I just don’t see how that could be. When I was studying, we had 2 girls in a peer group of roughly 90 people. All they had to do to find a lab partner is have a pulse. Interestingly, both have graduated, and neither is using her degree now.
Eh, that sounds a bit like those lab partners may have had dubious motivations.
I figure it's on those of us who strive for the highest degree of professionalism to take the lead on inclusion.
A: Dudes, go befriend a girl, include her! It's not creepy!
B: My anecdata experience suggests girls in my lab, where they were in minority, had no problem being included if they wished to, dudes were very eager to do it.
C: Motivations of those dudes sound very dubious and creepy!
Yup, yup.
There are lots of other people who don't feel such an extreme level of fear and discomfort, yet who probably could do more in terms of inclusion. Those are the people I hope the author of this article reaches.
I hope the many commenters on this article who feel so uncomfortable with female colleagues do find some way to improve their situation though -- their alienation is bad for them, bad for women, bad for all of us collectively.
To preclude the question, yes those girls did get asked for a date every now and then. If that’s wrong, I don’t want to be right.
Does it mean something else?
I'm not sure what you mean? Why would the women be inherently attractive as lab partners?
Many men in the lab would probably think that the women would be weaker, or wouldn't know how to interact with them, so wouldn't want them as lab partners.
And the men may have a higher chance of knowing each other already from outside the class in sports teams and fraternities, so they would team up with people they already know rather than someone they didn't.
But lots of men definitely do think women are likely to be weaker in computer science. I don't know why they think that - you'd have to ask them?
Yes I can. It's completely reasonable to be observe something even if you can't offer an explanation.
I don't know why some people are racist but I can see that they are.
I don't know why some people are sexist but I can see that they are.
I don't know why some people think women are inherently weaker at computer science, but I can see that they do think that by what they say and do.
If you're presenting that they don't, where is that information coming from?
I don't know how to break this to you... but a lot of people in this world unfortunately discriminate against people based on gender, either consciously or unconsciously.
> where is that information coming from
To give you a concrete example, I was at a conference just recently where the speaker took questions from the audience and when a man asked a question the answer was highly technical, and when a woman asked a similar question the answer was patronising and non-technical as if he thought the woman wouldn't understand like the men did. It was really obvious, and there was no other variable. I see this kind of thing all the time.
I don't know what more to tell you - if you can't see any evidence of men making assumptions that a women isn't going to be as competent in computer science just based on her gender then I think you must be blind to what is happening around you.