Girl-only science classes vital for gender balance, says leading Scots engineer

Submitted by Mastodon on Sun, 2019-10-06 14:52

Article here. Excerpt:

'One of Scotland’s leading female engineers wants girl-only science classes in primary schools to stop female pupils being overwhelmed by “pushy” boys and “brainwashed” into thinking they are useless at technical subjects.

Dr Carol Marsh, deputy head of electronic engineering at the Edinburgh site of Leonardo, one of the UK’s leading aerospace companies, and a former president of the Women’s Engineering Society, said women were missing out on professional STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) jobs because of being deterred at an early age.

Just 22 per cent of the UK’s STEM workforce is female according to the Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey.'

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Comments

Given that boys lag behind in literacy much more than girls lag behind in science (more science graduates from university are female than male) I might take this woman more seriously if she first pushed for boys to have boys-only language classes to stop the pushy girls from making the boys think they are stupid.

Or - and here is a really novel idea for today's generation of schoolteachers - we could encourage an atmosphere in schools that if you aren't doing well on a subject, you need to put more effort in and become more pushy, so that you succeed.

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Submitted by Douglas on Mon, 2019-10-07 00:13

... conveniently toggle between "women and girls are every bit as tough as men and boys" and "women and girls are so fragile and delicate that they need to be sheltered from pushy men and boys"? So, which is it, ladies? Are you really tough? Or are you fragile? Or do you want to have it both ways, depending on which seems better to shame men?
We see a similar ambiguity in their spiel about "role models." If boys outperform girls in a technical subject, then that's due to a "lack of female role models," but if girls outperform boys (as they often do in verbal skills), then that's just because girls are smarter, dontcha know? Consistency is definitely not a feminist virtue.

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Submitted by Roger on Mon, 2019-10-07 11:32