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> Last year, his school offered a robotics class for girls only. When my son asked why he couldn't join, it was explained to him that girls need special help to

> Last year, his school offered a robotics class for girls only. When my son asked why he couldn't join, it was explained to him that girls need special help to become interested in technology, and that if there are boys around, the girls will be too scared to try. And that's why we can't use sexism to fight sexism (or mistakenly enforce the same composition of the general population on self-selected subsets).

fudged71 13y ago
I've wanted to mention this for a while but the topic hadn't come up. My engineering faculty tried many things to get more girls in the program, including having girls-only events with the female dean. Of course, all students got these emails, and many of us guys were left wondering why we never had the chance to meet the dean in events like these. Excluding sometimes seems worse than the biases these programs aim to solve.
- codygman 13y ago
  Excluding the more privileged sometimes seems worse than the bias which excludes the less privileged? That doesn't seem to make much sense to me.
  - pantalaimon 13y ago
    I think it's up to discussion how they are 'less privileged'.
  - hueving 13y ago
    Because now you're excluding both classes. Two exclusions don't make a right, so to speak.
  - facepalm 13y ago
    While I don't agree with your assessment of privileges, let's look at it in another way: should boys be artificially constrained so that they don't outperform girls (and I am not implying boys would outperform girls, just that that is what society seems to think)? If you offer a robotics course only for girls, but not for boys, this is what you are effectively doing. You may end up with a better gender ratio, by preventing boys from getting into robotics (I doubt it'll work that way, but let's assume it does). Is this the way we want society to resolve this issue? Why not foster everybody's talents?
    - king_jester 13y ago
      The idea behind gender segregated classes/courses is about performance, but rather about social expectations and provided a space with less bias than a mixed gender setting. Whether or not this works is one thing, but this isn't about hampering performance.
      - devicenull 13y ago
        From the article, it doesn't sound like it was segregated courses. It sounds like there was a single "girls only robotics" class, and nothing corresponding for boys.
  - Crake 13y ago
    Sex based discrimination doesn't help reduce sex based discrimination. Surprising, I know.
facepalm 13y ago
It's just the same the world has always been: boys/men are on their own, no handholding provided.
- elohesra 13y ago
  This is really the crux of it for me. Boys aren't coddled or soothed, they're expected to learn self-restraint, and expected to just get on with it. They're also expected from a young age to put up with being treated somewhat scornfully, so negative socialization has less of an impact. If we look at what VonGuard said of the boys he teaches [0], he said they 'go off ahead and get lost'. Note how this isn't shown as a positive trait (e.g. 'they try extra hard to learn beyond their limits, even if it proves tough'), but instead as a negative trait, as a problem they've put themselves into. Note how the girls in his example are shown as being cooperative by helping one another, rather than the more uncharitable explanation being offered: they're not brave enough to own their own mistakes, so instead try to distribute them across a group. I remember this exact same rhetoric all throughout school. It's frankly unsurprising therefore, that more boys are more comfortable doing something that leads them to be ostracized, or to become a target. It's also unsurprising that more boys are happy to enter tech, where you're expected to constantly teach yourself without others helping you. For all the VonGuard's and the education system's suggestions to the contrary, working together and being cooperative isn't sustainable in a professional programming environment where you have to be comfortable with constantly keeping yourself up to date with changes in tech. Frankly, the actual solution to the 'girls in tech' problem is going to be one that few pseudo-feminist social justice warriors will actually want to bear: stop attempting to blame conspiracy theories for the low levels of women in tech, and start raising girls in the same harsh ways as boys. I hear a lot of 'daddy daughter programming time' being mentioned in threads like this, but for the life of me I can never remember the 'daddy son programming time' that lead me to become a programmer. I can only remember no-one giving a shit about me learning to program until it started paying lots of money and achieving results. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7207075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7207075
  - watwut 13y ago
    I get what you say about coddling and framing, really. Kids raise to expectation and if you help girl every single time she struggle, she will never become self resilient and will never learn to solve problems. Got that. However, how can one twist helping someone into "distributing own mistakes"? Seriously, that is beyond ridiculous. And going off ahead and get lost is also something entirely different then "they try extra hard to learn beyond their limits, even if it proves tough". The point of daddy daughter programming time mentioned in those thread is to show the girl it is normal for her to spend time coding. Boys know it is "normal" for them to code. And actually, plenty of boys do tech stuff with their parents. It was always normal and usual to teach your son crafting and tinkering. When daddy needed to repair car or some furniture he would call his son to help. It was not usual to teach the same to girl. The "daddy time" is just a call to extend the courtesy to girls too. Small kids do try to conform to gender roles they see around. Girls and boys alike, we are all herd animals. Daddy time is an attempt to offset the message about her supposed abilities and likes the girl (but not boy) hears.
parennoob 13y ago
I was really thankful that the author specifically expressed this viewpoint, which I'm always afraid to state in real life in case I'm labeled as being sexist. Special robotics classes for girls are not the way. Making robotics cool again, like space travel was cool in the 60s and 70s, is the answer. Most schools in the US see these pursuits as some kind of uncool dorky stuff, and girls who face a ton more peer pressure than boys for their age, tend to be directed away from them.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ucarion 13y ago
I disagree. As a high schooler, I know many intelligent and creative young women who don't want to do robotics or programming because of the people in those fields. High school boys in tech are much more likely to be misogynistic and socially inept than other high schoolers are. They make girls uncomfortable (they make me uncomfortable too, and I'm not event the subject of their creepiness), and this discourages girls from trying to program or build things. There are women who can handle this quite well (the author of the piece is an example), but there are also many women who don't deal with this so easily. Those who can deal with the male-dominated environment will always be free to join mixed-gender events and groups, but girls' robotics classes target those who could gain a lot from having friends of the same gender who share similar interests. Women aren't self-selecting themselves into tech, but there's no reason they couldn't. Women-in-tech events aren't fighting sexism with sexism, they're providing counterexamples to the misconception that programming is only for men.
- djent 13y ago
  High school boys in tech are much more likely to be misogynistic and socially inept than other high schoolers are. No
- gruseom 13y ago
  High school boys in tech are much more likely to be misogynistic That rings very false to me. It was not at all the case when I was in high school. In fact it was just the opposite, and I see no reason why that would have changed.
- Crito 13y ago
  When I was in highschool, I was in a model rocket club, and the science olympiad club. The gender ratios for both were roughly 50:50 (3-4 female-male for the rocket club, I forget the exact numbers for the science olympiad club, somewhere around 10-10). Both clubs operated very smoothly. I think that you give highschoolers too little credit. Rocketry and science competitions are not really any different from robotics and programming. None of them are exactly football team, if you know what I mean. The only real differences between "model rockets nerdy" and "programming nerdy" are a result of how the adults treat the participants.

