Nerd Girls redux August 25, 2010
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, engineering, feminism, science, societal commentary.Tags: Amp Hour, feminism, nerd girls, sexism, shopping
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I promise not to turn this into a weekly installment of “reactions to what Chris and Dave said”…unless, of course, they keep saying things I feel require a response.
In the fifth Amp Hour, they discussed the Nerd Girls upcoming reality show. I’ve discussed them a couple times before, and at best, my feelings are ambivalent. Rather than responding to the concept of Nerd Girls, I think it’s better to respond to the things the Chris and Dave said because there were some items that stuck out as misconceptions.
First, I agree entirely that the best way to encourage young women to get into engineering is by introducing them to engineering as a fun activity. (I became interested in programming when I was 9 and have felt that was what piqued my interest in science and engineering. Funny how I ended up doing simulation work.) On the other hand, that’s only half the problem. There really is a strong social disapproval of women who want to go into engineering. I think, for example, of my niece. Her aunt and and uncle are both engineers. She did very well in calculus. When she said she hadn’t determined a major when she entered college, I suggested engineering. The look I got from everyone in her family was pretty much, “Are you crazy?!”
Dave mentioned that the point of the show was that “you can be a traditionally girly-type girl and still be an engineer” but then wondered if that was really needed.
My answer is: definitely. Physics could use it, too. Shows like this are probably not going to appeal to men, and I suspect some of that is a rejection of wanting to deal with the things that strike them as too feminine. Both Chris and Dave said that those types of things shouldn’t be important or at least not as prominent to girls in engineering…but they can be, and I don’t think a lot of men can deal with that. And for younger girls, they have few role models of women who are able to accomplish a healthy balance.
“Fitting in” as a woman in engineering can be harder than you imagine: it really does require taking on a very masculine persona. For a lot of women who go into engineering (and stay), I suspect that some of that isn’t a huge issue. On the other hand, I have noticed that there are marked differences in personality and work between myself and my male coworkers (i.e. everyone else in my group). It is easy to stick out. If you happen to be a woman who likes to dress up daily and wear high heels, you can imagine that the responses of the people around you in that environment will be either derision or the assumption that this means you’re looking for a husband. Chris said, “I don’t want to see them go shopping,” but some women might. In particular, I’m curious how these women can manage being “feminine” engineers without the backlash that such behavior usually brings.
My ambivalence about the whole thing is exactly what Dave said, “And you know they’re going to choose the hot-looking ones.” Indeed, they’re looking for very young women, which would preclude a lot of quite accomplished and talented engineers. Although it’s meant to dispel the myth that “women engineers are ugly,” there’s the counter to that where many men think women are only kept around because they’re eye-candy and not because they’re good engineers.
Ideally, no one should give a damn how a woman looks: they’ll pay more attention to their accomplishments. I think most people strive for this ideal. There are a lot who don’t, however. Fluxor has a great example on his blog, but then Dave even made the comment along the same vein that Kari from Mythbusters was “a bit better to look at” than the other Mythbusters cast. I know it seems like an innocent comment, but it’s the type of thing that makes me cringe all the time. It’s very hard to get away from that, and I don’t think this program is going to do much to help it, at least from the male perspective.
My way to approach this is simply to assume that there is an audience of young women for whom this video will be somewhat inspirational. There are girls who are going to want to see how these women spend their personal time as much as their professional time. I’m just going to hold my breath and hope that they focus more on their intellect than their looks, as unlikely as it seems. I hope the guys will withhold judgement because the intended audience may find the “girly” aspect of the show just as compelling as the engineering side.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
I might be *gasp* a role model March 15, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, feminism, gifted, math, societal commentary, younger son.Tags: feminism, girls, math, nerd girls, role models
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My younger son is in chess club, and one of the girls, whom I’ll call K, is in his class and also in the club. K is a pretty bright cookie as she has won things like spelling bee and chess tournaments. I was picking him up from the club on Tuesday when K said hi as she walked by. A couple seconds later, K came back to ask me if I would be coming to their class for our weekly math lesson this week. I said I would, and she cheerily went on her way.
I went in for our lesson earlier today, only to find that the teacher was sick. Rather than work with the smaller group of kids as planned, I offered to read the whole class a math story (which I’ve been doing every other week). So I read Sir Cumference and the Isle of Immeter. They were all very excited, and there was a lot of discussion about the story.
At the end of the session, one of the girls came up to me (whom I’ll call F). F isn’t in the group I work with regularly, so I don’t know much about her other than she’s not as advanced in math. (I assumed that meant she wasn’t all that interested in it.) She’d been in the restroom and had missed the first page of the story and wanted to see it. I said I could leave the book with her to read. She was very excited. Then K came up and gave me a hug, and after she was finished, F gave me a hug. I was rather shocked, though certainly not unhappy about it.
I’m trying to process it, though, and it seems interesting in light of a couple semi-related things. First, I came across an article about how reducing academic pressure helps kids succeed. Given the younger boy was having huge difficulties with perfectionism, my response to this was, I admit, nothing more than, “Duh!” We’re helping him to deal with this by using his math program. Some days he does very well, other days, he’ll get somewhere between 75% and 80% right. I try to tell him that I appreciate his hard work, and that if he doesn’t get it right, it only means he needs more practice. He’s also learning that he almost never gets 100%…and that is making him okay with doing things wrong. Yeah, he still gets frustrated, but he’s not so scared to try anymore.
However, I realized that I’m kind of doing this with the kids I’ve been working with at school. I’m doing stuff with them that I don’t completely expect them to get, but I also don’t get upset if they get it wrong. And there’s no grades. We’re doing it to have fun and to learn, and I think the kids really like doing something just for fun.
Another recent event was when a coworker started lamenting to me how his daughters, who are middle school aged, seem uninterested in math. Being an engineer, he’s very disappointed, especially because they seem to be quite good at it. I suggested he get the books written by Danica McKellar and give them to his daughters.
Now, I have to say that I can’t imagine myself reading those books when I was that age (of course, I could very well be wrong – although I had some unusual role models). On the other hand, I figure that if there are bright girls out there who are eschewing math and these books get them interested, then I’m all for it. It turns out that my coworker did give them the books and, even better, they really seem to be enjoying them. Maybe they won’t turn into math majors, but he seems a lot happier, and they may be enjoying math more.
I’ve talked about efforts like Nerd Girls in the past, and I have to admit I felt it was stupid to try to ‘girlify’ engineering to attract women. On the other hand, I’m obviously the kind of woman who wasn’t very stuck on social messages about women in science or engineering. It’s not hard to imagine that there are a lot of young, intelligent girls out there who feel social pressure to avoid technical areas because they lack role models. Maybe some of those girls really need things like Nerd Girls and Danica’s books. I don’t have any daughters, so I can’t really say much based on experience. After my experience today, though, I’m wondering if female role models are far more important to some girls than I ever thought.