I almost want to stand up and applaud this quite outstanding level of whataboutery for the poor menz...

[ShotsFired]

Original article link (depressing, not surprising etc): www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2017/aug/30/keith-mann-the-inside-man-who-has-exposed-tech-industry-sexism

Comment:
I believe in equal opportunities , not equal outcomes . That said , I smile at the amount of time examining sexism in tech / science / engineering when there is a dearth of consideration given to the catastrophic loss of male teachers , desperately needed to reach out to disillusioned boys . Male teachers are an endangered species in primary schools and it's getting that way in secondary also . This is spreading to other 'caring' professions too as I noticed when visiting prospective universities with my daughter . 90% plus of psychology graduates are now women ..... at s time when men's mental health is in crisis . But hey , who cares?

I expect he's is too busy to write more bunkum because he spends his life campaigning and working to improve the ratios of men in teaching and other caring professions, given how strongly he feels about it. Right? Rght...? Hello?

You know, I wonder if MrWhataboutery is going to make the connections and get really active about the other issues in education, around representation and diversity (especially issues of SEN and race)? I think there's a huge issue about race and SEN and staffing in education.

I doubt MrWhataboutery is going to be leading the charge on that issue, either.

I think that;s what I most hate about Whataboutery. It never, ever aims at extension, alliances or making connections. It is always about closing down attempts at advancement.

I have to say I don't quite understand this fixation on getting women into tech. Why tech specifically? There are lots of other employment sectors in which they're woefully unrepresented: surgeons, carpenters, chefs, firefighters, pilots. Furthermore, high end tech jobs account for a relatively small proportion of the overall workforce and are predicted to dwindle. It seems like we're desperate to get kids coding by the age of two our whatever, but only so a fraction of them can make it.

Men shouldn't be allowed to become teachers in the first place, imo.

Interesting. How so?

Oh god the women making notes...

I hosted a meeting once where the client company was coming into our office. As I was hosting I was in the meeting room early - the clients (who id only communicated with via email) were late and I was just directing the caterers to set out teas and coffees and whatnot. Our junior (male) was there to take minutes.

Caterers leaving after being thanked politely and client arrived and started sitting down. I went over to do the Introductions and they started TELLING me what coffees they wanted and where I should sit to do the minutes so I wouldn't be in the way, and to sort them coffee until dr. Anatidea arrived. Utterly dismissive and rude. So what do you do? You can't be rude can you, even though you're seething.

"The coffee is self serve, gentlemen. Let me introduce mark, who is here to take minutes." And bless him (his first job as an intern too) he deadpans "thank you dr anatidea, where do you want me to sit to do the minutes - I don't want to be in the way..."

Why tech specifically? There are lots of other employment sectors in which they're woefully unrepresented: surgeons, carpenters, chefs, firefighters, pilots.

Probably because someone got the idea and everyone else is uncreative? Also, because it is easy to say that the problem is "girls aren't interested in tech".

I did see campaigns to get women into firefighting, and am myself very much for getting women to become pilots. (Though piloting is a lot about tech nowadays, isn't it?)

Why there's no big campaign to get more women interested in becoming chefs is kinda self-evident. I mean, girls are plenty socialised to learn cooking.
If you pointed out how few female chefs there are, you'd have to admit that the problem is not girls not being interested in the job, but men keeping them out of it.

(And I suspect the same is true for surgeons. Women are interested in studying medicine, there's no problem with that. If you talk about how surgeons have work hours that are unsuitable to people who have children they actually take responsibility for, again, you'd have to address the core of the problem that's patriarchal workplace structures)

As for carpenters, I guess feminists aren't much interested in that because women can earn as much money as a carpenter in a different job, even though that job might require a higher education.
(MRAs often complain that there's too few women in, I don't know, garbage collection, or the military, but aren't really invested in making those jobs more welcoming to women.)

What is the problem here though Vestal? Is it that women are applying for tech jobs (and per your point about piloting, I mean communications technology) and being turned down in place of men? If so, that should be fairly easy to substantiate. Or is it the problem with women not being inclined (for whatever reason) into going in to tech? I'm not sure what you do about the latter possibility. Whatever the reason, I'm not sure a corrective can be socially engineered.

As for carpenters, I guess feminists aren't much interested in that because women can earn as much money as a carpenter in a different job, even though that job might require a higher education.

I don't understand this.

(MRAs often complain that there's too few women in, I don't know, garbage collection, or the military, but aren't really invested in making those jobs more welcoming to women.)

How would you make garbage collection more welcoming to women exactly?

How would you make garbage collection more welcoming to women exactly

Seem to be quite a few women doing it where I live. Ditto truck driving.

Surgeons - that is changing as the intake to medical schools become more female. It takes decades to train, so that's something that will take time to filter through. But don't worry, this government is hell bent on breaking the power of the BMA. Once it does, pay and conditions will drop and the men will be less represented.

