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WA Bill Takes Aim at Boys' Dominance In Computer Classes
theodp writes Boys' over-representation in K-12 computer classes has perplexed educators for 30+ years. Now, following on the heels of Code.org's and Google's attempts to change the game with boys-don't-count gender-based CS teacher funding schemes, Washington State lawmakers have introduced House Bill 1813, legislation that requires schools seeking K-12 computer education funding to commit to preventing boys from ruling the computer class roost. Computer science and education grant recipients, HB 1813 explains, "must demonstrate engaged and committed leadership in support of introducing historically underrepresented students [including girls, low-income students, and minority students]" and "demonstrate a plan to engage historically underrepresented students with computer science." Calling it "a bold new bill that we hope more states will follow," corporate and tech billionaire-backed Code.org tweeted its support for the bill.
Forcing demographics is not organic and will never work and currently does not work. Just the same BS about having to have so many women, blacks, latinos in a given role, company, whatever. It's wrong. Let things self adjust. Nature works better without us tampering with how things work organically.
Boys and girls are different. Chicks don't dig computers. Period.
Hey, better be careful of what you wish for. A surprisingly large number of liberal causes depend on the principle of equal treatment. If you now have a law where it's OK to be unequal, that might open the door for others.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
There is only one kind of systematic prejudice in today's institutions. And it is against white males. And if you happen to be heterosexual too, no one will target you for any favoritism.
We will truly evolve in our values when we finally return to egalitarianism. When we finally admit that you cannot push people ahead in line because of their race/sex/sexuality without simultaneously pushing someone else back in line because of theirs, we will be truly enlightened.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Why not make a few of the classes a requirement, not an elective.
I suspect you may be able to entice more young women into tech, if you expose them too it more.
If EVERYONE in your grade has to take a few of the basic computer science classes, you may find that more women get interested in the subject. Women who wouldn't, on their own, think to take the class.
Maybe we should also take aim at the plummeting sales of Barbie dolls, and encourage more boys to buy them.
You could make a perfectly good argument about making a gender-blind program
That would be a good idea but not the case here. To be gender blind one would not even count the number of students in the different demographics and would not be able to see that there are any underrepresented demographics. The problem is how to encourage underrepresented demographics to participate without discouraging over represented demographics from participating.
Misandry is not the solution to misogyny; it is just a different problem.
Just a note; Google dictionary knows the spelling for misogyny but not misandry.
They're going to discourage boys from the programs? I smell a Title IX lawsuit coming on this one.
I see you mocking the argument, but I don't see you refuting it... Would you care to try again, or is this all you've got?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
too bad this isn't a gender-blind program....
I see an awful lot in here about forcing educators to push students into these classes, but nothing about making these classes attractive to kids who would otherwise skip it.
Great idea. Let's take all the enthusiastic, optimistic, and insightful CS students and throw them out the window, then try to coax and cajole the uninterested into replacing them. I don't see how this plan could possibly fail.
Seriously, guys?
What happened to merit? What happened to "the heart wants what the heart wants"? What happened to free choice?
Why must there be more girls in CS to the point of excluding those *actually* interested in the subject itself? And why is this situation not repeated in welding, or mining? Why don't you want women to make up their own minds on what they want to do?
I see lots of women every day that somehow managed to pick a career and/or interest without anyone having to invest lots of money into convincing or cajoling them, so I'm pretty sure it can be done.
"You code like a girl"
Seems like offering incentives to take the classes won't help if the people aren't interested in the first place. You've gotta make CS cool and hip. You need Disney starlets who program for real and have a gaggle of friends who all think it's so amazing. You need to equate programming with art, which honestly isn't far from the truth. To be honest though, this is a tough road to follow, since CS already has a strong association with utterly uncool turbo nerds.
I'm not sure how you target the poor inner city youth to get them interested.
I read the internet for the articles.
Sorry, but why do we need to make an argument for a gender blind program, again? Has someone slipped a coherent and convincing argument in favor of gender discrimination past me? One that invalidates all the staid and dependable refutations of the "logic" of discrimination?
Here's my argument against programs like this, and there are no red pills involved:
People who aren't interested in tech aren't going to suddenly start caring about it because society found a way to be paternalistic and manipulative enough to coax them into it, or because some pedagogic official somewhere told them to be. Did any official tell us to be interested in this stuff? Is that how we got here? My sense is that the truth is closer to the opposite: geekdom is a counterculture, i.e. a rejection of the very mainstream collective that's now using its disgusting, lamentable techniques to try and sell our valuable and important ways to the muggles en masse.
It's killing the goose that laid the golden egg. We have this beautiful, productive, vibrant culture of tech geeks driving the world forward, and we say that we want to expand and grow it. So what is our solution? Of course, not to walk to the mountain by adapting ourselves to this new way that according to the evidence offers these advantages... instead, we want to disassemble the mountain and ship individual grains of dirt to each person, whether they even want a mountain or not. This is not a recipe for a mighty monument, but a tragic iconoclasm.
How do you recruit minorities and women into CS?
By teaching them LOGO when they are eight.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Wait a minute.. what kind of cruel state still defines our little darlings as being either boy or girl? That's clearly not the type of progressive thinking we should be pushing for. Do they still have separate but equal bathrooms? The horror! Frankly, CS enrollments are the least of the problems in such backward thinking divisive environments. Won't somebody please think of the children?
If you are good at something, your achievements will be labeled as a "privilege" and redistributed to others. I hope you like the society that most of you voted for.
Question: Does creating a new, powerful disincentive for (the wrong kind of) people to achieve help or hurt our chances to have a prosperous society in the future?
I just did a career day at my sons middle school last week. I was the only programmer speaker. I did 3 30 minute sessions with about 40 kids per session. I'd say the ratio of boys to girls was 10:1. So what? Makes me sad if those boys interested in programming get weeded out to fill a female quota.
I find outrageous the male dominance in the plumbing industry, most plumbers are males, and government should push more incentives so women can also succeed in the plumbing industry, i will also support a bill for more heterosexual male hairdressers, feminine sides can't understand my side cut!
Why aren't these people so concerned about the overwhelming majority of teachers and nurses being female?
Isn't this as big of a problem?
Don't we need to do *something* to encourage more men to become nurses? I mean, isn't this so f'ing important that Google needs to get behind it?
Do you have ESP?
Well, they will have to turn eager boys away from classes in order to make room for not so eager girls. These classes are typically difficult to get into and overfull as it is. Thus, it discourages the eager boys that are turned away. The next step is to make the classes 'easier' because the uninterested girls think they are too hard and start failing and dropping out. This law, most definitely, is not what is needed. Finding ways to spark girls' interest? A bit more inline, and important.
There isn't a section that explicitly says 'discourage white boys from signing up for class'.
But, like the zero tolerance policies that are mis-interpreted to include biting a pop-tart into a vague gun shape, pointing your fingers, and having a 1 in plastic molded machine gun for your GI Joes, what will happen is if you can't get enough of the underrepresented demographic students into the class as a percentage of the entire class, then there's going to be a kid that really wants to take the class told 'Sorry, that class is full' when there's only 8 people signed up.
All just to keep the % of underrepresented students at a certain level.
It's a straw man argument intended to degrade anyone who identifies themselves as "Liberal".
There's no content or intelligence in it.
People don't seem to understand the necessary impact. They think, oh, we won't persecute boys; we'll just incentivize the special treatment of women. You get $100 per female seat and $10 per male seat, so you're encouraged to seat more women; we don't dock you for having too many boys in class.
Cue consideration that expanding the number of seats is expensive, while selecting for more women to fill the limited seats is not. The profit motive here is to push male participants away and lure female participants. Even worse, some may use propaganda to lure unqualified female participants: make the whole thing seem more attractive to girls, but don't actually change the curriculum to be more enjoyable for girls, so that it becomes an annoying struggle. Worse, but less likely, is the change of the curriculum to appeal to and interest girls, at the expense of actually being useful; we've taken long strides down the road of impressing parents and entertaining students with changes to the education system detrimental to actual education, but appealing to the public opinion as better marketing.
We will, in all likelihood, mishandle the translation of females into technical positions, drawing in students with no real interest in the topic but with starry-eyed expectations from the fancy posters and sweet words. Then we will learn not that we have approached the effort improperly, but that women are simply not suited for--perhaps not intelligent enough for--science and technology work. This stigma will not just affect education; instead, people will learn that women are directly inferior as engineers, by nature, and so will not hire competent female engineers any more.
This is not a prediction of the future any more than would be the answer to a physics question: I know what I am looking at, and I know what effect these things have. As a boulder rolls down a hill, so does misplaced effort generate misunderstood outcomes. I have seen these things before, I have seen them repeated over thousands of years, and I know what form the misunderstanding will take: it is always the fault of those in the system, and never the fault of those who designed the system.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Can't get much more blatant than that. So you have to PAY to get girls (and some minorities) to even try to program?
That's pretty stupid too.
So, we're going to actively block the little nerdlings if they happen to have a penis?
This sounds utterly moronic, misguided, and pointless.
Sure, try to get other people involved .. but don't fucking actively stop the boys if you find yourself with no girls or minorities who are interested.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The problem is how to encourage underrepresented demographics to participate without discouraging over represented demographics from participating
What if one of the causes of participation by the well represented ("over-represented", after all, implies a predetermined desirable level of representation) is the very fact of under-representation by other groups? i.e. what if geekdom is-or-was a "safe space" for an oppressed group?