fudged71 13y ago

I've wanted to mention this for a while but the topic hadn't come up. My engineering faculty tried many things to get more girls in the program, including having girls-only events with the female dean. Of course, all students got these emails, and many of us guys were left wondering why we never had the chance to meet the dean in events like these. Excluding sometimes seems worse than the biases these programs aim to solve.

codygman 13y ago
Excluding the more privileged sometimes seems worse than the bias which excludes the less privileged? That doesn't seem to make much sense to me.
- pantalaimon 13y ago
  I think it's up to discussion how they are 'less privileged'.
- hueving 13y ago
  Because now you're excluding both classes. Two exclusions don't make a right, so to speak.
- facepalm 13y ago
  While I don't agree with your assessment of privileges, let's look at it in another way: should boys be artificially constrained so that they don't outperform girls (and I am not implying boys would outperform girls, just that that is what society seems to think)? If you offer a robotics course only for girls, but not for boys, this is what you are effectively doing. You may end up with a better gender ratio, by preventing boys from getting into robotics (I doubt it'll work that way, but let's assume it does). Is this the way we want society to resolve this issue? Why not foster everybody's talents?
  - king_jester 13y ago
    The idea behind gender segregated classes/courses is about performance, but rather about social expectations and provided a space with less bias than a mixed gender setting. Whether or not this works is one thing, but this isn't about hampering performance.
    - devicenull 13y ago
      From the article, it doesn't sound like it was segregated courses. It sounds like there was a single "girls only robotics" class, and nothing corresponding for boys.
- Crake 13y ago
  Sex based discrimination doesn't help reduce sex based discrimination. Surprising, I know.

facepalm 13y ago

It's just the same the world has always been: boys/men are on their own, no handholding provided.

