor[ies] of oppression" would be all the more compelling if the humanists and sociologists who peddle them for a living bothered (or had the training) to think in terms of general equilibria.
Men benefit directly from how women suffer under gender. Did you read any of the articles? The only reason any of that occurs is for the benefit of the men in the society. The demand is for girls/women to "make themselves sexy," sexy being defined as appealing to straight men's sexuality. The idea of "oppression" has always implied an oppressor class -- attempting to revise the idea as to not include you and I in the class is only expected, though. "Sociologists"? Try Marx.
I don't "favor" any gender expectations. I don't know what you're referring to. The worldwide conception of gender, facets of which is illustrated by the articles, needs to go -- you can read what this would be like in the short essay "Imagining a World without Gender" by Judith Lorber [1].
[1] http://paste.pound-python.org/show/QGJwDfVVulEjLTdEmdmU/
As usual, the actual problem is deeper than symtomatic entities like LEGO. We will see the end of this issue when we see the end of the world's obsession with sex and sex stereotypes.
Hey, while not dolls, I had great fun with my teddy bears as a kid. Served up some mean teddy bear picnics. With the participation of my sister, made some teddy bear magazines for them to read. My mother baked them some miniature cakes. Of course, the bears went parachuting and such too.
Actually, I remember now, before Lego I had some large wooden bricks. Building towers and bridges was pretty neat. Playing physics based puzzle games is still great fun!
I believe this is one of the main issues. We tell kids they can "be whatever you want to be", and then look at a girl funny when she wants to be an engineer or make fun of a boy for wanting to be a nurse. Society has ingrained certain ideas into what a person in a given career looks like that people are deterred (consciously or subconsciously) from that career if they don't fit the norm.
For example, what is the first image that pop's into your head when you think of a nurse? This seems to be one of the fields that has been pushed so hard into a female career in our societal consciousness, that an entire genre of porn exists around this single occupation (I want my male naughty nurse Halloween costume, damn it!).
It's at a point where societal norms would need to be broken down from the ground up, with regards to gender roles and careers, starting with kids.
The idea of interwoving them sounds a little bit silly: a sci-fi text will bore a student who is literature-oriented in the same way that a mathematical model of romance will sound cheesy to a math nerd.
1. http://techpageone.dell.com/business/study-women-stem-career...
It's even worse in teen TV, where the smart female characters are more often portrayed as being love interests for male characters over being smart.
And lets not even get into the rampant sexism in most mainstream video games (and their communities), even more important for software engineering and computer science since modding/making/playing video games seems to be a common factor for many male entrants, and relatively uncommon among female entrants to the field (at least in my recent but anecdotal experience).
This all leads to a situation where computers, engineering, science, and math are more often seen as male disciplines. We may have cleaned up a lot of blatant sexism, especially in modern workplaces, but our media is still teaching our children gender bias, often with a detrimental effect for both genders (for example decreasing college rates for males, how many male teen characters care about getting into college, have their shit together, etc).
[1] http://www.truechild.org/PageDisplay.asp?p1=6656
It may mean that what the campaign thinks is right is not what people want. It doesn't help that social sciences research on the subject is kind of taboo.
As a counter argument: There has been lots of campaigning on fixing the problem of limited numbers of women in STEM, but relatively few changes to the media portrayal of women in STEM or education of children to fix the problem. Perhaps more importantly, a vast number of STEM fields are in high demand, and our education system seems to be poorly equipped at encouraging students (in general) to enter (any) STEM field. So perhaps we can hit two birds with one stone and change how we teach STEM to be a more integral part of school, like the original post suggested with a relatively provocative title.
Another possible explanation is that perhaps there is cultural pressure on middle-class men to make a lot of money, regardless of how much pain is involved in getting said money. If you are only getting an undergrad degree, a STEM degree is probably the most remunerative course of action you have open to you.
Now, my perception is that society puts a lot less pressure on middle-class women when it comes to making money... but I'm not a woman; it is quite possible that my perception here is in error.
the "ONLY" way??? "Boys too"??? well, i'm a "boy", and i got into STEM without this "way".
how about you start supporting STEM by not stipulating a logical statement that is easily provably false. logic is the core of STEM, and you're shitting on it.
did a woman write the article?
Computer science for instance is sitting behind a desk all day every day more or less constantly using your brain and concentrating. This is kind of a bad choice of occupation even though it appeals to some and has some upsides.
We know from the "pay gap" that women's lower pay is balanced by fewer hours, shorter commute, better environment, and other benefits of that kind; there's essentially no actual discrimination for the same work. This makes me wonder whether women are choosing this result, or whether men are steered away from working easier, less well-paying jobs.
It could be that women aren't going into STEM in equal numbers simply because they have subjectively better choices available. If that's the case, then programs to equalize the numbers will doubly discriminate against men by being forced into it in the first place and then getting less compensation in the second.