Slashdot Mirror
Soap Opera for Luring Women to Tech is a Flop
Billosaur writes "The Register has an article by Mark Ballard on attempts to lure more women into the area of technology by a '...TV soap that depicts them making a success of careers traditionally pursued by men.' The Public Awareness of Science and Engineering (PAWS) Drama Fund has been attempting to develop a soap opera called 'Happy Valley' to encourage girls to pursue careers in science and technology by giving them successful role models to follow. The idea is tanking, however, as no one is willing to pick up the show. To quote the show's writer, Tony McHale: 'People say, why don't you do a science soap. My reply is that no-one will commission it, because it's boring.'"
They have a ton of them. They are called the "Hour Long Drama", and they are all over TV, but in prime-time instead of mid-morning.
E.R., CSI, Numb3rs, I'm sure there are more. They have women, they have science. What more do you want?
We need women, don't we? If you're working in the tech industry, wouldn't it be nice to be able to date somebody who shared similar interests?
I think we'd all give our left... uhhh... big toe to find a nice Hot Geek Girl.
Rob
This is a classic example of backward thinking. If you watch tv and see that people are portrayed a certain way and then look at reality and see that people do, at least on occasion, act the way they were represented on tv, you might draw the conclusion that people are acting this way because they saw it on tv. But this would probably be wrong. TV, more likely, is imitating life. Although people like to blame all manner of social ills on TV and entertainment, TV's worst crime is that it wastes your precious time, not that it coerces you into behaving like the fictional characters on the show. This is good because I watch a lot of The Simpsons and I don't think I could get my hair to style like Marge. If you think more women should be scientist maybe you should start by looking at the earliest values we instill in girls while at home and school.
Okay, now I don't know much about young girls, but I have to say that during the period that they'd be most influenced by TV characters I don't think thatthey'd be watching Soaps. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong but the target audience of day time television isn't the person that is likely to get off their ass an enter into science or engineering.
So what if there aren't many women in tech jobs....maybe thats because they don't wanna be there. How many men are in nursing as compared to women? You don't see too many male hookers either ;) It's a non-issue that bores me quite frankly.
http://religiousfreaks.com/I don't know if you were trying to be funny or insightful (or both), but this really raises questions for me too. What, really, is the objective value in trying to convince women to do things they are freely choosing not to do? Given the absolute decline in school performance for boys and the increasing disparity between the sexes in academic performance, is this really the right thing to be concerned about? Or even the right message to be sending? If the message that boys receive is "scientists and engineers = female", are the already underperforming boys going to be more or less motivated to study math and science?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
... they want smart women, yet they go about trying to gather 'em by insulting their intelligence.
I got into technology because it was interesting and challenging. My gender had very little to do with my career aspirations. Maybe I'm a fluke, but I sure as hell never felt like certain fields were "off limits" to me just because I'm a setter rather than a pointer. I think the only time I ever heard "girls can't do that..." is when I tried to pee standing up, so maybe I'm just lucky.
I'll also say that I don't want more women in tech. I don't want more men in tech. I don't want more fluffy orange velociraptors in tech. What I want are more *good* people in tech - people who are smart, can think well, can do the work, and are good to work with. Specifically targeting "underrepresented" groups for a specific career based solely on demographic reasons is absurd. Ability is what should metter, not what one has under the hood.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
isn't part of the writer's job to make the show non-boring?
Apparently they don't know the lady engineers I know. Women are starting to dominate civil engineering and materials science even if it isn't obvious from surveys or industry literature. I can't speak for the mechanical engineers and stuff but this has been my experience.
In my degree program, the materials science major was so small that girls either equalled or out-numbered the guys in terms of enrollment. And there is such a shortage of people to replace metallurgists and civil and environmental people that any male bias has been lost to expediency. We hire the ladies or we can't get personnel.
The same is true for the military, the no women in combat rule has been OBE, overtaken by events. I think they've chosen a format that doesn't work for science. A soap opera is a stupid approach. My advice would be to do a show similar to the ER's and 24's. Have a female dominated accident re-construction team that goes in to analyze the results of major accidents, train de-railments, crane collapses, basic failure analysis. Is it a terror attack or not? Build on the premise and use good solid story telling. Science and engineering don't have to be boring. Soap opera's are boring,folks.
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
Because there's reason to believe that women are pushed out of tech.
It may be, as the Harvard president was attacked for suggesting, that women are not as capable as men in scientific and mathematical fields. The brains of women and men ARE different, and that could be one way. I'm willing to believe that on average, a woman is less likely than a man to want to be a programmer, in a biogically predetermined sense.
However, that doesn't mean that all women are worse than all men in technical fields. Unfortunately, many girls are brought up to believe precisely that. They're told in ways subtle and not-so-subtle that they can't make it in science/math/engineering, and if you tell a young person enough times they come to believe it. Some female friends of mine recall being told point-blank, "Girls aren't good at math. Stop it." Stupid, yeah, but it happens.
