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"The problem starts as early as grade school. Young girls are rarely encouraged to pursue math and science, which is problematic considering studies show a lack of belief in intellectual growth can actually inhibit it. In addition, there exists an unconscious bias that science and math are typically “male” fields while humanities and arts are primarily “female” fields, and these stereotypes further inhibit girls’ likelihood of cultivating an interest in math and science."
You said that there were fewer opportunities, that is NOT true. I also do NOT see that girls are not encouraged at all...I'm trying to think of our daughters friends that are NOT in STEM majors/fields and I can think of 2....not to mention the extra scholarships out there for girls in STEM, colleges that have male heavy STEM programs (mainly engineering programs) that are giving very, very generous scholarships to girls to try to even the field. In many male heavy STEM fields, a female in that same field will have dozens of offers for jobs where the males may have 1. One friend of mine has a daughter at MIT, she had 23 offers for summer internships at some pretty heady companies. Her boyfriend in the same field also at MIT had NONE.
If girls can't find STEM programs, they aren't looking....
You said that there were fewer opportunities, that is NOT true. I also do NOT see that girls are not encouraged at all...I'm trying to think of our daughters friends that are NOT in STEM majors/fields and I can think of 2....not to mention the extra scholarships out there for girls in STEM, colleges that have male heavy STEM programs (mainly engineering programs) that are giving very, very generous scholarships to girls to try to even the field. In many male heavy STEM fields, a female in that same field will have dozens of offers for jobs where the males may have 1. One friend of mine has a daughter at MIT, she had 23 offers for summer internships at some pretty heady companies. Her boyfriend in the same field also at MIT had NONE.
If girls can't find STEM programs, they aren't looking....
Do the same search for boys and you get a bunch of programs for "teens" and not boy specific....
The existence of programs doesn't prove girls are encouraged wide scale. The programs exist because of the disparity and are an attempt to address the issue. They tend not to exist for boys because boys are already ahead in these subjects without anyone doing anything special. Go to any advertised "lego camp" or "robotics camp" and it will be filled with mostly boys, etc.
Anyway, the lack of encouragement being talked about in studies refers to what happens on a day-to-day level in a typical K-12 classroom environment, among parents and in the media. The idea that math/science are not "girl" things gets reinforced constantly in explicit and implicit ways, or so the theory goes.
As far as your MIT example, that just reinforced the disparity. The young lady has many offers because she's a unicorn. When one shows up everyone pounces.
the existence of programs doesn't prove girls are encouraged wide scale. The programs exist because of the disparity and are an attempt to address the issue. They tend not to exist for boys because boys are already ahead in these subjects without anyone doing anything special. Go to any advertised "lego camp" or "robotics camp" and it will be filled with mostly boys, etc.
Anyway, the lack of encouragement being talked about in studies refers to what happens on a day-to-day level in a typical k-12 classroom environment, among parents and in the media. The idea that math/science are not "girl" things gets reinforced constantly in explicit and implicit ways, or so the theory goes.
As far as your mit example, that just reinforced the disparity. The young lady has many offers because she's a unicorn. When one shows up everyone pounces.
The existence of programs doesn't prove girls are encouraged wide scale. The programs exist because of the disparity and are an attempt to address the issue. They tend not to exist for boys because boys are already ahead in these subjects without anyone doing anything special. Go to any advertised "lego camp" or "robotics camp" and it will be filled with mostly boys, etc.
Anyway, the lack of encouragement being talked about in studies refers to what happens on a day-to-day level in a typical K-12 classroom environment, among parents and in the media. The idea that math/science are not "girl" things gets reinforced constantly in explicit and implicit ways, or so the theory goes.
As far as your MIT example, that just reinforced the disparity. The young lady has many offers because she's a unicorn. When one shows up everyone pounces.
I guess I fail to see how offering these programs on a wide scale is not encouraging girls to go into STEM fields??? No, our daughter didn't want to go to Lego camp, she had no interest in going to lego camp, but she did go to science camps where she got to do science experiments and has done some shadowing in medical professions and such. I guess I'm just not seeing where girls are not going into STEM fields just because they aren't filling up the engineering programs
Girls have been obtaining undergraduate and graduate degrees at higher rates than boys for quite some time. In my experience, teachers call on boys more than girls because girls are better at paying attention in class. My classes in middle/high school had boys that were distracted (usually by girls), and the teachers seemed to pick up on this.
I spent plenty of time at the board in Algebra II, lol!
Nobody is saying girls and boys aren't different. Of course they are but we all know girls don't have as many opportunities as they should.
Also of course there are many paths to success. Right now America is lagging behind in science and we need to encourage everybody-girls and boys to explore those fields IF they find them interesting.
This is just not true. The top students at my schools were almost always the girls. The teachers didn't pay more attention to the boys, and girls didn't get the impression they weren't supposed to be good at or like math or science.
The existence of programs doesn't prove girls are encouraged wide scale. The programs exist because of the disparity and are an attempt to address the issue. They tend not to exist for boys because boys are already ahead in these subjects without anyone doing anything special. Go to any advertised "lego camp" or "robotics camp" and it will be filled with mostly boys, etc.
Anyway, the lack of encouragement being talked about in studies refers to what happens on a day-to-day level in a typical K-12 classroom environment, among parents and in the media. The idea that math/science are not "girl" things gets reinforced constantly in explicit and implicit ways, or so the theory goes.
As far as your MIT example, that just reinforced the disparity. The young lady has many offers because she's a unicorn. When one shows up everyone pounces.
I must live in a different universe than you and NK. We girls never got the impression that math and science were for boys. Never. Maybe boys tend to be more into lego or robotics. Every single person I know who went into a STEM major was a female.
I have heard some horror stories (from reliable, non-politically motivated sources) about how women are treated in SV. I don't understand it. I learned at a very young age to be respectful to women and to treat them as intellectual, social, and moral equals. Today's boys who going into tech must be very poorly socialized.
The existence of programs doesn't prove girls are encouraged wide scale. The programs exist because of the disparity and are an attempt to address the issue. They tend not to exist for boys because boys are already ahead in these subjects without anyone doing anything special. Go to any advertised "lego camp" or "robotics camp" and it will be filled with mostly boys, etc.
Anyway, the lack of encouragement being talked about in studies refers to what happens on a day-to-day level in a typical K-12 classroom environment, among parents and in the media. The idea that math/science are not "girl" things gets reinforced constantly in explicit and implicit ways, or so the theory goes.
As far as your MIT example, that just reinforced the disparity. The young lady has many offers because she's a unicorn. When one shows up everyone pounces.
It's been a long time since I read this research but I read a study that compared the performance of girls in mixed and all girl classrooms. They found that just as many girls as boys do well in math (this study was on math) if you separate them by gender. It's not ability that is the issue here. The speculation was that girls step back and let boys take the lead in the mixed gender classroom because that is what is socially acceptable. This may not be about teachers, schools and parents encouraging girls but rather peers encouraging them.
I've noticed in chemistry class that in boy-girl lab partner groups it is the boy who usually takes the lead even if he's not the smarter one. In girl-girl groups they work together but they seem to pair up with someone of equal intelligence. I think there's a lot to peer expectations here. Don't underestimate the power of peer pressure. It is socially acceptable for girls to play helpless and that kind of behavior is often rewarded by a knight in shining armor showing up. This is just my observation but boys seem to like playing that role especially if the girl in question is pretty.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 03-10-2015 at 04:15 AM..
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