It isn't an accident that the image of "computer nerds" from the 1980s was what it was, nor was it some grand plan of the patriarchy to enable their heirs to carry on the torch of Y chromosomal world dominance. It was because we were the people who couldn't get dates, who got bullied, who retreated into our imaginations and creativity because what we found outside was so ugly and off-putting and predatory to us. We're The Mentor, and these people are still trying to spoon feed us baby food.
And now that we've won, we've actually built the shining city on the hill that stands a good chance of no less than saving the whole world from darkness, here come the barbarians to demand their share. Well if you ask me, they can fuck right off back to their hellish world of head chopping, marketing, buying, and hating. We built this, and we don't have to share it with assholes.
So what do they do? Pay people to attend the class so they can get funding?
To be gender blind one would not even count the number of students in the different demographics and would not be able to see that there are any underrepresented demographics. The problem is how to encourage underrepresented demographics to participate without discouraging over represented demographics from participating.
Why do all demographics have to be represented equally?
As I see it, the only way to fix this gender disparity is to fix the social problems that lead to stigmatizing boys to where they form their own subculture that eventually revolves niche aspects of computers, which in-turn creates a ready core of boys that realize in their high school years that they can make careers in computers because they're good at them, but because of the nature of that pre-existing subculture, does not appeal to girls.
But addressing the reasons that cause such self-segregation and the effects of it isn't easy.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I think it's a step farther than that.
When you see gender, or racial, or socio-economic disparity in something you need to ask yourself *why*. If the answer is that there's inequal opportunity, then it needs to be addressed. No one should be held back because of their race, gender, etc.
If, on the other hand, there's just no interest then... well... how come no one is addressing the lack of female garbage collectors?
This, as many other recent regrettable episodes, is a manifestation of misandry epidemic symptomatic of entrenched matriarchy unwilling to check its privilege. Propagating harmful learned gender stereotypes (boys don’t count) results in a society where disenfranchised young men are disempowered and prevented from reaching fulfillment and happiness.
No, but good attempt at "look over there".
Granted; I see your point.
On reflection, the part that speaks to me is: "Conservatives are for equal treatment. For instance, a law against sleeping on the sidewalk should be enforced equally on both millionaires and homeless vagrants." The part about liberals, I'm not impressed by that.
In any case, I have no use for either label -- "liberal" or "conservative" -- and prefer to avoid them altogether. To paraphrase John Brunner -- don't trust people who hate others based on generalities; only trust those who hate based on specifics. (Sorry, I don't have the actual quote at hand (from Stand on Zanzibar).)
-kgj
How about they spend extra money on the people who are interested in learning computers and spend less money on people who are not interested in learning computers? This is how marketing works in the real world. They don't market dolls to boys because boys don't like dolls. They market dolls to girls because girls like dolls. They market toy trucks to boys because boys like toy trucks. Take a cue from the business world. For the greatest ROI, spend the money on the people who are interested in your product.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Will there be a bill to address the gender imbalance in the art and craft classes as well?
When will we see equal representation in the fields of construction, military, sanitation, and plumbing? When will we see equality in homeless populations and suicides? When will family courts end their bias? When will we see equal sentencing for equal crime? Where are the grants and scholarships to get more men into teaching and nursing? How are we addressing unequal physical requirements for men and women in police and fire departments? Equal numbers of homeless shelters? Equal response for domestic violence victims? Equal funding for gender studies programs? When will the homicide numbers be made equal? Defend the men and bring crime victimization rates to equivalent standing.
I stand with you feminists! Equality now!
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Stop the madness already! I have no women in my team right now, not because I don't want women in my team (seriously, it would give that female toilet a reason to exist if we had one...) but because there are no female applicants. Zero. None.
It's not any man's fault that few women are interested in computer science. And if this insanity becomes reality, you may rest assured that it will create MORE, not LESS misogyny. Because then, unlike now, I will probably think twice before inviting a woman for an interview, knowing that she got her degree far easier than a man and hence the chance to be a dud being greater.
Seriously. When this bullshit becomes law, schools will carry girls through the courses whether they should pass or not, just to keep the ratio "positive". That's bullshit. If it accomplishes anything, it's that HR weeds out female applicants because there just are too many that were "quota chicks".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Your solution is a good one, however, you need a computer "literacy" test first before implementing something like mandatory classes.
One of the prevailing theories on why boys dominate the field is due to the fact that they have had more exposure on their own time (in essence have done "self study" work in the field). When schools finally begin offering classes in computers, it is typically 6th grade and later. At which point, many students who have been exploring the field on their own know significant more advanced skills than ones who are only just being introduced to it for the first time. And in schools that teach for the "majority" of students, they will skip past a lot of the more "basic" things because it is below the average skill set of the majority of the students in the course, with the students who don't have the basics down getting lost and as a result discouraged from the field. The converse is also a problem when the schools try to teach to the students with the lowest skill sets in the course. The ones who know it already get bored, complain, and ridicule the students who don't know how to do it so they can speed up the classwork to get to things that meet their skill level.
The real solution is something that school officials and state legislatures will be likely to want to do. If they truly want to have more equality in computers, they need to start having computer classes in kindergarden/1st grade, with individualized progression for the students (i.e. be able to "test out" of any material being taught). Initial costs to setup a system like this would be expensive, but long-term may be relatively in-expensive. The only way for this to really work would be for a mostly automated coursework up and through programming theory, and object oriented design. Everything being most entirely based on the foundation of "online learning" principals, but on a more individual pacing. Grading would not really happen at all for the majority of the work, simply skill progression in passing and completing projects, modules, and practical exams (i.e. very little memorization of definitions, vocabulary, etc., but actual real world useful skill tests such as being able to create a proper formatted paper/document, creating spreadsheets, setting up and using the computer, basic debugging of computer problems, creating a basic program with input and output, etc., etc...). And because it is all self paced, the students don't become discouraged with both themselves or at the other students who "are slowing them down". But school systems would hate something like this because there is no scoring.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
How about their pull their heads out of political correct land and realize male brains are better at logical computer tasks. Male and female brains process thoughts differently. This is known science! Female brains typically work well with relational thoughts and can piece multiple things together but lack solid focus on solving one individual problem. Male brains compartmentalize thoughts and like to process one thing to completion then move on instead of jumping around quickly to different thoughts, problems, or topics. Males are better at most computer work because of this and that's the end of it. Females don't work with computer science fields because they don't enjoy it and aren't good at it.
On the contrary, helping people to succeed does not necessarily mean that others do not succeed. There are not a finite number of "successes," as you imply is the case
In some theoretical sense, yes - it is beneficial to everyone in a society and the society as a whole if there is some way to help those in need.
No issue there.
Problem is that the case described above is not that.
It is favoritism according to sex, parental income and racial/ethnic status.
Only one of those can be in some way or form a responsibility of the society, and a thing that society should work to amend.
"Amending" someone's racial or gender status is not only wrong on account of such actions treating perfectly normal biological attributes as a disability.
It is favoritism and built-in corruption BECAUSE it treats one's perfectly healthy biological attributes as a disability.
It is exactly the same thing as giving a pass to an athlete on account of his/her biological ability to run after or with a ball.
Or someone getting their doctor friend to diagnose them with a disability which would allow them to park in the handicapped spots.
Also, while there is no such thing as "a finite number of "successes"" - there IS such a thing as a finite number of chairs, computers and teachers per classroom, classrooms per school, classes per day etc.
Again... if resources can be made more available in such a fashion that those who could not get access to those resources DUE TO SCARCITY OF RESOURCES could now get access, without taking away access to said resources from others - no issue there.
I.e. By BUYING more computers and chairs, HIRING more teachers, BUILDING more classrooms, holding more classes... by getting MORE resources.
If it can be done by addressing NON-BIOLOGICAL factors, by widening the doors to the classroom so to speak - GREAT.
If you have to put a gender/race/ethnicity percentage checker on the door to the classroom to get the right amount of each flavor of kids - that's corruption and favoritism.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
how is
boys-don't-count gender-based CS teacher funding
Unless I misunderstand this that means, the school will get less/no money more teaching boys. How can that do anything but discourage boys from attending. Encourage and Discourage are 2 sides of the same coin, if you go around saying we really want girls then boys will get the message that they are not wanted, which of course is true since each girl in computer class is worth more to the school. Or if there are limited places then boys will be refused entry in favor of girls.
I don't really see why we need every profession to have equal distribution of the sexes, anyway? Men and women are different, no matter how much the PC brigade want them to be the same. If a girl doesn't want to do computers why does society see the need to brainwash them into doing it.
Also in areas where men are underrepresented. It seems like the law forbids this type of behavior. (I know different country)
from http://www.stuff.co.nz/nationa....
He said despite male teachers being in a minority, scholarships were only available for women, disabled people and those from varying ethnic backgrounds.
The commission had said it would be unlawful to offer male-only scholarships.
I personally think the gender in-balance in teachers is much more important than the one in technology, teachers are major role models children's lives, and children need role models of both sexes, where who cares who wrote the latest app, or the latest network protocol.
This is going to come across as flamebait, but I really don't mean it that way. My guess is that social liberals are very empathetic to a particular stereotype of suffering: that of a girl, who through no fault of her own, was placed in a society that kept her from having as fulfilling a life as she could. They're greatly troubled by this, and are desperate to address the problem, thus alleviating their own sympathetic pain.
This question hits the nail in the head. The assumption that men and women are or have to be equal in every respect is a notion that requires reexamination. Maybe women in general just find this specific area not to be of their interest, hence there are less women participating. Are there any fields where men are underrepresented where we have to change the law to include them? Ballet or women's studies, perhaps?
