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Comment by BaronVonSteuben | Hacker News Reader

Could it be that girls get tons of encouragement, accolades, and praise when they do something, but when boys do they're told it's just their privilege that made them succeed?

In our current school there are 3 STEM programs for girls, one that is for both boys and girls. One of the programs for girls is very well funded by local startup money and gets designers, marketers, etc to make them fun. The one for both boys and girls is volunteer run and while I respect and appreciate the effort, frankly it not fun and exciting at all. It's little better than someone just handing you a textbook to read.

I'm all for making STEM (coding especially) inclusive and welcoming for all. Nobody should face discrimination or harassment based on gender (or any other attribute). Unfortunately it's the boys getting the shaft right now. I can't imagine the outrage that would happen if someone started a "boys only" program, yet it almost seems like that's what needs to happen. We're back to the days of striving for "separate but equal."

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This is what I’ve always said. I was just looking for scholarships in computer science, and I was surprised at the amount of women only scholarships I found. Society in general has less sympathy for men, and this is a pretty hard truth i’ve discovered.

I will second this. I was hunting for merit scholarships, as this has been a tough year and college is pricey, even with the scholarships I have. For existing college students, most of those I found were for women only, especially for CS. But I'm not eligible, because I was born a guy. fml.

Edit: btw the thing that annoys me about this is that I already won some tough and prestigious merit scholarships so I actually would have a good shot at these and probably get one if I applied to several. So it's more direct here for me.

At this point, everyone should just say they're a woman.

Lol, a buddy jokingly suggested that. But joking aside, if we took sex and race off documents, job apps, college apps, etc. it would really help.

Sex and race are not on job applications in the US.

If I remember correctly names on applications that are traditionally more likely to be given to a black person is still considered less qualified on an identical resume than a name that is traditionally given to a white person. I don’t know if sending photos with your resume is still practiced in the USA (I think it is illegal in the UK) but if that is still the case than gender and ethnicity are still very much on the average job application.

Yep: https://hbr.org/2020/03/research-to-reduce-gender-bias-anony...

Evey beyond names people tend to assign class, gender, and race to surprisingly mundane things that are found on resumes.

That hasn't been shown in a study for over 2 decades. Every recent study (past ~decade) that I'm aware of has shown no effect.

Here's an article that discusses one recent study:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-bias-hiring-0504-...

The problem with the original study was that it used names that denoted socio-economic status as much as race (ie, "Dahntay Smith" or "Shaniqua Thomas"). That's a problem, too, but I suspect a similar effect for professional job applicants can be shown using "lower" socio-economic status white names (ie, "Bobby Lee Jones" or "Tommy Ray Brown").

Regardless, I would be strongly in favor of anonymized job applications, since that would eliminate any suggestion of such bias in whichever direction.

Ok, that is good news. It has been a while since I read up on the literature. And it is always nice to see findings revised by better studies.

The names are. Take them off and watch response rates change.

At my job names (among other things like urls) are blanked out by HR. When I get a resume to review I don't know the name of the applicant.

I assumed this was fairly typical.

Either way I was responding to "if we took sex and race off... job apps... it would really help."

Indeed: https://behaviouraleconomics.pmc.gov.au/projects/going-blind...

Not explicitly. But your name, LinkedIn account, Github profile picture, clubs... carry those information.

No, but there is a strong will to reach gender and race equity in tech.

And I don't think this can be achieved by accident. There must be intentionality to achieve this.

Just look at this NYT hit piece on Coinbase yesterday and all the data available from big tech like Google and Facebook: https://twitter.com/nathanielpopper/status/13440449092006952...

I'm not endorsing it. I'm just noting that it's happening.

Oh yes they are. You can check "prefer not to say" but that's an answer in and of itself.

Yes, just go to the interview wearing a wig and a skirt. Then on your first day you can wear your normal stuff, and if anyone says anything, you can just say you transitioned, and you really hope there won't be any discrimination against that.

Look on the "bright side," those programs contribute to workplace sexism that will "benefit" you in the future. /s

Indeed, my workplace is part of an internship program and for the last two years all interns have been female, and deliberately so.

At my company (FAANG), 2/3 of intern and entry level opportunities are given to women. Ironically virtually all of them come from the same few elite universities and were hardly held back by anyone, as far as I can tell.

Some of them play this game very aggressively. Once they are there, immediately organize into diversity projects and groups to push for quotas in promotions, project leads, etc. Despite these fast-track opportunities, they fully believe they are continuously being held back, at every level, and everything will be interpreted that way.

