I started today being so excited about Susan’s (yes that Susan, FairerScience’s coPI) USA Today’s opinion piece, "Gender segregation in the schools is not the answer" . It’s a good, thoughtful piece, co-authored with neuroscientist Lise Eliot .
And I loved their message:
Boys and girls have much to learn from one another, whether it’s academic skills, relational styles, or mutual respect. It’s an odd logic that says this can happen better in a segregated environment, and odder still to claim that brain research supports it. If anything, neuroscience research has revealed the enormous plasticity — or learning ability — of the brain, especially in childhood.
The day started to go downhill when I read the comments. You can read them to or just trust me-- the commenters didn’t get it.
The day went really down hill when I read CNN’s Boys will be boys, girls will be girls from birth by Anita Sethi. Now you know...
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Girls and boys: what’s the difference, here?From: fairerscience.org
Post Date: 2006-12-10 07:38:50
Joanne Jacobs, guest blogging over at The Volokh Conspiracy , wrote last week ,
On The Quick and the Ed, Sara Mead reviews a 1993 Washington Post Magazine article on the problem of "smart girls" who are "hesitant to speak up out of fear that they’ll look foolish if they’re wrong." Newsweek’s boy-crisis story raised the same point:
Middle-school boys will do almost anything to avoid admitting that they’re overwhelmed. "Boys measure everything they do or sa...
more She’s Such a Geek: You Gotta Read ItFrom: fairerscience.org
Post Date: 2006-12-16 14:09:40
FairerScience friend Annalee Newitz has a new book She’s Such a Geek: Women Write About, Science Technology and Other Nerdy Stuff . It’s really good. Describing it to a group involved in broadening participation in computing, I sounded like a 1950’s movie trailer "I laughed, I cried, I thought." (Oh wait that last one is rarely part of a movie trailer). And I did all three.
I got a little worried reading the first essay-- thinking "ah I’ve heard...
more Read JustineFrom: fairerscience.org
Post Date: 2007-01-02 15:45:08
Recently I wrote about She’s Such a Geek: Women Write About, Science Technology and Other Nerdy Stuff and the discouragement women geeks face.
Justine Cassell added a different take on ways girls are disempowered as users of technology. . Her analysis, that the real reason behind the fear of girls using social networking sites is that girls’ use of technology threatens the established social order, is well worth reading.
She comments that the stories about th...
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