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Why Women Don't Stem?
quoting "More Than A Woman" by Caitlin Moran:
(vs her brother) ...
"It's because we have been brought up in two utterly different worlds.
Living with my little brother allows me to see this -... I know what his life has been like.
But we do not -- even though we share the same parents, and toilet. From birth, men and women are installed with different software. We are given different information. Our worldviews have totally different frameworks.
If you compare the pile of books and magazines by our beds, you see how this happens. When Andrew was thirteen, the floor by his bed was heaped with gaming magazines, and books about physics. He liked physics, his Xbox, and he read books and magazines solely about how to be good at physics -- and about how to play Xbox.
He had no choice in this -- there are no "general interest" magazines for teenage boys. A boy in a newsagent is faced with specialist titles -- on music, gaming, fishing, film, martial arts, etc. -- and so gains a worldview dictated by mono-interest, clannish communities, dedicated to becoming good at "a thing." In newsagents, this is made clear by simple categorization: "men's magazines" are racked together under the title "Men's Interests." Men have interests. You pick your thing; you dedicate yourself to it. You see the whole world through your specialist subject. You concentrate on becoming good at your thing -- and that is how you become successful. This is the way of men.
By way of contrast, the newsagent's racks for female periodicals are titled "Women's Lifestyle." Men have interests -- women have lives. Lives they must strive to perfect. As a consequence, the magazines heaped by my bed were there to guide me through a world where it was presumed I would have to become knowledgeable about a whole range of things that would give me not an interest, but a life. And a stylish life, at that. And that is how you beocme successful if you are a woman."
- daly 6y agoI have run an open source project for nearly 20 years. The mailing list has over 14,000 entries by 380 people. Anyone can post. Anyone can contribute. There are no women postings. This puzzles me. Yet MIT and CMU seems to have CS classes that have a large number of women. I have no insight on this subject. But Caitlin's book seems to speak to one of the potential issues. On the other hand, my high school peer group studied physics, chemistry, and chess. Things anyone can do. But no women joined. I had mostly female friends in high school but we never "talked tech". We did have a year long discussion of what "friendship" means, a topic never mentioned with my male friends. Anyway, I continue to try to understand.
- pmdulaney 6y agoThere are fewer women in STEM for the same reason there are fewer women who collect garbage: there are other lines of work that they can perform as well or better and which they enjoy more. The example that seems to pop up in the news the most is that women who are capable of doing top notch engineering work are often equally capable in other lines of work (e.g., law, management, medicine) that they enjoy more. We also repeatedly see research stating that the countries in which women have the most degree of personal autonomy and freedom are the ones in which they are least likely to be in tech. The meme which needs to be stopped is: We need more women in tech. No, we don't! Men in tech need to behave themselves in terms of harrassment and providing equal opportunity to flourish, but we only need more women in tech to the extent that more women want to be in tech.