Stem and tech - well it's obvious surely? Unlike being a firefighter or soldier which needs a degree of physical strength (which of course women CAN posses) tech has no need to be gender biased. You don't need a penis to do anything techie yet women are woefully underrepresented in the field (it's my field.)

The problem isn't women being turned away ffs. It's that girls are socialised from birth to be sweet and nice and wear fucking pink frocks that aren't amenable to climbing trees and wading in ponds. It's that girls toys are predominantly 'caring' based and the exciting stuff is branded for boys. Even lego, which used to be about as egalitarian as it gets, now has a pink girlie version.

Girls are told to be nice. To be quiet. To not get dirty playing (if they even can with their crap shoes and dresses)
They are told that dinosaurs are for boys
They are told, through he media, that the boy is the roughty toughty adventurous archaeologist and they are the prize at the end of the film.
That boys are better at ...

And then we wonder 'gosh are women being turned down for roles in tech?' No! They're not even applying!

It needs to start from the bottom. Boys and girls need to play with dolls. Boys and girls need to play with construction kits. Boys need to be not mocked for playing at caring roles/girls need to be told they can be the archaeologist and not the screamy ditzy prize at the end of the film.

And on and on. When children are allowed to be children and play unhindered by he pink/blue shit. When women and men play equal roles in household maintenance, and child rearing. When they have truly equal parental leave... maybe, just maybe we will see a few more women physicists and male primary teachers.

It does men and women a disservice to be so gender stereotyped

The problem isn't women being turned away ffs. It's that girls are socialised from birth to be sweet and nice and wear fucking pink frocks that aren't amenable to climbing trees and wading in ponds. It's that girls toys are predominantly 'caring' based and the exciting stuff is branded for boys. Even lego, which used to be about as egalitarian as it gets, now has a pink girlie version.

I accept there's some truth in what you say; but at the same time there can not be a direct link between girls playing with dolls and wearing pink clothes and a disinclination to study computer programming twenty years later?

Even if you enforced every gender neutral protocol imaginable in playschools, it is hard to conceive this leading to a spike in female software developers. And come to think about it, how should these measures work? Would girls be left to feel free to play with dolls if they wanted to? Or would they pressured to play with trucks? While I accept that this gendered behaviour is (or very likely is) to a large part socialised, you have to accept that it has been entrenched over centuries. You cannot administratively re-mould people. It doesn't work.

If there is a change in gender norms, this will happen organically, and probably over a long period of time. You cannot force it.

I know a woman studies some engineering related thing, and from what she tells me ... men do create an unwelcoming atmosphere for women by being sexist assholes, plain and simple.

There's several problems here. Girls being socialised to not be interested in certain jobs, women not being hired for those jobs, women being bullied by male colleagues in these jobs, and women not being promoted.

I don't understand this

You don't understand how the main problem about there being "men jobs" and "women jobs" is not that there is a difference, but that the "women jobs" are paid less, and this means that women earn less money than men?

That is THE problem.

Look at the reputation different jobs have in different countries, and how they are paid, and how many women work in them. You will notice something.

In some African country I read about, there are women crops and men crops - and guess which ones are the more profitable ones! In fact, when something becomes profitable, it then becomes a "man" thing.

The inequality in pay and reputation is the CORE of the problem.

We can address this by trying to get girls and boys to enter ALL jobs in entirely the same numbers, and introducing quotas for how many women a company has to promote to top positions.

But the fact that women have less money, while at the same time having to spend more money, is the main problem.

We can address this by trying to get girls and boys to enter ALL jobs in entirely the same numbers

How?!

But the fact that women have less money, while at the same time having to spend more money, is the main problem.

Again, what's the solution to that? I'm not saying there aren't solutions, but I have no idea what feminists think is going to just magically happen by virtue of getting angry on the internet without a strategic solution. Let's say a man works full time and makes £30 K a year (though lots don't, but let's keep this simple and assume they all do) and a woman works part time while looking after the children and earns £20K a year. What should - in practical, realistically achievable terms - be done about that? There's the issue of equal pay for the same work, which is a matter of legislation (I'm in favour of forcing companies to get rid of negotiated salaries and pay pre-agreed flat rates). But beyond that, what do you do?

We don't have to provide strategic solutions to satisfy you John. We are allowed to angry on the internet too and have a discussion around it without having all the answers.

But the post from Anatidae pretty much sums up what the solution is. Remove gender as a hierarchy and gender stereotyping.

We need more stem qualified people in general, there's a huge shortage. Women are woefully underrepresented, so are an untapped talent pool. That's why there are lots of initiatives to get women into stem but not other areas.

It's also how people respond to girls and women. Study after study shows that when schoolwork, paid work, job applications etc are done by a woman, they are judged more harshly than the same work done by a man. Let's look at Uber - they said they were actively going to look for a woman CEO and yet, after that massive search, they couldn't find one. I find it almost impossible to believe that there are no competent women who could do that job. More likely is that the women they looked at were judged on different criteria to the male applicants.

