Discussion on All-Girl events

[Hitchhiker 42]

Can we not have the anon account debate in this thread about all-girls events?

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Originally Posted by Hitchhiker 42

Can we not have the anon account debate in this thread about all-girls events?

Wasn't this thread started BY an anon account?

[Hitchhiker 42]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

Wasn't this thread started BY an anon account?

No, it was split off from another thread

[The Swaggy P]

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man

Wasn't this thread started BY an anon account?

This is not an "anon" account. This is the one and only account I've ever used on CD.

I don't post my personal information, purely because I prefer privacy when using the internet.

[EricH]

I've been thinking for most of the day on how to phrase this. I think I might have it. By the way, this does not apply only to the gender discussion--there are other discussions it can apply to as well.


Men and women are not equal, and will not necessarily like the same things. And, that applies to individuals with the same gender as well. So, each person should be free to find out what they like to do. Everybody with me on that? Reasonable enough?


What happens when one gender strongly dominates one area? Well... The other gender can be intimidated into not even trying. I think that's kind of established. And when they do enter that field--and this is not limited to engineering--they can be the proverbial nail that sticks out (result: it gets hammered down). I've seen a couple of news articles recently on how women are working on just getting interest in traditionally male-dominated fields, or how women in those fields are, how shall I say this, subjected to non-workable working conditions. By the way, I realize that I'm totally ignoring social conditioning. That's also part of it, too.

Now, part of my take is that in order to know it's not for you, you need to try it--whatever it happens to be. If you're too afraid/pressured/etc. to try, then you're probably not going to try--so you're not going to know one way or the other. It takes a great deal of courage to go through that pressure.

My take on it is, if you can pass the test, great, come on in. And by "test", I mean that you meet the requirements to do whatever career field you're entering. (All I'll say is that if I'm in a house on fire and can't get myself out, whoever comes in there better be able to pull me out!)


The question is, for someone who is not interested in trying due to societal pressures or similar reasons, how do you get them to try?

And what the answer to that, according to the event organizers for these events (and, also, according to the '07 and '08 versions of team 842), happens to be to remove the pressures temporarily. LET them try, encourage them to try--and once they figure out that, yes, in fact, they CAN do this, and do well at it, then they will tend to be more assertive at doing it the rest of the time. And the general idea is that if you get one group of a larger group "in the door", more will follow, with a better support structure, until the support structure is no longer needed because it is the entire building that that door is in.

Whether that is the correct answer for all cases, I don't know. On the other hand, it does seem to be a popular answer for the general problem of "Group X is underrepresented in Y", along with "make a support group".

[John Weissman]

Siri
Hi, thanks for your response and I always respect your opinion.

[JohnTu]

In the medical profession, tremendous progress has been made since 1950s to increase female medical students from 5.5% to 47%.
.
The original article is here.

In engineering, we still have a long way to go.

Team 226 Hammerheads is very appreciative that our near by FRC teams 2834, 469, 33 and 68 have been hosting their annual Bloomfield Girls Robotics Competition in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. As we participated in the competition these past two years, we have seen a 50% increase of our female students from 32 to 48 (We have about 75 male students). Of our 20 leadership positions, 10 are held by girls including the Engineering VP.

I believe these girls-only competition events definitely have helped to interest more girls to join a robotics team and hopefully a career in STEM!

- John

[smitikshah]

While browsing the internet I found this: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2016...ugh-emoji.html

This made me really happy.

This is just one example of "unintentional bias", and a great proposed solution to it!

While I doubt anybody would go "we shouldn't make female emojis representing a construction worker or detective", the end result did end up playing a bit on traditional gender roles. If some of these suggestions are used, we can all take a great step forward towards promoting females in STEM that might not have otherwise joined thinking it's not their place.

[Mike Schreiber]

I won't comment on all the debate that's happening with regard to bias etc. Just wanted to make a point I hadn't seen yet.

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't this mean Cheesy Poofs cannot come to IndyRAGE? They're from an all boys high school.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by smitikshah

While browsing the internet I found this: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2016...ugh-emoji.html

This made me really happy.

This is just one example of "unintentional bias", and a great proposed solution to it!

While I doubt anybody would go "we shouldn't make female emojis representing a construction worker or detective", the end result did end up playing a bit on traditional gender roles. If some of these suggestions are used, we can all take a great step forward towards promoting females in STEM that might not have otherwise joined thinking it's not their place.

Are those emoji's really male/female, or just long loose hair/short or pulled back hair? What specifically is it about showing a cartoon face with a hat/helmet on and very little hair showing on the sides that makes it a "male" representation? Why, in the new emoji's, are the "male" representations wearing green while the "female" ones are wearing purple?

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against expanding the standard emoji set, but it's important when we look at stuff like this to recognize that, even in efforts to promote gender equality we can still unintentionally put forward gender stereotypes. When we embark on these efforts ourselves, it's important to ask these types of questions.