The boys club

[Tsun Tzu]

120 students in first year, around 40 girls.

80 students in second year, about a dozen.

35 students in third year, 3 girls.

That's a loss of 85 males to 37 females.

Why did the guys drop? Not boy enough?

This is applicable to every single industry, hobby and community really. Everyone deserves to succeed based on merit and not feel they have to behave like someone they're not in order to hold a job.

I agree. Meritocracy = Best. However, I'd argue that everyone feels that way to a certain extent about any and every job they do. Hell, I do that every single day of my life because I'm not a people person, in the slightest, yet need to interact, pleasantly, on a daily basis in order to do my job (one I enjoy) effectively.

So...does this mean there are girls clubs too? Is that an issue as well?

I personally don't see a problem with either since, if you genuinely want to do a job you love, you suck it up and do what it takes to make that a reality.

Thats not an insult. At least, not to him. Sure, its infuriating but its not a personal attack on one's sense of self.

I have no idea what gave you that impression, but for heterosexual men attacking the women they care about is viewed as a worst slight then attacking they themselves is. It IS a personal attack on one's sense of self when that sense of self holds up that person higher then yourself. Men overall do not care what other men call them as insults unless it harms their reputation. What we do care about, however, is the women in our lives being insulted. A mother, wife or daughter being insulted are fighting words for many.

Family is a reflection of the self and vice versa.

It's not even an argument. It's an insult to him.

 

[TelosSupreme]

I don't give a shit about the labeling, lets just acknowledge there's a problem.

Here's a fundamental problem with trying to 'solve' this, you're assuming there IS a problem. Is is actually a problem, are people legitimately being driven away because of how people inside already act, or are they simply choosing not to partake in this industry (you said it yourself that first year was 120 students down to 35 by third year. While 91% of women left so did 75% of men). And even if people who aren't of a certain mentality and/or fortitude aren't making it in, is that due to the fact there is a problem in not letting people without what is lacking in, or is it a key to succeeding in the industry?

I work summers in a factory processing turkeys. I work specifically in the slaughter section, where there isn't a single women to be found save federal inspectors who come by one every few hours. It's physically demanding work, it stinks and you have to deal with pretty ugly sights constantly. Not a single women has even APPLIED to try and work in the section for the past 4 years, and I'm the only student worker, male or otherwise, who didn't quit either in his first summer or simply not come back when the contract came to an end.

This is something that ticks me and everyone else in my section off. Whenever someone complains about there not being enough women in "X", it's always (unless being used as a point against such complains, or ironically) either a glamorous, idealized, or otherwise comfy job, typically high paying. It's never the low paying, gritty jobs that keep your food on your table, your lights on and you toilets running. These jobs are done to the near exclusivity by men, yet you don't see anyone seriously making complaints about that.

Here's the short of it if we're being honest, the Norwegian Paradox has long made clear men and women overall want to do different lines of work, and no ammount of programs for schools or affirmative action is going to change that. Men and women act differently, think differently, overall want to do different jobs and as a result overall do different jobs. It's hard coded into us to want to do different things, which is why you'll never have parity for the gender ratio in many lines of work. People can say it's a result of socialization, but as reality has shown over the past 50 years (and hell, the very unethical experiment which started the debate in the first place itself showed if one actually looks at its results) that is definitively not the case.

Basically every bit of this. These kind of "gender roles" can also be found in nature. I've seen studies done on chimps where they examine what activities and toys the males and females naturally choose. Funnily enough, it's virtually identical to that of human children in the western world: Boys like to play with cars and girls play with dolls. Hell, even some of the girl chimps made their own dolls out of sticks. Obviously humans will have a much wider variety of activities chosen among children, but these "gender inclinations", as it were, are a lot more ingrained that most might realize.

Don't forget that academia is also ridiculously corrupt with people desperately trying to push identity politics on their students.

 

[9tailedflame]

If there exists an environment where a certain type of humor is expected, then i personally think that those who exist in the environment shouldn't have to cater to the sensibilities of others. I think if everyone had that mentality, the would would be a horrible place with no sense of intimacy anywhere.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

120 students in first year, around 40 girls.

80 students in second year, about a dozen.

35 students in third year, 3 girls.

That's a loss of 85 males to 37 females.

