Discussion on All-Girl events

[Joe G.]

Originally Posted by SoftwareBug2.0

People can be rude or mean for a myriad of reasons. A person being a part of a protected group is not the only one.

I acknowledge this. And that would be fine if that's all that it was about. But the scenario was posted in the context of an example of gender bias by a person who knows more about its details than any of us, and the person who first took issue with the scenario then made it very explicitly about gender, by expressing doubt at the idea that Smiti would find enjoyment in spending time with them, and stating that things work much better when boys and girls play separately. Even if the people in the original story weren't discriminating on the basis of gender, it was certainly interpreted as such by readers on both sides here.

I apologize if any of my posts were jumping to conclusions.

[Ed Law]

Originally Posted by Steven Smith

Fair enough. It is a lot easier for me to use my primary account as my views are probably more in line with many in this forum. Again, wasn't trying to disrespect you, just honestly don't know if you are 15 or 50, and if you were a student wanted to pass along a caution. You are absolutely entitled to an opinion and to speak the opinion, and I won't disagree with an anon account when you recognize your opinion might rub some the wrong way.

Yes he is entitled to his opinion. We formed our opinions based on our upbringing and life experiences. But I do not agree he is entitled to use an anonymous account to hide and express an opinion. If he feels so strongly that he is right about his opinion, he should say it in public. He should teach the students on his team and convince them of his opinion. He should tell the girls on his team and their parents where girls belong in his opinion. in short, be a MAN!

[Steven Smith]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

Yes he is entitled to his opinion. We formed our opinions based on our upbringing and life experiences. But I do not agree he is entitled to use an anonymous account to hide and express an opinion. If he feels so strongly that he is right about his opinion, he should say it in public. He should teach the students on his team and convince them of his opinion. He should tell the girls on his team and their parents where girls belong in his opinion. in short, be a MAN!

I probably could have worded a number of things better after my first couple posts, which were from the heart, versus later posts where frankly I was just arguing on the internet with someone I disagreed with. Someone noted it in a PM, and I agree, and I went ahead and removed a few posts where I was more focused on dissecting someone else's opinion than sharing my own and contributing positively to a discussion.

To your point though Ed, it did read as I was endorsing the use of anon accounts to speak opinions that are unpopular. My intent was more of "I understand" and "please everyone be mindful of what you post, especially if it is (or could be construed as) sexist/racist/homophobic/etc... that might bite you in the future". I can understand some of the uses of anon accounts, but this would not be one of them, and I wouldn't want to come across as endorsing them.

[ASD20]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

Yes he is entitled to his opinion. We formed our opinions based on our upbringing and life experiences. But I do not agree he is entitled to use an anonymous account to hide and express an opinion. If he feels so strongly that he is right about his opinion, he should say it in public. He should teach the students on his team and convince them of his opinion. He should tell the girls on his team and their parents where girls belong in his opinion. in short, be a MAN!

I've noticed that the 2 most inflammatory posters on this thread are both accounts created in the past 2 days that have only commented on this thread and have very little personal information in their profile. One has admitted it is a second account, and I am fairly certain the other one is a second account as well. And now a quote from the Chief Delphi rules:

Creating multiple accounts for a single person is not allowed.

It is not a matter of opinion. These posters are not allowed to use anonymous second accounts.

[John Weissman]

I am sorry that some teams only ( from the thread of the conversation) seem to use males more than females. I cannot speak for any other teams, only my own, but as I say to anyone on my team 1640, I don't care what bathroom you use, The team cares about effort and ability. We as a team have decided not to go to all girls competition because that is not representative of our team. Admitting that some members of the team, both male and female, took the side of going, the team decision was we are a team, and individuals, but we go as a team, not as separate sexes.

This is my take on this subject.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Drake Vargas

Karthik, everyone seems to be up in arms about the lack of female representation in engineering. In my opinion, that ostracizes men more than anything else. The very graph you posted shows fields with almost no males, and nobody seems to be upset that there aren't more male kindergarent teachers. At the same time, I don't see anyone complaining that men almost completely fill the most grueling jobs on this list. This isn't a very good argument for "equality".

Of course there are efforts tat support men, male issues, and male membership in underrepresented fields (total or male minorities). They may not have visibility to you [this is a general "you"], or you may wish more existed or that they were more active. If so, I'm sure they'd welcome any help. It's the membership that determines how controversial, active, and effective any organization is. But these groups certainly can and very much do exist whether or not they're regularly mentioned on a robotics forum. As a quick first Google, there's American Assembly of Men in Nursing, American Men's Studies Association, Young Men's Initiative, 100 Black Men of America, the Men Teach nonprofit, and the Mankind Project, before I satisfied myself about the depth. There are also a massive number of male fraternal, social, and religious (not to mention sporting) organizations that support male career and life goals, as well as organizations that focus on male-dominant issues, such as Just Detention International. If there's one you'd like to see and don't, go for it. Every organization ever made was made by a person who felt that.


As for whether people complain that men dominate many grueling jobs on the list, I need to control my temper. Do women push for male-dominate jobs that aren't very socially valued? Not so much, but that's a recursive definition and also applies to low-paid women's jobs, most notably tipped food service (72%). But don't conflate low social value and grueling. Have women fought for access to other grueling male-dominated jobs? Of course. Countless women have being fighting for literally generations to be able serve and potentially die for their country in many military and law enforcement jobs, and for the recognition of women who already did before they were technically allowed. I hope you are not in this position, but I know I could wake up tomorrow to find out that any number of women in uniform I care about are dead for their country on the other side of the world, doing jobs they or their foremothers had to fight just to access, in an organization where they are still far more likely to be discriminated against, harassed, and assaulted. Regardless of what you think of women in combat, to say there's no push to grueling jobs is blatantly ignoring a very, very long and hard history of women pushing just to be able to compete against the same standards of the profession as men.

Phew. And separately, yes, of course there is a National Association for Women in Construction, several for women in mining, Women in Petroleum, Women in Manufacturing, Automotive jobs, and on and on. (Like the male counterparts, these tend to focus on or at least publish more high versus low social value jobs in their industry, but the support network is there.)

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

Let's be reasonable now. Posting controversial opinions and/or opinions grotesquely opposite of CD popular opinion will get you neg repped into oblivion. Heck, I've been neg repped for "Harsh tone". Some BS that is.

Point is, the guy probably wants to voice his true opinion without sacrificing his account's reputation. Yes, they're just dots. But all the cool kids have them.


My point is: if we're REALLY that concerned with women in engineering, we need to stop the equality fanfare and focus our attention on changing parenting techniques of "Legos and K'nex for boys and barbie/baby dolls for girls". Little kids are VERY persuadable, and if you want to instill a passion in both boys and girls EQUALLY, you need to introduce engineering to both similarly. Right now, boys are generally exposed to engineering WAY before girls are, and therefore are more likely to want to do it.

There's a reason kids do what they do; it's because their parents are setting them up to do it.

[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.