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If you ask me, you're making this discussion about sexism.
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<p>Maybe we have experiences that you do not. I'm truly not trying to jump on you here. I'm just saying that since the sexism isn't directed at you, you have no particular reason to notice it unless you happen to be present for a blatant example by coincidence.</p>
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Do any of the females that post here have any personal experiences where they were treated differently in engineering classes because they are female?
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<p>Not so much "treated differently in engineering classes", but I can certainly cite some examples of sexism that I have witnessed/experienced:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Being told with no evidence that I only got into my (tech) school because I'm female and that I took a hypothetical more-qualified male's spot away (this one has happened many times, though fortunately it generally didn't come from classmates).</p></li>
<li><p>Listening to male engineering students talk about how women in sci/eng are hideously ugly (or, in a common variant, about how it'll probably be easy to get them in bed because they must be desperate since they're ugly). I've also heard a lot of jokes about how it's easier for women to pass classes because they can just sleep with their TAs, or people commenting that an attractive woman with good grades probably earned them by sleeping with TAs.</p></li>
<li><p>Overhearing two physics profs in a lunch line talk about how the school should stop admitting so many women and URMs because they dragged down the quality of the student body (women actually have a higher graduation rate at this school).</p></li>
<li><p>Hearing people refer to what they considered easy classes as "girly".</p></li>
<li><p>Hearing people make jokes about women seeking "MRS degrees".</p></li>
<li><p>I have pretty often, in a variety of contexts, had people assume that I was a lesbian because of my sci/eng interests. Not that there is anything wrong with being a lesbian, but it's not accurate.</p></li>
<li><p>I have had people (not profs or classmates, thankfully) ask me if I'm in sci/eng because I think it will be easier to find a boyfriend in a male-dominated field, or assume that that was my motive.</p></li>
<li><p>In particular, I have seen more femme women be dismissed by classmates or ignored by instructors, and more femme women in sci/eng have told me that people openly express disbelief when they say that they are in sci/eng.</p></li>
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<p>The blatantly sexist people were never a majority, and usually outside my subculture (a friend of mine did a survey at my college several years ago and found that women who lived in some parts of campus had experienced more sexist treatment than women in other parts of campus, and most of the comments that I refer to above that came from students, came from students who weren't in my dorm or social circle), but it gets annoying pretty quickly, you know?</p>
<p>My college was actually, IMO, quite good about this sort of thing, relatively speaking. Pre-college, I remember plenty of instances like people turning around and staring when I walked into the room, opposing academic team coaches chewing out their players for not being able to answer a science or math question faster than a girl, people making casual comments about girls not being cut out for math and science, etc, etc. A friend of mine had her physics teacher tell her that "over [his] dead body" would a girl be the captain of the physics team, and another friend (who went on to be a math major in college) had her school counselor tell her that as a girl there was no point in her taking more math.</p>
<p>I haven't even touched the issue of subconscious bias and the subtle ways in which it affects people. There's plenty of social psych lit on subconscious bias and its implications.</p>