I think it will eventually break the org but I don't plan on staying.

I’ve also seen that FANG is actively discriminating against white men. I was asked to throw out all white male and Asian male resumes for an internship programs relatively recently.

If that is true and there isn't more to this story it is likely illegal if this was done in the US.

That said, FAANG companies have provided countless textbook examples of what HR departments should not do in almost every imaginable situation.

It’s not illegal to discriminate by race for internships.

I’d love to see the aclu sue FANG over their Diversity programs. I highly suspect they are illegal in one way shape or form.

Not a lawyer, but my understanding is that it depends on the details of how and why.

A uniform decision regarding all interns across an entire company targeting specific racial charactaristics is very different from a policy that bases decisions on objective measurements done in good faith with intent to correct for some form of bias.

Checkout this past HN thread on the topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18524333

I also sat in a conversation with my team about not hiring the most qualified intern candidate because he was a white guy. Affirmative action is a double edged sword and it sucks that more left leaning people in places of power can't admit that.

Maybe people just try to do things they are interested in or care about and aren’t trying to scheme or gang up on others? I think if I were in such a position, I might see the process as too unegalitarian and want to change it. I wonder how one would get involved with changing such a thing.

You’re obviously able to organise in the workplace for basically whatever goals you want if you like (though in the US this organisation is only protected if more than one person is involved.)

This is a nice idea if they were trying to change the process to work better for everyone.

That's not what's happening. They just demand explicit quotas for themselves.

The whole 'diversity and inclusion/feminism makes things better for everyone' is largely a myth, it's just identity groups out for themselves in corporate America.

Just wait until you need to get a divorce and have young children.

It is either Women only, or offered to immigrants where I am located. It is absolutely sickening what they've done.

Probably not. If I remember correctly there is no correlation (and sometimes even negative) between unearned praise and performance.

A more likely explanation which is backed up by evidence is that generalized perception of a group by the teacher will yield grades accordingly, so the more research that shows girls being better at school will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Teachers have to work hard to counter this bias (and many do).

There is also a possibility that there is some biological difference that makes certain teaching methods that just so happen to be favored by teachers at the moment are a tiny bit easier for one gender over others. However I would like to see some research before I subscribe to that, but remain open for the possibility meanwhile.

That all said, if there is a difference, but the effect size is small, then honestly: Does it matter?

> If I remember correctly there is no correlation (and sometimes even negative) between unearned praise and performance.

That's not what the parent comment is saying - it's saying that earned praise is not given at the same rate for males as for females.

It's even de-evolving to outright discrimination. I worked in a lab where participants were asked to give away their social media data for a chance to win at an ipad. The collecting of the data and lottery selection was done by a group of women. One time a man had one it, and they were upset at that fact and were going to re-run the lottery until a woman won it. I stopped them, but look where we are now.

There were half a dozen of them and none of them even considered what they were about to do was wrong. I wonder how often this happens in other areas.

> "boys only" program,

Even the "boy scouts" are just the scouts now: https://www.scouting.org/

Scout groups are mixed all over the world, it really doesn't make much difference - the only thing I noticed moving from a mixed one to an older all-boys one is that the boys one was much much more violent but that was mostly due to the leaders not stopping it.

I got out just before the change and am hearing some pretty dopey stuff from buddies still in the program. Like they can't go pee behind a tree any more, can't swim with shirts off. Trust me, dynamics change when girls are around. There was a mixed program already, btw, called Venturing.

I'll add that one of the best things about Boy Scouts was that we could do stuff that was dangerous, but not too dangerous. We didn't have any moms come along either, and I think that helped. Dads would stop us from doing something truly stupid (like permanent injury type stupid), but not something dumb that would bruise us and teach us a lesson. It also allowed us to do lots more fun stuff.

These days, tree forts are a no-no, apparently. Some guys from my old troop were building one at a mixed event recently. Some girls from another troop came over and said it wasn't safe, then got some karen from their troop to come yell at the boys. Oh, and and apparently it's no longer okay to climb above chest height these days, because it's "not safe". I'm way too young to be saying, "Back when I was young, we did $UNSAFE_THING all the time! We liked it, and never got hurt." Or at least, I thought I was.