There is a smaller class size in the program as the years go on. Some of the girls and guys didn't place but a lot just didn't return for various reasons.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

...as important a question to ask, I can't help but think this probably isn't the forum to be asking it, given we've already had the 'Women don't want certain jobs, it's not our fault' and 'It's only natural' arguments rear their ugly heads already. Good to see the usual excuses are trotted out despite a woman saying 'yeah it's a thing and it sucks' literally as the first reply.

But anyway. It's largely a result of weird cultural gendering that gets ingrained into things - i.e. why people find it strange when there's a female engineer or a male nurse (and why there's often mockery of those kinds of things), because over the years we've just ingrained assorted assumptions about 'which gender should play which role' out of an assortment of shitty reasons. It sucks and it's hard as hell to shift people out of that kind of thinking, since it's not really something people actually... think about. They just kinda go with it because it's what they've grown up with, and people suck at addressing their own biases.

To answer your question though... well, just include them. Don't make weird gendered assumptions about them, and call people out who try and pull that shit. Encourage people to stop thinking about people as 'That gendered role' and just as 'that role'. So instead of 'that female director' she's just 'the director'. Treat people with respect, and don't treat women with kids gloves to make them feel 'welcome'. Just treat them as people, and support them as you would any other co-worker.

As Fiz said in the first response, it's a long and painful transition. My advice is, as a man to other men? Be the change, support your female co-workers, call your male co-workers on any sexist/racist bullshit they try to pull and generally just try and encourage a shift towards respecting everyone for their ability rather than making weird assumptions about peoples gender.

If there exists an environment where a certain type of humor is expected, then i personally think that those who exist in the environment shouldn't have to cater to the sensibilities of others. I think if everyone had that mentality, the would would be a horrible place with no sense of intimacy anywhere.

...the thing is, is it really humour? I'm a gay man, and I've had numerous work places where other employees have made gay 'jokes'. Except they're not jokes, they're either broad-brushed harmful stereotypes or slapping 'gay' onto something and complaining about it being broken as a result. Like... if that's the standard of humour you're wanting to preserve in the workplace, you have some pretty low standards.

And I like gay jokes. I love 'em to death. They can be light-hearted, they can be dark, they can be rude and crude, whatever, I'm down with it. Just... include me in the joke. Don't make jokes about stereotypes or shitty assumptions, make some real proper gay jokes! Trust me, it's so much better to make a joke that actually includes gay people than just throwing out a 'lol homosexuals'. And if educating yourself on some good quality gay humour isn't up your alley - then just don't make 'em! Simple as that, don't make shitty jokes about a subject you know nothing about, make shitty jokes about things you're educated in (like, say, shit everyone at the job has to deal with), that'll go over much, much better than low-quality humour around terrible stereotypes.

In my personal experience, calling people on their lack of thought in regards to jokes doesn't result in some warped, horrible place where everyone treads on eggshells and there's no sense of community. It often results in them going 'oh, shit, really?' because they just never thought what they were saying was negative, and then putting in the effort to stop doing that and include me on the joke. No drama, no 'woe be to the office', just a moment of me going 'Hey, mate, could you not? I'm quite gay' and then them going 'Oh, shit, my bad mate' and it's all hunky-dory.

Granted, I could just be lucky since I've heard some horror stories from some fellow gay/lesbian friends in this regard and getting an overly dramatic response from whomever they're asking (people often assume 'what you're saying is hurtful' actually means 'You're a sexist, homophobic prick', which is dumb), but still. Going 'Uggh people not wanting to be made fun of by the expected humour is going to ruin the sense of intimacy in the workplace' is just... well, wrong. It isn't a bad thing to want to be included in the workplace humour, and it'd serve people a hell of a lot more if they actually included the 'others' rather than making fun of 'em.

 

[Phasmal]

Well I see the lady-issues are alive and well. Jesus christ dudes. Just.... fuckin' yikes.

OT: There's tons of reasons women don't feel welcome in male-dominated environments. It can be big things like a dude flat out telling you you don't belong there or little things like the guys around you constantly making jokes like 'hurr hurr woman interested in [x]'.
And an environment where people seem to have zero empathy or even misplaced anger towards women due to their own baggage.

 

[Jei-chan]

I just recently completed a degree in IT networking that included the Microsoft MCSE and Cisco CCNA exams. I was getting an average of 90% in all the exams - I will point out, they're pretty easy, it's not like I'm a super genius or anything - and I got called into the Head of Department's office for an interview, where they asked me all sorts of questions to test my knowledge. I'd apparently been flagged as a cheating risk because my scores were high and I was female, so they made me resit one of the exams privately under the supervision of like five staff members staring directly at me the whole time. (I actually did better, because by that time I'd seen my results and figured out the things I had misunderstood the first time.)

