Why are female-only STEM classes so popular?

magus678 · 2020-01-30T20:21:00+00:00

Over here, they are offering a couple of female-only classes in STEM fields, especially computer science

I can offer some insight here as I just completed a software bootcamp.

The hunger for hiring women in software roles is completely and totally off the rails. In my class of 28 people, only two people graduated already with jobs, and it was the only two women. We had a recruiter who spoke to the class at one point but she was only interested in hiring the women. The bootcamp itself is trying its best to fill their roster with as many women as they can because the hiring rate is so strong that it makes the bootcamp look "successful." My program's staff was literally just walking up to women on campus to try to pitch them the camp.

Last I was aware the best student we had, who got a near perfect on our final, just took a job as a janitor because he has not been able to get in anywhere for software. Neither have any of the other men managed to get hired on anywhere in the months since. Take from that what you will.

The drive to pipeline women into these roles is strong, to an almost absurd level.

NAWALT_VADER · 2020-01-30T20:17:08+00:00

In most places, it would be illegal to have rules that prohibited women from being allowed when men are permitted. The reverse is generally not true, such as the STEM classes you are mentioning.

That is feminism.

Viper1-11 · 2020-01-30T19:39:20+00:00

Put me in a room full of women and I’ll be uncomfortable, when I was younger I wouldn’t, but now I’ll get judged harshly by both men and women.

PsychoPhilosopher · 2020-01-30T20:22:11+00:00

It's a rather desperate attempt to resolve a sociocultural problem at the wrong end.

Men do more STEM because they are the most consistent, reliable ways to get a relatively well-paid job.

Women just don't value the opportunity to work in the same way that men do, as a consequence of a society that actively attacks unemployed men.

That's it. No great mystery. We'd all love to study art and culture, if you offered Engineers a chance to play video games and read comics for their degree they'd take it in a heartbeat. But they wouldn't get the job that for most men is an absolute requirement to acceptance.

Lupercus64 · 2020-01-30T23:56:45+00:00

Personally, I think there is a huge feedback loop. There is a lot of focus on boys holding girls back in school, not because boys are dumber, but because school systems have changed to benefit the way girls learn over boys, classifying the as "disruptive" or "on the spectrum", but when 70% of the male population is "on the spectrum" that sounds more like a trait that has been classified as a medical disorder. In addition our society is completely okay misandry, look at representations of men in media, they are usually either predatory or bumbling fools today. Couple those with a dialogue that focuses on how violence against women is a societal issue, and men are only perpetrators, the idea that all men are potential rapist makes all men threatening. Perception distorts your view of reality, and with the media saturation we endure, there is a lot more control over our perception that is not let up to us as individuals. I think it is closest to ideological blinding, but there is a good dose of cultivated fear in that.

As someone who has participated in minority-oriented STEM programs in college, a large part of their introductions to the program focus on cultivating how helpless you are without them, and how the majority is actively working against you, that you can work as hard as you possibly can and still fall behind somebody in the majority. This was the main reason I stopped attending any such events, they only encouraged an attitude that required a dependence on them, and it seemed much more detrimental to individual personal success and merit, and rather favored the prestige of the group and the places you could go, if only you associate yourself with them and their connections.

Now as a man sexually attracted to men, I feel much more safe in a room full of men than a room full of women. Growing up, I experienced way more homophobia from girls than from guys. When a guy was homophobic to me it was rarer and usually more threatening, but I could stand up for myself and that was the end. When a girl was homophobic it was usually more of an attack on my character (or other guys) and was just harsh and insulting, saying that I was weak and not a man, and there was nothing I could do about it, she had the right to say whatever she wants to me and spread whatever she wanted to say about me to everybody she knew. It is okay to shame a man for his behavior, but to shame a women would be a crime.

Lady_Coraline2 · 2020-01-30T21:04:27+00:00

One legitimate reason could be that due to cultural reasons boys typically go into CS courses with a higher level of starting knowledge than girls, although there's no reason universities couldn't just offer optional introductory courses that aren't unnecessarily gendered.

In the 1990s, researcher Jane Margolis interviewed hundreds of computer science students at Carnegie Mellon University, which had one of the top programs in the country. She found that families were much more likely to buy computers for boys than for girls — even when their girls were really interested in computers.

This was a big deal when those kids got to college. As personal computers became more common, computer science professors increasingly assumed that their students had grown up playing with computers at home.

Patricia Ordóñez didn't have a computer at home, but she was a math wiz in school.

"My teacher realized I was really good at solving problems, so she pulled me and this other boy out to do special math," she says. "We did math instead of recess!"

