11 Feb
2013
11 Feb
'13
4:17 a.m.
I also read a study that was interesting which was about how the popular image of
engineering (iirc they used a sea of empty jolt cola cans and pizza boxes for their social
experiment) was a big turn off for women who were around the age where they were deciding
on a career. I wish I could find it.
Speaking as someone who was interested in computers enough to make me good at math, I
wonder if a lot of the discrepancy comes down to culture and interest. I did very badly in
mathematics in grade school and picked up the slack in college, and it was because I liked
the subject enough. It's entirely possible that we'll see attitudes change in
upcoming generations as more people are addicted to computers and catch the bug to want to
create software.
Btw, there's a similar gender discrepancy in electronic music (as far as I've
noticed), and that requires no math... There's more going on here than sexism, afaik.
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 10, 2013, at 5:40 PM, James Harkins < jamshark70(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Keeping it short:
- Online discussions of racism/sexism/homophobia are almost guaranteed to draw
out idiotic comments. Those usually cluster into hypersensitivity to the issues,
and denial of the same. Sadly, this thread is no exception.
- The kind of sexism (IMO) that discourages women from being active in
electronic music starts long before they would have anything to do with LAU. I
recall reading about an observational study of grade school math classes, where
the researchers tried to measure the teachers' interactions with the students,
broken down by gender. They found, in general, that teachers paid more attention
to boys and gave them more positive feedback than for girls. I don't remember if
they had different results for subjects other than math, but I do remember one
of their conclusions was that the teachers were showing a subconscious bias
against girls wrt math. If that's so, it's a partial explanation why electronic
music communities are so heavily male.
- FalkTX may have had some good reasons to choose that image, but choosing it
was insensitive at best. Sometimes there are good reasons to be insensitive, but
for a screen wallpaper? (Chinese web and chat apps have an emoticon of somebody
picking his nose. I would use it here if I could.)
hjh
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