{"id":7116,"date":"2017-08-10T11:13:03","date_gmt":"2017-08-10T17:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=7116"},"modified":"2017-08-10T11:13:03","modified_gmt":"2017-08-10T17:13:03","slug":"tech-women-anti-nerdism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/08\/tech-women-anti-nerdism.html","title":{"rendered":"Tech, women, and anti-nerdism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Erlenmeyer<\/p>\n

First of all, I\u2019d like to share a bit of a Megan McArdle article from the other day, \u201cAs a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0After describing an early career as a technology consultant, and her subsequent departure for, eventually, journalism, she writes<\/p>\n

No, the reason I left is that I came into work one Monday morning and joined the guys at our work table, and one of them said \u201cWhat did you do this weekend?\u201d<\/p>\n

I was in the throes of a brief, doomed romance. I had attended a concert that Saturday night. I answered the question with an account of both. The guys stared blankly. Then silence. Then one of them said: \u201cI built a fiber-channel network in my basement,\u201d and our co-workers fell all over themselves asking him to describe every step in loving detail.<\/p>\n

At that moment I realized that fundamentally, these are not my people. I liked the work. But I was never going to like it enough to blow a weekend doing more of it for free. Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job as the guys around me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Second, a statistic from my twitter feed, linking to an article at the World Economic Forum<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Parental influence is also a factor. An OECD report found parents are \u201cmuch more likely to expect their sons to work in STEM careers than daughters, even if they show the same ability\u201d. The report found 50% of parents in Chile, Hungary and Portugal expect their sons to work in STEM fields, but less than 20% expect the same of their daughters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This comes from a report analyzing PISA data<\/a>\u00a0(very rich with data); here\u2019s the full table (from page 140) \u2013 why only these selected countries are included isn\u2019t clear to me:<\/p>\n

\"PISA<\/p>\n

Now, I know there are a lot of issues surrounding these questions. \u00a0Are girls discouraged from studying math and science? \u00a0Are boys given more support in their out-of-school science-related hobbies? \u00a0Are women discriminated against in entering tech fields or harassed once they enter the field? \u00a0etc.<\/p>\n

But consider this: \u00a0why is there such a push for women to go into STEM fields? \u00a0Partly, yes, there are nice thoughts about the great contributions women can make, but there\u2019s also an assumption that this needs to happen for purposes of gender equity, because these fields are\u00a0highly-paid. \u00a0After all, men also make up a disproportionate number of trash collectors and this doesn\u2019t cause any anxiety from anyone.<\/p>\n

But at the same time, those careers may be high-paid, but they\u2019re not particularly high-status, by which I mean that the individuals working in those fields don\u2019t have a lot of social prestige. \u00a0They\u2019re stereotyped as nerds, and largely because the stereotype tends to be true. \u00a0When we repeat the \u201cdo what you love\u201d mantra, we don\u2019t have in mind crunching numbers or coding. \u00a0When parents encourage their sons to go into STEM fields more frequently than their daughters, isn\u2019t it possible that part of the reason is the perception that boys are disproportionately likely to be weak in social skills, so be considered ill-suited for other types of work, relative to girls? \u00a0A girl, on the other hand, why, \u201cshe can do anything,\u201d and pursue her dreams, so why not dream of something better than sitting at a computer writing code?<\/p>\n

But now, rather than conceding certain occupations as a refuge for nerds, we\u2019ve upped our demand that all occupations belong to those strong in social skills, and that the nerds have no place in society. \u00a0In yet another variant of Boys Are Bad and Girls Are Good, we now need girls in computer science and engineering because their superior social skills and care for the environment and for others will Make The World A Better Place, and, indeed, the way to persuade them to enter these fields is by marketing them was Ways To Make The World Better.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s one final data point: \u00a0STEM careers are only a small portion of the working world, and career ambitions cover a much wider of fields. \u00a0Here\u2019s the OECD graph plotting boys\u2019 and girls\u2019 career ambitions by status, according to a standardized framework:<\/p>\n

\"ambitions\"<\/p>\n

The overall low scores of places like Germany and Switzerland are explained in the study as due to the apprenticeship and tracking systems of those countries:<\/p>\n

Figure 4.7 shows that in countries where students are sorted into separate tracks before they are 15 years old, students hold particularly low expectations for their future occupations. This may be because those who are already in education tracks that do not lead to professional and managerial jobs tend to adjust their expectations accordingly and align their expectations to fit what is expected of them (Buchmann and Park, 2009). In contrast, students in more open, comprehensive systems can nurture hopes to be employed in jobs that require high skills, even if they have no real chance of attaining their goals. Students who hold high expectations may be more motivated and ready to put time and effort into their studies because they can see purpose and meaning in their pursuit of excellence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But of the sex differences, the report offers no explanation, only a description:<\/p>\n

across almost all countries and economies that participated in PISA 2006, girls held more ambitious career expectations than boys. On average across OECD countries, girls were 11 percentage points more likely than boys to expect to work as legislators, senior officials, managers and professionals. France, Germany and Japan were the only OECD countries where similar proportions of boys and girls aspired to these occupations, while in Switzerland and the partner economies Hong Kong-China and Chinese Taipei, boys generally held slightly more ambitious expectations than girls. The gender gap in career expectations was particularly wide in Greece, Poland and the partner countries Azerbaijan, Brazil, Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Uruguay. In all of these countries, the proportion of girls who expected to work as legislators, senior officials, managers or professionals was 20 percentage points larger than the proportion of boys who expected to work in those occupations (ISCO88 groups 1 and 2).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So that\u2019s my vague and ill-defined gripe\/set of observations for the day.<\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0Erlenmeyer Laboratory Chemistry Science Flasks, from http:\/\/maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com\/Erlenmeyer-Laboratory-Chemistry-Science-Flasks-606611<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First of all, I\u2019d like to share a bit of a Megan McArdle article from the other day, \u201cAs a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My People.\u201d \u00a0After describing an early career as a technology consultant, and her subsequent departure for, eventually, journalism, she writes No, the reason I left is that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":6261,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[438,710,708,709,105],"class_list":["post-7116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-equity","tag-google","tag-nerds","tag-stem"],"yoast_head":"\nTech, women, and anti-nerdism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"First of all, I'd like to share a bit of a Megan McArdle article from the other day, "As a Woman in Tech, I Realized: These Are Not My 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