Most of them were top of the class, which to me always suggested that while many men signed up and then “see how it goes”, only women who knew exactly what they wanted signed up.

Can you draw connections between what I linked/emphasized and this statement?

[–] sudneo@lemm.ee 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

It's quite hard to make connections between statements about adult society (I.e. workplace, reproductive rights) and what happens in teenagers in a completely shielded (and tbh, fairly inclusive) environment like schools (mostly, high school as that's when people decide to sign up in university). Actually, possibly what happens even earlier, as many people who go to STEM faculties in university come from the "scientific high school" which is the only "liceo" where males are more than females.

On average females earn also higher grades, in all levels of school (which is why I don't find solid the argument that women have to abide higher standard of excellence in this context).

So all this to say, I definitely think there is a cultural issue that pushes women away from STEM subjects (a phenomenon quite common in all the West), but I don't think is what my interlocutor suggested - that is another expression of women having to meet higher standards. This wouldn't explain the corresponding imbalance in other areas.

To make an example: 91.8% of students in teaching sciences are females. 87% of students in computer science are males. I would say that culture stereotypes and fixed gender roles are responsible for both, and instead this idea of "higher standards" seems fuzzy and explains only one side of the equation.

Curious also to note that women are absolutely the vast majority of teachers in kindergarten (99.3%!), primary school (97%), secondary school (77%) and high school (65%). While women are perfectly capable of reproducing gender oppression, it's also fair to assume that there are plenty of women role models in STEM subjects.

Anyway, besides this long thing, I can't find solid connections between what you posted and the topic, can you maybe elaborate your point?

[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

A couple other stories to help connect the dots:

When I was in high school, I was in Botball for a while. I was the only girl in the coding team - there was another girl on the construction team that was mostly tagging along with her boyfriend (I’m not saying this to demean her, she was a friend.)

The guy who was teaching us to code refused to teach me enums. He was talking about structs, my eyes looked glazed over because I didn’t get to eat lunch at school lol - he made some joke about losing me and said it was too advanced for me.

I also was getting really into Linux at the time - playing with things like Compiz Fusion on a shitty laptop during lunch (again, I didn’t get to eat lol). I wanted to make a cell phone game - I think I had a Nokia at the time. So I downloaded some sample project and opened it in Netbeans or whatever. It showed up as covered with red squigglies, because I didn’t have the libraries, but the group of coders walked passed, saw the squiggles and started joking about how shit at coding I was and how stupid I was. I stopped coding at lunch, I felt hopelessly insecure about even talking about Linux because I was worried someone would jump down my throat with the GNU thing or make fun of my distro. There was no safe “nerd space” for me.

And as a teacher, I see this shit all the time.

[–] sudneo@lemm.ee 1 points 2 hours ago

That genuinely sucks. I think that school is far from perfect even in my experience, and yet reading this I can't help but feeling so disconnected from it. My experience has been so different.

To give some different anecdotal experience:

scientific school in suburb of Rome
majority males

My class of 31 in first grade saw 5 new students over the course of the 5 years. 10 people graduated. In the class, 2 female students were genuinely encouraged to be point of almost be privileged in subjects like technical drawing or math. They are the only ones that ended up leaving school with the highest grade (both of them Physics PhD now). In comparison a male student was objectively brilliant. The kind of guy who could figure out physics formulas on his own, great at math Olympics etc. Didn't pass the last year, among other reason due to absences. No teacher ever encouraged him, and he was treated like just a guy who didn't want to do anything. Had a strange family situation, but anyway, ultimately now works in the family bar (which is nothing bad, of course, but a massive waste of potential).

I think despite all the limitations, all the problems, my school experience was not one where these kinds of stereotypes were present. Our study groups have always been mixed etc. All our math, physics, biology, chemistry teachers have been female but one.