Discussion on All-Girl events

[Joe G.]

Originally Posted by Drake Vargas

There is nothing wrong with this situation. Really, this isn't going against any law or infringing on any of your rights.

Just because it's legal to be a rude person, doesn't mean you should be a rude person.

Do you honestly think you have the same definition of fun as them?

Given that she presumably wished to be included, I'm going to go with "yes." Or at least "more than close enough."

The very graph you posted shows fields with almost no males, and nobody seems to be upset that there aren't more male kindergaren teachers. At the same time, I don't see anyone complaining that men almost completely fill the most grueling jobs on this list.

So get upset about this! Do something about it! People are missing out on the opportunity to gain fulfilling employment right now, time is of the essence! Start a program to encourage male Kindergarten teachers, and eradicate the perception that men working with young children are automatically sexual predators! Create initiatives to remove sexist barriers to entry and cultural normalization of dirty, hands on work as "a man's job." But that sounds like work, and it's easier to complain about people actually taking these initiatives in other fields. It'd take real passion and concern for these issues, rather than only caring about them for the purposes of an internet argument in favor of the status quo...

The fact is, every heavily skewed datapoint on that graph, in both directions, are simply symptoms of the same, much larger problem: That people refuse to acknowledge that artificial societal pressures and factors generate these uneven distributions rather than some innate biological reality of gender, that in doing so, people reinforce those societal elements that created the disparities in the first place, and that no matter how you cherry-pick careers, these societal pressures are overwhelmingly sexist and present women as generally "less capable." STEM is an attractive field, with very obvious benefactors from gender equality movements, and so it gets a lot of focus. I mean, we're on a discussion board about a nationwide program to get more people inspired by this career -- I doubt you could find a similarly sized "For Inspiration and Recognition of Garbage Collectors," regardless of gender focus. But maybe victories here, and breaking down barriers and perceptions here, can help inpart change across the board. We don't only encourage women in STEM to get women in STEM, we do it because it's a part of the bigger picture in the fight against the patriarchy.