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ChickTech Brings Hundreds of Young Women To Open Source
ectoman writes: Opensource.com is running an interview with Jennifer Davidson of ChickTech, a non-profit organization whose mission is to create communities of support for women and girls pursuing (or interested in pursuing) careers in tech. "In the United States, many girls are brought up to believe that 'girls can't do math' and that science and other 'geeky' topics are for boys," Davidson said. "We break down that idea." Portland, OR-based ChickTech is quickly expanding throughout the United States—to cities like Corvallis and San Francisco—thanks to the "ChickTech: High School" initiative, which gathers hundreds of young women for two-day workshops featuring open source technologies. "We fill a university engineering department with 100 high school girls—more girls than many engineering departments have ever seen," Davidson said. "The participants can look around the building and see that girls from all backgrounds are just as excited about tech as they are."
I bet you think you're funny, huh? You a comedian or something, dork? Here's a nerd joke for ya: Why don't you make like a tree and GTFO?
I forgot that "Marcus" was a female name. My mistake.
Bald faced liars make for the best threads.
The largely patriarchal narrative woven into the fabric of the american dream is that women are caretakers of children and roasters of turkey during holidays. Whereas the soviet union in the 1970's boasted much greater equality in the workplace in terms of female STEM headcount, the US doubled-down on rhetoric, shuffled 'in god we trust' into the pledge, and made haste to forget rosie the riveter ever existed.
We have an entire party in government that literally see women as uselessly inferior to men. We cant even approach the idea that women are, in terms of sexuality, to be treated as equals to men. Womens healthcare at the local and state level is nothing short of an embarassing campaign to wipe the scourge of contraception off the map, at any cost. Colleges routinely hush up rape cases and take it upon themselves to redact student names and details of repression and reprisal. Its also sadly true that not a day goes by where a politician or religious leader claims to speak for reason when they ardently affirm rape can be 'legitimate' and its the womans fault. Our approach to womens education is inconsistent at best as women didnt get to attend military colleges until the 1970s, and it wasnt until 2013 that we decided they could not only participate in the military but actually serve a combat role.
so yeah, if we ask ourselves why the deficit exists its because we have tacitly and communally agreed that women are inferior, despite a thin veneer of nodding and applause for our insistent declaration that women are no different than men and can achieve anything.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The issue is that male focused groups are criticized for it while female groups are lauded. Sure, the society for male nurses might be mostly male, but try building a society specifically for male engineers. What happens? The SJWs come out in droves clamoring for the death of the 'patriarchy.' Meanwhile the last 50 years of new laws and social reforms lobbied for by feminists force organizations to select for women because of their sex and not their accomplishments.
Criticism of feminism's hypocrisy is often taken as misogyny when it is not, which is what a lot of feminist critics deal with on slashdot and the mainstream media. These arguments are just ad hominem attacks (eg calling them misogynists) and other fallacies (like taking it as 'proof' of patriarchy) because feminists don't have sound justifications for granting women privilege in society under the guise of fighting for everyone's equal opportunity. This cannot be true as long as feminists only concern themselves with the needs and whims of one sex. Many of them have no qualms about 'redefining' masculinity as well, which is ironic considering how they don't want men dictating what a woman should be in any sense.
You're right, though, people should be able to concern themselves with their own interests and ally as they see fit, but it is wrong to have the state dictate which cross sections are permitted to do this, labeling some as 'oppressors' and others as 'oppressed,' by default. This 'chicktech' initiative is no more or less discriminatory than my male engineering society example above. If one should be allowed then so should the other.