The Only Way To Get Girls into STEM (Boys Too)

You simply cannot have the same experience with a sealed, black box, computing device like an iPad, Surface, or Chromebook. I hesitate to even call them "computers" since they're so unlike the computers I built as a child.

Look at the message, it is about how computers are fun and empowering. Even with this general message, they still market to girls by simply showing how women and girls are involved with coding. The target of the campaign is girls, but the message is universal that girls don't feel like outsiders and even boys can tag along.

It's even worse in teen TV, where the smart female characters are more often portrayed as being love interests for male characters over being smart.

And lets not even get into the rampant sexism in most mainstream video games (and their communities), even more important for software engineering and computer science since modding/making/playing video games seems to be a common factor for many male entrants, and relatively uncommon among female entrants to the field (at least in my recent but anecdotal experience).

This all leads to a situation where computers, engineering, science, and math are more often seen as male disciplines. We may have cleaned up a lot of blatant sexism, especially in modern workplaces, but our media is still teaching our children gender bias, often with a detrimental effect for both genders (for example decreasing college rates for males, how many male teen characters care about getting into college, have their shit together, etc).

[1] http://www.truechild.org/PageDisplay.asp?p1=6656

Another possible explanation is that perhaps there is cultural pressure on middle-class men to make a lot of money, regardless of how much pain is involved in getting said money. If you are only getting an undergrad degree, a STEM degree is probably the most remunerative course of action you have open to you.

Now, my perception is that society puts a lot less pressure on middle-class women when it comes to making money... but I'm not a woman; it is quite possible that my perception here is in error.

Hey, while not dolls, I had great fun with my teddy bears as a kid. Served up some mean teddy bear picnics. With the participation of my sister, made some teddy bear magazines for them to read. My mother baked them some miniature cakes. Of course, the bears went parachuting and such too.

As usual, the actual problem is deeper than symtomatic entities like LEGO. We will see the end of this issue when we see the end of the world's obsession with sex and sex stereotypes.

Even without such a study it should be intuitive that steering neurotypical (in the broad sense) boys toward typically female preferences and activities, and vice versa, will end up being cruel along some margin.

(Just as it's certainly cruel for an atypical girl to be forced into typically female behaviors and preferences, which is what you're describing.)

The question is, where's the margin?

This actually is a common conversation within those fields, and is certainly viewed as a problem in wider society. Some researchers claim that one reason male students underperform in school is due to the lack of adult male role models in the form of teachers. As a male with some experience in education, I have seen first hand how much my very presence in the classroom can inspire young male students. They yearn for more male teachers, and they don't even know anything about education theory or developmental psychology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_nursing#Increasing_numbe...

I'd appreciate if you'd read something: http://reelgirl.com/2013/11/im-not-a-pilot-im-a-pilots-wife-...

Edit: It's telling when people downvote a comment that is nothing but a relevant link. This is a situation in which you either have convictions and are willing to defend them, or are knowingly ignorant about the subject and are willing to try to learn and engage in discourse. If those options feel constricting, all you have to do is close the tab.

[Citation needed]. What you're seeing in school is very likely the effect of early age socialization effects. Which can go both ways, if you look at other cultures, such as Iceland [1]. You may also want to familiarize yourself with the concept of "stereotype threat" [2].

> You never hear of the need to get more male nurses, or primary teachers and that is generally not viewed as a problem.

As a matter of fact, this is a source of concern in the relevant circles [3, 4]. For example, much has been written about boys not having enough male role models among teachers in schools. It just doesn't get much coverage in the media because, well, these are considered low-end jobs that few people other than those involved in nursing and teaching care much about. In fact, that is a major theme: If a type of job is dominated by women, it's likely to be poorly paid (stereotypically male jobs can go either way).

[1] http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1032361...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat

[3] http://www.edutopia.org/male-teacher-shortage

[4] http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2013/02/21/is-the-short...

As for why you believe there isn't a demand for these things, it's basically confirmation bias. You don't personally hear a need for more people in these sectors so you assume the need doesn't exist. But in fact there's been a lot more need for nurses in the past decade, so male nurses would definitely be welcomed in terms of increasing the applicants for those jobs. Teachers less so because they have a hard enough time making ends meet with miniscule budgets without adding more teachers to the roles.

All these industries are different and have different motivators as to whom they try to get more jobs to. But behind any great push to get more people into an industry you'll probably find economic motivators, not a demand for social justice. So focus less on the fact that it's women, and focus more on the fact that it's half the population not going after STEM jobs.

Of course we come across more articles about women in tech because we frequent tech forums. But the topic (of men in nursing, teaching etc) do come up on the relevant forums.

If you treat a field as gendered in your recruiting of kids, the sum of your efforts may ultimately balance the scales more than they're self-defeating. But don't think for a moment kids are stupid enough to hear a gender-specific, or gender-targeted introduction/recruitment to some field and not walk away with some notion that a field is "for" a specific gender, or that one is "better" at it than another.

I believe this is one of the main issues. We tell kids they can "be whatever you want to be", and then look at a girl funny when she wants to be an engineer or make fun of a boy for wanting to be a nurse. Society has ingrained certain ideas into what a person in a given career looks like that people are deterred (consciously or subconsciously) from that career if they don't fit the norm.

For example, what is the first image that pop's into your head when you think of a nurse? This seems to be one of the fields that has been pushed so hard into a female career in our societal consciousness, that an entire genre of porn exists around this single occupation (I want my male naughty nurse Halloween costume, damn it!).

It's at a point where societal norms would need to be broken down from the ground up, with regards to gender roles and careers, starting with kids.