In these scenarios, boys find groups that are supportive. In their case the video game playing, computer oriented, math/physics/etc. "nerds" are one such social group.
The entire point of the article is that those same groups are not supportive for women and girls.
It has nothing to do with them being so strong and manly that they can stand up to the bullies and pursue computer science anyway! It's that they find a safe haven in those social groups where they are not bullied and are inclusive.
The way bullying works with boys and girls is very different. A boys greatest wish when bullied is to be left alone by the bullies. A girls greatest wish is to avoid being excluded. In general anyway.
As long as I have enough good friends, I don't really care what anyone else thinks of me. My wife on the other hand would be incredibly distressed to find out 80% of her colleagues etc disliked her.
That's the definition of desiring inclusion.
If all of those friends that accepted you were marketing majors and not computer scientists the odds you'd pursue computer science goes way down. Particularly if the computer scientists were the bullies.
The point of the article is the computer (and in her case physics/science) culture was hostile to women, not inclusive.
Previously when viewing a thread like this I would take a perspective of "It's not discrimination, they just don't want to do it". Now I want to think about it some more in the context of what I just said.
As a corollary however, is it really a good thing to push a gender towards a particular field? Anecdotally in the case of SE there seems to be a huge amount of anxiety, depression, and various social issues, that comes with the work load. I often wonder if my life would be better had I never taken to computers. Interesting food for thought, do any of us really know what's "best for us" on a societal level?
> a perspective of "It's not discrimination, they just
> don't want to do it".
Well, maybe that wasn't exactly wrong. Or rather, there are different motivations for entering the profession. For males "love of technology" is a much stronger motivating factor, whereas for females it is "job security", "ease of entry" and "flexible working hours" [1]. All other factors surveyed were not different.
When it comes to experience in the job, the only difference found was that women received greater support and mentoring from their superiors.[2].
This is from a study published in the Communications of the ACM as "Women and men in the IT profession"[3]. Although not as interesting an anecdote as the NY Times article, and not fitting the current narrative, the study does have actual data. It concludes that women and men in tech are more alike than different, that the primary difference coming in is "love of tech" vs "good benefits" and that the biggest difference when in the field is that women get slightly better support from their bosses.
Come on in, the water is fine!
[1] http://deliveryimages.acm.org/10.1145/1320000/1314229/figs/t...
[2] http://deliveryimages.acm.org/10.1145/1320000/1314229/figs/t...
[3] http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-t...
I don't think the suggestion is being made to push genders toward a particular field. I believe the case being made is that the status quo is that genders are pushed towards certain careers due to cultural biases and antagonistic or hostile group behavior that goes unchecked by the larger communities in certain groups.
The question being asked is how we, as a society, can stop pushing genders into certain roles. In particular, regarding the field of computer science and engineering.
That said, as controversial as there is, I think there is a bit of a genetic component here. Not that girls are genetically less capable of being good engineers or even of being nerds, but rather, that men may be genetically more likely to have obsessive and solitary interests, including things that seem to be borderline on the autistic spectrum.
Men are 8x more likely to be diagnosed with high-functioning autism than women are.
If there is a genetic component to this [1], then the numbers of female nerds are probably always going to be lower than female nerds. But awareness and support of female nerds is certainly important.
[1] http://www.autism.org.uk/about-autism/introduction/gender-an... (See section about chromosomal differences)
Girls in secondary education, though, seem to be all-too-ready to screw over each other and throw "friends" under the bus if there is any perceived benefit socially (saw this happen with family and female friends).
It's downright ugly.
Where did you read that? I wrote sufficiently interested. And no, not because there's a "safe group", but because they lose themselves in the technology and f*ck the groups.
