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.'"

Comments

Hour Long Drama

[Se7enLC]

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?

Re:Hour Long Drama

[natedubbya]

There has always been a push to get women in science, yet there is no similar push to get men in literature, social sciences, education, etc. It is extremely lopsided and the efforts are beginning to seriously affect how boys progress through the school system. The male/female ratio in college is now 44%/56%. Such numbers mean we need more pro-male programs, not more pro-female. Newsweek had a recent story about this and other factors, it's a good read.

Re:Hour Long Drama

[Golias]

Does the word "duh" come to mind for any of these people?

The reason soaps are the way they are is because the largest marketable demographic that is at home from 11:00 AM until 3:00 PM is house-wives and stay-at-home moms of small children.

If you want to reach teenaged girls, you don't produce a show for them that runs while they are at school.

Bad Ideas

[softspokenrevolution]

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.

Who cares??

[gasmonso]

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/

Re:Hmm.

[amliebsch]

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?

Of *COURSE* it's a flop...

[thesandtiger]

... 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.

Re:Of *COURSE* it's a flop...

[AeroIllini]

...fluffy orange velociraptors...

Just like a woman to make her velociraptors fluffy and orange.

*ducks*

In all seriousness, though, I agree with you. There is no need to push women (or men, for that matter) into various fields just because the percentages don't match the general population. However, I do think we need to focus our efforts in this country away from *discouraging* specific genders from entering certain fields. Girls should never be told that "girls can't do math," and boys should never be told "being a nurse is for sissies."

That being said, the general population really does tend to sort itself into gender roles. Give a G.I. Joe action figure to a little girl, and she will likely dress it up and have a tea party. Give a Barbie to a little boy, and soon Major General Barbie will be unleashing the dinosaurs on Cobra's headquarters. In the absense of all discouragement, the percentage of women in technical fields would definitely be higher, but it would still not approach 50%, as most people who "encourage women to enter $FIELD" think it should be.

Boring?

[phrackwulf]

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.

Restoring balance, perhaps?

[jfengel]

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.

Re:Restoring balance, perhaps?

[SIGFPE]

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.

Here is a list of all the role models I can remember looking up to growing up as a young kid enthusiastic about mathematics:

1. ...er...
   

I couldn't name a single mathematician as a kid. I had no role models. I didn't need to see TV programs about mathematicians to tell me that I enjoyed mathematics. I didn't know a single mathematician or scientist. Nobody in my family did science as a profession. Scientists were people in movies who wore lab coats and were the first to die when the experiment went out of control. They weren't someone I wanted to be. I liked mathematics because it was a fascinating subject and I could do it. I didn't do it because I wanted to be like someone else. I did it in spite of the fact that there was incredible peer pressure on me not to do because kids who like mathematics tend not to be the popular kids (until eventually you realise not being stingy with doing other kids' homework gave you a popularity of sorts).

So tell me please, what do role models have to do with anything? If you need a role model to tell you that science or mathematics or computing is interesting then I think you probably ought to consider getting a job in acting so you can try to be like them all day long.

Hatred of Men and Women

[argoff]

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.

A more fundamental question...

[stlhawkeye]

Why do we need more women in these careers? I wish people would quit trying to find ways to "fix" the "problem" of there being too few women in computers and the sciences. People who want to do this stuff will do it. To think that modern girls are incapable of making that decision for themselves and need soap opera role models to encourage them is a slap in the face to strong, independent women everywhere. Should we fix up some scientist Barbies? How about lipstick with its own chemical formula on the side? Do titration mounts need to start coming in pink? Lab coats need "Hello Kitty" on the back? Seriously. Do we want people whose direction in life is so easily influenced by a soap opera to be the next generation of great minds in the sciences?

And where is all the interest in increasing male participation in primary education?

How about making tech attractive to EVERYBODY?

[i love pineapples]

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".