4 ms·

My daughter once remarked about something STEM-related: "he can do that <technical thing> because he's a BOY." We tried so hard to not raise her that way, and I

by _greim_ 11y ago

My daughter once remarked about something STEM-related: "he can do that <technical thing> because he's a BOY." We tried so hard to not raise her that way, and I'm sad the "meme" still managed to slip through and take root, and at such an early age. What role did I inadvertently play? No idea :(

striking 11y ago
The media, et al. You don't control the entire environment. Now it's your turn to change her mind.
dopamean 11y ago
This is why it's so important to have examples available for children that demonstrate someone outside of the "norm" taking part in an activity. My brother is 14 and to him it is reasonable to expect that the president could be a black man (not quite there on women yet unfortunately). My family has gay friends who are married with children and these are regular facts of life to him. I don't think either of my parents have spoken to him very directly about these issues and he has managed to evolve into a pretty open minded and cool teenager.
drewrv 11y ago
I would be devastated to hear my daughter say that but I'm also bracing for the inevitability of it. May I ask how old she was when she said that?
- _greim_ 11y ago
  Probably around age eight. We corrected her immediately of course and have been continuing to do so, but yeah culture runs deep and kids pick things up fast!
js8 11y ago
You should also consider that humans are naturally lazy, and our brains can make up excuses for that. Maybe she just said that because she wants her brother to do it for her, instead of doing it herself.
- _greim_ 11y ago
  True. I keep hoping she was just doing that, or mindlessly parroting something she heard, rather than internalizing subtle cultural cues!
protomyth 11y ago
Most probably your child's elementary school teachers had a much bigger influence than you. They have the most time with your child and the stats for STEM are pretty bad in their ranks. If we spent as much time worrying about the gender / STEM imbalance in elementary and pre-school as we do in technology, we would fix the imbalance in technology within a generation. If a thing is not the person whom your child looks up to's thing, then it will not be your child's thing.
dikdik 11y ago
This just seems weird to me as a millennial male. I am obviously lacking some perspective, but my advanced and AP math and science classes in high school were always very split by boys and girls. The upper echelon of students in those courses, of which I was consistently part of, were moreso women than men. But when I look at what my old classmates are doing now, most of those girls went into teaching, law, and business related roles. A couple went into science and engineering and one is a dentist. Of the guys, most of them became doctors, engineers, and pharmacists and a couple work in agriculture and wildlife conservation. All of the women I am referring to know they are smart enough to do whatever they want, but they obviously decided to favor non-technical roles for their own reasons.
- dllthomas 11y ago
  In the case of my wife, she moved away from more technical fields in college precisely because of her impression of who her classmates (and, later, co-workers) would be.
  - dikdik 11y ago
    Isn't that a self-fulfilling prophecy? Eventually women will have to take some leadership here and not expect men to say, "we're firing half our company and only hiring women who aren't even in the field anymore so we can even it out and attract more people down the line." At some point women HAVE to stand up and take the lead for themselves.
    - dllthomas 11y ago
      Your original comment seemed to be arguing that this wasn't an issue because these women probably wanted first order to be doing other things. If that's the case, then we probably shouldn't be pushing too hard to get them to do things they don't want to do. I'm sure that is the case for some individuals; I don't know the distribution. My point was to demonstrate that it's also the case, for some individuals (I still don't know the distribution), that they were turned away for reasons other than first order lack of interest in the field; and in fact, reasons we have something of an impact on. My wife was turned away not simply because she thought she'd be working with men, but because of her impression of the particular men in STEM fields that she had experience of. I don't know if her impression was fair - looking back, she doesn't know if her impression was fair. But we do collectively have the ability to work to make sure such an impression is not fair and to work to make sure we're giving the correct impression. Given a negative impression of likely experiences in the field, expecting outsiders to fix it is a collective action problem. If a woman correctly judges that the existing population working in a field are likely to make that field painful to work in, and she is the only one (or part of a small minority) who "stand up", then she's chosen a painful career for herself. Those of us already in the industry can work to address the problem with substantially less risk. I'm pretty sure "we're firing half our company and only hiring women who aren't even in the field anymore so we can even it out and attract more people down the line" is effectively a straw-man. It's certainly not what I would advocate, and I don't see how my comment would have implied it.

