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FTA: > My teachers recommended that I study economics and statistics as my A-level subjects, but I had my mind set on a life fulfilled by the arts. And in the

by adekok 13y ago

FTA: > My teachers recommended that I study economics and statistics as my A-level subjects, but I had my mind set on a life fulfilled by the arts. And in the next paragraph: > Without realising it, I was a victim of a gender stereotype reinforced since birth, that men do science and maths and women do arts or languages. Society was encouraging her to go into the sciences. Or was it that she was trapped by a "gender stereotype"? She doesn't see the contradiction between the two statements. She could have accepted personal responsibility, and said "I screwed up. I didn't look into the job prospects, or the salaries. I just had a romantic notion and went with it, against the advice of people who knew better." > Now I have a five-year-old daughter. I don't want her to blindly follow gender roles the way I did. Is she an adult, or an automaton with no free will? > I want her to embrace the fact that a science or technical degree will not limit her creativity but expand it and broaden her horizons far more than my arts background could i.e. "I was bigoted against STEM degress, but now I realize that they're useful, too". This article is interesting. Not for it's promotion of STEM degrees. But for it's shameless bigotry, and total denial of personal responsibility.

JonnieCache 13y ago
A 5 minute interview with the careers advisor is definitely not where society's gender stereotypes stem from or play themselves out, especially at 16. Part of their role, at least now, is actually to offset preconceptions. >"I just had a romantic notion" This is just where the socialisation manifests itself. Social conditioning is just that, undetectable (by definition) changes in your own perceptions, rather than coercion from authority.
sampo 13y ago
She also wrote: "Computer science, technology and physics just did not figure in my teenage world view. Nobody popular in my school chose to study those subjects." She gave more weight to the peer pressure from other teenage girls, especially from the popular girls, than she gave to the word of her teacher. Not very uncommon. Peer pressure on what is considered "cool" vs. "lame" is a strong force in teenagers. I don't know if it's fair to say that every teenager who is not immune to that is not accepting personal responsibility.
- altrego99 13y ago
  It is easy to not succumb to peer pressure. You have to just change the way you are thinking - people follow peers to become accepted. But if you do, you will not get noticed. You have to stand out. You have to do what the others are not doing - and make a stand for it. And you will get noticed. For example if everyone in your class smokes, and you politely decline everytime you are asked to, people will notice. If everyone wants to do a PhD but you think of it as a waste of time and want to get out, people will notice. And people will even follow you.
  - Yhippa 13y ago
    > It is easy to not succumb to peer pressure. You have to just change the way you are thinking - people follow peers to become accepted. But if you do, you will not get noticed. When you are growing up I think it's very difficult for kids and teenagers to avoid pressure especially for something as prevalent as this. I feel like "nerd" fashion is in so you see that a lot in society as rappers and athletes sport that look so that aspect of the nerd life is acceptable presently. The other aspects of nerdery that might not be socially acceptable to teenagers are playing with robots, programming a web app, and building a mobile application. To me if you like doing things like that you are probably the type of person okay with going into computer science or engineering. Until that's just as socially acceptable as joining the football team I doubt you're going to see much mindset change around the idea of going into engineering vs traditional liberal arts.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    I don't entirely disagree, but this is a high risk, high reward strategy if you're looking to get positively noticed. And with humans, dealing with disapproval is hard, so while the steps to "not to succumb to peer pressure" are not complicated it may well be misleading to say that it's "easy".
- adekok 13y ago
  > I don't know if it's fair to say that every teenager who is not immune to that is not accepting personal responsibility. To give it some perspective, in 1942 there were 18 year-olds fighting in the war. The people then were under tremendous pressure. They had enormous responsibilities and enormous independence, compared to today. What changed? Are we supposed to expect that at 18, she's ready to live on her own, sleep with anyone she chooses, join the military, but she's still a child, and can't muster the wits or guts to fight peer pressure. I, for one, have higher standards. It's demeaning (IMHO) to deny her own responsibility in her actions. What do you think of her opinion now? She's clearly older, maybe in her thirties. And she's still denying all personal responsibility for her actions. When I was 18 I did stupid things, and I'm adult enough to admit they were stupid things. Why can't she make the same admission?
acdha 13y ago
> Society was encouraging her to go into the sciences. Or was it that she was trapped by a "gender stereotype"? … > But for it's shameless bigotry, and total denial of personal responsibility. Your privilege is showing: if you are born male, it's easy to forget that for every teacher pushing a STEM career there are many more people – often close relatives, family friends, respected community members, etc. – who encourage traditional gender roles in their choice of toys, activities, and interaction with adults. This isn't usually an overt process but it's a constant background tide: if you have a young female relative, watch how many times toys are oriented towards looking good vs. doing anything constructive or what happens if she asks too many questions. It's quite disturbing once you're actually paying attention. You can blame every individual for not recognizing this and correcting it early but the only denial I see is yours. It's particularly galling to see your repeated whine about admitting mistakes when someone reading for comprehension would have realized that the entire article was an extended version of “I should have listened to my teachers rather than the people who convinced me science wasn't for women”.
- wads 13y ago
  I am not OP but since I agree with him 100% and your comment personally offends me: "Your privilege is showing: if you are born male" - This pisses me beyond anything. What "privilege"? "Privilege" of having to admit my own mistakes and take personal responsibility for every step I take? So what if there are people "who encourage traditional gender roles"? (IMPLYING that gender roles are bad) Whose fault is it that you got "scammed" by these people and lost 4 years? Be happy that you figured out "scam" and take responsibility for falling for it. What is more, this "privilege" offends me personally. I am male from poor country and poor family. I had "privilege" of getting education without any money (Did being man helped me to survive on 4sausages and 2 slices of bread a day? No.), I had "privilege" of going against peer pressure and choosing field everyone deemed 'uncool'(Yah, maybe "having balls" do help when it comes to surviving peer pressure). Hell I had "privilege" of getting lower grades in university because I wasn't woman... I just can't stand white handed feminists and white knights saying "check your privilege". “I should have listened to my teachers rather than the people who convinced me science wasn't for women". No. It's not about that. Article is about "I should have listened to my teachers rather than the people who convinced me science wasn't for women. But I didn't, and I blame men instead of myself."

