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I agree, yet there is a bias against hiring men in many medical settings. Also, whereas there are many programs encouraging girls to go into STEM fields, you don't find comparable programs encouraging boys to pursue nursing and med tech fields.
And that is the simple point. Encourage them to look at fields that they otherwise probably would never consider (for a variety of reasons, but likely due to a lack of good female role models in these fields and because of societal stereotypes on "male" and "female" professions).
You don't force them to do anything - you provide all opportunities, and hopefully they choose something that is fulfilling to them.
I think you need to start young with these kind of things, too - high school and college are probably too late. Middle school is probably a good time (I remember being super excited about my science fair project in 7th grade...more stuff around that age!).
Absolutely. I didn't have a good foundation for advanced math and science because I resigned myself to a belief that I was not good at them without even trying. My brother took his studies seriously from a young age and got extra help from my smart gynecologist grandmother in those subjects. No surprise...he's the engineer, loves what he does and moved to a great a salary within years of graduation with only a bachelor's degree.
and companies that follow your guide are doomed to fail..
Women bring a lot to the table that men just don't bring often enough.
I see women working in sectors where they were no welcome just 10 or 20 years ago and they change them for the better. Cooperation , collaboration is the future. the companies winning are the ones ignoring your advice.
You can't say "women bring things that men don't". That's also just a form
Of discrimination and generalizing
No surprise I remember seeing liberals saying things like that to explain why we should elect Hillary
Good idea or should people stop worrying about how many of a certain race or gender is in a certain field?
GE is about to be toast.
They're trying to do the right thing, but capitalism doesn't care about the "right thing." While there trying to find qualified female employees the competition is going to hire the best candidates regardless of race or gender. Unless they do the same, they're going to get crushed by the competition.
Ideally, that would be what we should do - but we also should work to help women enter STEM fields. That must start early in their lives, of course, but employers can help, too, by incentivizing women to enter these fields.
I'm a male in a male-dominated area of biological research (which is usually pretty evenly split between men and women), and I think it'd be great to have more women in the field.
I think it gets tricky when you pick candidates just because they are women (that shouldn't happen)...but there are ways to incentivize women to join this field in other ways that don't involve some sort of affirmative action solution...such as internship incentives (perhaps have women-only internships early on when students are in high school or college - get them interested in the fields at that point).
And once you get more qualified women entering the field, a feedback loop develops back to younger children (who see these positive women role models in STEM fields and then think "hey, I should do this! This is cool!").
This is basically about challenging concepts of what fields go with which gender...we've done a lot of great work here as a society in the last few decades, but we still need to do a better job of breaking down those barriers for our upcoming generations.
Why? In Western civilization, are there really any barriers preventing a qualified female from entering a STEM field in 2017? How much more help do they need? This doesn't seem a little sexist to you at this point?
Why? In Western civilization, are there really any barriers preventing a qualified female from entering a STEM field in 2017? How much more help do they need? This doesn't seem a little sexist to you at this point?
Why are there still barriers? Because the world isn't perfect, unfortunately. Yes, even in 2017. We have come an amazingly far way, but unfortunately there are still some barriers. That doesn't mean we just throw our hands up in the air and say "oh well!".
I do not think it is sexist at all to show girls (particularly at a young age) all of the possible career options they have in life (STEM being a part of this, among all other careers)...you let them be the judge of what they want to do, and hopefully they choose a field that they actually like. That is probably the least sexist thing one could do!
Knowing how GE operates, what they're likely trying to do is push a new wave of off\on-shoring of cheap tech workers and are going to try to brand it as "gender equality".
However, they at least get some of the fundamentals right and are looking at things like role models and early education.
I remember the Obama initiative to get more minorities in STEM by encouraging them to enter those majors and possibly some scholarships.
Um, it's wayyyy too late by then. You need these kids taking lots of math and science before they ever leave highschool.
Lego robotics is one good program aimed at addressing this.
^
This.
You simply need to raise the bar much higher already in Elementary-Middle school ( not to mention High school,) in order to see the capable kids when it comes to math. Sure, you can encourage girls all you want, but you'll see the result of it all pretty fast - by the end of the Middle school most likely. There will be very few girls to keep up and barely any minorities I'm sure.
P.S. Yeah, I'd like to play Mozart piano concerto too, but no matter how much you'd "encourage" me, not everyone is born with ability for it.
What makes you think that math/physics are all that different?
Oh yea a bunch of women working together and catfighting and whining, and gossiping about each other all day. That's not a recipe for disaster or anything
Because we, sometimes subconsciously, give signals to each gender to what "roles" are acceptable for them to take on later in life. That is an absurd thing to do.
Whether we want to admit it or not, what our adults are doing have an effect on what our children think of the world. If a girl doesn't see a lot of women in STEM fields, she'll get the message that maybe that isn't something she should even think about getting into.
By offering incentives to have girls check out these areas, you let them judge for themselves whether they actually have an interest in those fields or not. Wouldn't you actually want the girls themselves to be the ultimate judges on whether they find that work interesting or fulfilling? Rather than some societal stereotype on those fields?
My sister when she was little wanted to be a hockey player because I was too...and she was told "no, that's a boys game"...
You know what, though, she said "eff that" and still played anyways. She played with boys until she was about 14 (even when they started checking). Around that time, she was lucky enough that women's hockey was burgeoning and coming on the scene. She started playing with girls, and kept going. She then went on to play into her collegiate years.
If she had listened to the naysayers, she wouldn't have even tried that sport. She would have just stuck with figure skating (which was something she did try, but didn't like it as much as hockey).
And thankfully, because of girls like my sister, other little girls saw that they could play this game, too (previously mainly for boys/men only).
This kind of thing should happen in STEM. Let the girls decide if they like it or not. And I think you'll be surprised to learn that some girls who wouldn't give those fields a second look because they're conditioned to think they should go off and do something "appropriate" for their gender, actually would end up liking STEM work.
I work with a few women who went into science, even though other people thought it was nerdy or not for girls...and they love it. One girl told me that her parents wanted her to do something else...but she had a great role model teacher when she was younger that showed her how awesome science was. She fell in love with the field and never looked back.
Get enough of these kind of women in science, and you start building that feedback loop back to the children of today...
We're in a better place than we used to be in regards to this stuff, but we should continue to work on it as a society.
How can you even compare hockey with math/physics I wonder?
Hockey doesn't require any particular intellect; basically anyone in good physical shape can play it, and yes, girls/women can make mediocre players as well ( mediocre - because obviously it's a game that requires much more brutal force, speed, aggressiveness and muscles that women usually have,) so what's a big deal?
Of course it's only a matter of "public acceptance" for a time when these games ( and players) of mediocre abilities will take part in "championships," but when it comes to actual "high intellectual abilities," that not too many are born with, it's not just a matter of "encouragement" and "acceptance."
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