One of the all girls HS in my area hosted a lego robotics competition for middle schoolers where we used to live. They also promoted the SWE Next programs for high school girls. The flip side though was they were the same school that didn’t offer AP Physics C because “girls don’t take that class.”
My D chose a STEM focused HS instead. There were no unisex clubs. There were only two girls in her AP physics C class. She had to fight to be heard, fight to be able to do labs, etc… Fast forward 5 years and my D has been one of the only women in the room at most of her co-op sites and is in a very male dominated field. It’s a struggle.
I will say that boys do seem to be less open to getting help and going for tutoring. During freshman orientation, the engineering team did a team building exercise where it was impossible to succeed without asking for help. The girls figured it out way before the bulk of the boys. They did it to highlight that you can’t get through engineering alone.
As a 50 year old female engineer, I definitely am aware of the challenges women have historically faced. However, as a mom of two boys in an economically disadvantaged area with limited resources, I often found it hard to find ways to expose them to STEM growing up. Researching camps and activities - almost all of them were for girls or minorities. Ones that were open to all came with a price we could not afford. And our city is a small blue collared city. There just aren’t many people to shadow, or places to go.
I sometime chuckle at suggestions of math competitions, chess club, etc. I had no idea Math competitions existed until I came here and that was after older S was in college. So much of that just doesn’t exist here
And asking a kid to start a club doesn’t really work. Mine would have wanted to join to see if they liked it and was something they might want to pursue. It’s hard to start a club if you have no idea what goes on, not to mention find a teacher sponsor. Our HS teachers at our failing HS are so overworked and stressed. You’re not going to find many willing to take anything else on.
But is “stepping up” necessarily defined as applying to and succeeding at college? As mentioned upthread, not everyone needs to go to college. Not everyone should go to college. College really shouldn’t be only standard and, also as mentioned upthread, there are numerous trades that don’t require college that can be quite lucrative (sometimes even more so than the office job that a college graduate might get).
There’s nothing wrong with learning a solid skill that can earn you a good living. But then this is also still quite gendered: of course there are women plumbers and damn fine ones, but the majority of plumber are men. Same for mechanics, electricians, etc. So the most viable alternatives to college - skilled trades - are very much male-dominated professions, meaning these alternatives are more available to men than women, whereas women who choose not to attend college are left with fewer viable options to earn a good income. Women who want to earn a good living in most cases need a college degree. Less true for men.
Our daughter is an engineering manager now, and she has developed a very thick skin from similar experiences to yours. She has a loud voice- it’s not shrill, it’s booming. Early in her career, people trying to speak over her found out, really quickly, how her “assertiveness” did not yield.
In her job, she assigns tasks and, initially, she came off as “witchy”, but now, in her latest company, they see her as an asset because her teams get the jobs done efficiently. Her organization skills are a huge asset. She recognizes the skills sets of her team and rotates assignments so that no one person always get stuck with the grunt work for very long.
Her team loves working for her. The clients now know, not to BS her because her ability to recall technical standards, physics limitations, and rules/ regulations/laws is amazing. She can do calculations in her head.
She is aware that when woman are assertive in their fields, they are called a certain word.
When men are assertive, they are complimented. She doesn’t care what people call her because she figures as long as she gets the job done, in a cost effective manner, she’s completed her job description. It took her a while to develop her thick skin; but it is really thick.
I absolutely want girls to succeed in STEM fields. I do not think that broadly eliminating boys from participating in clubs geared towards STEM is the way to do it. It doesn’t teach the boys anything, breeds resentment, and frankly, it doesn’t help the girls in the long run either.
No idea about the motivation of the original poster, but it’s pretty cool to see the thoughtful discussion that this thread has engendered. (Pun intended)
For the record, I don’t think that, but I also think the problem isn’t really solvable at the college level. With so much in education, you are really talking about things that start from birth, and not just in schools but also families and popular culture and on and on.
So by college, if only 40% of the applicants to selective colleges are boys, it is way too late. And I note even turning that into 40% of attendees is basically requiring some not-so-subtle “affirmative action” at various colleges.
So I don’t want to say this isn’t a problem, or that it is problem that can be solved by telling boys to toughen up (which is about the opposite of what they need, in fact).
But how do you change a society’s entire way of raising children from birth through high school? Not easy.
I agree wholeheartedly that changes would need to start very early, like in elementary school.
My daughter, from day one, was beloved by teachers. It was her natural inclination to please them. Her energy level was moderate and she moderated it well in the classroom.
My son, on the other hand, had an abundance of energy. Sitting still was not a strength, though he was certainly ready for the content covered in these early grades. This is not remarkable—I saw many boys in his lower elementary years struggle to contain their energy.
My son had a few teachers who dealt with this well—including a favorite who let him do a lap around the track for every paragraph or worksheet he completed. He had other teachers who did not, and used his energy against him, criticizing him and making him feel bad about his “performance” in school. We even moved him out of a school because the administrators and teachers didn’t seem equipped or interested in managing the situation without harming his self esteem. My biggest concern in those years was convincing him that he was not “bad” at school. I saw many boys treated terribly by overworked and impatient teachers, and I felt terrible for everyone involved.
But it is no wonder to me that boys choose not to apply to college (or they don’t have the grades for competitive admissions) after a decade or more of that kind of criticism—which may, over decades, lead to the gender imbalances we do see today.
A bit of a tangent, but this recent guest essay is related to your post about the bind women are in when they try to speak up. I found the article interesting because I tend to use “weak language” in certain settings, and even before reading this article, I had been thinking about the topic quite a bit. However, it also feels like a generalization. I know that I use that sort of language, but I haven’t really noticed other women doing it as well.
Older S got lucky with his kindergarten teacher. I used to help volunteer with the reading groups and she told me how he was a fidgeter. From the neck up, he would always be focused on his work, but something always had to be moving. Sometimes he would be doing his work, writing, etc. and his lower body would be circling the chair. She didn’t mind since he was doing the work and not disrupting anyone else.
That kid was born moving. He never was still as a baby. He only let me rock him once in his life when he was sick. At some point he grew out of it. He played the lazy teenager part quite well too.
How AWFUL! I really get incensed when teachers label a kid as “bad” because that young child is fidgety and hasn’t learned how to direct his/her energy. The really SAD part is that the teacher makes his feelings known, indirectly, to the rest of the class and the rest of the class also labels the child as a troublemaker. The label sticks. A good teacher, uses his/her previous experience to know how to channel each child’s energy.
I’ve had to teach language lessons to TK and Kinder classes. When children announce to me that “Joey” was in the office for being “bad”, I immediately stop the class and loudly state: [color=blue] “Excuse me! No child is BAD. You are all TOO YOUNG to be BAD and I never want to hear another one of you say that you, a classmate or a friend is BAD. There are children who can be ‘naughty’ because they are still learning how to be good listeners, but they are not bad!”[/color]
The message sticks with these kids, at this age, in the same way that we need to direct equitable ways to ask for help for male/female/other young children and adolescents.