by adekok 13y ago

JonnieCache 13y ago

A 5 minute interview with the careers advisor is definitely not where society's gender stereotypes stem from or play themselves out, especially at 16. Part of their role, at least now, is actually to offset preconceptions. >"I just had a romantic notion" This is just where the socialisation manifests itself. Social conditioning is just that, undetectable (by definition) changes in your own perceptions, rather than coercion from authority.

sampo 13y ago

She also wrote: "Computer science, technology and physics just did not figure in my teenage world view. Nobody popular in my school chose to study those subjects." She gave more weight to the peer pressure from other teenage girls, especially from the popular girls, than she gave to the word of her teacher. Not very uncommon. Peer pressure on what is considered "cool" vs. "lame" is a strong force in teenagers. I don't know if it's fair to say that every teenager who is not immune to that is not accepting personal responsibility.

altrego99 13y ago
It is easy to not succumb to peer pressure. You have to just change the way you are thinking - people follow peers to become accepted. But if you do, you will not get noticed. You have to stand out. You have to do what the others are not doing - and make a stand for it. And you will get noticed. For example if everyone in your class smokes, and you politely decline everytime you are asked to, people will notice. If everyone wants to do a PhD but you think of it as a waste of time and want to get out, people will notice. And people will even follow you.
- Yhippa 13y ago
  > It is easy to not succumb to peer pressure. You have to just change the way you are thinking - people follow peers to become accepted. But if you do, you will not get noticed. When you are growing up I think it's very difficult for kids and teenagers to avoid pressure especially for something as prevalent as this. I feel like "nerd" fashion is in so you see that a lot in society as rappers and athletes sport that look so that aspect of the nerd life is acceptable presently. The other aspects of nerdery that might not be socially acceptable to teenagers are playing with robots, programming a web app, and building a mobile application. To me if you like doing things like that you are probably the type of person okay with going into computer science or engineering. Until that's just as socially acceptable as joining the football team I doubt you're going to see much mindset change around the idea of going into engineering vs traditional liberal arts.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  I don't entirely disagree, but this is a high risk, high reward strategy if you're looking to get positively noticed. And with humans, dealing with disapproval is hard, so while the steps to "not to succumb to peer pressure" are not complicated it may well be misleading to say that it's "easy".
adekok 13y ago
> I don't know if it's fair to say that every teenager who is not immune to that is not accepting personal responsibility. To give it some perspective, in 1942 there were 18 year-olds fighting in the war. The people then were under tremendous pressure. They had enormous responsibilities and enormous independence, compared to today. What changed? Are we supposed to expect that at 18, she's ready to live on her own, sleep with anyone she chooses, join the military, but she's still a child, and can't muster the wits or guts to fight peer pressure. I, for one, have higher standards. It's demeaning (IMHO) to deny her own responsibility in her actions. What do you think of her opinion now? She's clearly older, maybe in her thirties. And she's still denying all personal responsibility for her actions. When I was 18 I did stupid things, and I'm adult enough to admit they were stupid things. Why can't she make the same admission?

acdha 13y ago

> Society was encouraging her to go into the sciences. Or was it that she was trapped by a "gender stereotype"? … > But for it's shameless bigotry, and total denial of personal responsibility. Your privilege is showing: if you are born male, it's easy to forget that for every teacher pushing a STEM career there are many more people – often close relatives, family friends, respected community members, etc. – who encourage traditional gender roles in their choice of toys, activities, and interaction with adults. This isn't usually an overt process but it's a constant background tide: if you have a young female relative, watch how many times toys are oriented towards looking good vs. doing anything constructive or what happens if she asks too many questions. It's quite disturbing once you're actually paying attention. You can blame every individual for not recognizing this and correcting it early but the only denial I see is yours. It's particularly galling to see your repeated whine about admitting mistakes when someone reading for comprehension would have realized that the entire article was an extended version of “I should have listened to my teachers rather than the people who convinced me science wasn't for women”.

wads 13y ago
I am not OP but since I agree with him 100% and your comment personally offends me: "Your privilege is showing: if you are born male" - This pisses me beyond anything. What "privilege"? "Privilege" of having to admit my own mistakes and take personal responsibility for every step I take? So what if there are people "who encourage traditional gender roles"? (IMPLYING that gender roles are bad) Whose fault is it that you got "scammed" by these people and lost 4 years? Be happy that you figured out "scam" and take responsibility for falling for it. What is more, this "privilege" offends me personally. I am male from poor country and poor family. I had "privilege" of getting education without any money (Did being man helped me to survive on 4sausages and 2 slices of bread a day? No.), I had "privilege" of going against peer pressure and choosing field everyone deemed 'uncool'(Yah, maybe "having balls" do help when it comes to surviving peer pressure). Hell I had "privilege" of getting lower grades in university because I wasn't woman... I just can't stand white handed feminists and white knights saying "check your privilege". “I should have listened to my teachers rather than the people who convinced me science wasn't for women". No. It's not about that. Article is about "I should have listened to my teachers rather than the people who convinced me science wasn't for women. But I didn't, and I blame men instead of myself."