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When I was growing up, I was told that women were by and large too dumb to do any real science by teenage boys and girls. I found great solace in Joan Feynman'

When I was growing up, I was told that women were by and large too dumb to do any real science by teenage boys and girls. I found great solace in Joan Feynman's story, > “Women can’t do science, because their brains aren’t made for it,” Lucille Feynman declared to her eight-year-old daughter Joan. The news was a huge blow to the little girl’s ambitions which, at the time in 1935, were firmly set on following her brother Richard into a life scientific. “I remember sitting in a chair and weeping,” she recalls. > whilst the doubts about a woman’s abilities to undertake a career in science, planted in her by Lucille, remained, Joan’s interest in science continued to be fuelled by Richard’s progress through university. Before he’d left home, her brother had made a deal with her that whilst away at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), studying for his bachelor’s degree, he would answer any science question that she sent him. > “So I did,” says Joan, “and I got a little further each time. And then one day there was a figure in the book of a spectrum and underneath it said ‘the relative strengths of the Mg+ absorption line at 4,481 angstroms… of Stellar Atmospheres from the work of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin’.” The caption was a revelation to Joan. Cecilia was a woman’s name, and the hyphenated family name indicated she was married. It was proof that a married woman was capable of doing science. Representation matters. That one hyphenated name, proof that someone like her could contribute, gave us an exploration of auroras and solar wind. It enriched our world immensely. If some other little girl, even one, can find solace in one of these wikipedia articles, then it's worth it.

onos 4y ago
I don’t think many people have a problem with the concept of representation. Eg conservatives can have daughters and want them to be happy as well. The issue that rubs many the wrong way is that advocates often simply replace one form of exclusion with the other. For example, at my local children’s science museum they have a large exhibit titled “this is what a scientist looks like”. It includes six large posters of women scientists. This is not “inclusive”. It’s also not uncommon. I’ve seen similar within some of my kid’s science classrooms. Lastly, I think it’s not surprising that the example you quote is from the 1930s. Today’s bias (in the usa at least) is most definitely towards promoting female achievement.
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  > It includes six large posters of women scientists. This is not “inclusive”. Yes it is. The aim of the diversity initiatives isn't to be neutral in their representative, pretending they exist in a vacuum, they are there to counter-act an existing bias in the world[1]. No boy is going to see that poster and think they can't be a scientist, because they're going to have grown up hearing about Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Hawking and listening to people like Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson. The reason you think that the inclusion initiative is exclusionary is because you are factually wrong about the likelihood of women going into certain careers in the USA today. From that source I cited: >For the 2017-2018 academic year, women secured 22% of all bachelor’s degrees in engineering, and just 19% of degrees in computer science. So you can say airy things about the USA being biased towards promoting female achievement, but the fact is the statistics show that there are still lots of areas in which women demonstrably don't see certain career paths as options. [1]:https://www.stemwomen.com/women-in-stem-usa-statistics https://www.stemwomen.com/women-in-stem-usa-statistics
  - yucky 4y ago
    Has it ever occurred to you that men and women often have different interests and value different things, and what impact that might have on career paths? 90%+ of elementary school teachers are women, which means almost all kids are taught from a young age that women are teachers. Should society be doing more to get men into teaching young kids? Or can we accept that maybe most guys don't want to deal with kids all day long?
    - SilverBirch 4y ago
      Let's assume you're 100% right, and that men and women simply just have different interests and values (which seems a bit of a push, since that's completely confounded by the fact this issue varies wildly internationally), then these outreach programmes will let girls and women know the options available to them, and the women will choose not to take those opportunities. Society should absolutely be encouraging more men into teaching. But that's the classic conundrum - people are working to fix a problem and you come in and say "No, no, don't fix that problem, fix this problem instead". I agree with you - more men should be encouraged to go into teaching, we need great teachers and it can be a very rewarding career - why don't you go and do something to make that happen.
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> Representation matters For some. I wanted to be a Formula 1 pilot as a kid because I liked fast cars, not because pilots were men. I wanted to be an astronaut because I was obsessed with space and spacesuits, but I saw them in comics where the protagonists where animals and I clearly wasn't. You know, sometimes people like stuff because they like it, not because they saw a male or female name somewhere. Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper existence has not discouraged me from becoming a male programmer and the fact that when I was a kid everyone said that knitting and crocheting were a girls' thing hasn't stopped me from learning them, it was a fun thing to do with my aunt. > If some other little girl, even one, can find solace in one of these wikipedia articles, then it's worth it. I read this sentence a lot, but there is no reason why we should believe it could happen. If the fact that these people exist and are alive wasn't enough to make them known, what can a Wikipedia article about unknown people actually do? Unless a marketing department with a budget pushes them to a larger audience under the assumption that they are important because they are women, regardless of the importance of to actual body of work they produced, they're gonna stay unknown.
- mlyle 4y ago
  If you want to be an X and are female, and then you see that 95% of people who do X are male... it's pretty rational to wonder if there's some social or selection barrier coming up that's going to make it difficult or impossible for you to do X. And that's if you even get to explicitly thinking about it: the message is so strong that "Xers are male" that many people will never take the leap of imagination.
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    > . it's pretty rational to wonder if there's some social or selection barrier coming up That's a very modern take Where I am from 90% of the people were farmers or worked in construction I liked math and then I discovered computers, nobody in my circle knew about 'em, except one of my youngest uncles People used to refer to it as "wasting time in front of a screen" I have become a computer programmer nonetheless People must understand that bubbles are much older than social networks and they were real bubbles, like people that never moved farther than a 100 kms from where they were born. If this "theory" was true, we would all still be hunter gatherers. People evolve despite the odds. Columbus parents had a small shop that sold wine and cheese in a small city called Savona. He became an explorer Science as a profession is still not mainstream, there still an high chance of failing at it, it's pretty obvious that it is more common among people who are less risk adverse: young men.

