Gender Issues Start Sooner Than You Think
It’s a good post, linking to another good post. Go read it/them.
The more of this stuff I see, though, the more I think that many women-in-STEM initiatives in higher ed are aiming at the wrong target. If you want to really change things, you need to start earlier. About eighteen years earlier, probably more (since the minds you really need to change are the parents’).
(Of course, to be fair to those initiatives, they’re working on changing what they can. College faculty have a fairly minimal ability to affect the conditions even at their own children’s schools and day care centers, but they have a good deal more flexibility to affect their own classes and departments. And even too little, too late is better than nothing at all.)
From my own perspective, I used to observe and even weigh in on some of the STEM gender discussions, only to have the attitude that “it’s university-level discrimination, and only university-level discrimination, dammit” prevail, and anyone not toeing the line getting lambasted, regardless of the validity of their argument. This happened too many times, in a setting of a bunch of scientists, which I found to be dismaying. Thus I usually duck or run the other way when the subject comes up these days. I have no use for conversation where volume is substituted for facts.
There are no female scientists, or Hispanic scientists, or Jewish scientists; or diversity scientists, or minority scientists; or sexually harassed Black Muslim lesbian single mother of six intellectually challenged intravenous drug addict with AIDS doing the Macarena in a wheelchair scientists.
There are objectively-qualified scientists, now in 100% oversupply, at least. Save the drama for your Mama. March or die. For every stupid, pathetic, and Officially Sad poster child scientist there is a fully qualified intellect told to bugger off.
When the congenitally inconsequential are compassionately inserted into organic chemistry labs, they die of their own hand. That occured with considerable frequency over the past ten years. Think of it as evolution in action.