Re: How To Recruit Women to Tech and IT Classes

[Margaret Mazzolini <mmazzolini@SWIN.EDU.AU>]

Hugh Haskell wrote:

> > I do have to comment, though, that I have just received today's
> > phys-l digest containing 20 postings debating the need to attract
> > women into tech areas & specifically physics, and whether the
> > prevailing culture in physics discourages women participants, and all

> > the postings were by men!  That has to rate as one of life's
> > surreal experiences.

> What is surreal about it? The fact that there are men who believe
> that women have not gotten a fair shake in the area of science, or
> the fact that the women subscribers to this list have chosen not to
> rise to the bait?

I found it surreal that the idea that 'the pervailing culture in physics
discourages women participants' can be doubted, when the all-male debate
on the subject highlighted that almost no women participate in phyl-l,
which is at least potentially an extremely useful forum for physics
educators.  And wouldn't you find it odd if a group of black women felt
comfortable about debating and coming to conclusions about the lack of
participation of white men in some particular profession, with no white
male input?

> It may say something about the culture of physics but from my
> "outsider's" (i.e., male) point of view, I have always felt that this
> list is at worst female-neutral, and certainly, it has always seemed
> to me that virtually every poster to the list has been treated with
> courtesy by the other members, whether they be male or female.

There we have to disagree. I'm not particularly fussed about it,
otherwise I wouldn't continue to subscribe.  But every time this issue
has come up (including this time) I've received a small number of
off-list emails from both men and women saying that they do find the
debates on phys-l at times go 'beyond the pale'.

As to whether the debates are female-neutral, I would say that that is
mostly, though not always, the case with respect to content. The issue
that it would be interesting to investigate is whether the adversarial
style, rather than the content, is off-putting to women. We have a fact:
almost no women post to phys-l.  How many women subscribe to phys-l I
don't know (though it would be interesting to find out), so whether they
are underrepresented as subscribers can't be proven yet, but they are
clearly underrepresented as participants.  Why?  I wrote on this topic
to The Physics Teacher not because I have any easy answer, but because I
was asked to do so, off list, last time this topic came up.

I have a professional interest in this.  The quality of the learning in
the online astronomy program I coordinate depends vitally on the success
of the newsgroup discussions we conduct with our participants. If there
are dynamics which discourage a subset of our students from joining in
the discussions, then I want to identify them as best I can so that I
can work out how to avoid those dynamics becoming established in my
newsgroups.

> That
> the discourse has been vigorous should not discourage women to
> participate.

Well, it's not what women should do, it's what they choose to do (or in
this case, mostly not do) which is of interest here.

> I am a member of another list that has a significant
> number of women posters and the discourse is, if anything, even more
> vigorous than on this list. The women who join the discussions, and
> there are a goodly number of them, are able to give as good as they
> get in the arguments.

I doubt that you'll get many women saying that they can't 'give as good
as they get' in arguments, the issue is whether they find that necessary
or even useful in this case.

Perhaps the topics discussed on your other list are of more immediate
importance to the women participants?  I don't know. I do know that one
person who has contacted me off-list on this issue has pointed out that
he subscribes to another list of similar size to phys-l, where he feels
that the discussions are just as useful and significantly less
aggressive. Certainly that is the case so far in the newsgroups which I
run in my astronomy program.

> Maybe, as Jim has said, the women on the list have better things to
> do than get into these endless arguments.

My interest is not whether they have more sense than I do and therefore
don't get into these particular debates.  After all, most of the
discussions on phys-l are about physics education.  My interest is in
whether most women physics educators make use of Internet resources like
phys-l at all, if not why not, and whether they are missing out on an at
least potentially very useful teaching resource by not doing so.

> Maybe they're just tired of
> rehashing this particular topic again. I'm sure they've all heard
> everything that has been said here and worse, from both sides of the
> street, many times over.

Amen.

> Have you any suggestions about how we can get our female list-members
> to come out of the woodwork?

No simple fixes here - but it would be interesting to know how many
there are, and perhaps to encourage them to start up a thread where they
can discuss how they find phys-l, if they could do so without being
jumped on by anyone who wishes to give them advice on whether they
should be happy raising children or foregoing Nobel Prizes or whatever.
But then again, by this point if there are other women out there, they
may not want to bother, and I can't blame them.  (It never ceases to
amaze me how there are always men - not you, Hugh! - who feel that it is
perfectly acceptable to make generalisations about, and give gratuitous
advice to, women as a group, when I assume that they would never dare to
do the same to blacks, Hispanics, Moslems etc)

Cheers
Margaret


Dr. Margaret Mazzolini
Astronomy Course Coordinator
Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing
BSEE, Mail Box 31,
Swinburne University of Technology,
PO Box 218 Hawthorn VIC 3122
Australia
email: mmazzolini@swin.edu.au
phone: (+61) 3 9214 8084
fax:   (+61) 3 9819 0856

Visit Swinburne Astronomy Online, online courses in astronomy:
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