So when Ordóñez got to Johns Hopkins University in the '80s, she figured she would study computer science or electrical engineering. Then she took her first intro class — and found that most of her male classmates were way ahead of her because they'd grown up playing with computers.

"I remember this one time I asked a question and the professor stopped and looked at me and said, 'You should know that by now,' " she recalls. "And I thought 'I am never going to excel.' "

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding

bkrugby78 · 2020-01-31T02:47:39+00:00

I don't know what you mean by "over here." Like what part of the world? Also, seems like most responses to that tweet disagreed with the poster.

There's been a push in the United States, and probably other Western nations, to encourage more girls to get involved in STEM fields. I imagine because there are not many women in those fields, and those fields are considered more "important" than others, because of technology and stuff. You know, girls can do math too, etc.

For segregated classrooms, by gender, there's a fair bit of layering there. I think some might argue that a girls only class might encourage more girls to be interested, in the idea that maybe they'd feel less intimidated if it were all girls. Grrrl Power...and all that. Which is fine...in the beginning. But what happens over time? When there are grades, ranks etc? High achieving girls can be very competitive. Also, is it really a good idea to segregated genders when the end goal is them working in a place where they will likely work with males.

Personally, considering I do teach high school, I don't see what different it will make. Girls do intimidate other girls, it's pretty much a staple of most high school cultures. If anything, we tend to see more girls succeed than boys.

The idea should be: get everyone interested in STEM, because we hope the future minds will come up with great discoveries later. I'd like to think in this day and age, we've done away with myths about whether boys or girls are smarter. If you'd look at who ends up valedictorian of many schools nowadays, it often seems to be girls. I'm not a big fan of women's empowerment. Let's empower everyone!

I have smart boys and smart girls in the classroom. I also have boys and girls who don't seem to care much about their education. It's part of the struggle, but gender's got little to do with it.

ConnorGracie · 2020-01-30T21:31:54+00:00

The safest place for a woman is in a room full of men. You think they're going to gang up on the woman, they're way more likely to attack each other defending her.

liztu_june · 2020-01-31T15:24:09+00:00

I don't mind people encouraging women to go into STEM as long as you don't pretend it about equality and don't expect men to change for you over none violant behavior.

genkernels · 2020-02-01T11:39:59+00:00

Are they really are popular to enroll in, substantially moreso than mixed? I can see obviously that it is popular to offer them, but I'm not sure the evidence is there for the response.

cromulent_weasel · 2020-01-30T20:38:31+00:00

I'm aware that genuine attempts to answer the questions are raising will attract downvotes, while ones which shit on women will get upvotes. But here goes anyway.

So what is it with the women choosing to participate in female-only STEM classes?

For better of worse, there's a stereotype of geeky guys as being socially awkward, and being the only sexual target around can get REALLY old for flirting and being hit on. Plus whatever success you have is credited with teachers being soft on you for being a girl. And at some point they look around the room and decide 'this isn't the room for me, I shouldn't be here'.

Most women I know who have gone through tech and are working in industry are basically are on the spectrum and have a fireproof hide. That shouldn't be a requirement to passing a university course.

Are they so terrified of men?

No, I don't think they are terrified at all. They are sick of being treated as second class citizens and having to plow through an extra layer of crap that male STEM students don't have to endure.

I'm reading a book right now called Raising Cain: protecting the emotional life of boys and it's making the exact same argument as this thread, but gender flipped and for primary school. Basically, because boys are less mature and less literate at ages 5-8, they should have segregated schools so they don't get permanently branded as slow and dumb simply because they are developmentally delayed compared to their girl peers, who can and do outcompete them. Having a 'safe space' where they can just be themselves without a barrage of subtextual messages that they are a poor fit for the class protects their ego and helps them be positive about themselves and about learning.

Or are they ideologically blinded?

I don't even know what you are trying to say here.

romulusnr · 2020-01-30T23:11:37+00:00

Supposedly men in a class leads to the prof favoring the men and the men get better grades and stuff. Plus the men lead to an uncomfortable environment for the women because they talk about men stuff.

(There's probably plenty of cases of men talking down to or badly about women in such environments tbf. But it's an apple and bunch question imo.)

Title	Why are female-only STEM classes so popular?
Author	GaborFrame
Upvotes	53
Comments	205
Date	January 30, 2020 7:34 PM UTC (6 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/ewavr2/why_are_femaleonly_stem_classes_so_popular/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/why-are-female-only-stem-classes-so-popular.1064085 https://theredarchive.com/post/1064085

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