I think people like to focus on pink or dolls because it's easy to dismiss all feminist concerns if it looks like we've taken some kind of inexplicable anti-pink role. But it's deeper. The FT reported a few years ago that girls even get less pocket money!? How? In schools, girls work can be marked more strictly. It all starts with these assumptions about women and girls that are then inbred into our consciousness (and I'm sad to say that many of those studies show that the gender of the person reviewing the material is irrelevant - both women and men are more likely to judge the girl/woman more harshly. Because its ingrained).

GentlemanJohn - for a start, discussing it is PART of the solution. If just one person starts to see the problem every time the conversation comes up, we'll slowly make progress.

But I have some ideas. Unconscious bias training should be mandatory for anyone working with young girls, starting at nursery. Schools should immediately cancel specific "ladylike" requirements for girls' uniform and encourage them to wear similar (and similarly comfortable) clothes as the boys (ditto - I'm all for doing away with the tie for young men at high school, but that's probably a different topic). Toy manufacturers should immediately stop promoting toys as being for either girls or boys. It might well be that those toys will naturally fall more to one or the other, but why do we have to bang on about it?

Fathers should be encouraged to take more paternity leave and to have a higher engagement with family life by encouraging flexibility. Large corporates everywhere could make a huge difference by genuinely instilling these values in their organisations and ensuring that neither men nor women who have family committments are penalised (let's see large city employers providing enhanced paternity leave pay for men as they do for women).

All childcare should be tax free to take the burden off the lowest earner (usually women) and allow them to go back to work. This not only increases employment but would allow women even in lower paid careers to nonetheless have a career and to contribute to their families and their societies. (Perhaps the reason men naturally rise to the top even in professions in which they are the minority is because the women have other commitments and there's no allowance for this).

Men everywhere should stop expecting their female partners to take on the bulk of family care and thinking (I guess you can't legislate or make institutional changes to impact this as with my other examples, but nonetheless, it's important and would go a long way).

Those are just my ideas off the top of my head.

Finally, last comment from me - STEM is important because contrary to a pp on this thread, it is NOT decreasing. Our children today will be far more likely to work in industries and jobs that are tech based (if not as techs). We need women in these jobs now so that they can be part of the way this industry develops and change. We need women to be in leadership positions over time to change the culture and we need women contributing to the massive changes that STEM industries are bringing to our society.

[Ditto, we need more diversity generally in these industries. Did anyone see the video of an automated soap dispenser didn't dispense for a person with dark skin? Fascinating].

I accept there's some truth in what you say; but at the same time there can not be a direct link between girls playing with dolls and wearing pink clothes and a disinclination to study computer programming twenty years later?

I can no longer access the library resources I had when doing my MA, but I have read numerous studies (and written papers on) how children by the age of 4 use gendered language for a job. So, show a 4 year old a picture of a firefighter (just the uniform, no features to distinguish male/female) and they say 'fireman'. If you give them lists of jobs and ask them to organize them, they'll separate them into male and female roles, and label them "nurse" (f) and "doctor" (m). etc. This can happen even when they have a mother who is a doctor or a SAHD so even when their real life, lived experience says that jobs don't have to be so stereotypically gendered, all the other influences of life have taught them otherwise, even before they get to school.

So, yes, there is a link between their play experiences and how they decide which jobs to do.

Gentlemanjohn

Gender stereotyping is getting worse not better. Have you seen this programme?

The BBC broadcast an experiment at a school on seven-year-old children.

The results were quite shocking.

Even at age 7, the girls had very low self-esteem and thought the only thing they could do better than a boy was to be pretty. Aged 7.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09202jz

It's an interesting watch and very revealing. The teacher in question subsequently contributed to a thread on here, about the programme.

I accept there's some truth in what you say; but at the same time there can not be a direct link between girls playing with dolls and wearing pink clothes and a disinclination to study computer programming twenty years later?

Absolutely there is. Direct and irrefutable.

I urge you to watch the programme I mentioned.

And it's not the dolls and the colour. It's that dolls and pink are always and only for girls.

Gender stereotyping is getting worse not better. Have you seen this programme?

Well if that is the case then none of this is working.

None of what is working?

I thought we weren't doing anything, just whinging on the internet?

I'm sorry I don't think 'unconscious bias training' (whatever on earth that is) or any of these strategies are going to change anything to any significant degree. It's behaviourist nonsense.

As for men being encouraged to take more maternity leave - who is going to encourage them and how? Furthermore, if gender is socialised, then you have the problem of women wanting to (or thinking they want to due to their conditioning) look after the children. What happens if I am a progressively minded man and say "I want to take paternity leave and do my bit" and my wife says "no, I want to stay at home and look after the children"? Am I to say " you're only saying that because you have been conditioned to think that as a woman you are the primary carer; stand aside"? How is this to be negotiated? Surely you would have to encourage women not to be the primary carer as much as influence the man?

STEM jobs are decreasing. Big companies want more people trained so they can just pick from a larger pool with less labour rights. The whole point of tech is to reduce labour.

spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth