Originally a comment by latsot on Hey, 13% is practically half.
When I studied computer science in the 80s, there were four women on a course with about 80 people who weren’t women. The women were not, in general, treated with a great deal of respect.
There were a lot of conversations about them among the men, including speculation about why they were on the course in the first place, what they would have to do to pass the course (hard work, skill and intelligence were rarely considered as possibilities), and exactly how certain men expected to help them do that regardless – as far as I could tell – of whether they wanted any help.
I don’t remember the motives of the men taking the course being questioned.
I do remember the women being widely criticised for pairing up with each other for group assignments. I wonder why they did that. I also remember that they tended to do their lab work in the library clusters rather than the computer science ones. Again, just about impossible to work out why.
Most of the men on that course seemed to think they were being welcoming to computer science students who were women because they wanted them to be on the course. The fact that they wanted women to be on the course because maybe they’d be able to fuck them didn’t strike those men as being largely unwelcoming and presumably unwelcome.
Decades later, I still work on and off for universities and things are certainly a bit better in computer science departments, at least among faculty (I don’t usually have anything to do with teaching). But when I bring this sort of thing up, the answer is always:
“We’ve got X women in fairly high positions in the faculty, what more do you want?”
There’s all sorts of wrong here but what curdles my piss is that it’s hardly about what *I* want. You’re asking *me* why I think it’s bad that you’re responding to criticisms of having hardly any top faculty members who are women by asking *me* what ratio I’d approve of?
Holy cocksucking Christ.
As Notorious RBG said, when asked “how many women justices on the Supreme Court would be enough?” answered, “Nine.”
“I don’t remember the motives of the men taking the course being questioned.”
Well you know men’s reasons are completely valid and rational, women can only enter into the field because they have ulterior motives!
Sarcasm aside, as an outsider to the field, what are some things I can do to try and help women in fields where they’re heavily discriminated against? I talk about it publicly sometimes, but I want to do more.
Matthew Ostergren @2:
First, don’t reinvent the wheel. More than likely someone has already started an initiative and considered that question. Check their recommendations, and decide from there.
If you can’t find an initiative, borrow ideas from one in a related field and create your own. Be sure to listen to the people you’re trying to help during this, as at minimum they can describe the problem better than you can thanks to direct experience.
Finally, don’t underestimate the power of talking about the problem. How else can you influence other people’s opinions?
HJ Hornbeck @3:
Thank you for the link. I’m checking it out now.
The sad thing is, I studied computer science in the early 2000’s and it wasn’t much different then either Most of the women who started the course with me had dropped out by year two or three.