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Originally Posted by Strider-dan
A little while back, I had posted some thoughts in response to the graph put up by Karthik. I had included examples of experiences that my daughter and sons have had growing up to show that there is intentional bias in favor of girls in many activities today and that it is not helpful to the healthy development of our society.
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I'm glad you're worried about bias, as bias is typically bad. But the thing about initiatives like affirmative action and "intentional bias in favor of girls" is that the goal is to negate bias elsewhere that puts people -like girls- at a disadvantage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Swaggy P
I do have a sister, and she wants to earn her way through life on her own merits and hard work, and does not expect, nor want, special treatment from society.
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I too enjoy earning my way, because nothing is more frustrating than being told my achievements were only attained because I'm a girl and not because of hard work and long hours that I put into them.
But you know what would suck? If your sister was denied something she had earned because her resume said "Rebecca" instead of "Robert". We still live in a world where a
girl's name is perceived as less competent than a boy's name on an identical resume (click the blue and read the study if you don't believe me). So I wouldn't see it as "special treatment" but instead as "making up for a deck stacked against them."
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However, this competition has nothing to do with special treatment and more to do with building girls' confidence in STEM, an idea I've explained before (summarized/modified for this conversation):
To explain why all-girls events/teams are not bad, we have to understand that -whether we like it or not- girls are conditioned as they grow up to be submissive and quiet while boys are taught to be loud and "take charge". Consequently, in many situations boys will take on leadership roles/talk more/dominate the space - especially domains like STEM where men are perceived to succeed at higher rates than women.
This is not because boys are inherently evil, its just a side-effect of our social environment.
All-girl events are beneficial to girls because without boys automatically claiming the space, they now are able to. This builds confidence, which allows them to be successful when they are in co-ed environments. This is one of the underlying principles behind single-sex education for women. Girls aren’t dumb, they know that they will someday be in a co-ed environment. Having a single-sex environment for developing skills is not a detriment, special treatment, or making them “soft.” It’s just giving them a safe space to grow their confidence and skill set.
For a longer explanation and links to relevant studies,
see the whole post.