<p>Since I have yet to experience it first hand…
Of course should that occur in the future, I reserve the right to take that statement back…</p>
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<p>You are so incredibly wrong.</p>
<p>Some schools are much more (or less) supportive of women and minorities than others, just like with subcultures, neighborhoods, and the like in regular society. So are some departments. Outside of academia, so are some companies. I have female friends in engineering who have been sexually harassed, grossly underpaid, etc, at their companies. There are still some older professors who don’t believe that women and minorities belong in these fields.</p>
<p>Racism and sexism are both quite widespread in our society. Those biases that you might have seen in high school (or on CC, for that matter)? They don’t magically disappear because people get older.</p>
<p>Even what you interpret as professors being “nice” may not be as benign as you think. Paternalism can be very pernicious. If those “nice” professors are behaving that way because they doubt the abilities of their female students, that is a problem. You might wonder how it can be problematic, but it breeds resentment among other students, casts general doubt on the abilities of the recipients, and may mean that the recipients are less likely to get, for instance, research or teaching assistantships with those profs.</p>
<p>One trend I have noticed in reading CC and some of those college ratings websites is that at the colleges where girls are 40% or less the boys always post complaints that there aren’t enough girls or that the girls are ugly (which is really mean). </p>
<p>But when a school such as MIT or HMC starts attracting more girls then the boys start complaining that the school is favoring the girls over the boys and accepting girls that are underqualified. I’m not quite sure what to think about all these complaints. It seems like the boys want to be around girls but then they don’t want to be around girls. </p>
<p>My D is interested in studying CS but with the extreme lack of girls in this area the social options within the departments appear to be boys who are resentful of the girls or boys just interested in girls for their looks and romantic (to put it nicely) potential or boys who just stare at computer screens all the time. Please somebody tell us that there are some nice sociable boys in CS and engineering that she will be able to be friends with.</p>
<p>Interesting, that whole “all the girls there are ugly” vs. “the girls don’t deserve to be there” juxtaposition, isn’t it?</p>
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<p>There are. There are actually a lot of them.</p>
<p>The internet can be a great place to get information, but it unfortunately also sometimes makes people brazen and bold, and rude. A lot of people kind of hide behind their internet identity and hurl epithets at people. In real life, they shut up and quietly stew and manifest themselves as people commonly known as ‘jerks.’ Real-life jerks are, thankfully, few and far between. It’s been a very rare occasion where someone has actually ‘shared’ their sexist opinions to my face. There’s some measure of comfort in the knowledge that the people who hold these opinions are too chicken to actually say them to my face.</p>
<p>Your daughter will likely catch an undercurrent of closed-off hostility from these cowards, but in all likelihood she will rarely encounter anything overt. The vast majority of human beings intelligent enough to major in something like engineering or computer science stopped dragging their knuckles on the ground eons ago, and I’d say that a very large number of my very best friends are guy engineers or computer scientists, and they are VERY supportive of women engineers and computer scientists, and really truly recognize us as peers and equals and friends and coworkers. (The ones who are the best at this, in my experience, are the ones who end up marrying and having families with career women… they really respect and adore confident women who are self-reliant, and since they’re really tuned in to what it’s like to juggle both a household and an intense career, they really ‘get’ the challenges that we face.)</p>
<p>The neutral ones who are still not entirely sure how to handle women are plentiful, and I really get a kick out of showing them I’m a good engineer, because about once a year, I get to really convert one of these guys. The number of good ones who understand what it’s like and really ‘get’ women in engineering and science are growing in numbers all the time. There will always be jerks, but I get the sense that their power is decreasing all the time.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reassurance and the nice post. At the summer math camps my D has attended the boys are very nice and polite and sociable (when they aren’t playing video games). But they are almost all from Texas so I wasn’t sure if it would be different if she goes somewhere out of state. </p>
<p>My husband is in CS (or really MIS) at a large company and he has a lot of female friends but they tend to be from other departments. His dept is mostly guys and there are quite a few eccentric folks (to say it nicely). </p>
<p>I agree that people tend to be ruder on the internet and perhaps more honest than they would be in real life. </p>
<p>Thanks again for the reply!</p>
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<p>I can’t speak for every school, or even everyone at my alma mater (subcultures differ), but the guys that I was/am friends with there are fantastic.</p>
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<p>Reading CC for its views on gender relations is a mistake, unless one likes being angry constantly. This was why I stopped reading the “College Life” board ages ago. Thankfully, my real-life experiences at a tech school bear little resemblance to some of the muck I see on here.</p>