I cannot relate to anything you've said and I spent I think 10 years in a mixed one

That's because males naturally use aggression/assertiveness to establish social hierarchy. That's the reason for having all-boys groups for youth, it gives them a space to work that out in a controlled way and learn how to channel their energy and aggression in positive directions.

There is a strange double standard in our society which posits that it is totally reasonable for women, people of color, people of different sexual orientations, etc. to all deserve their own 'safe spaces' to be around people of their intersectional group only; but the moment that males want this, or white people, or straight people, it's exclusionary and offensive. Nobody can defend this effectively without resorting to rhetoric that essentially just attacks people in the latter groups for things that are not their fault individually, and the entire mechanism that works to prevent them from having their own spaces seems fundamentally vengeful.

There is very much a need for boys to have a space to be boys: where they can let their boisterousness out, where they can act a little crazy, or just act closer to their true selves etc. without having to worry about how they're perceived by the girls. As soon as puberty kicks in, all co-ed events are affected by sexual dynamics; it's been a standard in every human society to provide plenty of contexts for boys where that is removed from the mix as much as possible in order to get better / different behaviour from the young cadre.

IDK I'd lean more towards mixing everyone as much as possible. All people should learn to handle being around diverse groups of people early and learn to handle themselves and respect others.

I actually think we need both. Boys need a place to be boys by themselves and girls need the same. Nothing wrong with mixing it up, but you also need the opposite.

Of course. This is obvious to anyone who has had kids of both genders. Boys and girls care about different things, play differently, react to different kinds of encouragement. And we need our boys to be the best they can be at whatever they genuinely care about, in the way they care about it, just as much as we need the same for our girls. We are in for deep, deep trouble as a society if we loose the masculine drive.

> There is very much a need for boys to have a space to be boys: where they can let their boisterousness out, where they can act a little crazy, or just act closer to their true selves etc. without having to worry about how they're perceived by the girls.

As the father of several boys, I agree. For anyone interested more in this concept, I recommend "Boys Adrift" by Leonard Sax (a psychologist) and "Boys Should Be Boys" by Dr. Meg Meeker (a pediatrician). Both books are very enlightening about some of the problems our boys face in America.

Somebody commented and then deleted their comment, but I do want to throw this out there: "Boys Adrift" was focused on psychological theories and what institutions can do, and it was more clinical in style. "Boys Should Be Boys" was more focused on what parents can do, and it was super upbeat and positive while keeping it real. Dr. Meeker (author of "Boys Should Be Boys") also has a podcast if you want to try out her style before buying [1].

[1] https://www.meekerparenting.com/podcast

Also a father of boys. They all tried Boy Scouts and none really took to it but all were involved in sports. Teams were ostensibly co-ed when they were younger but by middle school age they were all-male. Having that outlet to "be boys" and work out their energy and agressive impulses is important to growing into a well-balanced adult man.

One argument is these spaces exist, have existed for a long time, and are completely accessible to those who would want to join them. If you're a man, men's clubs and men only events still exist. Maybe they don't exist explicitly in tech? Are implicit spaces not enough? Seems easy enough to have a meetup and simply not invite any women, POC or LGBTQ people, especially in tech.

There is also a different between "explicit" and "implicit" safe spaces for different groups. Its just that they are only ever "marked" with a demographic identifier if they are for a non-dominant group. I.e., "Comic Book Shops" are geared towards (historically, typically) white boys, but "Black comic book shops" and "Girl comic book shops" also exist. We notice these, because they are marked as such, because they run counter the norm. What we don't always notice is that the unmarked "Comic Book Shop" is already geared towards a particular demographic—white men.

Basically, different safe spaces exist for different demographics, but are only marked for certain groups.

Take Boy Scouts. It used to be exactly the sort of group that GP describes. Now that's been destroyed; the boys have been told that no, you can't have a boys-only group or event.

Just FWIW, the Scout Association in the UK was renamed from "Boy Scouts Association" 1967 and began to admit girls in 1976.

Your STEM example explains very little of this gender gap. The article says:

1. this gender gap begins very early (kindergarden), before the majority of "women in STEM" programs begin

2. are international (i'm fairly certain they don't have women in STEM programs in China, for example)

3. it doesn't explain why the differences are inversely related to income level (do you think there are more "women in STEM" programs at lower income levels?)

4. this difference is very old (>50 years of this effect)

> 4. this difference is very old (>50 years of this effect)

About 100 years ago, women were explicitly forbidden from most colleges and universities. The attitude that women aren't cut out for, and should be excluded from STEM dates back to Socrates (~400 bce), at least. I'm not a historian but that wasn't terribly long after Greeks started writing things down.