Also, does it always have to be about gender equality? I'm so tired how people try to profit by making things issues when they are not. Gender baiting, race baiting, whatever-baiting seems to be this nation's favorite pastime.
They don't have to be, and the bill doesn't say they have to be either. The bill provides grant money for programs that reach out to underrepresented groups who usually have less exposure to CS. There are a few poor, majority white schools in my area that don't have CS classes at all, in 2015. This grant money could be provided to them, if they can prove the need more than other districts that apply for the grant. Once again, internet comments confusing equal access with quotas, which often happens in these debates.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
As a relatively successful white male (well paid engineer, graduate degree holder, homeowner in San Francisco, top 5% income earner), I see discrimination against women and ethnic/racial minorities all around me.
Try moving out of the SF area BRO and you'll see far less of this worrying behavior.
I've come to realize a big problem for women in tech is the tech dev culture around SF, not the institution of technical environments everywhere - most places I have worked IT jobs have treated women pretty well and had a decent number of them too. This is why there's such a disconnect from the people yelling loudly there's a huge problem in work environments and those kind of surprised at the level of complaints, because they had not seen anything that bad going on...
If you chose to stay there you are acting as an enabled for aberrant behavior.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes!!!
Send more women, mkay?
But no throwbacks from other sectors...
...but shouldn't that be "I don't support XY-gender-doesn't-count programs?"
/duck
/run
Great idea. Let's fight gender imbalance with intentional discrimination...
I'm so happy I went through school before the PC mania made it borderline illegal to be male. Maybe that distance makes me see more clearly that the reason for these gender imbalances lies as much in the classroom as the reason for elementary school teachers being predominantly female.
If you want to fix a problem of culture and society that leads to gender imbalances in certain professions or fields, you can't do it without looking at culture and society. You've got a problem in your database and you're fixing the webserver, so to speak.
And, frankly speaking, if girls simply don't like computing as much as boys do, then WTF is wrong with that? As long as teachers are not actively running around telling girls to stay away from the computer room, maybe the problem isn't in the school, and maybe it's not even a problem at all?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Is it clear bias in computer gender?
:(
or
Is it clear need for cheap programmers even if its a lot of hard work and they wont enjoy it?
or
Or perhaps if a girl wants into computers she just has to want into computer class and try?
or
Are we keeping minorities from getting into computer class? clearly this is the issue, right?
or
What are we solving here other than creating more programmers, that will have insecure jobs as they are ready to be replaced with foreign workers who will always work cheaper because they are more desperate than an American?
---
Sigh, code.org showed such potential, but I think I forgot who funded it.
This.
Liberals are for equal opportunity and choice. Until the woman "chooses" to be a house wife or not take a computer class.
Liberals are for free speech. As long as that speech isn't outside of the authorized thought processes and isn't Christian.
Liberals are for freedom. Unless it's the freedom to do non-liberal stuff.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Anyone want to see the sports teams all forced to hold to proportional racial and gender statistics?
Let people do what they want to do. Some people don't even like computers. Why force them.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You say it isn't what is needed, but I think people are overestimating the point of the law.
This is numbers. The kind of people that support this kind of legislation only want to balance out the numbers of people. Reduce the number of boys and increase the number of girls; equal seats is equal opportunity. They don't care about improving CS education or the quality of the industry. The law isn't needed because of the thousands of CS-interested girls that aren't getting into classes because the boys are taking the seats; the law is "needed" because people look at the numbers and want a legal answer to the social problem. Who cares if boys who actually care about CS don't get to take the classes because girls who don't care get incentivized to take it instead? Nobody watches the demographics of disappointed high school boys,.
You're right that the problem is that those girls don't exist (or exist as a minority), and you're right that the law isn't solving that problem, but I don't think it was ever intended to. It'll make the numbers look better though, and to some people, that is progress.
These "equality" pushes always mean lowering the bar and suppressing those with actual ability.
Feminism died 35 years ago when women got equality, but the feminists still want jobs.
How are you defining an underrepresented group without using a quota?
Granted; I see your point.
On reflection, the part that speaks to me is: "Conservatives are for equal treatment. For instance, a law against sleeping on the sidewalk should be enforced equally on both millionaires and homeless vagrants."
Thing is, that statement is just as much bullshit as the anti-liberal statement.
1. Sleeping on the sidewalk is a law that affects only 1 group. They make such laws knowing that the law will only or primarily affect the demographic they hate. Do millionaires sleep on the sidewalk? No. Passing a law that you know will only or primarily affect a certain demographic is discriminatory. The KKK could fuck over 2 of their hated groups by getting a law passed that says "curly hair is illegal." Such a law doesn't violate the constitution or civil rights laws at its face, so the conservative KKK says ". You have to look at who it hits primarily.
2. Entitlement programs. To me, giving a business a tax break is no different than giving an individual a tax break. Conservatives are all for tax breaks for their businesses & charitable donations. But give a poor person a meal and they throw you in jail.
"We will, in all likelihood, mishandle the translation of females into technical positions, drawing in students with no real interest in the topic but with starry-eyed expectations from the fancy posters and sweet words. Then we will learn not that we have approached the effort improperly, but that women are simply not suited for--perhaps not intelligent enough for--science and technology work. This stigma will not just affect education; instead, people will learn that women are directly inferior as engineers, by nature, and so will not hire competent female engineers any more. "
Chuckle.
I think the female gender is more intelligent than you give them credit for. Computer Sciences, Programming, Network Engineering, are all decent paying jobs I suppose, but far from the most interesting. ( Some are downright boring, monotonous, and mind numbing after a while. )
If the truth about many of these jobs became widely known, ( long hours, cubicle environments, you're a number to a company - not a human being, hunched over a keyboard staring at a monitor 10-12 hours a day ) you might even have a difficult time getting ANYONE to show interest in the field, gender notwithstanding.
Perhaps the female gender sees that all of the negatives far outweigh the positives and really don't want anything to do with it. Unless you walk, talk, eat, sleep, breathe and DREAM this stuff, it really is rather boring. Important work ? Absolutely. Just not very exciting.
But addressing the reasons that cause such self-segregation and the effects of it isn't easy.
It isn't easy because society doesn't actually want to know the truth.Whenever we as a society want something to be true that isn't we ignore the truth and spend inordinate resources trying to prove what we want the truth to be.
The truth is there is indeed a biological component that drives humans that can be repressed but not eliminated. And there are dire consequences for repressing them as well. Scientific studies have proven this repeatedly but even many scientists ignore the facts because they are so unpopular. The reason so few girls pursue tech is they genuinely aren't interested. Intellect has very little to do with it. I've seen more women in tech that hated it but were pressured into it than women who actually chose tech and loved it. Anecdotal to be sure but that has been my experience.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
And in a similar vein: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
When will people learn that measures like this promote discrimination.
As soon as you force schools to have more girls in the classes, one of two things will happen: (1) They will forbid interested boys from taking the classes, or (2) they will put uninterested girls into the classes, which will screw up the classes for those who really do want to learn.
Reminds me of the (entirely unofficial, but entirely real) quota systems I have seen in certain schools and companies. Because some women were admitted/hired despite being unqualified, all women in the program were regarded with suspicion. This was utterly unfair to those women who were, in fact, qualified. It encourages discrimination, because everyone assumes that all girls/women are there due to the quota rather than their personal capabilities.
The right approach: Encourage anyone interested to take the classes; ensure that the instructors and administrators are not discouraging anyone because of their gender.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
This "we" you talk of is actually rather isolated to two specific communities: the Ruby community, and the JavaScript community.
This isn't surprising, obviously. Those communities are generally made up mostly of males (as in one or two females for every few hundred males), many of whom are still teenagers. Even the older ones among them still often have a mentality and maturity on par with teenagers.
I'm not certain why this is, but the members of those communities often have a dislike, if not an outright hatred, for women. Maybe it's due to mother-son issues when they were young. Maybe it's due to latent homosexuality. Maybe it's due to peer pressure. Maybe it's from watching too many deviant Japanese cartoons. Maybe it's just due to immaturity.
Whenever a controversy comes up involving sexism, it pretty much always involves people from the Ruby and/or JavaScript communities.
The communities surrounding just about every other programming language, from C to C++ to Java to C# to VB.NET to Haskell to Fortran to COBOL to Python to Tcl to Scheme to Lisp to PL/1 to Smalltalk, tend to be made up of much more mature individuals with better judgment and a lack of hostility toward women. These are also far more diverse communities, where the number of males and females involved are much more balanced. The issue of sexism is pretty much non-existent within these communities, and this has been true for decades now when it comes to some of the programming languages (see the role of Rear Admiral Hopper within the development of COBOL, for example).
Please don't blame everyone for problems that are very isolated to the Ruby and JavaScript communities.
Yes, because I'm sure there are lots of colleges and universities out there are telling girls that they can't be programmers, and throwing them out of the CS program the second they're discovered to possess vaginas. The administration probably threatens them away with a stick or something.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Yeah, and I feel intimidated by the girls in knitting class, so let's have boys-only knitting classes, please. The only problem left is figuring out what you pay a teacher who has no students.
by hatchet, axe, and saw.
Same AC that did the career day. The kids could choose whatever they wanted. The girls that attended were more interested in graphic design. Only a few of them had an interest in programming. Girls were free to choose whatever career they wanted to learn more about. Girls just weren't interested in this case. That doesn't mean we have to slam the door on boys who have an interest in it and force it down the throats of girls who don't.
