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0 pointswetmore12y ago0 comments

Yes explain to me how keeping things the way they are will fix the situation.

0 comments

I will do that as soon as you explain how treating female coders as if they were freaks, segregating them in their own class, decreases the problem of integration of more female coders in tech.

Perhaps the issue of "feeling alien to the community" would be improved by, you know, not alienating females from the community, with sexist behavior such as this.

primitivesuave12y ago

I would never consider a female coder to be any different from a male one. I am merely giving anecdotal evidence that female students of the 11 - 17 age group learn significantly better when they are amongst their peers. My decision to make a few of our classes into girls-only ones was to allow the girls who felt uncomfortable in a male-dominated setting to still have an opportunity to learn in a setting they found comfortable. My underlying motivation was not to segregate them, but to give them another option - we still have girls attending our regular classes, and this is hardly the issue that some of the commenters here are making it out to be.

obstacle112y ago

>I would never consider a female coder to be any different from a male one

You literally segregated males from females in your coding class. That is considering them to be different.

>female students of the 11 - 17 age group learn significantly better when they are amongst their peers.

So male students aren't peers of female students? Really?

I'm pretty sure you're not being purposefully malicious, but jeeze... Your philosophy is kinda broken, you don't really seem to realize the (incredibly sexist) assumptions you're making, and that's going to lead to reinforcing a gender divide, not solving any problems.

4 more replies

forgotmycreds12y ago

You make it sound like there were boys running around them in circles every class all class long. But its a good discussion, hope one of you comes with a less dramatic solution.

vacri12y ago

"Hey, female coder, you can choose to be in a co-ed class or a female-only one, your choice" is hardly treating them as freaks. You're completely misrepresenting the original commentor.

shangxiao12y ago

imho, I think we should target less popular and possibly more important situations (all relative, I know) such as helping people in 3rd world nations to get better access to IT & education.

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