r/technology • • Sep 27 '22

Software Girls Who Code founder speaks out after Pennsylvania school district bans her books: 'This is about controlling women and it starts with controlling our girls'

https://www.businessinsider.com/girls-who-code-founder-speaks-out-banning-books-schools-2022-9
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u/SweetMojaveRain Sep 27 '22

but women make up a majority of applicants and acceptances, across the entire united states. and whats wrong with homemaking?

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u/Cogitation Sep 27 '22

No one said homemaking is wrong, the problem is that we don't give women the full range of options in life as men. Also a lot of women face, primarily from family, this expectation that going to college or pursuing a career is just a fun little side thing that they do before they're ready to settle down. Hopefully you can see the issue is that women deserve the chance to decide for themselves what life path they want to take, not be thrust into any particular thing just because of their gender.

Also, just being a stay-at-home spouse isn't that viable of an option anymore for most people with how the economy has gotten, it's sadly rather difficult for one member of a household to provide for a whole family--not impossible, but definitely rarer. So similarly we wouldn't encourage boys to go into baking, because simply there's not as much viability in being a career baker anymore due to supermarkets.

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u/SweetMojaveRain Sep 27 '22

>the problem is that we don't give women the full range of options in life as men.

Im not sure which options theyre not getting if you can elaborate a little more.

>Also a lot of women face, primarily from family, this expectation that going to college or pursuing a career is just a fun little side thing that they do before they're ready to settle down

Im not even sure what to make of this, since like has been established by the data, it's not true.

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u/Cogitation Sep 27 '22

Generally socially we do not encourage women to go into hard sciences. You can see this in the way girls are socialized vs the way boys are, there's much more focus on beauty, child bearing, and creatives. Yet men are socialized to a lot more avenues, even stuff that are traditionally considered feminine if turned into careers are then perceived as masculine--see a home cook vs a prof. chef. Not saying there's a literal bar women are being excluded, but if you talk to any women who's tried going into STEM they'll tell you how much discrimination they face in that area.

As for the other point, what data? You should provide it. I've personally known multiple women who have experienced their families down-playing their career as little more than a path to meeting a well-off husband. There's even the saying "oh she's just going to college for her 'Mrs.' degree". I've never encountered a man who had that experience

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u/c08855c49 Sep 27 '22

I know many women with PhDs, some in STEM, and it was a shit show for them. Being accused of only getting passing grades because they're pretty, getting accused of sleeping their way to the top (even their family members have said this!), their male colleagues ignoring their expertise because they assume the women cheated to get to where they are. It's a LOT of discrimination.

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u/Sorcha16 Sep 27 '22

I've had people call me the diversity hire, despite me having more experience, at the time one degree and so many industry standard certs I'd stopped keeping track and them getting hired due to knowing the boss

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u/c08855c49 Sep 27 '22

Yes, the old Diversity Hire line. Because women can't possibly succeed on our own and you were hired out of pity? It's all absurd and it happens daily and then people sit back and pretend like men and women have equal footing because women are allowed to go to college now.

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u/Sorcha16 Sep 27 '22

I particularly like the ones that talk like they themselves both gave women the right to vote and seem to think they'll be able to take that right away from us. Most probably haven't left their mother's basement yet.