What liberals and feminists still do not get, after all these years, is sexism is sexism.
If you include, or exclude, somebody on the basis of their sex, it is sexism. Period.
Did you ever think that women are too SMART to consider a Computer Science job? While the (mostly) guys in the field are pulling all-night marathon coding sessions to meet unreasonable shipping deadlines and worrying about their job getting outsourced overseas, many women are still going after cushy union teaching jobs.
Why? Because most teachers have a 35 hour work week, 12 weeks of paid vacation every year, and practically guaranteed job security and retirement benefits once they're tenured after a few years.
We're the morons here, people.
No one is inherently more intelligent about anything. The truth is boys go into computers because boys are interested in computers: experiments with small children under 2 years old have shown that small boys find interests more in trucks, and small girls prefer dolls. Small boys who do play with dolls in such experiments tend to make them fight; we call boys's dolls "action figures" for this reason. In both cases, the children select for what interests them inherently.
The selection criteria for a career is, similarly, based on what interests people. As G'Kar once said, all people do everything for precisely the same reason: It seemed like a good idea at the time. Some people select a career for money, for power, for working hours, for its attractiveness to women, its ease, its challenge, or its interest. Women, for example, may select a career for its monetary benefits, as a way to command their own independence; while men may seek a career for a perception about women being hot under the skirt for doctors, lawyers, and executives. Overwhelmingly, the decision is based in what is interesting.
The most obviously interesting career, the one selected for when no planning nor cunning nor foresight is applied, is the one which essentially amounts to playing with toys. Women like children, and select teaching jobs to interact with children; men like computers and machines, and become programmers and lube techs. Often this leads to hating your job and having your primary loves in life destroyed; nobody thinks that far in.
Ultimately, the women who get into computer science are largely there for the money, to assert their independence and their ability to challenge a male-dominated society; the small minority actually like computers. The men are, of course, only interested in tech. We see this pattern most clearly in casual conversation: outside the office, men talk about computers, about networking hardware, about software, about computer games they're writing at home; women mostly complain that their coworkers want to keep talking about work, instead of something interesting, and wish they could just talk about something else and enjoy their lunch break.
It hasn't occurred to most people that a pool of 100 men and 100 women produces 10 female programmers and 90 male programmers because women just aren't interested. Most people probably haven't considered a career choice as a multi-factor decision, but rather a matter of "what do you want to do?"; some are viewing it as a "what do you believe you're allowed to do?" problem. I wonder how long before the crisis of the male-dominated penis market will come up.
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Huh? If they are really talented, they are going to succeed regardless of where the bar is.
That is utterly, horrifically wrong.
What actually happens is that being bored, they don't do at all well in school, or later. Talent does not guarantee success, if nothing you do indicates to others you are talented they will not hire you.
This is called, wasting the potential of a human life and it happens all the time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You're mocking, fine, but you do somewhat have a point: home ec courses, parenting courses etc. Female dominated and the odd male that takes it gets the 'why aren't you taking ____ instead'. At least in HS level. Think cooking and such it event out at the college level.
Put an end to the malnutrition and suffering of the takeout/ramen-eating uni kids! Male-only home ec courses!
Considering that women have been there all along, and that many of the men are not the basement dwelling or unloved stereotypes you claim, I conclude you're full of it. and your last paragraph pretty much seals the deal.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
But, I digress. I eagerly await similar bills to end "boys' dominance" in fields like garbage disposal, oil rig maintenance, construction and homelessness.
Yes, because I'm sure there are lots of colleges and universities out there are telling girls that they can't be programmers, and throwing them out of the CS program the second they're discovered to possess vaginas. The administration probably threatens them away with a stick or something.
You are absolutely correct in your sarcasm. Hormones and other chemicals in the body heavilly influence what someone finds interesting. I am a mechanical engineer and always had interests in machines, repairing things, and science. But if I smoke some weed the left side of my brain takes over and creative tasks become much more interesting- playing music, writing, etc. I had no interest whatsoever in playing an instrument until I started using marijuana at age 28. THC, a chemical, has changed the way I see those things and how much I enjoy them.
It could very well be that the chemicals Estrogen and Testosterone have an effect on which things a person likes and how much they enjoy them. If my estrogen/testosterone balance was tilted the other way, maybe I would find teaching small children stimulating and interesting. Or maybe if a women's estrogen/testosterone balance was shifted, they would find writing code fun.
Maybe estrogen and testosterone have nothing to do with the reasons why women aren't that into science and engineering. But maybe they do. There are shedloads of possible reasons besides "the culture" that haven't really been explored. Women are now 33% more likely than men to earn a bachelor degree. That's alarming. Women are getting degrees in literally everything else, including in medicine, advertising, and law. Those fields put up a lot of overt sexist resistance back in the day. Science/Engineering doesn't have that overt sexism (or it doesn't anymore), and I don't think that "subtle" sexism can be more powerful than the overt sexism that existed, and was soundly defeated, in medicine/law. There have been pushes for at least the last 10 years to improve the % of ladies in science and Engineering, and the numbers haven't really budged. I think that if women wanted to be in Science/Engineering, they would be.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Please provide links to independent, peer-reviewed research demonstrating that it exists in more than isolated cases.
Number of male kindergarten teachers.
I don't think they do. And judging by the two kinds of of people that complain about the under-representation of women in tech...
The first person is doing absolutely nothing about it except throwing a patreon account around and begging for more money...
The second uses it as a PR campaign (without realizing that the outragists that care about the whole thing have no interest in tech)...
Not a single complainer decided to go into tech to improve the ratio. But you hear about it. From "journalists". From bloggers, vloggers, and podders. And high ups that don't do any of that stuff themselves, but have a chief of public relations.
How come the programmers aren't complaining? If this is such a problem, why is it only ever raised from the outside in the form of clickbait, PR, or justification for getting more money?
Are there any fields where men are underrepresented...
Nursing.
and teaching, especially elementary school level.
Sexism, even with the stated goal of equalising a perceived imbalance, is still sexism. It is the same way with racism. Mandating discrimination, no matter how lofty their goals, breeds resentment. Using statements referring to "historically under-represented students" simply hides the intent.
They need to be very careful to encourage those who are 'historically under-represented' while not marginalising those who are 'historically over-represented'. It is not a kid's fault if they are born male or female, and neither gender should have a lesser education because of it.
Mandating changes to K12 funding rules is, unfortunately, not going to change society's pressures as a whole.
Is that not exactly what makes the statement so well-crafted? I thought it showcased the hypocrisy of the claim beautifully.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Thanks, I do appreciate the heads-up.
I agree that the conservative statement is as much bullshit at the anti-liberal statement is bullshit.
I should have made clear that the conservative statement -- "sleeping on the sidewalk" -- is such patent bullshit that I took it for sardonic irony. Granted, the original poster might not have sardonic irony in mind. But if I use the phrase in conversation, I'll make the sardonic irony patently obvious.
I shouldn't have commented in the first place. Broke my own rule: don't comment on politics on Slashdot (or pretty much any place else, for that matter). I am primarily committed to sharing information, not opinion. Commenting on politics is rarely informative, always opinionated. One is reduced to sardonic irony, or worse.
-kgj
We will, in all likelihood, mishandle the translation of females into technical positions, drawing in students with no real interest in the topic but with starry-eyed expectations from the fancy posters and sweet words. Then we will learn not that we have approached the effort improperly, but that women are simply not suited for--perhaps not intelligent enough for--science and technology work. This stigma will not just affect education; instead, people will learn that women are directly inferior as engineers, by nature, and so will not hire competent female engineers any more.
You had me in total agreement until right here. But by dropping sexist ideas into your argument, you defeated yourself.
It should be plenty to say that men and women have measurably different sets of hormones, and that those hormones probably play a role in what kinds of tasks a person enjoys and/or excels at.
When you make an argument, avoid using comments which anyone might vehemently disagree with. "Hot" topics like that don't build up your argument and aren't needed. Making a persuasive argument is about getting the audience to say "yes, yes, yes, yes" in small steps. Having them say "yes, yes, yes, NOOOO" a good way to make someone take the opposing side.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
a lot of low paying, back breaking, labor jobs are 99% men and nobody cares enough to get women to take those jobs.
Bring in the blue collar jobs in IT, suddenly they want equality because those are better paying jobs that don't need a lot of physical back breaking labor.
Females just don't seem to have an interest in IT, only 18% people taking IT classes are female. Both males and females get bullied because they do well in math and science but somehow the females get discouraged from it and move on to something else. Males get bullied too but don't get discouraged from it. Maybe cracking down on bullying will make more females take up IT classes because bullies call females who take IT as not feminine.
Minorities, it is basically a poverty problem, they cannot afford tuition and college to earn the IT degree. They cannot afford the home computer to learn on, and they might be in a financial situation because their father left them or went into prison. You'd have to get a fund to get them home computers and low cost Internet and then scholarships for IT degrees.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
You are a moron, but not for the reason you suppose. You're utterly ignorant of a teacher's life, for starters.
Along the same lines I can point out 2 good reasons boys are generally driven in that direction.
1. Boys are into video games - for the very same reason that big gaming is targeted at boys and that the majority of players are male. Those gamers are into computers and the possibility of coding future games, so they go into computer science. Girl gamers are starting to become a little more common, and their representation in computer science might increase organically if everyone just left it alone.