If this is an indication of how my career in IT is going to be going forward, I'm dreading it, despite the fact that I love the subject.

People who deny that boys' clubs exist confuse me.

 

[TrulyBritish]

I think I'll add to this discussion something I think is interesting whenever I read about how gender discrimination does/does not exist in certain industries.
In America 14.5% of the adult male population is over 6 foot. 3.9% of the population in over 6 foot two.
According to Malcolm Gladwell in his book blink (a book about what he calls "unconscious prejudice") in Fortune 500 companies 58% of CEO's are over 6 foot. The number of CEO's over 6 foot two was 30%.
Gladwell specifically points out that there are rational reasons behind why women and minorities aren't in higher and that the board of directors can plausibly say "There aren't a lot of X in management positions, so of course a white male would be more likely t get the position". He goes on to say that the same cannot be said of short people and that while no-one ever dismissively says "He's too short" of a CEO candidate that doesn't mean that people don't unknowingly place bias against them on the basis of taller men being more "imposing".
Also according to Gladwell, a group of researchers (irritatingly, the piece I've found doesn't say which group) went back and looked at "four large research studies, that had followed thousands of people from birth to adulthood, and calculated that when corrected for variables like age and gender and weight, an inch of height is worth $789 a year in salary. That means that a person who is six feet tall, but who is otherwise identical to someone who is five foot five, will make on average $5,525 more per year."

It's kind of funny how the world works. What confuses me more is that it's not like various industries aren't filled with complaints from people who've left over feeling "unwelcome", so it seems odd to just dismiss those. The Trans perspective others have posted was very interesting, never considered it from that perspective.

 

[Yopaz]

This isn't just a case of lack of interest, or difficulty of the job, it's a hostile environment. Plain and simple, if it wasn't there'd be more women to start and more would stick with the program.

Basically this:

Spoiler: Warning! Large comic that illustrates my point. Also very applicable to the topic at hand.

[http://www.robot-hugs.com/technigal/]

This is a pretty bold statement. Do you have any statistically significant evidence that indicates that this is the case already at the choice of education? You are right that in the business there's a lot of sexism and there is indeed problems with work environment, but there are also gender related differences at an earlier point related to our neurobiology. Female brain development is more synchronized than male brain development so the brain halves aren't as radically different as they are in males. Now what does this mean? Well, girls will (on average) be better at communication at a young age. This makes them more suited for school than boys at the same age. In Norway this presents itself quite clearly in a few fields of education. Odontology, medicine and law studies are heavily dominated by female students. Physics, maths and IT on the other hand are heavily dominated by men still. It's actually reached a point where they considered giving boys extra credits to increase their chances of being accepted, which is stupid since we should strive for gender equality. (Source in Norwegian http://www.nrk.no/norge/jentene-tar-over-prestisjestudiene-1.11866832 )

So I am not claiming in any way that women shy away from challenges, statistics indicate the opposite. I am claiming that it runs deep. Hostile environment is probably one of the reasons why so many girls drop out or don't stay in their line or work or dislike their jobs, but in picking their education? I would need some evidence to support that. Doesn't have to be more than a survey, I'm just genuinely curious.

 

[MrFalconfly]

I don't give a shit about the labeling, lets just acknowledge there's a problem.

That's usually the first point of contention.

Back in my electronics courses, we were taught things like "Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls, But Violet Gives Willingly," a mnemonic for resistor colour codes. People get offended, even hostile when you suggest this sort of thing isn't particularly cool.

Actually, about that mnemonic.

It seems like the only kind of "Teach men not to rape", that doesn't assume all men are rapists.

I mean it literally says that only Arseholes rape.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

This is applicable to every single industry, hobby and community really. Everyone deserves to succeed based on merit and not feel they have to behave like someone they're not in order to hold a job.

Okay, I'll entertain this thought. I study engineering, land surveying to be precise, and am graduating this spring. I've worked at 2 different field-related jobs during my studies. Out of my initial class's around 40 students, less than 10 were girls. Now there are 6 left. In all this time I've heard exactly one instance of, admittedly, incredibly crass sexism. And that's it. None more. Nada. Not in school, no from my teachers, not on the job, not anywhere. The field holds no requirements that would call for one gender specifically, like demanding lots of physical strength. There has been no exclusion of the women in our class on group projects and such. And yet, you could still take a look at the numbers and say "there's not enough gender representation" or "land surveying is a boys' club", which is actually generally still said about any engineering fields.

