Re: How To Recruit Women to Tech and IT Classes

["Daniel L. MacIsaac" <Dan.MacIsaac@NAU.EDU>]

> 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'.

I'd have to agree with this, although I try and address blatently ignorant
postings to the list via provate email and have suspended people from
the list.  I cannot manage PHYS-L conversation as a referee, though, I think
the list subscribers have to do that as a community.  As you are doing now.

> 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 just printed off and counted.  Of 657 subscribers, I can identify 61
female first names.  Other women are doubtless subscribed by inital or
title + lastname.  There are two subscriptions that in fact provide PHYS-L
to groups of physics folk at other institutions, that are not broken out for
me.  However, I expect about 10% of PHYS-L subscribers are women, reflecting
the national trend for college physics faculty, who primarily compose list
membership.

I also should point out PHYS-L has no more than 2 dozen regular posters,
and these posters are historically established (few new posters any year).
It should be expected to see 1-2 women regularly posting on PHYS-L by
strict proportion, fewer if the majority of posters are senior, tenured
faculty or are near or past retirement.  I'd also expect more HS teachers as
regular posters then we have.  I also agree that the effect of having debate
dominated by fewer than 2 dozen senior people can seriously stifle debate and
I feel my positions have been stifled (in particular my positions on ehat and
tides, for instance).  I have the ability to secretly rejoice in the fact that
I am right regardless :^) of this situation.  This seems to be a hallmark of
success for juniour faculty.

> 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.

I am also interested in this Margaret, and would appreciate your advice
and guidance.  Do your other lists give different direction to subscribers?
How is conversation monitored and guided by the membership of those lists?

Dan M

Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Northern AZ Univ
danmac@nau.edu          http://purcell.phy.nau.edu         PHYS-L list owner