It could very well be that women have had the potential to outperform men in academic tasks since Socrates, but never had the chance until widespread and egalitarian schooling.

I'm not even 40 and in my education, I heard several STEM teachers say that girls can't hack it. The latest of which occurred a mere 10 years ago at a public university. "Egalitarian schooling" is an extremely novel concept and many parents and teachers (men and women) still haven't bought in on the idea.

They hack it perfectly fine in microbiology,(71% female) and veterinary science (65%). The main issue is that they really aren't represented in computer science and engineering STEM fields, as well as research scientists. But if you looked at all the STEM fields, it is probably more even, or there even are significant male shortages in some.

The issue is that a lot of people don't really define stem as stem, they define it as RCE-research, computers, and engineering.

Linking the pew article for more detail: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/01/09/diversity-in-the-...

> They hack it perfectly fine in microbiology...

Besides the point. Have you ever had a favorite teacher who told you that you were destined for failure? Probably not, that teacher is never gonna be your favorite -- and spending a semester, or even years, with that teacher might well sour you on the subject even if it was your favorite.

Very true. "Egalitarian" here is highly relative. Schools now are certainly more egalitarian than they were a few centuries ago (when barely anyone could even attend!) but they are still a long way off.

I'm optimistic that we will eventually reach a fully egalitarian future, but pessimistic at how much work is left to do.

the vast majority of teachers are women

this wasn't true 50 years ago

could it be that simple? yeah I think it is actually

Is that right? I'm in my mid-50s, and certainly in elementary school nearly 100% of the teachers were women. There were two men teaching in my entire school and they were both teaching 5th grade. In middle and high school there were more men but it was still at least 60-70% female teachers.

Could it be that girls get tons of encouragement, accolades, and praise when they do something, but when boys do they're told it's just their privilege that made them succeed?

Probably not, no. Setting aside the deliberately inflammatory description you chose to use here, this is a complex phenomenon observed over quite a long period in a variety of different locations and social backgrounds globally, and the suggestion that it could be simplified to "uneven praise" doesn't seem to correlate with any research I've seen.

Unfortunately it's the boys getting the shaft right now.

It's pretty difficult to make any real progress on issues of equal access if any targeted efforts to improve access for particular groups are going to be characterised as "giving others the shaft".

It boils down to what those targeted efforts are. If they are removing bias against a group, fine. If they are introducing artificial favoritism for the group, that's problematic as now others are losing equal opportunity.

> It's pretty difficult to make any real progress on issues of equal access if any targeted efforts to improve access for particular groups are going to be characterised as "giving others the shaft".

It depends on whether the efforts go from "equal access" to positive discrimination, and I'm not sure where that line is drawn or if people are interested in drawing it

> It's pretty difficult to make any real progress on issues of equal access if any targeted efforts to improve access for particular groups are going to be characterised as "giving others the shaft".

If "equal access" is the goal (which I agree it should be), why are we excluding a group based on immutable characteristics? You really see that as equal?

Dunno why you think "girls get tons of encouragement, accolades, and praise when they do something." My experience growing up as a girl totally contradicts that.

I read 10 years ago that males were on the verge of getting preferential acceptance at colleges.

There's a pop theory / crackpot idea that men tend to be on average "dumber" than women, but with a higher standard distribution, so they will have more "geniuses".

Women will be on average "smarter", but lower standard deviation.

If true, the disposable male theory might explain aspects of that, since while women will have a high chance of reproduction, male biology will need to have more variance and "risk" to achieve some sort of distinction to get to the comparatively lower reproductive success rate of males.

In reality, our schooling is now so screwed up between grade inflation, teaching for the test, over-prescribing ADD drugs (which is opioid dependence grooming by the drug companies), reduced funding, destruction of the middle class, and a host of other changes to society and policy.

> There's a pop theory / crackpot idea that men tend to be on average "dumber" than women, but with a higher standard distribution, so they will have more "geniuses".

The current understanding is that the average is generally similar, and males have greater variability. So yes, vastly more male geniuses. But men have larger brains for a reason, so it might be we're biased against measuring anything men are better at.

> If true, the disposable male theory might explain aspects of that

It doesn't. The main reason is because female mammals have duplicate sex chromosomes, and the effects get combined together. In some other kinds of animals (such as birds) females tend to have greater variability. So it's a haphazard consequence of some evolutionary split way back when. (Who knows, maybe the causation of disposable males is there, but in the other direction.)

