brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (06/04/85)
There's been talk here and there saying, "Women make up 51% of the population but only 10% of the engineers - there must be discrimination and AA is the way to counter it." The one thing people haven't had the guts to say is that quite simply, 51% of the most qualified engineers and computer scientists are not women. Plain and simple. This is the problem! The main problem is not that people are refusing to hire women. The problem is that far more men are qualified than women. This is the problem we should attack, through education and encouragement. To attack it at the job level is to attack a symptom. I am not sure why it is the case that there are far more men qualified in these fields, (although I have some interesting theories). It may be related to upbringing, society or genetics - nobody can say for sure yet. Nonetheless, this is where the problem lies. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
gkloker@utai.UUCP (Geoff Loker) (06/06/85)
In article <278@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: >There's been talk here and there saying, "Women make up 51% of the population >but only 10% of the engineers - there must be discrimination and AA is the >way to counter it." > >The one thing people haven't had the guts to say is that quite simply, >51% of the most qualified engineers and computer scientists are not women. > ... various rumblings about AA should be happening in education and not in the work force ... > >I am not sure why it is the case that there are far more men qualified in >these fields, (although I have some interesting theories). It may be >related to upbringing, society or genetics - nobody can say for sure >yet. Nonetheless, this is where the problem lies. >-- >Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 Allow me to suggest at least one reason why there are more qualified men than women in engineering (if not other 'technical' fields): At the University of Waterloo (where I spent my undergraduate years in computer science and \not/ engineering), there were a number of things which filtered out to the rest of the campus from the Engineering wing of things: 1) The Engineering Society (EngSoc) sponsored a "humour" paper for engineers (the "EngiNews"). It was apparently quite crude, rude, and sexist in its "humour". In other university papers, there was a steady barrage of complaints about the sexism of the "EngiNews", as well as a steady stream of replies saying that those complaining weren't engineers and shouldn't be reading the paper anyways. A few years ago, a woman who worked for the company which printed the paper refused to work on printing an issue which she found particularly offensive. (Note: She was fired because of this.) 2) About 2 years ago, the engineers had a Lady Godiva day. (Lady Godiva is the "mascot" of engineers.) An officially sponsored (by EngSoc) event was a Lady Godiva march - a stripper was hired to parade with several hundred engineers all over the campus, wearing nothing but an overcoat. At various stops, she would "tittilate" people by opening her overcoat. At one point, the march invaded an exam room disturbing an exam in progress. When the parade was condemned by many, EngSoc made a back-handed apology in a student newspaper (i.e. - We're sorry if we offended anyone, but we feel we had the right to.) Other than a small handslap from the university (a statement condemning the march), there was no visible action taken. 3) There was a game called "Cobra", I believe, which required a female engineer. It was played at any time there was a group of male engineers and a female engineer. One (male) engineer would cry out "Cobra!", and then all the (male) engineers would quickly try to bite the back-side of the female engineer. 4) EngSoc sponsored events tended to be Bus Pushes, Arm Wrestling competitions, etc; events which tend to require "physical prowess" (read "male-oriented". Men seem to need to show off their strength; women don't.) These blatant examples of sexism are in one technical discipline at one university, but rest assured that sexism is not limited to just there -- it's just more obvious. Rest assured, also, that the images portrayed by technical fields such as engineering are extremely unappealing to women. (Would you want to be on the receiving end in a game of "Cobra"?) Until these technical fields get rid of their male-engendered, unappealing-to-women images, and the inherent sexism is gotten rid of, it's ridiculous to speculate that something such as genetics is responsible for the imbalance in the ratio of men to women in said technical fields. -- Geoff Loker Department of Computer Science University of Toronto Toronto, ON M5S 1A4 USENET: {ihnp4 decwrl utzoo uw-beaver}!utcsri!utai!gkloker CSNET: gkloker@toronto ARPANET: gkloker.toronto@csnet-relay