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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."
[citation needed]
"In the United States, many boys are brought up to believe that 'doing math makes you a nerd' and that science and other 'geeky' topics are for wusses," the_skywise said. "We break down that idea."
The probably could've pick a name that wasn't so terrible.
whoops i thought i was replying to the post by the_skywise, begin troll with my blessing
It means "Cow shit."
Looking around my cube farm:
3 rows of 9 cubes for a total of 27 cubes.
3 cubes are inhabited by boxes and spare equipment, the rest by people.
Out of 24 cubes with people, a solid half (13 to be precise) are filled with females, the rest, males.
So, no, there is not a "shortage of girls in tech." Now, there may be a "shortage of girls" in certain avenues of the tech industry, but I'll bet dollars against pesos that there's a perfectly reasonable, non-misogynistic reason for at least the majority of those shortages.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Oh, yes, because that has worked so well in the past? There are still lots of ages-old prejudices and preconceptions, like e.g. women suck at anything technical and men who become nurses must be feminine gays and so on. These things do not change unless they're forcibly made to change and ignoring these things helps no one.
TFA claims that "The participants can look around the building and see that girls from all backgrounds are just as excited about tech as they are." If that is true then clearly there is a problem because girls are interested but put off for some reason. At the very least it blows the argument that girls just don't like engineering out of the water.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So by creating an environment only welcoming to one group is the way to the solution?
take any 2 groups any 2 groups separate them and have them work exclusively with people from their own group... then see how well they integrate when you combined them together... do they seem to have a prejudice against the other group? do they flock together or intermingle freely?
I will leave this right here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem...
And this more controversial one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.u...
I will say I'm a fan of female scientists, there are some with biochemical and chemical degrees in my family (who have long since abandoned the field for hearth and home, a decision of their own choosing), but I see a lot of men who are promoting it simply trying to make women in their own image. Maybe they are dads with only one child, daughters, which is very common now or what not. But actively steering them away from traditional female disciplines just because it offends our modern senses of "diversity" and conflating equality with equal results is just as wrong imo.
When one of the groups is already prejudiced against and is lacking in skills and education exactly because of this behaviour, then yes, you really do need to take steps to fix this. You can get your panties in a bunch over this all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that women are, indeed, in a position where they're not being taken seriously and where they're afraid of even getting education in these matters.
If I'm talking about the national budget in some advertised talk, and I look around during my lecture and see people very interested in the topic, should I say the majority of the population loves studying economics?
What kind of fucking logic is that?
Seems to me to be a poor way to be taken seriously. It screams "we cannot compete with men so we must create our own exclusive clubs." Fear of getting an education because someone might disapprove is just pathetic.
Actually, this is not accepting diversity. It is trying to force sameness.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
It seems the stereotype threat theory is a myth:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
my seventeen year old daughter scored a 5 on the AP Calculus AB exam. she intends on teaching High School Math. ( why she wants to go back to high school, I have yet to understand.) so in my mind, girls get to choose what they want to do just like guys do. dunno why girls don't choose geekage as much as guys do... could be the tan line possibilities.... (or not)
My completely anecdotal non-scientific evidence is that girls interested in math, science, and tech were mostly discouraged by their peers. Communities to support girls and women pursuing tech are great and all, but I feel like for a lot of girls it's going to come down to one very simple question: do I get new hobbies, or do I get new friends? It wouldn't surprise me if a majority of girls choose the latter.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe things have changed since the decade or so since I was a high school student. Maybe it really was just my high school. But my suspicion is that this is still common, and ChickTech is going to have to find a way to solve the peer pressure problem.
Chick Squad
BS on anyone thinking "geek is for boys". Everyone knows geek work is for both pimple-faced, socially awkward boys AND fat girls too.
Which doesn't explain why my boss is so good at it, nor why my mom was an awesome programmer and analyst - neither of them are fat.
I just love the sound of that.
Oink
The article doesn't actually talk about what this ChickTech is about. "According to that theory, girls tend to perform worse on tests after they've been told they'll do poorly." -- entirely a different matter. This isn't about addressing whether women do poorly or not, it's about addressing the whole premise of women even trying in the first place because of various efforts to dissuade them from it.
a) there's nothing special about Open Source
b) being excited about something is not tangible
c) self-esteem is not the point
d) being a career non-profit means that you never created value
e) Oregon is full of hipsters and douches
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Also see:
The Ada Initiative.
