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There is no shortage of men demonstrating to younger males that they can make it in technology. This is what we get to take for granted, and as a result, aren't

There is no shortage of men demonstrating to younger males that they can make it in technology. This is what we get to take for granted, and as a result, aren't really aware of. Girls trying to figure out what they want, out of the set of options that they think are viable/promising, don't have this benefit, and needlessly self-select themselves out. Really? Downvoted? I'd love to know what for. Is what I'm saying making people angry?

deleted 16y ago
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- dieterrams 16y ago
  Of course it hurts them to have a huge sector of the economy seem like it's not a viable option. People here seem to be using the fact that girls/women frequently "decide" against or don't "want" a career in tech to obscure the question of what determines why they decided that way or didn't want to pursue it, and whether those determinants are fair or beneficial. A more extreme example that demonstrates what's wrong with how you guys are using "free", "decided", "wanted", etc. would be something like a minority "deciding" against running for president in a country where the majority is racist against his kind, even if he is free to attempt it. Note that I'm not claiming any moral equivalence here, or that the problem of females self-selecting themselves away from tech is primarily the result of discrimination. But there's a real sense in which the decisions being made, and the ideas of what someone wants for themselves, are being generated in less than optimal conditions.
anamax 16y ago
> There is no shortage of men demonstrating to younger males that they can make it in technology. What, exactly, are these older men doing such that younger men can benefit and younger women can not? If your response is "they're men", that's not something that they're doing. That's something that the younger women are doing, or rather, not doing, namely thinking that the gender of X matters in "X is doing Y, so I can do it too" when it doesn't.
- dieterrams 16y ago
  I said what they were doing in the part you quoted. By dominating a field, they establish ample precedent that others like them can do so as well. This is not an intentional thing that they're doing. It's a byproduct. This phenomenon occurs all the time, for groups of all kinds. To flip it around, think about nurses before male nurses became commonplace. What would run through your head, thinking about being a nurse? There are probably a lot of things that would stop you from taking the idea seriously, just because the profession was dominated by women and had hardly any men.
  - anamax 16y ago
    > By dominating a field, they establish ample precedent that others like them can do so as well. And you think that "like" is gender?

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dieterrams 16y ago
Of course it hurts them to have a huge sector of the economy seem like it's not a viable option. People here seem to be using the fact that girls/women frequently "decide" against or don't "want" a career in tech to obscure the question of what determines why they decided that way or didn't want to pursue it, and whether those determinants are fair or beneficial. A more extreme example that demonstrates what's wrong with how you guys are using "free", "decided", "wanted", etc. would be something like a minority "deciding" against running for president in a country where the majority is racist against his kind, even if he is free to attempt it. Note that I'm not claiming any moral equivalence here, or that the problem of females self-selecting themselves away from tech is primarily the result of discrimination. But there's a real sense in which the decisions being made, and the ideas of what someone wants for themselves, are being generated in less than optimal conditions.

anamax 16y ago

> There is no shortage of men demonstrating to younger males that they can make it in technology. What, exactly, are these older men doing such that younger men can benefit and younger women can not? If your response is "they're men", that's not something that they're doing. That's something that the younger women are doing, or rather, not doing, namely thinking that the gender of X matters in "X is doing Y, so I can do it too" when it doesn't.

dieterrams 16y ago
I said what they were doing in the part you quoted. By dominating a field, they establish ample precedent that others like them can do so as well. This is not an intentional thing that they're doing. It's a byproduct. This phenomenon occurs all the time, for groups of all kinds. To flip it around, think about nurses before male nurses became commonplace. What would run through your head, thinking about being a nurse? There are probably a lot of things that would stop you from taking the idea seriously, just because the profession was dominated by women and had hardly any men.
- anamax 16y ago
  > By dominating a field, they establish ample precedent that others like them can do so as well. And you think that "like" is gender?