2. Boys like to build things - along the lines of Lego, blocks, and carpentry. Boys dominate "shop class", but I don't recall any big push to change that. OK, the shop class I had in high school did have a fair amount of girls in it, so maybe that's not a big concern. The building enjoyment flows into programming because the program that comes out at the end was "built" by you.
There are some toys aimed at getting girls into building things, so that's a good thing as well. I don't know that threatening funding is the best plan. That puts all of the pressure on the teacher or school to try to drive girls in that direction (and makes me think that down the road "unwillingly" isn't out of the question, or granting a passing grade for sub-par work just to keep the numbers up). Games that girls are interested in and getting girls into "building things" at an earlier age is where the attention needs to be. So that lies more in the parents, and asking parents to make their daughters good little cogs isn't likely to garner much traction...which is why nothing has worked so far.
I refuse to sign
It's obviously society's fault that girls don't want to program. There couldn't possibly be any other reason for this lack of interest.
making these classes attractive to kids
That's why they are putting more girls in the classes: to attract more nerds, duh.
Any guy that would admit to being run off of a female dominated class would rightfully be mocked and made fun of by other guys.
I think that is perhaps the real dividing line.
No one treats poor Johnny like a damsel in distress that needs resucing.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Granted, the original poster might not have sardonic irony in mind.
I am the OP, and I certainly had sardonic irony in mind. I am surprised by the amount of "whoosing" that my comment engendered.
"La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain."
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
Anatole France, 1894
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Before you flame... I know that they aren't threatening to take funding away, they are giving funding to those who do fit. The thought remains the same, but I have no problem with passing money out - it's your money do what you want. But I don't appreciate when they take that money from places that do have students who just happen to be white males.
I refuse to sign
Still waiting for the moral outrage over male 'dominance' of the waste disposal field. Or logging. Or death by job in general.
There aren't too many female miners or oil rig workers but I don't see any campaign on the horizon.
Truly, the tech companies, banksters and such have long since killed that goose's egg: with the massive offshoring of tech jobs and importing of foreign visa scab workers to take the place of American workers, this entire topic is completely specious.
I don't see too many women creating their own wildly successful games. How did all these hugely successful software companies come into being? Did the magical patriarchy just will them into existence?
I think it was Thomas Sowell who said something like this: Washington has a mostly black population, but proportionally, few blacks use the city's airport. Are we going to force black people to go on plane trips now?
. . . then the same EXACT argument applies to wealth distribution, which means all wealth must be also equally redistributed --- except the minions of the super-rich are the ones pushing all these "divide and conquer" programs, forever successful in what they do --- the very same ones behind the offshoring of as many American tech jobs as possible!
Acknowledging that affirmative action is inherently discriminatory is not hatred of women.
We are bombarded every single day that women in America lead men in both undergrad and graduate degrees now (never mind that they are all in the "subject" of Communications) --- so what is with this program???????
I more rely on the audience to have the reading comprehension of a five year old; but they often have the reading comprehension of a confused squirrel. My experience is that people read by words, not statements, and interpret what they read by grabbing a fist full of vocabulary and making up a narrative; my reaction to this has been to assume they are idiots and ignore them.
You are an idiot and I am ignoring you.
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Excellent comment, ZH, but we both know why those won't be forthcoming!
Then we will learn not that we have approached the effort improperly, but that women are simply not suited for--perhaps not intelligent enough for--science and technology work.
are ok, or that 3 other people would vote it up to a +5. Maybe I'm wrong and you're right. Lets go back to putting ladies together in secretary pits. While we are at it, we might as well start calling all attractive coworkers "sugar tits" again.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
This isn't about Miss Ogyny (she didn't win the pageant anyway), but if I sponsored a similar bill in my state that directed schools to make sure that black males didn't dominate in Basketball, I would be labeled a racist. How is this any different?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
There is only one kind of systematic prejudice in today's institutions. And it is against white males. And if you happen to be heterosexual too, no one will target you for any favoritism.
Three words: Reality Distortion Field.
The white male geek starts his career from an extraordinarily privileged position.
The median household income in the US is $52,000.
College graduates in the class of 2015 with bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering can expect an average starting salary of $57,000. Computer engineering graduates are close behind, with average salaries of $56,600. Next come mechanical engineering graduates with starting salaries of $56,000.
Software design $54,000
Computer programming $54,000
Computer science $52,000
The College Degrees With The Highest Starting Salaries in 2015
I'm glad you had sardonic irony in mind; I made you a Friend with this in mind.
But damn, it's often difficult to tell, and somebody will usually take it literally. This is why I should stick to my rule: Don't comment on politics.
-kgj
I suspect most five-year-olds or confused squirrels know what "ignoring" means :)
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
What's pathetic is you read something like this:
We will, in all likelihood, mishandle the translation of females into technical positions, drawing in students with no real interest in the topic but with starry-eyed expectations from the fancy posters and sweet words. Then we will learn not that we have approached the effort improperly, but that women are simply not suited for--perhaps not intelligent enough for--science and technology work. This stigma will not just affect education; instead, people will learn that women are directly inferior as engineers, by nature, and so will not hire competent female engineers any more.
And come out with this:
But by dropping sexist ideas into your argument, you defeated yourself.
You are not able to follow a thought from start to finish, to retain context, and to understand what is being said. I said that the sky is blue, and you told me you cannot accept my argument that the sky is green; I told you dogs are descended from wolves, and you said that is ridiculous because they do not seem like any type of cat.
You are an idiot, and you cannot process language. You are processing vocabulary: You are reading words and inserting them into your own schematic to create a self-manufactured narrative. Words convey both the schematic and the components in use, but you are throwing out their order in the layout and instead holding them up as pieces in your image of a whole. The wheels and engine in a diagram of an airplane tell you it is a car.
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well, when you offer a program that will help
women
minorities and specifically excludes a single group (white males) do you REALLY need to wonder why white men are getting angry? And God forbid someone were to set up a scholarship or grant that was only open to white males. it would (rightfully so) be called bigoted. so explain to me how excluding X is not bigoted but excluding Y is???
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Excellent quote; thank you.
I am reminded of a passage from A Tale of Two Cities, where Monsieur runs down and kills a young boy:
A Tale of Two Cities
-kgj
Here's the reality.
Men and women are different. They *come out* different. How many of you parents out there have noticed that their little girls usually play with dolls while boys play with trucks, despite your best efforts to equalize?
You're fighting human programming. Testosterone does things to the human nervous system that make it act in certain ways, like enhancing spatial reasoning, agression, and so on.
You can try and jimmy social structures all you want. You won't change this, unless and until you get to genetic and/or neurological programming at a level we haven't achieved yet.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
well if you have a class of 30, and there are 30 boys who WANT to be in the class, but this bill would REQUIRE the addition of others (who may not even want the class) its a problem
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
This is numbers. The kind of people that support this kind of legislation only want to balance out the numbers of people.
you are right, it IS about the numbers, those numbers being, who is going to vote for the politician who gives stuff to 50% +1 people
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Somebody hasn't been to Mardi Gras before!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It's more of people being able to follow the flow of context in a paragraph, instead of processing it as isolated words and phrases with no context. A lot of stuff is impossible to explain to anyone who cannot track context; and, besides, I have gotten quite tired of running into people who can't talk about even a simple and straightforward topic without being reminded every third sentence what topic we are discussing (I have dealt with people who insist I have just started rambling out of nowhere if I don't repeat the subject every couple sentences; they're like goldfish).
I've decided they're just idiots.
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Seriously? Is there ANY chance this won't lead to discrimination against little white boys that like computers? Will there be similar 'wonderful' legislation passed to address the gender disparity in, say, home economics or wood shop? What about dance classes? Auto shop? Will girls be forced to enroll in computer classes or will boys be prevented from disproportionately enrolling in the class?
Hate that word, "incentivize" which translates to bribery and thievery to us non-Wall Street types. You said ...now it's time to make an effort to tap into another pool of resources to help fulfill/solve the stated problem...
Problem with that is this is the region which leads in offshoring jobs. Plenty of workers. . . remember, it was Micro$oft, on 9/12/01, which took advantage of the horrendous attack on America to have an unscheduled layoff of 1,000 local workers!
I shouldn't have commented in the first place. Broke my own rule: don't comment on politics on Slashdot (or pretty much any place else, for that matter). I am primarily committed to sharing information, not opinion. Commenting on politics is rarely informative, always opinionated. One is reduced to sardonic irony, or worse.
I *should* do that.
So should most everybody else actually...
I am the OP, and I certainly had sardonic irony in mind. I am surprised by the amount of "whoosing" that my comment engendered.
Remember that over 80% of people support mandatory labeling of foods containing DNA.
Most (I am not exaggerating, I believe the number actually is > 50%) people are stupid and/or uneducated enough to be quite serious with comments such as yours. It is pretty safe to assume people are in the majority.
I generally trust /. still on moderating such posts enough for meed to weed them out, but I browse lower... probably lower than I should with my emotional baggage.
There isn't a section that explicitly says 'discourage white boys from signing up for class'. But, like the zero tolerance policies that are mis-interpreted to include biting a pop-tart into a vague gun shape, pointing your fingers, and having a 1 in plastic molded machine gun for your GI Joes, what will happen is if you can't get enough of the underrepresented demographic students into the class as a percentage of the entire class, then there's going to be a kid that really wants to take the class told 'Sorry, that class is full' when there's only 8 people signed up.
All just to keep the % of underrepresented students at a certain level.
