<p>Things have changed a lot for women in STEM fields, if only on the generational time scale. I have been surprised when I have read about remnants of gender stereotyping at MIT, such as that reported in the original article, “Silent Technical Privilege.”</p>
<p>molliebatmit had first-hand experience with MIT as an undergrad, while I was there more briefly as a post-doc. I think that there is little gender discrimination at either level, or in between, at MIT, and at most places in the US. That is not to say that there is none.</p>
<p>@QuantMech: Oh. OK. Rhodes was gender-neutral when I was in school, so I was not aware of this.</p>
<p>Deep Springs seems like a very interesting place. I have heard of it over the years. It is a 2-year school with a total enrollment of 26 students. I am sure you could also think of an example of female exclusivity at the undergraduate level that impacts at least as many individuals. ;)</p>
<p>From Wikipedia: “From its inception in 1917, the college [Deep Springs] has been all-male, until its board voted, in fall 2011, that it will begin accepting female students in the summer of 2013.[1] There are currently active legal challenges to the Trustees’ action, disputing their authority to change the admissions policy, including an injunction preventing the college from accepting female students and delaying coeducation until the 2015-2016 academic year at the earliest.”</p>
<p>My hope is that my contributions to a specific board help a person seeking knowledge in the subject area of that board. I don’t think I am really doing that right now, so I will sign off. Carry on, all. :)</p>
<p>The original link in the first post was written by a friend of mine from MIT, who felt that he had witnessed examples of insidious discrimination during his undergraduate years, which is why I posted it on the MIT board. </p>
<p>Because MIT is a school overwhelmingly populated by science and engineering majors, I think these discussions about privilege and gender in sci/tech careers benefit MIT applicants, students, and alums, as well as anyone else who is interested in these issues. </p>
<p>It’s really troubling to me that your friend witnessed that kind of discrimination as an undergrad at MIT, Mollie!<br>
I have to say, “Kudos to him for noticing it!” Some men would not have picked up on part of it.</p>
<p>I wonder whether this kind of discrimination is actually more common at the more rigorous schools? I guess with your experience at MIT and Harvard, it’s hard for you to provide first-hand comparisons with universities that are less rigorous. But I wonder whether the self-doubt of young men faced with academic challenges might make some of them more prone to subtle discrimination? Although I recall that some of the discrimination was attributed to people further along the career track.</p>
<p>I really hope that you will find that discrimination goes away in your lifetime!</p>
<p>Finally, I have to admit that I was taken in–hook, line, and sinker–by your friend’s initial story of his computer prowess at a young age. </p>
<p>I do think that Phil is remarkably aware of these issues, and I think his perceptiveness will serve him very well in his new faculty job. 
</p>
<p>I agree that a lot of people at MIT, whatever their chromosomal arrangement, have intense cases of impostor syndrome from time to time, and I think that self-doubt can sometimes be read by outsiders. To make matters worse, everybody has very high expections for themselves, and it can be easy to believe that your worst critics are closer to the truth than your best advocates.</p>
<p>I hope I will find that discrimination goes away in my lifetime, too. </p>
<p>I wasn’t in a technical course, so I guess I never experienced most of this. In the GIRs and RESTs I took early on as well as in the more math-heavy electives I took later on, my professors and TAs seemed to treat me as well as any of the guys. There was one TA in an econ class who I had to make a complaint about, but his behavior was simply mean-spirited, unrelated to gender.
Still, MIT’s not in a vacuum. I noticed that guys in my classes were more likely to raise their hands and volunteer answers, even when they were wrong. Harvard Business School, I’ve read, has instituted cold calling to try to reduce any advantage men might have from being more willing to provide answers. It’s also definitely true that some of the more technical classes are male dominated while courses 9 and 7 are majority women. And there’s a ton of stereotyping based on major. It’s annoying in general, but it also makes you wonder - how much are the stereotypes about the subject matter and how much are they about the groups of people in the major?</p>
<p>Honestly, I worried a lot more about encountering racial discrimination than gender discrimination. Of course, they intersect. In the class of 2014, the overall male to female ratio is about 55 to 45 (not too shabby!), but the black male to black female ratio is much, much higher. I can’t imagine why that is.</p>
<p>In any case, MIT seems to me better than the post-graduate world on both these counts. </p>