That's not a "crackpot theory" but what the data currently show. This doesn't mean that there's a biological cause for this (although it's possible). But with IQ data, there's abundant evidence that the averages are similar, but men have greater variability:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26158978/

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/dr-paul-...

Could it be that girls get tons of encouragement

Definitely not, because this gender difference far predates our belief as a society that women are as capable as men in STEM subjects and careers.

Something else to consider is that some times these hiring bises are explicit and others they are de facto the way things are be [1]. In my university there is a target to have at least x% of new faculty hires female. It's against the law to state a direct number (e.g. 7) but apparently that method is fine in my country...

[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360

That’s interesting, that overt discrimination on the basis of a protected characteristic (sex, race) is allowed in these cases, even by public institutions. How is it not challenged in the courts under the various civil rights acts and nondiscrimination laws of states?

However, if we are going to solve a problem (eg non biodegradeable plastic) we must do it upstream (eg taxing non biodegradeable plastic and nudging corporations into switching to biodegradeable materials), rather than expend tons of effort downstream (eg banning plastic bags, straws and blaming individuals).

Same here... if we are going to be doing something about girls in STEM as a society, I’d rather do it upstream — earlier in life — because otherwise trying to fiddle around the edges later is just a bandaid.

PS: as an aside, I found the expression “it’s the boys getting the shaft right now” a bit ironic, given the origins of the phrase https://www.etymonline.com/word/shaft

At least in Canada, discrimination is considered the denial of something, but anything that improves someone's condition on the basis of race is fine.

[Race] may not own houses. -- Illegal. [Race] is given extra help to own houses. -- Legal

Odd, I suspect the same people would offer the idea that wealth disparity is bad.

Isn't "[Race] is given extra help to own houses" the same as "[not-Race] is given no extra help to own houses"?

On average [Not-Race] has more wealth to afford houses, or home ownership is more common than [Race] in these programs.

You do see anger when individuals perceive they can't afford homes, school, or other big ticket items and perceive that they aren't given help - but that isn't quite the same as denying people something.

>On average [Not-Race] has more wealth to afford houses //

Which is fine if you're part of that the well-off, but if you're just a person and not benefitted by the categroy association with rich people who happen to be the same race -- a simplistic association that discriminatory, racist people make -- then you're shit out of luck.

Discriminating against people is denying them something, it's denying them a fair shot, fair treatment by the government. Regardless of their sex or skin colour they deserve fair opportunity.

> perceive that they aren't given help - but that isn't quite the same as denying people something.

How is that not denying them help?

> On average [Not-Race] has more wealth to afford houses, or home ownership is more common than [Race] in these programs.

So why not just have your aid program be based on wealth, rather than race?

I don't understand how this logic can hold up when resources are finite.

It doesn't, they were just looking for a way to justify discrimination that they saw as positive and no one was there to defend against it.

Hiring/acceptance is zero-sum. Privileging one group is taking spots away from another.

Given that there is only a finite amount of money/resources available to help people, giving extra to someone based on their race is equivalent to depriving another of help based on their race.

Is there something you can point me to, in order to learn more about Canada's approach? So you're saying that a program specifically to give cash to white men only as "extra help to own houses" would be perfectly fine?

Affirmative action programs have a specific constitutional carve out up here:

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-15.html#:~:te....

They can’t reject boys attending the girls club. If they did they’d likely loose a lawsuit.

However the organization’s programming can be very feminist, turning off boys.

As an employer I'm thrilled to hear about these programs to encourage more women in STEM.

They seem completely unrelated to overall academic performance however, and your complaint sounds a little whiny. I'm as tired of woke nonsense as anyone, but these programs are a great idea.

What should I tell my son when he asks why he can't be in the "cool" group? What would you tell him? He is 10 currently.

If he wants to go into STEM, he should totally do it. I did, and I’ve been pretty much the opposite of cool since well before age 10

Being cool is a chump thing

> In our current school there are 3 STEM programs for girls, one that is for both boys and girls.

Is this a public school? What does "for girls" mean? Like, can you enroll a boy?

I actually considered just enrolling him to see what would happen, but I didn't want my child to become a lightning rod for a political battle between adults.

The description of the program specifically says, "for girls" and it has a cartoon graphic with a few different female characters of different skin colors, each dressed as some profession. It doesn't say, "no boys" or anything like that, but as I said above I'm hesitant to try with my son. If it were me I would do it.