by _greim_ 11y ago

striking 11y ago

The media, et al. You don't control the entire environment. Now it's your turn to change her mind.

dopamean 11y ago

This is why it's so important to have examples available for children that demonstrate someone outside of the "norm" taking part in an activity. My brother is 14 and to him it is reasonable to expect that the president could be a black man (not quite there on women yet unfortunately). My family has gay friends who are married with children and these are regular facts of life to him. I don't think either of my parents have spoken to him very directly about these issues and he has managed to evolve into a pretty open minded and cool teenager.

drewrv 11y ago

I would be devastated to hear my daughter say that but I'm also bracing for the inevitability of it. May I ask how old she was when she said that?

_greim_ 11y ago
Probably around age eight. We corrected her immediately of course and have been continuing to do so, but yeah culture runs deep and kids pick things up fast!

js8 11y ago

You should also consider that humans are naturally lazy, and our brains can make up excuses for that. Maybe she just said that because she wants her brother to do it for her, instead of doing it herself.

_greim_ 11y ago
True. I keep hoping she was just doing that, or mindlessly parroting something she heard, rather than internalizing subtle cultural cues!

protomyth 11y ago

Most probably your child's elementary school teachers had a much bigger influence than you. They have the most time with your child and the stats for STEM are pretty bad in their ranks. If we spent as much time worrying about the gender / STEM imbalance in elementary and pre-school as we do in technology, we would fix the imbalance in technology within a generation. If a thing is not the person whom your child looks up to's thing, then it will not be your child's thing.

dikdik 11y ago

This just seems weird to me as a millennial male. I am obviously lacking some perspective, but my advanced and AP math and science classes in high school were always very split by boys and girls. The upper echelon of students in those courses, of which I was consistently part of, were moreso women than men. But when I look at what my old classmates are doing now, most of those girls went into teaching, law, and business related roles. A couple went into science and engineering and one is a dentist. Of the guys, most of them became doctors, engineers, and pharmacists and a couple work in agriculture and wildlife conservation. All of the women I am referring to know they are smart enough to do whatever they want, but they obviously decided to favor non-technical roles for their own reasons.

dllthomas 11y ago
In the case of my wife, she moved away from more technical fields in college precisely because of her impression of who her classmates (and, later, co-workers) would be.
- dikdik 11y ago
  Isn't that a self-fulfilling prophecy? Eventually women will have to take some leadership here and not expect men to say, "we're firing half our company and only hiring women who aren't even in the field anymore so we can even it out and attract more people down the line." At some point women HAVE to stand up and take the lead for themselves.
  - dllthomas 11y ago
    Your original comment seemed to be arguing that this wasn't an issue because these women probably wanted first order to be doing other things. If that's the case, then we probably shouldn't be pushing too hard to get them to do things they don't want to do. I'm sure that is the case for some individuals; I don't know the distribution. My point was to demonstrate that it's also the case, for some individuals (I still don't know the distribution), that they were turned away for reasons other than first order lack of interest in the field; and in fact, reasons we have something of an impact on. My wife was turned away not simply because she thought she'd be working with men, but because of her impression of the particular men in STEM fields that she had experience of. I don't know if her impression was fair - looking back, she doesn't know if her impression was fair. But we do collectively have the ability to work to make sure such an impression is not fair and to work to make sure we're giving the correct impression. Given a negative impression of likely experiences in the field, expecting outsiders to fix it is a collective action problem. If a woman correctly judges that the existing population working in a field are likely to make that field painful to work in, and she is the only one (or part of a small minority) who "stand up", then she's chosen a painful career for herself. Those of us already in the industry can work to address the problem with substantially less risk. I'm pretty sure "we're firing half our company and only hiring women who aren't even in the field anymore so we can even it out and attract more people down the line" is effectively a straw-man. It's certainly not what I would advocate, and I don't see how my comment would have implied it.