Comment on Transitioning in STEM
andros_rex@lemmy.world 17 hours agoDunja Mijatovic, commissioner for human rights at the Council of Europe, faulted Italy across multiple areas, lamenting that Italian courts and police sometimes revictimize the victims of gender-based violence and that women have increasingly less access to abortion services. She also noted Italy’s last-place in the EU ranking for gender equality in the workplace.
sudneo@lemm.ee 16 hours ago
Absolutely…but how does that relate to the previous topic?
andros_rex@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Earlier you said:
Can you draw connections between what I linked/emphasized and this statement?
sudneo@lemm.ee 15 hours ago
It’s quite hard to make connections between statements about adult society (I.e. workplace, reproductive rights) and what happens in teenagers in a completely shielded (and tbh, fairly inclusive) environment like schools (mostly, high school as that’s when people decide to sign up in university). Actually, possibly what happens even earlier, as many people who go to STEM faculties in university come from the “scientific high school” which is the only “liceo” where males are more than females.
On average females earn also higher grades, in all levels of school (which is why I don’t find solid the argument that women have to abide higher standard of excellence in this context).
So all this to say, I definitely think there is a cultural issue that pushes women away from STEM subjects (a phenomenon quite common in all the West), but I don’t think is what my interlocutor suggested - that is another expression of women having to meet higher standards. This wouldn’t explain the corresponding imbalance in other areas.
To make an example: 91.8% of students in teaching sciences are females. 87% of students in computer science are males. I wouldn’t say that culture stereotypes and fixed gender roles are responsible for both, and instead this idea of “higher standards” seems fuzzy and explains only one side of the equation.
Curious also to note that women are absolutely the vast majority of teachers in kindergarten (99.3%!), primary school (97%), secondary school (77%) and high school (65%). While women are perfectly capable of reproducing gender oppression, it’s also fair to assume that there are plenty of women role models in STEM subjects.
Anyway, besides this long thing, I can’t find solid connections between what you posted and the topic, can you maybe elaborate your point?
andros_rex@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
A couple other stories:
When I was in high school, I was in Botball for a while. I was the only girl in the coding team - there was another girl on the construction team that was mostly tagging along with her boyfriend (I’m not saying this to demean her, she was a friend.)
The guy who was teaching us to code refused to teach me enums. He was talking about structs, my eyes looked glazed over because I didn’t get to eat lunch at school lol - he made some joke about losing me and said it was too advanced for me.
I also was getting really into Linux at the time - playing with things like Compiz Fusion on a shitty laptop during lunch (again, I didn’t get to eat lol). I wanted to make a cell phone game - I think I had a Nokia at the time. So I downloaded some sample project and opened it in Netbeans or whatever. It showed up as covered with red squigglies, because I didn’t have the libraries, but the group of coders walked passed, saw the squiggles and started joking about how shit at coding I was and how stupid.
And as a teacher, I see this shit all the time.