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Newsweek refutes "women and science" myth while simultaneously promoting it
Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2008-06-13 16:10
You know, there is little better than the women-in-science stuff to offer as an example of bizarre dual-process thinking espoused by the MSM-feminist press. Newsweek declares "Nerdgirls" are taking over the sciences but at the same time bemoans the absence thereof from the fields of science, pinning the reason for this of course on the men therein and "popular culture".
Article here. Try not to think too much about the contradictions, your head will start to throb painfully. And be sure to watch the video of the Nerdgirls posing in high-fashion clothes and heels for photographers, running around doing nothing but good in the world for everyone, and of course declaring their confidence, power, independence, etc., etc. Oh yes, and also about how "guys are afraid of smart women."
"Guys"... "Women"
Excerpt:
'In 2007, girls won both the team and the individual categories of the Siemens Competition for high-school students in math, science and technology for the first time in the competition's history. A recent Pew Internet & American Life project found that among users 12 to 17, girls dominate the blogosphere and social networking sites; they're also beating boys when it comes to creating Web sites of their own. Even women gamers far outnumber men ages 25 to 34, according to a 2006 study by the Consumer Electronics Association.
...
Yet there is still a dichotomy between the culture and the workplace. Forty years ago women made up just 3 percent of science and engineering jobs; now they make up about 20 percent. That sounds promising, until you consider that women earn 56 percent of the degrees in those fields. A recent Center for Work-Life Policy study found that 52 percent of women leave those jobs, with 63 percent saying they experienced workplace harassment and more than half believing they needed to "act like a man" in order to succeed. In the past, women dealt with that reality in two ways: some buried their femininity, while others simply gave up their techie interests to appear more feminine.
...
She may not be in the majority now, but if her fellow geek girls have anything to do with it, she will be. Outreach programs such as TechBridge, an after-school workshop for middle- and high-school girls, and MAGIC (More Active Girls In Computing), a national mentoring program for aspiring computer scientists, are among the dozens of programs aimed at getting girls to think about futures in science and technology."
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Comments
It really is unbelievalbe
It really is unbelievalbe how hypocritical women are, the say one thing and then say the opposite in the same sentence.... amazing.
The gamers thing I know it complete bullshit. I am a very avid gamer, I play all sorts of multiplayer online games, and there are no females... none!
Only on a few MMOs do you see females, and the numbers are closer to 1 girl for every 500 guys, if that. They also only play the games considered to easy or too childish by most gamers.
Its just like the rape myth, all you have to do is change the definition of rape and you get all the results you want. The same goes for gamers and math wizards, just change the rules and the qualifications and you can fit anyone.
What's even stranger, is the women actually believe they are doing well, even though they didnt really do anything except dumb down the qualifications.
Absurb overstatements...
I consider myself to be somewhat of a nerd, and the way they phrase the statistics is a JOKE. Girls are not "beating boys when it comes to creating Web sites of their own". What they are doing here is including myspace, facebook, xanga, livejournal, and other such ACCOUNTS that give users a personal page. This is NOT the same thing as designing and coding your own website! In this area, it is heavily male. You can take a quick look at the percentage of sites run by men to see this. Or take a look at web development, as a hobby or paid, and it is even more male.
And also about being gamers...what a load of crap! I read similar studies, they include CELL PHONE GAMES and mini FLASH GAMES you play in the browser. This is not the same thing as being a video game hobbyist. Not even close.
As for women not being encouraged to get these jobs, baloney as well. I often see or hear of tech-related jobs that specifically want women to apply. They even say it right in the ad.
This whole article reeks of ignorance.
For example, the girls were trying to figure out the "air gun" in No Country for Old Men? If they're so smart and geeky, they would have done what I did and check wikipedia, to find out it's a captive-bolt pistol used for killing cattle.
And saying the special effects in Harry Potter are done by an "engineer"? WTF? Special effects are done by animation and effects artists. It's true that a software engineer is probably behind their coding and proprietary tools, but it's simply ignorant to say effects are are done by an "engineer".
I have gotten really tired of these silly, trivial attempts to get girls into tech by making it look sexy or whatever. Most guys get into tech because they're hardcore passionate about it, not because there's any sort of prestige or social encouragement. It's just as hard for a guy to be a nerd as it is for a girl. At my work, the head of web production is a woman. No one harasses her or treats her differently. As far as I know she didn't have to join some female-exclusive club to get interested. She did what us guys do - follow her passion and work hard at it.
In fact in many ways a geeky girl is seen as something of a goddess among male nerds, the holy grail girlfriend. Guys are dying to get more females in their industries, it makes things a little more interesting and balanced. This whole sexism thing is a myth in the minds of oversensitive PC people that don't have the motivation to follow their passion. When they say "act like a man" - they probably mean doing long stints of dull technical work without chatting it up with coworkers - which is what these jobs demand. And men like these jobs more.
So the question is...when are we going to have clubs to get women into trash-collecting? I heard reports that it's male-dominated and they face pressure to "work like a man". This demands immediate attention.
Girl Geeks Want to Make Babies
Just my bias, but I would like to see more attention given to the incredible amount of social resources ($$$) that are going into recruiting women into "male-dominated" fields, only to be wasted when the best and brightest university geek girls decide to succumb to their biological clocks and go home to make and raise babies for twenty years.
Britain right now is experiencing a crisis in health care because the country launched an aggressive campaign 20 years ago to increase the numbers of women graduating from medical school.
Guess what? After 3 -5 years of practice, most of these female MD's landed a high-earning hubby and quit their careers to breed.
Of course, it is politically incorrect to suggest that subsidizing women in med school has been an expensive failure.
Ditto for high tech and other evil patriarchal fields.
"Even women gamers far
"Even women gamers far outnumber men ages 25 to 34, according to a 2006 study by the Consumer Electronics Association."
No way there are more female gamers. I'd love to know where they got that data. Was it from actual product registry or the percentage of people who spend time in the chat rooms.