Also, most of the discrimination in STEM happens later in life, in the workplace - the only real effect of getting more girls into STEM is to have a larger pool of women entering STEM careers so you still have some left after driving a bunch of them off. Businesses donating to STEM-for-schoolgirls programs is a way for them to assuage their conscience (or to do PR) without having to ask what they can be doing directly to solve the actual problem.

And I'm afraid this increases the perception that men are naturally fine at STEM and women need special support because of inherent gender attributes (and not because of social problems that we could just address at the root)... which at the end of the day makes life harder for women in their careers.

+1. Everybody's setting up balloon drops and loud publicity stunts for these "let's get girls to code!" initiatives. Nobody's calling serious attention to the lack of female tech leads, directors, and VPs, because that would require uncomfortable investigation into why non-male employees aren't retained and promoted.

Those directors and Vps promoting these gender programs certainly wouldn't support programs that make their own positions more competitive.

Until STEM fields actually have at least a semi-decent gender balance, I don't have a problem with any of this, because apparently it's not even enough to counter the inherent cultural biases that push woman away from technology fields.

I mean, I suppose it's also possible that these programs just don't do anything and we should scrap them due to lack of results, but I'm inclined to believe they're helping somewhat.

(Semi-disclaimer: Prior to COVID I used to volunteer at Girls Who Code.)

What if the case is that the more choice our women in our society have, the more they choose jobs that deal with people (medicine, politics, management, marketing, social sciences, etc) and the less they choose jobs that deal with things (engineering, computer science, etc)?

Because there's a lot of evidence to suggest that's what happens. As measured by the Global Gender Gap Index , the countries with the highest levels of gender equality, such as Scandanavia, have the lowest levels of female programmers and engineers, whereas countries with much lower scores and more traditional views on genders (such as Iran UAE) have some of the highest levels of female programmers and engineers.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

https://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem-gir...

This is what's dangerous about affirmative action type programs. They're discrimination going in the other direction with the objective of equal outcomes, not equal opportunity. The ultimate equal outcome is communism - everyone ends up equally poor. That doesn't seem like the right direction.

On the other hand how do you get more girls into STEM without programs like this? Maybe it's the best of bad options.

Why is “get more women into STEM” a worthy goal in and of itself?

Well, it depends on whether women stay out of STEM because they don't care about programming, or whether they stay out of STEM because they're worried about being alone in a toxic environment. Ideally a diversity program would not influence group 1 while solving the problem for group 2.

If you phrase the problem like that, there is no problem. Group 1 is tiny compared to group 2.

I think addressing group 2 is a desirable and valid goal.

Societal gender roles say nurses and teachers are women's work and STEM is man's work. That's the thing one would need to address, and at a young age. It's not entirely clear how one can do that. One "only" has to challenge the societal norms that define gender roles themselves. Not an easy problem.

>Group 1 is tiny compared to group 2.

That is in my opinion an unjustified assumption. Huge numbers of men and women are uninterested in programming. In fact, virtually everyone I know of either gender is uninterested in programming. The number of people who don't program because they're not interested anecdotally dwarfs the number of people who don't program for any other reason.

I got the two groups mixed up. Just swap 1 for 2 in my comment, which I can't edit anymore. I fully agree with you.

That’s a different problem. “Fix toxic environments that keep certain types of people out of an honest line of work” is a good problem to solve. That is not the same as “let’s increase the number of people of a certain demographic within an industry”, in and of itself, taken entirely on its own.

If you don't defend your privilege, you lose it. This is what men deserve, if they're so easy steamrolled.

I don't think this is the case at all, this has been a trend since basically the start of all public schooling.

And on a tangent, as for "girls in STEM" programs, I'm not really sure why they need to exist. I think a "girls in STEM" program is as necessary as a "boys in teaching" program, and that is, not at all. Different genders will naturally gravitate towards different fields, and we don't need to fight that.

Interesting question would be in which of the two programs more technical skill will be acquired.

Downvoters: why is this not interesting? Traditional textbook way of learning might be better than making things too much fun. (it still has to be fun, but intrinsic motivation is better than extrinsic). We will never know if we don't measure the outcome.

Well at least in our case the skill in the co-ed program is 0 because my son hated it and wanted to quit. I'm now helping him learn to code on his own. Scratch has been a god send. I'm glad Scratch is available for all genders.

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