Girls need access to every possible advantage, thus they need entry to male events, but the reverse is "what about the menz" and only eligible for sneering derisively. This is the egalitarian ideals of feminism in action. Men falling behind women in college, high suicide rates and other bad outcome events are male toxicity, but anything less than equal outcomes in STEM, managerial and politics is a clear case of sexism, again men's fault. Women really seem to have no agency at all in feminism.
Okay, so don't get me wrong, I am certain Dinah Davis is a wonderful mother and has and will have a wonderful relationship with her daughter, but if you read the article she wrote at Medium, well, it really sounds like what she is setting up is a STEM re-education camp for girls (especially her daughter) and that when her daughter rebels and becomes something non STEMMY that Dinah is going to consider herself a failure.
code.likeagirl io/girls-need-role-models-bef0998fd71e
I often get asked how we are going to fix the gender inequality problem in tech. This is a huge, complicated, multi-faceted problem. That needs to be worked on from many sides to effect change. However, I do believe there is one thing we can do that might just get us over the tipping point.
Role Models.
Modeling STEM.
In every single part of girl’s lives.
This is what I have worked hard to do for my daughter and I think it is working. Time will tell if I am right, but there are glimmers of hope and because of this I want to share my approach, in case, just maybe, this is the thing that tips the balance.
The STEM Cliff
My daughter is approaching the edge of the STEM Cliff. She is starting to enter the time in a girl’s life when how she is perceived by her peers becomes the most important thing in her world. This is also the time when girls begin to form their identity as women. It is important to girls at this age to feel liked and part of a group. It becomes can be more important to adopt an identity that is perceived as “female” than to follow their own interests. Just as this social shift is happening we are also seeing girls move away from STEM subjects.
The STEM cliff, shown above, indicates that girls move away from STEM subjects between the ages of 12 and 17. One conjecture is that computing and more widely STEM subjects are viewed as uncool, or not part of female identity and seen as a major contributing factor to them choosing to move away from STEM subjects.
So how do we change this?
What follows is paragraph and paragraph of the girls STEM re-education camp syllabus.
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BONUS: Cute girl comes out as non-binary as if that's any sort of brave daring act in 2017, says her "pronouns are" something/something/spawn
medium com/@edenthecat/i-came-out-as-non-binary-a-year-ago-here-is-my-experience-177f74fc553e
I’m a programmer, and a musician. Both of these spaces are highly dominated by cis men, and as such my identity was outwardly enforced regularly. Frequently being the only “woman” on a team or on a stage often meant that my peers would strictly see me as “the girl guitarist” or “the girl programmer” or “the person we should ask to organize our panel about being a woman in tech”. As I started to find communities where this wasn’t the case, I started being able to come to terms with who I was without the external pressures of living up to an identity that was outlined for me.
After returning from my first cross-Canada tour, an experience that helped me find those communities, I posted on social media asking people to refer to me with gender neutral pronouns. I was in the process of moving from my hometown in Saskatchewan to Montreal, and as I was saying my goodbyes I explained my gender identity to my family and close friends. My mother, while she didn’t understand completely, was very accepting. I remember her asking me if she could still call me Chickadee, a nickname she’s called me since I was a child. I told her that was fine, but that I’d prefer if she called me her spawn rather than her daughter.