Have you asked any of the women who quit their studies why they did it? Because making assumptions isn't cutting it. I'm not one to say it isn't possibly the climate in your studies, but is it really so bad as to be the primary reason for leaving studies, ones which they must have had at least some passion for? Not because they felt their interest fade away? Not personal issues? Not frustration over the teachers, or the quality of the education they were getting?

Numbers don't mean shit. Look at the gender ratios of fields like child care, education and nursing, and tell me there's not a gross imbalance there. And yet, do you hear someone saying nursing is a "girls' club"?

How do you include women into the discussions and creative process without them feeling they have to 'become one of the boys' to do it?

I dunno, you tell me. Why would the women need to "become one of the boys"? I don't know what camera operation studies are like. What kind of aspects are there related to the job (note: the job, not your studies climate) that would drive this kind of process?

 

[NPC009]

And yet, do you hear someone saying nursing is a "girls' club"?

I've heard people say that, yes.

 

[Thaluikhain]

And yet, do you hear someone saying nursing is a "girls' club"?

I've heard people say that, yes.

Likewise, when I was doing my Library Technician training, we were told there was a push to get more men involved in the library system, as it was seen as a female occupation.

 

[kurupt87]

I've worked in a field where the split in a 60 person building was about 80% women. On my team, I was the only guy out of 16 people.

Unsurprisingly, I left.

The only thing I had in common with any of them there was mutual attraction, which isn't the best idea in an office.

I don't blame them, not their fault.

I see no other way it could've ended unless they'd hired a whole group of other guys as well when they hired me, which would've still been risky and also probably sexist.

 

[Nemmerle]

[HEADING=2]Mod Voice[/HEADING]

NPC009:

Also, you know what? Fuck you.
[...]
To throw in another 'Fuck You' just because I can
[...]
(Probably going to get a warning for this, but right now, I don't care. If I survived the GID forum with a clean record, I'm sure I'll be back to zero soon enough.)

I really didn't want to have to do anything about this post, I mean most of it was fine. Perhaps even insightful. I was reading it not because it had been reported but because I was interested in the discussion. - I was having a similar talk with one of my colleagues at work recently and he was saying how he found it quite awkward to be around women because he consciously had to restrain the stories and jokes that he told. He's not overtly sexist, he just enjoys toilet humour from time to time. And I was saying how I didn't generally find those jokes very clever, and we got to talking about how humour when he grew up was different (at least in the UK.)

Interesting discussion.

But... yeah. I understand that it's a difficult discussion to have, and the nature of the discussion means some people are going to get pissed off, but...

-sigh-

That you seemingly look on receiving grace as an excuse to do as you will just makes things worse. I fear if I don't do anything about it, or impose some warning that you've already said you're fine with, you're just going to see that as an endorsement of your actions or as weakness on my part.

:/

You knew what you were doing, you knew it would be frowned upon, and you did it anyway in the expectation that you'd be able to get away with it because people would make allowances.

Please don't do this again when you get back.

 

[Something Amyss]

And an environment where people seem to have zero empathy or even misplaced anger towards women due to their own baggage.

And if you have an issue with it, it must be a "girl thing."

Which is totally not indicative of the issue.

 

[Cati]

OP- that's what the numbers were like, proportionally, when I was doing CS. The difference was, the girls were already split into smaller groups based on who they knew when they started, and joined up with groups of the guys from there. There were no problems getting along and there was none of this "one of the guys" bullshit. A couple of us even ended up dating someone from our respective groups over the time of the course.

By the second year a girl from each group had changed course or left because they realised they didn't want to do CS or uni (guys also dropped out or switched for the same reasons), and we all remained separated in different groups. The only time we ever worked together was when somehow 4 of us were put in the same group for a project.

If there is a need for better representation in areas where one gender or group is under-represented (e.g. women in tech, manual labour etc. Men in teaching, nursing etc.) the change needs to start with school. Encourage kids when they show an interest in a subject or field one wouldn't normally expect them to be interested in. No indoctrination, just don't hamper kids based on some silly expectations.

 

[9tailedflame]

...as important a question to ask, I can't help but think this probably isn't the forum to be asking it, given we've already had the 'Women don't want certain jobs, it's not our fault' and 'It's only natural' arguments rear their ugly heads already. Good to see the usual excuses are trotted out despite a woman saying 'yeah it's a thing and it sucks' literally as the first reply.