onos 4y ago

I don’t think many people have a problem with the concept of representation. Eg conservatives can have daughters and want them to be happy as well. The issue that rubs many the wrong way is that advocates often simply replace one form of exclusion with the other. For example, at my local children’s science museum they have a large exhibit titled “this is what a scientist looks like”. It includes six large posters of women scientists. This is not “inclusive”. It’s also not uncommon. I’ve seen similar within some of my kid’s science classrooms. Lastly, I think it’s not surprising that the example you quote is from the 1930s. Today’s bias (in the usa at least) is most definitely towards promoting female achievement.

SilverBirch 4y ago
> It includes six large posters of women scientists. This is not “inclusive”. Yes it is. The aim of the diversity initiatives isn't to be neutral in their representative, pretending they exist in a vacuum, they are there to counter-act an existing bias in the world[1]. No boy is going to see that poster and think they can't be a scientist, because they're going to have grown up hearing about Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Hawking and listening to people like Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson. The reason you think that the inclusion initiative is exclusionary is because you are factually wrong about the likelihood of women going into certain careers in the USA today. From that source I cited: >For the 2017-2018 academic year, women secured 22% of all bachelor’s degrees in engineering, and just 19% of degrees in computer science. So you can say airy things about the USA being biased towards promoting female achievement, but the fact is the statistics show that there are still lots of areas in which women demonstrably don't see certain career paths as options. [1]:https://www.stemwomen.com/women-in-stem-usa-statistics https://www.stemwomen.com/women-in-stem-usa-statistics
- yucky 4y ago
  Has it ever occurred to you that men and women often have different interests and value different things, and what impact that might have on career paths? 90%+ of elementary school teachers are women, which means almost all kids are taught from a young age that women are teachers. Should society be doing more to get men into teaching young kids? Or can we accept that maybe most guys don't want to deal with kids all day long?
  - SilverBirch 4y ago
    Let's assume you're 100% right, and that men and women simply just have different interests and values (which seems a bit of a push, since that's completely confounded by the fact this issue varies wildly internationally), then these outreach programmes will let girls and women know the options available to them, and the women will choose not to take those opportunities. Society should absolutely be encouraging more men into teaching. But that's the classic conundrum - people are working to fix a problem and you come in and say "No, no, don't fix that problem, fix this problem instead". I agree with you - more men should be encouraged to go into teaching, we need great teachers and it can be a very rewarding career - why don't you go and do something to make that happen.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago

> Representation matters For some. I wanted to be a Formula 1 pilot as a kid because I liked fast cars, not because pilots were men. I wanted to be an astronaut because I was obsessed with space and spacesuits, but I saw them in comics where the protagonists where animals and I clearly wasn't. You know, sometimes people like stuff because they like it, not because they saw a male or female name somewhere. Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper existence has not discouraged me from becoming a male programmer and the fact that when I was a kid everyone said that knitting and crocheting were a girls' thing hasn't stopped me from learning them, it was a fun thing to do with my aunt. > If some other little girl, even one, can find solace in one of these wikipedia articles, then it's worth it. I read this sentence a lot, but there is no reason why we should believe it could happen. If the fact that these people exist and are alive wasn't enough to make them known, what can a Wikipedia article about unknown people actually do? Unless a marketing department with a budget pushes them to a larger audience under the assumption that they are important because they are women, regardless of the importance of to actual body of work they produced, they're gonna stay unknown.

mlyle 4y ago
If you want to be an X and are female, and then you see that 95% of people who do X are male... it's pretty rational to wonder if there's some social or selection barrier coming up that's going to make it difficult or impossible for you to do X. And that's if you even get to explicitly thinking about it: the message is so strong that "Xers are male" that many people will never take the leap of imagination.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > . it's pretty rational to wonder if there's some social or selection barrier coming up That's a very modern take Where I am from 90% of the people were farmers or worked in construction I liked math and then I discovered computers, nobody in my circle knew about 'em, except one of my youngest uncles People used to refer to it as "wasting time in front of a screen" I have become a computer programmer nonetheless People must understand that bubbles are much older than social networks and they were real bubbles, like people that never moved farther than a 100 kms from where they were born. If this "theory" was true, we would all still be hunter gatherers. People evolve despite the odds. Columbus parents had a small shop that sold wine and cheese in a small city called Savona. He became an explorer Science as a profession is still not mainstream, there still an high chance of failing at it, it's pretty obvious that it is more common among people who are less risk adverse: young men.