Authority questions you. Return the favor. -- d474
Wake me up when women are required to register for Selective Service, and qualify to be shot or blown up against their will.
https://www.sss.gov/fswho.htm
WHO MUST REGISTER
Almost all male U.S. citizens, and male immigrants living in the U.S., who are 18 through 25, are required to register with Selective Service.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
NBA is granted permission to be gender segregated by the US congress. I don't really approve, but it is the law.
We do have programs to work on gender ratios in Nursing, teaching, and Salons aren't exactly a career people aspire to, as if that were equivalent.
The difference is feminists don't come whining about people trying to make progress in these areas because they feel threatened. They welcome the break in stigmatized job roles.
MRAs, on the other hand, just love to pretend any attempt at social progress are an attempt to discriminate. And their whines pierce the vale of every single debate.
The token male who suddenly appeared on the internet in April of this year, with no information to back up "his" existence, other than the listing on that page and a single article toeing ChickTech's party line? That Marcus?
Also: https://web.archive.org/web/20130529232614/http://www.chicktech.org/about-us. You'll note that doesn't go to the "Leadership Teams" page, because, according to that page's source, it was created 5/23/2014 (and updated this morning).
So, the AC claimed the leadership was 100% female when it's (reputedly) actually (at least) 93.75% female. Wow... you really told 'em with that "bald faced liars" bit. Do single-digit-percentile discrepancies always drive you to froth?
So, now it's a grand conspiracy to fabricate fictional men in order to discredit internet commenters.
Yep. That's sane.
I've seen studies go either way. I've seen claims that women CAUSE more accidents (random braking etc) that they themselves don't get INTO the accident, but effect the people they had cut off etc (claims by traffic cops). I've watch women apply makeup while making lane-changes on 6-lane highways, or declare they waited long enough to cross a highway "they'll just have to stop". Personally come across as many accidents caused by hesitation as by aggression.
tl;dr: Both genders have their share of incompetent morons.
I joined SWE, Society for Women Engineers. Never had to take a DNA test or anything.
Except, of course, for the fact that by trying to focus attention on how males and females are being treated differently where gender should be irrelevant, they are, in fact, treating the different genders differently when the notion of gender should be irrelevant, which only perpetuates the problem
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That's because they pretend to like diversity, but come to work everyday dressed as Pennywise, or respect "Talk like a Pirate Day".
Shoot I've been harassed at work for using fountain pens with purple ink, working with my office light off, and a bunch of other stuff.
They wanmt their token diversity, but when it comes ot real diversity forget it.
It's one thing to have an organization comprised of women, it's another to go all-out like penis-hating feministas.
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
The litmus test is in applying the opposite logic. What would the situation be if they were promoting boys instead, and someone like yourself came along and answered feminist criticism with "but see they accept women too!" Even if they did, their primary discriminator is still the sex of the student instead of relevant discriminators, like aptitude and interest. The bottom line is you (or some other feminist) would have called someone out for saying
"While they're overwhelmingly male in structure, you're absolutely wrong in your made up assertion that they don't accept women."
"I don't care, but let me rationalize this out-of-nowhere accusation that makes no sense"
Sorry you had to find out like this, but your mom is a boy.
Oh, no, I wouldn't say that's a problem for a reversed situation either. The society of male nurses is mostly male, for example, because they're specifically addressing concerns of male nurses. There's a natural and not-fundamentally sexist reason for that divide to have some degree of existence.
People do have a need to be concerned with their own interests.
You accuse me of hypocrisy, when the reverse you assert is entirely within acceptable bounds of anyone who isn't a tremendous misandrist. The fact that hypermisogynisic assholes run rampant on slashdot is gravely concerning.
Now if it were, say, an industry, instead of a gender issues organization, that would be cause for alarm and serious work. The problem here is just sexist pretending to care about sexism. And nothing else.
When there's a statistically significant imbalance between the sexes, sometimes it's because of discrimination, and sometimes it's because there are actual statistically significant difference physical and psychological difference between men and women,.
They could distinguish between the two, of course, but that would require thinking.
Those aren't "prejudices and preconceptions" any more.
Maybe they're just your prejudices and preconceptions.
The mods have identified you as a troll, but in case you're really this ignorant, here are some numbers showing that "patriarchal oppression" has not stopped women from becoming the majority of recipients of all degrees, up to and including doctoral degrees. This would seem to indicate that such oppression is purely the stuff of myth and legend.