Funny you should mention that. At Berkeley High (in CA), they had only a girls computer club despite the fact that dozens of boys wanted a computer club. There were no girls who signed up for computer club but they still wouldn't have a boys computer club (or a students computer club which is what it should be). So rather than teaching those that are interested, they denied everyone rather than have an out of balance club. Sad considering Berkeley High used to be an excellent high school. Its now behind the high school I attended in rural Kentucky that has less than 1/20th the budget.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
There is only one kind of systematic prejudice in today's institutions. And it is against white males. And if you happen to be heterosexual too, no one will target you for any favoritism.
Oh, come on! Cry me a river.
Look at any movie in the west - the hero is a white heterosexual man 99% of the time. Look at most any culture and men are heroes and lead in every important aspect of society, super-models aside. Of course, in all these cultures there are also more dropouts on the male side, but that's how evolution wired the sexes as we know today.
Women get aided in MINT, come out of school an avarage of 2 or more gradelevels better than boys (every since) and yet it's still men who get the higher salary and end up in boss positions.
Why?
Because we (men), evolution and our culture wired us to not give a shit about grades and some dumb-ass teacher! Because we know better, don't we? But we *are* wired to seriously give a shit how much we get for our work. Especially so if we want to impress the ladies. A man is way likely would rather be a bum or at least a dropout than work under circumstances he considers below him. I know I am. He is also way more likely to grab a Kalashnikow and take what he thinks he deserves when pushed far enough. Examples all around. All the time.
Get it into your head: The most successful men don't even need a degree. It's white male college dropouts who've built the most powerful companies in the world.
Women end up having to weigh their desire to habe children against optimised career moves. In a classic society they are way less likely to completely drop out of society and also way less likely to rise to the top.
In my opinion any law that tries to curb those tendencies of gender inequality is welcome. That some of them are debatable, mostly because they are as ineffective as they are unfair, is obivous. But your statement is a blatant over-simpification and, to be honest, a tad whiney. If I may say so.
Get a grip, grow a pair and find a cute lady to have some awesome sex with - you sound like you could use some.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Let me see if I can help...
What BlueFoxlucid is saying is that perhaps the efforts to attract more female students lower quality students (who happen to be female) will also be encouraged to join therefore flooding the market with passionless female graduates who will in turn reinforce a stereotype of poor performance and in turn prevent passionate females from gaining a foothold and creating success stories that encourage other girls to start down the path.
I agree that "people will learn that women are directly inferior as engineers" is provocative in itself but in context it should be read as "people will learn, incorrectly so, that women are directly inferior as engineers".
That is what people are trying to say to you.
I suspect most five-year-olds or confused squirrels know what "ignoring" means :)
Dude, reread his original post. And substitute the word 'learn' for the words 'be told'. Then it will make sense to you. He was a rude asshole, but you are still being either intentional dense or the idiot he says you are.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Boys have an inherent fascination with the concept of using symbol manipulation to change the functionality of physical machinery. By changing how machines work by typing words and code. Boys are absolutely obsessed with the concept that you can create machines that do what you tell them to do by changing mere symbols (which is what source code is). It is a way of creating life from dead objects by using 'magic' symbols. Religions are based on this. Programming is a type of religion. Boys are very much into this.
Girls, on the other hand, are absolutely fascinated by their ability to create actual living, thinking, unique human beings with their own bodies. They don't need magic symbol manipulation to create artificial life from physical objects. Their bodies create life from their interactions with other life. The lives that girls create can't be controlled like the robots or machinery that boys create, but their human-life creations are infinitely more complicated than what the boys can do.
This is the basic primal fundamental reason why boys are much more attracted to computers and science. Boys spend their lives and careers trying to gain and master the life-creating abilities that girls are endowed with at birth.
This is my concept of how things are going
Women in tech: 10%
Women in tech who enjoy tech: 1%
Men in tech: 90%
Men in tech who enjoy tech: 1%
I predict that there are roughly the same number of good tech people of both male and female, the rest are in it because they're confused about what they wanted to do with their life or picked a random career that was "cool".
Any guy that would admit to being run off of a female dominated class would rightfully be mocked and made fun of by other guys.
I don't know. I was fairly terrified of girls in grade school. I admit it.
Though I did basically teach the computer classes because the teacher was a no0b. Apple IIe days.
The truth is there is indeed a biological component that drives humans that can be repressed but not eliminated. And there are dire consequences for repressing them as well. Scientific studies have proven this repeatedly but even many scientists ignore the facts because they are so unpopular.
I don't know which studies you refer to, but there are also "scientific studies" which demonstrate gender bias towards science students.
http://news.yale.edu/2012/09/2...
OK, you're up. What studies are you referring to? Game on.
First: Yes this is anecdotal, but it is my own experience with 'diversity' in the academic environment. It may not happen all the time or everywhere, but I don't believe it is uncommon either.
The summer before my senior year in college I acted as the boy's counselor for a career "summer camp" sponsored by the State of Michigan, aimed at high-school students. There were many different topics offered, but my school (U of M-Dearborn) was providing an engineering focused camp. As a counselor, I was involved in the selection process, which was run by the engineering admissions office. There were many more applicants than we had openings for students (approximately 30 openings), and the state had mandated a diversity goal (including geographic diversity). The result was a process that went like this:
1. Sort the applications. Place all white male applicants in pile 'B', retaining all female and non-white male applications in pile 'A.' (Actually, the gender sorting was retained.)
2. Review female applications and select the best to fill 50% of the openings.
3. Review non-white male applications and select the best to fill the remaining openings.
4. Plot geographic location of selected applicants' hometowns on the state map. Notice that no applications were selected from the Upper Peninsula. (U.P.)
5. Look for U.P. applicants in the A pile. Finding none, go get the 'B' pile (white males) and search for U.P. residents. (two found)
6. Replace bottom two selected males with the two U.P. residents.
7. Congratulate the team that they have done a wonderful job at promoting diversity.
I do not have a poker face and my disgust must have shown, because the Associate Dean of engineering approached me afterward and said "See, we got some white males in the end." What she didn't seem to understand was that what disturbed me wasn't the outcome (which was bad enough), but that if you were a white male applicant, your application wasn't even considered (except for the two Yoopers*, and they wouldn't have been if there had been any in the 'A' pile). Given the topic today, I suppose I should have been happy that they accepted any male applications at all.
*For those who don't know: Yooper = someone who hails from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U - per). Conversely, the Yoopers call those of us from the Lower Peninsula "Trolls", because we live "below the bridge." (the Mackinac bridge which connects the two)
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
How's this for a counter-example? Orchestras used to have a ton of reasons why women were grossly under-represented -- they just weren't interested, they didn't have the skills, they didn't have the long-term ability -- whatever. But when orchestras started to have players audition behind curtains, suddenly a lot of talented women started getting hired.
Right now there are plenty of teachers who literally don't want women in their high-tech classes. This bill helps solve that problem, and doesn't let the teacher weasel their way out with cop-out answers.
Want a sig like mine? Join ACM's SigSig today!
OK, long ago for people, but the majority of programmers used to be women. They started this field : http://womensenews.org/story/b.... It was considered clerical work at the time. When it was recognized as pretty substantial work, companies turned to universities for recruiting and male graduates were far more prevalent at the time and the graduates quickly dominated the field.
My wife was told by her guidance councilor that she shouldn't be a programmer because she'd just be typing stuff in and working with dusty old tape. My mom was steered away from engineering, so she got an RN instead. The dominance of boys over girls in this field was culturally manufactured. What else would one expect from a culture that teaches girls the importance of being pretty, their parents giving praise when they are pretty, and boys being praised for being strong or smart?
There is nothing intrinsic in boys or girls that makes them good or bad at computer science and programming. People will cling to the myth that they have some rare super ability in their brain to do programming; it gives someone a sense of self worth which is important for people to have. What you need is a reasonable memory and time to practice. Can everyone do it? No, but the bar is not sky high; the majority could pass it.
and therefore most girls display little interest for fear of being "weird" and "masculine". This IS a problem that we need to look at correcting.
Im sorry but can you explain to me WHY this is a problem that needs to be corrected???
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Does anyone see a "must" in there, as quoted in the summary?
The problem is that it has money attached, and will become a "must" even if that isn't explicitly stated.
The first example I can think of to demonstrate this effect was the 55 mph "national speed limit." Because the speed limits on roads have been held to be a state controlled matter, the federal government couldn't simply set the maximum speed itself. Instead, congress made federal highway funding contingent on a state's adopting a 55mph maximum speed limit. None of the states wanted to lose the opportunity to get their "fair share" of the money, so they all enacted 55mph limits.
As soon as the monetary contingency was removed, states started setting their speed limits higher again.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
What I'd like to know is: why do we have such a lack of female pro-football players?
How about coal miners?
Heavy equipment operators?
In other words, why is CS such a big deal?
A-freaking-men. Preach it! Studies done a few years back showed women in STEM (Sci, Tech, Eng., Math) fields had lower natural estrogen counts. Doesn't mean it has to be that way. I can guarantee you that few boys in HS or men in college would say no to having more girls/women around in the so called "nerd" classes. I am saddened that Washington State, a place that I called home for 10 years as a child, is trying to force out boys from a field by threatening to withhold money just because there aren't "enough" girls in the classes. Politicians have zero right to meddle in such things. It's pathetic.
My perception of the problem shows that a contributing factor (even at the college level) may be that girls/women don't want to be around socially awkward and many times smelly boys/men.
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
He's not talking about women, he's talking about people wanting to force women into our city. The geek city is open to any geek, but F those people and their money trying to change the fundamentals of what made the city great in the first place. Throwing money at a problem is generally not a good idea.
