While I've been reading this thread since it started, I've been avoiding posting for a while because I don't want to simply rehash the same old arguments. Plus I've been busy (perhaps ironically) teaching at the Women's Technology Program, a summer camp introducing rising high school senior women to EECS and having lots of conversations with my colleagues on this subject. But I've been talking with a friend who reminded me that there seems to be a trend that females are more likely to allow themselves to be marginalized in conversations, are more likely to use qualifying language to express uncertainty, and are more likely to keep quiet/doubt that they can contribute to the conversation, so I'm attempting to refute that
I found Pauline's post extremely insightful, and I want to expand on it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pauline Tasci
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This is beautifully put, even though I've had it incredible easy. My parents gave me Tinker Toys and my favorite toy as a kid was a wooden tool set. I've been extremely lucky to have been supported my whole life in my dream to pursue engineering, but even so I have faced harassment and people's assumptions that the "cute little girl" must not really know what she's doing with the complicated tool. I've had some truly spectacular men help me along the way -- and I think that's the main crux of my complaint, that practically all of my technical/engineering mentors so far have been male (before this summer it would have been "all"). None of them have ever condescended me or tried to turn me away from engineering; in fact, I've received nothing but "good for you!"s and praise, which I'll always be grateful for.
But there's a frightening lack of representation of women in the most technical pursuits, and I think it's difficult to realize just how bad it is until you walk into a room and realize how alone you are. I was often the only girl at builds. I sat in on a Turing Computer Science Honors class at UT Austin: my presence brought the number of women in that room up to 20% (from 7/39 to 8/40). HackMIT runs a puzzle of programming challenges with automatic admission to the hackathon as the prize: out of the first 250 to attempt the puzzle, only 8% were female. I have no doubt that the number of women pursuing computer science outside of Turing is more balanced, as is the actual number of women attending HackMIT, but it's almost uniformly men who have more exposure to CS from a younger age, allowing them to dominate the higher levels of the field, at least at first, which only gives them more and more legs up: they get to take the honors classes, participate in hackathons, practice their skills, have access to fantastic resources... Most of the male programmers I know have been programming since they could type. Most of the female programmers I know learned their first year of college (or later).
A pair of MIT 2016s published a fantastic Report on the Status of Undergraduate Women at MIT
http://news.mit.edu/2016/report-on-s...en-at-mit-0225 which essentially says that women come in with less experience and confidence in their abilities, but by the end of their time at MIT women had caught up or surpassed men in several metrics of success. FRC teams have the same ability to level the playing field, as long as we're careful not to accidentally steer girls away from technical parts (although it's also critical that no one be forced into something they don't enjoy). Just because she's happy doing marketing/outreach doesn't mean she wouldn't also be happy CADing or soldering if you give her a proper chance.
When I was in high school, I did some of mechanical/electrical stuff, and started out doing drive team, but I did a ton of outreach and paperwork because no one else wanted to do it. And as a result, by the end of the season I had been pushed off drive team. Which was fine because the guys really wanted to do it, and it made them happy, and they probably did a better job than I could have, and anyway outreach stuff is fun and important. For similar reasons, I never learned how to solder in high school: by the time it came up we were in the middle of build, and from a utilitarian standpoint, it made them happier to solder than it would have made me, and anyway, what if I messed up? My friends and I have speculated about girls being conditioned to be polite and considerate and please others and so on, but it's not speculation that these definitely aren't isolated incidents, despite the best efforts of my mentors.
And like most of the women in STEM I know, I find myself moving more and more towards more managerial/logistic extracurriculars, which I almost feel guilty about, as if I'm letting down future generations of women, but it's what I truly enjoy more. But I think that's because I know I'm good at it, because it was easy to get involved in those sorts of activities, whereas the activation energy required to start technical projects was much higher. I wonder if my choices would have been different if the shop where the technical teams work wasn't a pretty long walk in the dark from my dorm. I welcome anything that attempts to negate the many factors nudging girls away from technical fields.