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.
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.
"ChickTech Brings Hundreds of Young Women To Open Source"... where they encounter Richard "THAT'S FREE SOFTWARE TO YOU" Stallman , Linus Torvalds, and Theo De Raadt and vow never to touch a computer again.
Somebody disagrees with you in a debate!? The nerve of some people!
Why would you need a group to help get more people who are already overrepresented into an industry.
This. Makes. No. Sense.
Despite the fact that society pats women on the head by passing them a largely useless piece of paper
You don't think women earn their degrees, or that having a degree increases anyone's earning potential? Okay.
the Troll mod is probably the work of yet another pimply MRA type.
This isn't jezebel.com. If strawman and ad hominem arguments are all you bring to the table, then you can expect more troll mods in the future.
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.
There absolutely was the accusation of a conspiracy theory there.
"I can't prove to myself he exists" is directly implying the assertion that he doesn't and thus is fabricated. It's literally crazy.
"Why would there be self selection for jobs on women's rights"
--an abject moron.
Where exactly is the funding to get free education for my son? Why exactly is it that he has to be disadvantaged for not having a vagina?
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Again I ask, what does that single stat do to refute the multiple points brought up by its parent post?
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
I only gave one example because there's no need to refute troll posts point by parroted talking point. If you don't agree that even one piece of actual, reliable data is stronger than a million appeals to emotion, that's your choice, and I won't waste my time or bandwidth trying to convince you otherwise.
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.
Actually, distinguishing between discrimination and actual systematic differences requires experimentation. We know that women do not do a great many athletic things as well as men, as a general rule, because lots of people have tried.
The fact that there are lots fewer women than men in tech suggests to me that there's likely discrimination going on, and that it would be worthwhile to find out. I keep remembering my son's middle school math club, which was something over half girls. From what I heard, that was not rare. Where do they all go later on?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
OP gave multiple, well-documented cases, of which I was so nice to actually put a name to two, but anyone who followed the news the past 5 years recognised them.
Of course, like a typical troll with no argument you just shout "t'ain't so!" and run away, while projecting your own moral bankruptcy on the other. I had expected nothing better after asking you to back up your position.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
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.
What's wrong with taking care of children? It's a hard fucking job, and one that I honestly hope you never have. This is changing, anyway: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
Whereas the soviet union in the 1970's boasted much greater equality in the workplace in terms of female STEM headcount
[citation needed]
the US doubled-down on rhetoric, shuffled 'in god we trust' into the pledge, and made haste to forget rosie the riveter ever existed.
[citation needed]
We have an entire party in government that literally see women as uselessly inferior to men.
Are you suggesting that government is actually representative of the people? Because I'm fairly certain it is not (see also: the NSA, NDAA, FCC, and so on).
We cant even approach the idea that women are, in terms of sexuality, to be treated as equals to men.
Not so fast there, senpai. What's this "we" bullshit? Maybe you can't get your head around that concept, but the pronoun you're looking for is "I."
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.
This is pure hyperbole. Again, maybe it's true where you live, but there are 50 states in this country, and I'm going to go ahead and guess that mvdwege has never been to any of them ('recognised' gave you away as being a foreigner; we spell it 'recognized'), let alone lived in any of them long enough to know anything about it.
Colleges routinely hush up rape cases and take it upon themselves to redact student names and details of repression and reprisal.
Routinely? And you're saying all colleges do this? Before you point to a couple of high-profile cases, anyone else can just as easily point to a couple of high-profile cases where the woman was proven to be a liar. The problem is that such cases tend to be anomolous, which is why they make the news.
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.
You expect reason from politicians and religious leaders? Fantastic. Do let us know how that works out for you.
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.
This is a given. I would expect the military to evolve more slowly than the rest of society; it doesn't exactly attract the brightest bulbs in the box.
so yeah, if we ask ourselves why the deficit exists its because we have tacitly and communally agreed that women are inferior
Again with "we," and again, the pronoun you're looking for is "I."
, despite a thin veneer of nodding and applause for our insistent declaration that women are no different than men and can achieve anything.
[citation needed]
OP gave multiple, well-documented cases
No, OP did no such thing. Maybe something in that post triggered you to recall the narrative that the feminists have hammered into you, but read it again. Notice that there are no citations of any kind.
Of course, like a typical troll with no argument you just shout "t'ain't so!" and run away, while projecting your own moral bankruptcy
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.