If nothing else, the lack of present role models for women in scientific fields gives them the message that women can't go into those fields. Yeah, there are some, but they're far outnumbered by men.
So how many potentially brilliant programmers have we lost because Women Can't Do Computers? And how many women grow up with a fear or deep-seated misunderstanding of tech because they were told that they can't possibly be any good at it? Could your girlfriend/wife/female friend really program her own $*@#$& VCR if she hadn't been told at a young age it was impossible?
The best solution is to eliminate the bias that girls receive, and I think the world is getting better at that. Girls are passing boys in the SAT math, for example. But some bias remains, and rather than wring our hands and decry it, we can also try to counteract it by explicitly showing them women who do like tech. If there aren't enough real ones, we can bootstrap the process with fictional ones.
It may be pointless. It may not work; perhaps we already have as many female programmers as women who want to be programmers. And this kind of social engineering is as best unproven, if not actually backfiring.
And in fact, there are pushes to get men into education, for precisely the same reason. There are fewer male nurses, and some who want to are pushed out of the field by the stereotype that they can't. There's a deficit of nurses, and I for one would like to see if we could encourage more men to take up the field. It's a reasonably lucrative profession, if men can get over the shame of being called by a "woman's" title. Perhaps a few extra male nurses on medical TV shows would help.
I think the problem here isn't more women in tech - it is a liberal hatred of men and women. They try to make men act more feminine, and try to make women act more masculine rather than just accepting that men and women are different, should be different, and complement each other rather than compete with each other. IMHO, there are too many political interests that absolutely hate that because it leads to a stable family system, and that leads to less dependence on welfare, public freebies, and government programs.
Trying to encourage mostly-grown women to go into technology fields is pointless because they've already got at least two decades of accumulated discouragement built up. You have to start at birth to have any real effect.
Young girls are constantly subjected in our society to advertisements, television shows, movies, video games, peer pressure, and stereotypes that all give them the idea that socializing, procreating, and "having fun" are the only things they should concern themselves with. That's why most females are only interested in things that support those goals (examples: fashion, trying to be popular, partying, dreaming of a perfect white wedding, wanting to have kids, etc). Note that nowhere in any of these goals are "learning" or "self-accomplishment".
If you want to raise a female geek, you have to actively combat all those influences and also actively teach the girl that other goals are actually more important in life. If you plant the seeds so that the main goals a girl cares about in life are learning and self-accomplishment, then everything else will fall into place.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Isn't Star Trek really a science soap opera? I know i'm usually pissed about the lack as ass kicking and the prevalance of "talking things over". Women tend to have "role-model" positions?
Oh and it was cancelled too.
Pshaw! Being fit and nicely dressed has hardly anything at all to do with it. It is about honesty. If you have it, forget it. Women prefer confidence over honesty. Ask'm. Money triumph's physical appearance, too.
Got money and are a cocky ass? You can get laid even if you look like Ron Jeremy.
Of course, some of us suffer from a terminal case of integrity and are unable to pull off such behavior.
And where is all the interest in increasing male participation in primary education?
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Here's an idea. Instead of targeting women, why not target the public in general? I'm a nerdy chick (info. assurance,) and I've met many men and women alike who still think being into "nerdy" things means you fall into the typical negative nerd stereotype. Try showing ALL people that scientists, mathematicians, and engineers don't all sit in their parents' basements eating doritos and obsessing over their interest to the point of having no social life.
Perhaps the gender ratio would be more balanced if the population in general believed that a person can be a techie and still be "cool".
As another poster has mentioned, it's pretty lame to think that gals will just see "ooh! pretty role model! Me do too!" (although guys are pretty susceptible to "Arnie does it, so can I!" logic) and that gals so easily influenced would make your prime candidates for nuclear physics.
A more reasonable goal would be to just get people in general used to the idea of seeing females in a wide variety of technical, scientific and medical roles.
I think that's because, with some rare exceptions, the day-to-day lives of people working in labs are honestly not something that you'd want to watch on TV.
Real physics research isn't like Bill Nye. It's quite often hours of tedious data collection, followed by days or weeks of number crunching. That's not to say that it's not enjoyable -- I loved the time I spent working in the lab -- but it's going to make exactly thrilling television.
I've talked to people doing some very interesting and cutting-edge biochem research, and had them admit that after spending 8 or 9 hours in a lab, to an outside observer, at the end all they have is a few tenths of a gram of white goo to show for it.
I think this is true for most sciences. With some exceptions, real research isn't terribly flashy. It's a painstaking process, and the rewards that drive people are mostly internal and inscrutable to those who don't share the same interests.
Just think of how hard it is for someone who works in the sciences to go home at night and tell their spouse/S.O. what they did at work that day -- now imagine how hard it would be to tell a few hundred thousand people that, and keep their interest. It's not easy to do, and I think that's why you don't see much mainstream TV about it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."