But anyway. It's largely a result of weird cultural gendering that gets ingrained into things - i.e. why people find it strange when there's a female engineer or a male nurse (and why there's often mockery of those kinds of things), because over the years we've just ingrained assorted assumptions about 'which gender should play which role' out of an assortment of shitty reasons. It sucks and it's hard as hell to shift people out of that kind of thinking, since it's not really something people actually... think about. They just kinda go with it because it's what they've grown up with, and people suck at addressing their own biases.

To answer your question though... well, just include them. Don't make weird gendered assumptions about them, and call people out who try and pull that shit. Encourage people to stop thinking about people as 'That gendered role' and just as 'that role'. So instead of 'that female director' she's just 'the director'. Treat people with respect, and don't treat women with kids gloves to make them feel 'welcome'. Just treat them as people, and support them as you would any other co-worker.

As Fiz said in the first response, it's a long and painful transition. My advice is, as a man to other men? Be the change, support your female co-workers, call your male co-workers on any sexist/racist bullshit they try to pull and generally just try and encourage a shift towards respecting everyone for their ability rather than making weird assumptions about peoples gender.

If there exists an environment where a certain type of humor is expected, then i personally think that those who exist in the environment shouldn't have to cater to the sensibilities of others. I think if everyone had that mentality, the would would be a horrible place with no sense of intimacy anywhere.

...the thing is, is it really humour? I'm a gay man, and I've had numerous work places where other employees have made gay 'jokes'. Except they're not jokes, they're either broad-brushed harmful stereotypes or slapping 'gay' onto something and complaining about it being broken as a result. Like... if that's the standard of humour you're wanting to preserve in the workplace, you have some pretty low standards.

And I like gay jokes. I love 'em to death. They can be light-hearted, they can be dark, they can be rude and crude, whatever, I'm down with it. Just... include me in the joke. Don't make jokes about stereotypes or shitty assumptions, make some real proper gay jokes! Trust me, it's so much better to make a joke that actually includes gay people than just throwing out a 'lol homosexuals'. And if educating yourself on some good quality gay humour isn't up your alley - then just don't make 'em! Simple as that, don't make shitty jokes about a subject you know nothing about, make shitty jokes about things you're educated in (like, say, shit everyone at the job has to deal with), that'll go over much, much better than low-quality humour around terrible stereotypes.

In my personal experience, calling people on their lack of thought in regards to jokes doesn't result in some warped, horrible place where everyone treads on eggshells and there's no sense of community. It often results in them going 'oh, shit, really?' because they just never thought what they were saying was negative, and then putting in the effort to stop doing that and include me on the joke. No drama, no 'woe be to the office', just a moment of me going 'Hey, mate, could you not? I'm quite gay' and then them going 'Oh, shit, my bad mate' and it's all hunky-dory.

Granted, I could just be lucky since I've heard some horror stories from some fellow gay/lesbian friends in this regard and getting an overly dramatic response from whomever they're asking (people often assume 'what you're saying is hurtful' actually means 'You're a sexist, homophobic prick', which is dumb), but still. Going 'Uggh people not wanting to be made fun of by the expected humour is going to ruin the sense of intimacy in the workplace' is just... well, wrong. It isn't a bad thing to want to be included in the workplace humour, and it'd serve people a hell of a lot more if they actually included the 'others' rather than making fun of 'em.

Oh sure, there's a difference between harassment and humor, i guess the picture i had in my head was of people having a light-hearted but offensive joke to each other, and some sensitive newcomer overhearing it and getting offended. I guess it sometimes seems like some people want the whole world to have the same social dynamics, and i'm opposed to that concept, but i agree with the stuff you're saying. There's a difference between telling someone something they might not have realized was hurting you and taking offense to something that never involved you in any way and going straight to the managers or boss or whathaveyou without talking to the person.

 

[Erttheking]

I don't think I have much experience in this field, as I'm an English major and that's not really boy's club territory. I'm just saying that a lot of women have issues with this kind of crap, and I don't think they're all lying/misrepresenting their situations.

 

[Worgen]

Its interesting how this also goes over to media. Like look at the new mlp and the hate it got when it was getting popular. It wasn't because it was a kids show, if it was then no one would be this nostalgic over transformers. It was because it was a 'girl' show and everyone knows girls don't like good things. >.>