No one is inherently more intelligent about anything. The truth is boys go into computers because boys are interested in computers: experiments with small children under 2 years old have shown that small boys find interests more in trucks, and small girls prefer dolls. Small boys who do play with dolls in such experiments tend to make them fight; we call boys's dolls "action figures" for this reason. In both cases, the children select for what interests them inherently.
This happens to be almost 100% incorrect:
New research from the University of Western Sydney shows baby boys prefer objects with faces over machines, challenging the theory of an innate preference among babies for ‘girly’ or ‘macho’ toys.
Researchers from the MARCS Institute Babylab at the University of Western Sydney gauged the preferences of four and five month old babies by showing them pictures of male and female humans and dolls, as well as cars and stoves.
The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, found that like baby girls, baby boys were more willing to engage with dolls than cars.
Without doubt, there is now some kind of liberal conspiracy to bring affirmative action into high-tech education and workplace. Now that they have mostly won the same sex marriage battle, it seems like this is now the top item on the agenda, considering we're seeing news articles on this issue nearly every other day, like this is this the top problem hindering our progress towards some kind of a utopian Star Trek society.
There you go again. Using good common sense in a discussion about social engineering.
I thought we lived in a country where you could grow up to be anything you wanted to be, but maybe the government's fairness cops know better.
It's been exactly two weeks since Slashdot discussed one of several studies that conclude that groups with more women perform better than groups with fewer. Already, readers here seem to have largely forgotten that. It should be pretty obvious why there's a demand to recruit more women into the industry.
Somebody hasn't been to Mardi Gras before!
:D My mother-in-law once got stuck overnight near SFO waiting for a delayed flight (She is a millionaire). She ended up sharing a piece of cardboard with a random guy. Even with millions she is still the type to say "It was only 5 hours, why would I waste money on a hotel?!" She is awesome.
Oh don't get me wrong, there are a very real contingent of legit folks out there who happen to have two X chromosomes. But they don't make a big deal out of it, and they probably share a lot of the formative experiences of their counterparts with a Y chromosome.
What's your problem with my last paragraph, by the by?
That's very much better and more succinctly put, but precisely the idea I was going for. I don't want to discriminate against a female -- in either direction. Jeri Ellsworth is awesome and I don't care what's in her pants, but the cold hard fact is that the industry is suffering from this wave of pity hiring a bunch of college coeds, giving them titles with "communications" or "marketing" in them, and lying to them and everyone else that they're now part of the IT revolution. It's not a solution to anything.
you must be confusing the traditional "liberal" with that of the modern "liberal"
classical liberals are today called libertarians because the left hijacked the term liberal (and the right made it a bad word)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
In a lot of ways geekdom is no longer counterculture.
That's fine, as long as Joe Schmo wearing a dashiki doesn't start demanding a vote in an actual Nigerian village. We can be popular, but don't try to co-opt our shit. No flash photography, keep your hands off the exhibits, pl0x.
think that men are definitely the authorities on why women aren't in CS and should not be encouraged to enter CS. Their suitability for the task is underscored by around 98% of the preceding posts amounting to "We have nothing against more women entering CS, but for some reason the stupid incompetent bitches don't want to have anything to do with us."
You jest, but I once read that at least one European country seeks to hire women as prison guards in the hopes that it will make it easier to transition to life outside prison. I'm too lazy to look it up.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
make CS a mandatory graduation requirement. Then ALL the girls and ALL the boys will have to do it, like math.
Nullius in verba
Women, for example, may select a career for its monetary benefits, as a way to command their own independence; while men may seek a career for a perception about women being hot under the skirt for doctors, lawyers, and executives. Overwhelmingly, the decision is based in what is interesting.
Interestingly the Chinese economy is reportedly 2% better because of this women in short supply men need to attract them however this is something that has been happening for eons males always tried to show they were bigger, stronger, faster and lately richer or smarter and women wanted these attributes as it would mean their offspring would be protected men could then have their pick, usually the most attractive. Lately women wanting to be independent or increase the quality of male they attract can take steps and go into a career or use the attributes to gain finances until they are attractive to a mate http://fortune.com/2013/02/15/... On the doctors lawyer executive this is for the money just ask any construction worker renovating their houses
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
Finding ways to spark girls' interest? A bit more inline, and important.
Why?
Why is it important? Why is it so all fired important to get people to do what they don't want to do?
Apparently we can't as a society be just a little bit pregnant on this. If we really believe it is important, then somebody is going to start rolling out these programs. Because it's important!
So I think we need to question the very premise, not just pander to it.
Is it a counter-example?
Roughly equal numbers of men and women graduate from classical music study at high levels. Roughly equal numbers apply to professional jobs.
This is different from software engineering in two important ways.
You need to factor-in people in both gender categories that liked tech when the got into it, but now don't like tech or don't enjoy it as a hobby anymore now that it's a profession.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
A CS class is a meritocracy. You can either do the work or you cannot. There is no way to force representation of various groups of people including females and minorities to what we out of our hats think it should be. The effort to make it so is braindead.
I do not think that word means what you think it means. One study discussed TOYS the children under 2 years of age but almost certainly over 1 year of age given that they were actually playing with said toys preferred vs a bunch of 5 to 6 month olds who prefer pictures of people, a.k.a the monstrous entities who feed them and wipe their asses, over pictures of anything else. You're comparing apples and chocolate covered ants with that one.
If there were no female applicants for your team, either your HR department isn't doing a good job of advertising the job to women, or else your team is doing a lousy job of looking like somewhere a women would feel comfortable working.
My company's not perfect, but they're a lot better at it than that - losing a big lawsuit 40 years ago got their attention. My current department doesn't have a lot of women in it; my previous department had women as more than half of the managers (varied over the years, as we kept reorganizing), and so did the sales department we did tech consulting for. The last time my group hired a contractor through the HR department, probably 1/3 of the applicants were women (the one we really wanted to hire had found a better job before HR got us her resume, sigh. We hired a guy who didn't work out, then hired an old friend who'd contracted with us years before and was willing to come back again.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That is not awesome, that is ultra-cheap. She's going to be one of those fools who dies with millions in the bank and living in poverty conditions.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
Star Wars was the number one movie of 1977. It's one of the most profitable franchises of all time also. Still associated with geeks. Geeks are still outside mainstream culture; it's just that certain geek-associated things are in fashion now. You may as well claim 1%er motorcycle clubs aren't counterculture because Sons of Anarchy is popular.
They wouldn't let me take Home Ec. Those kids are crazy... Hormonal, growing teenagers who get to eat food and be around girls? Come on...
Have you considered that perhaps it is the girls themselves that are causing each other to steer clear away from science and math? Women are more socially sensitive and definitely can influence each other much more than boys do. If there were more women mentors perhaps that perception can change?
You win the debate! (sarcasm)
I have interviewed and hired many engineers over a 35 year career with a "very large computer company". Here's my opinion on the subject. Lately, there has been a big push in the media to have "diversity" in the technology fields. Jesse Jackson is involved in it so one can assume reverse discrimination. Now political nutjobs have entered the fray. The bottom line is that there are NO barriers in colleges that discriminate against anyone taking technology subjects. It's just that they tend to be difficult. Many don't wish to take difficult courses. Many don't like solitary endeavors and prefer socially-related positions. Mandating the outcome without proper education and training is simply ridiculous. However, our wonderful "media" ignores these facts. It's like mandating the same in a football team, ignoring capability. If someone is truly interested in pursuing a technical field, then all they have to do is well, pursue it. It's out there and if one wishes to train in the area, they will obtain employment in the field if they know what they are doing. I took science subjects in school because I was truly interested in science. Forcing someone to hire me in to a scientific position if I had no or insufficient training in the subject would be stupid. Forcing an incompetent in the field will only undermine their cause. When I interview a college graduates for an engineering position, I asked the same questions of all candidates, regardless of whether or not they had boobs or if their skin color was whatever color. In the end, we hired the best person. In many cases, they were someone with boobs (only if they knew engineering well) or someone who may have had skin darker than mine. We hired *people*, not colors or genders and those people were hired to perform a job. The bottom line is I recommended someone for the job IF I felt they could do the job or had the capability to learn to do the job.. Ironically, I was on a team that turned down our manager's brother (who happened to be a white male) because he wasn't a good candidate for the job. He was a crappy engineering graduate. It's what one can do, not the outward appearance that makes the difference. If our stupid "governments" hold technology jobs so high, perhaps they should *mandate* engineering and computer science courses in the public schools rather than forcing the outcome on people of various appearances with little or no training.
So they want to implement Affirmative Action at the class level? That will only make the program fail, no matter how much "diversity" is forced.
I hope the law ends up not passing or gets pre-empted by Federal anti-discrimination law.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
LOL, me and a buddy actually took HomeEc back in high school to hit on girls (we were the only two guys in class). It worked out pretty well too. At first the other guys laughed at us, until they saw the results. The next semester, a bunch of other guys were in it too. In that sense, I'm a gender rights pioneer. I look forward to the statue you build for my pioneering work.
That can happen?! Tech is one of the few things that are primarily limited by imagination and has practical application to every day life. I could understand getting sick of your job, but I can't understand no longer enjoying tech. I'm one of those people that absolutely hates being bored, and as long as I am awake, my mind is always racing thinking about something. Tech is one of those few things that can keep my mind preoccupied for any length of time.
