Re: How To Recruit Women to Tech and IT Classes

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

>  >
> > I think you've got it backwards. It's not promoting *for* any given
> > segment of society, it's stopping the practice of "anti-promoting"
> > physics for certain segments of society.
>
> "Anti-promoting"???  I don't see any physics instructor standing in front
> of her/his class and saying "Folks, physics is a lousy field to be majoring
> in, try the law, or maybe engineering"   Of course if a male instructor
> said something like "Ladies, physics is a male field; stay away, he would
> be fired and maybe sued.  If a female instructor said this, that would be
> ok, but I can't see a female physicist saying this to female students.  I
> don't know what would happen if a chemistry instructor said the likes of
> this. <g>
>
> What "anti-promoting"?
>
>
> Jim Green

Jim, you're looking for the Bull Connors of the physics community.
Not too many of them around, The situation is much more subtle. Talk
to any woman scientist. They can tell you all of the little things
that happen in grad school to make it appear less welcome to women.
In a field that has been notoriously inhospitable to women, it is not
enough to say "You know the way we were? Well, we're not that way
anymore." There must be positive action taken to make it clear that
the doors for the women are completely open and they will be treated
entirely as equals. This means that the women have to be included in
the departmental social activities that were previously all-male,
even if it means that the activities have to be changed in order to
make them more appealing to women. Lots of things like that. The
obvious stuff has long since gone away. As you point out those louts
would be quickly disciplined or dismissed. Its the subtle stuff that
is still around and just as effective as the louts used to be.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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