elohesra 13y ago
This is really the crux of it for me. Boys aren't coddled or soothed, they're expected to learn self-restraint, and expected to just get on with it. They're also expected from a young age to put up with being treated somewhat scornfully, so negative socialization has less of an impact. If we look at what VonGuard said of the boys he teaches [0], he said they 'go off ahead and get lost'. Note how this isn't shown as a positive trait (e.g. 'they try extra hard to learn beyond their limits, even if it proves tough'), but instead as a negative trait, as a problem they've put themselves into. Note how the girls in his example are shown as being cooperative by helping one another, rather than the more uncharitable explanation being offered: they're not brave enough to own their own mistakes, so instead try to distribute them across a group. I remember this exact same rhetoric all throughout school. It's frankly unsurprising therefore, that more boys are more comfortable doing something that leads them to be ostracized, or to become a target. It's also unsurprising that more boys are happy to enter tech, where you're expected to constantly teach yourself without others helping you. For all the VonGuard's and the education system's suggestions to the contrary, working together and being cooperative isn't sustainable in a professional programming environment where you have to be comfortable with constantly keeping yourself up to date with changes in tech. Frankly, the actual solution to the 'girls in tech' problem is going to be one that few pseudo-feminist social justice warriors will actually want to bear: stop attempting to blame conspiracy theories for the low levels of women in tech, and start raising girls in the same harsh ways as boys. I hear a lot of 'daddy daughter programming time' being mentioned in threads like this, but for the life of me I can never remember the 'daddy son programming time' that lead me to become a programmer. I can only remember no-one giving a shit about me learning to program until it started paying lots of money and achieving results. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7207075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7207075
- watwut 13y ago
  I get what you say about coddling and framing, really. Kids raise to expectation and if you help girl every single time she struggle, she will never become self resilient and will never learn to solve problems. Got that. However, how can one twist helping someone into "distributing own mistakes"? Seriously, that is beyond ridiculous. And going off ahead and get lost is also something entirely different then "they try extra hard to learn beyond their limits, even if it proves tough". The point of daddy daughter programming time mentioned in those thread is to show the girl it is normal for her to spend time coding. Boys know it is "normal" for them to code. And actually, plenty of boys do tech stuff with their parents. It was always normal and usual to teach your son crafting and tinkering. When daddy needed to repair car or some furniture he would call his son to help. It was not usual to teach the same to girl. The "daddy time" is just a call to extend the courtesy to girls too. Small kids do try to conform to gender roles they see around. Girls and boys alike, we are all herd animals. Daddy time is an attempt to offset the message about her supposed abilities and likes the girl (but not boy) hears.

parennoob 13y ago

I was really thankful that the author specifically expressed this viewpoint, which I'm always afraid to state in real life in case I'm labeled as being sexist. Special robotics classes for girls are not the way. Making robotics cool again, like space travel was cool in the 60s and 70s, is the answer. Most schools in the US see these pursuits as some kind of uncool dorky stuff, and girls who face a ton more peer pressure than boys for their age, tend to be directed away from them.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

ucarion 13y ago

I disagree. As a high schooler, I know many intelligent and creative young women who don't want to do robotics or programming because of the people in those fields. High school boys in tech are much more likely to be misogynistic and socially inept than other high schoolers are. They make girls uncomfortable (they make me uncomfortable too, and I'm not event the subject of their creepiness), and this discourages girls from trying to program or build things. There are women who can handle this quite well (the author of the piece is an example), but there are also many women who don't deal with this so easily. Those who can deal with the male-dominated environment will always be free to join mixed-gender events and groups, but girls' robotics classes target those who could gain a lot from having friends of the same gender who share similar interests. Women aren't self-selecting themselves into tech, but there's no reason they couldn't. Women-in-tech events aren't fighting sexism with sexism, they're providing counterexamples to the misconception that programming is only for men.

djent 13y ago
High school boys in tech are much more likely to be misogynistic and socially inept than other high schoolers are. No
gruseom 13y ago
High school boys in tech are much more likely to be misogynistic That rings very false to me. It was not at all the case when I was in high school. In fact it was just the opposite, and I see no reason why that would have changed.
Crito 13y ago
When I was in highschool, I was in a model rocket club, and the science olympiad club. The gender ratios for both were roughly 50:50 (3-4 female-male for the rocket club, I forget the exact numbers for the science olympiad club, somewhere around 10-10). Both clubs operated very smoothly. I think that you give highschoolers too little credit. Rocketry and science competitions are not really any different from robotics and programming. None of them are exactly football team, if you know what I mean. The only real differences between "model rockets nerdy" and "programming nerdy" are a result of how the adults treat the participants.