When I have nothing to think about, I get anxiety. The simplest feeling of anything not normal makes me think of what it could be, next thing I know I'm on the topic of cancer or some neurological degeneration. Having something to keep my mind preoccupied reduces my anxiety. I'm addicted to thinking, I can't make it stop.
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1. Sleeping on the sidewalk is a law that affects only 1 group. They make such laws knowing that the law will only or primarily affect the demographic they hate. Do millionaires sleep on the sidewalk? No. Passing a law that you know will only or primarily affect a certain demographic is discriminatory.
Congratulations. Of everyone in the subthread, you came the closest to grabbing the edge of the sar-chasm.
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That is not awesome, that is ultra-cheap. She's going to be one of those fools who dies with millions in the bank and living in poverty conditions.
Oh, no, she does not live in poverty conditions, but she is also not disconnected. I'm not doing the story justice. You have to know her. She is awesome.
Are you saying Americans are master-baiters? Because that's what it's starting to sound like.
Say what? Is this yet another solution looking for a problem? When I was taking computer classes in high school the hands down top performer was a young woman named "Marjorie" who went on to an Ivy League school. WA has lost its collective mind again...
Broad and deep is the gulf between sexes. Not only are there physical differences, there are physiological ones as well so that well before puberty they are divided into two streams, so that any young girl of 6-10 years old who dares to show what are called 'boy's attributes', are branded tomboys and set down as less worthy.
Then well meaning mothers dress them as boys/girls, instead of in sexless clothes and hair that reveal no hint of their gender - after all, what good is gender until after puberty when breeding is possible?
So how do we make them all like peas in a pod?
We can not.
Our current state of socialization means most mothers will not dress and groom their kinds as gender = 0 people.
We even have 7 years old beauty queens in contests with bouffant hair, makeup and false breasts in competitions.
How can we eliminate that? In a free society, we can not.
All we can do is eliminate this early bullying and dress them alike and hair them alike, until puberty reveals unconcealable sifferences.
with expressions like OMG and LIKE and WUTEVER!!! That will roll them right in.
Gotta meet the quotas.
Replying to someone and calling him names is not ignoring him. It just looked funny.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
And it's virtually impossible to get a tenured teacher fired. Smart indeed. Even better, become a computer science teacher.
Beware of the Redittor who loans you a Sharpie.
I personally think the gender in-balance in teachers is much more important than the one in technology, teachers are major role models children's lives, and children need role models of both sexes, where who cares who wrote the latest app, or the latest network protocol.
That is not going to happen. Men are all pedophiles, havent you heard? Only females can be trusted to be around our precious children.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Perhaps they fail to see the appeal of a career with diminishing pay Checks
Ken
So would a law against armed robbery be considered racist if it disproportionately impacts poor minorities who, arrest records imply, are more likely to commit armed robbery. The law would equally apply to white millionaires, but 'we all know' that 'they' (rich white folks) aren't likely to commit armed robbery...
Ken
That's just what we need, more discrimination.
They are focused on biochemistry, biology, medicine, audio engineering, geology, architecture, marine biology, genetic engineering, truck mechanics, electrical technicians, etc. I have only met a few that were hip to CS in any real sense. Those few were either UI designers/developers (yes they wrote code), or Psychology majors with an interest in UX (didn't write code for development, but did write code for processing their study data).
Stop the pigeon-holing! Many disciplines encourage their practitioners to learn coding, indirectly! HOWEVER, most of the specific personages I reference indirectly above were coders because their disciplinary goals required that they learn to write code on their own, NOT because their discipline requires it, but because their projects indirectly require it! Having a strong coding background myself I was in a position to offer useful advice on where they could refine their skills to achieve their disciplinary goals with code. It really had very little to do with pure CIS... It had to do with getting a pie-eating-contest off their plate so they could move on to the rest of their research!
Code development is not an end. It is a means to accomplish a disciplinary goal that cannot be solved by any other method, and all of the academic and professional women I have met dealing with that particular challenge grok that. They don't love computers, but they know what such machines can do for them, and they are more than willing to roll up their sleeves to learn it, and keep their hands dirty in it, only so long as that effort is required to satisfy that portion of their larger goal.
SO:
In K-12 teach Discrete Math, Data Structures, Algorithms and call it good. If you must get feed back, teach them a core language like ANSI C. But let it go after that. Make it a required section of every math class, scale it to fit the level expected for that student. By the end of k-12 every student should know what an integer and a float is, what a pointer is, what arrays and strings are, what control statements are, and why they are important for computer processing. This should be true even if they never want to see a line of code again. Put it where it belongs. Programming is applied math. Treat it as such. Don't bury women in a discipline that does not interest them. Teach them how they can apply Discrete Math and automatic computation in their own path.
Coda: Women generally won't spend 20 years studying one species of dragonfly -- guys have, and do similar things all the time. That is a guy thing.
Women, if they focus down on something like fruit fly larva, it is generally for a greater purpose that tends to broaden their efforts not narrow them. That is a key difference between guys and gals. Guys are content, for a lot of bad, or ill-defined reasons, to narrow down to a laser fine focus on shit that most women just can't be bothered with. It is not that women can't do it, or won't do it! I think it is more that they recognize it is usually self-destructive and self-limiting. I think the feminine approach is healthier, for a lot of reasons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... VERSUS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Casteism
Although I know you are being sarcastic, I fear not exposing children to men therefore not exposing men to children will have the reverse effect. I don't know of any study that looks into this but I have my suspicions.
When you see someone often you see them, as a person, not just a thing.
Think about it this way, you hear about people dieing in Africa all the time, it is sad yes but doesn't really effect you but how would you feel if it was someone you knew?
I also think people live down to expectations.
Although I know you are being sarcastic, I fear not exposing children to men therefore not exposing men to children will have the reverse effect. I don't know of any study that looks into this but I have my suspicions..
Yes, without being sarcastic, children should not be kept away from men, I've seen children, epsecially males, who become rather messed up without a father figure. Which is not to say that daughters deprived of being "Daddy's little girl" are missing something from their lives too.
And yet, that's where we are heading . http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/d...
And yet, men are pigs. Whoops, I went sarcastic again....
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So would a law against armed robbery be considered racist if it disproportionately impacts poor minorities who, arrest records imply, are more likely to commit armed robbery. The law would equally apply to white millionaires, but 'we all know' that 'they' (rich white folks) aren't likely to commit armed robbery...
The effects are just one piece of the equation. The goal & motivation are also important. Who is protected by a law against armed robbery?
Since 93% of job fatalities are men, there's a real need to push women into jobs where they have a non-negligible chance of dying on the job - equality demands it!
"Boys don't count?" What a crock. Of course boys count. So do African-Americans, Asians, Latinos, women, autism-spectrum people, and pretty much every other identifiable subgroup you can think of. Here's a clue: no subgroup has more innate ability for CS than any other. Unless your chosen subgroup is "people who have innate ability for CS."
Every time the gender imbalance in CS comes up on Slashdot, we see the same phenomenon: a huge phalanx of men jumps out and tries to defend their ignorant biases. Actually, it's kind of generous of you folks: by loudly proclaiming your prejudices, you make it easy for savvy employers to avoid you. Because frankly, one hugely skilled guy who pisses off ten talented women just isn't worth having around.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm one of the two people (both men, BTW) who taught the first Harvey Mudd course for students with experience. (See TFA if that isn't meaningful to you.) We weren't the first to figure it out (that credit goes to CMU) but we were the first to do it in a compelling intro course (I don't get credit for that either--write me privately if you're dying for details of how I fell into it). But I'm currently the only one who teaches that course to experienced students. The whole idea was originally developed by two amazing men (not me) and one brilliant woman (not Maria Klawe, BTW; she'll tell you that herself because she wasn't even at Mudd at the time). So let's not pretend that anti-male bias was a factor.
But what has been found based on *science* (oh, that) is that some groups of people, women included, are easily intimidated by show-offs. Which, if you haven't caught on, includes most of the noisiest Slashdot crowd. By and large, these are people who are fascinated with computers and don't have the social skills to see that some of their questions and opinions are irrelevant to whatever discussion is going at the moment. So they blurt out their questions, and the intimidated ones think (this really happens) "Maybe if I don't know the multiply cycle times of the latest Intel chip then I can't do CS." And then we lose those people even though they're incredibly gifted. (BTW, this example was taken from a class this week--and the person who announced multiply cycle times was wrong. Which is often the case in these situations, but they still intimidate others because they make their statements with such confidence. But I politely pointed out that the information was irrelevant, giving the rest of the students a chance to concentrate on the material that actually matters. I can only hope that the message gets across.)
The data is incontrovertible. Gently shutting down the show-offs (most of whom aren't even trying to show off; they're just eager and socially inept) doesn't discourage them in the least. But it keeps them from discouraging others. The result is more total people majoring in CS, and a far wider variety of ideas. All benefit, no loss.
If you feel threatened by that, I suggest that maybe *you're* the intimidated one. And I encourage you to try to develop your self-confidence by taking pride in your own strengths, rather than dissing complete strangers.
Rather than to force more girls into CS courses the question is why many girls do not want to attend CS courses. So before legislating anything find out what the cause is and then take corrective measures.
Well, then it seems IT security isn't quite a field where a lot of women try to specialize in. I'm sorry, but I will not hire a woman because she's a woman. If she has the qualification, no doubt about it, but I refuse to partake in the gender bullshit that's going around like a disease. I cannot afford my staff to consist of duds because I have to hire people who are not qualified just to fulfill some inane quota.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.