<p>That is good to know about your experience. I have to say that on our campus visits the guys have been welcoming and friendly. We had a male CS student as one of our tour guides at CMU and he said that they “treasured” their female CS majors.</p>
<p>As a male student from CMU, I feel I can say that many of the girls there were pretty ugly. As were almost all of the guys. It’s a nerd school, and you’re going to get some pretty rough looking people with that. A lot of the “pretty” girls I knew at CMU tended to develop a bit of an entitlement air about them, because though they weren’t top of the pile back in high school, at CMU they were hot stuff. While this certainly isn’t universal, it definitely seemed to be at trend.</p>
<p>But, yeah, if you’re a girl in CS at CMU, be prepared for about 30 guys to have a crush on you, no matter your looks.</p>
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<p>The following isn’t intended to knock you down, this is just an explanation from the female point of view as to why it’s not a good idea to make these statements.</p>
<p>Regardless of the general truth of this statement, which is debatable, I think it’s pretty uncouth to presume that nerds will more often be physically unattractive, and that physically attractive people will more often be dumb. It’s a dangerous assertion to make. I think it perpetuates the lack of women in the field (you can either be smart or pretty, girls, and society says you should be pretty, so don’t bother with taking physics, right…? Yes, it’s <em>completely</em> irrational, but you guys don’t really ‘get’ how the female brain works… it works irrationally when it comes to these things. And when it comes to you guys, but that’s a whole other discussion).</p>
<p>These statements are damaging to your female compatriots’ self-esteem in a field that already challenges everyone’s foregone assumptions that they’re smart, so our egos are already a little tired of regenerating lost limbs, so to speak. If you make a blanket statement that “many of the girls are ugly” in a given location, then EVERY SINGLE GIRL there, regardless of whether they are one of the common ones or one of the rare knockouts, will get a terrible feeling in the pit of their stomach that you are talking about them. They will internalize this, but they will never talk about it with you. In this world of size zero stick-figures who botox the hell out of their visages, those of us who aren’t the one-in-a-millions often have some insecurities about our appearances.</p>
<p>School challenges our belief that we’re halfway-intelligent, even if we’re really smart. Same as how that goes, statements like this challenge our belief that we’re halfway-attractive, even if we’re really gorgeous. Whether it’s true or not, you have to understand the sort of damage that this can cause, even if it’s unintentional.</p>
<p>It’s really best not to go there at all.</p>
<p>I think that many intelligent people tend not to look very good because they make a choice not to take care of themselves. I knew a lot of girls that were pretty rough looking day to day because they wouldn’t do anything for their appearance. I know I’m not exactly the best looking guy around, but at least I wash my hair, keep my nails trimmed, brush my teeth, and practice other forms of basic hygiene. You’ll find this lacking in a lot of collegiate nerds, both male and female. I think the reason why girls get a bad reputation for it is because there’s so few in the first place, so each impression sticks out a lot more than the sea of mediocre guys.</p>
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<p>LOL. So now we’re under the impression that we’re stupid, we’re ugly, and we smell bad. Excellent! ;)</p>
<p>At least your stereotype isn’t Milton from Office Space. ;)</p>
<p>RacinReaver: I would appreciate a little more information on the CMU social interaction scene. My D and I visited here last week. It seemed to have everything she wanted in a college but school wasn’t in session so we didn’t get a good grasp of the social scene. We had three girls, very attractive and well-spoken, for tour guides but none of them were engineering or CS majors. We walked through the CS and engr buildings several times and all we saw were guys staring at computer screens. There were no girls and only a few of the guys were talking to each other. The girls we saw walking around campus were all on the other side of the campus away from the CS building. We had a nice talk with the CS career counselor who confirmed the lack of girls in CS and said the numbers just never seemed to increase. I am assuming my D could make friends with the girls in fine arts and business or wherever they are. But she would still need some friends in CS to do projects with. So what was your experience with this? </p>
<p>Also, I talked not long ago to a recent EE grad and he was reminiscing about all the nights he spent at school working all night on projects. I can imagine that anyone up all night would not look very attractive in the morning. Do you think this is partly the cause for the lack of attractiveness? My D goes to a private school where they have to wear very strict uniforms and this does make it easy to get dressed in 5 minutes in the morning. Maybe CMU just needs a uniform that everyone can throw on after a hard night of programming. </p>
<p>Thanks for the information, good or bad.</p>
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<p>It doesn’t help. I can tell you that from personal experience, both having done it and having seen other folks doing it. :)</p>
<p>I think, though, that part of it is that geek subculture has different standards of beauty than mainstream culture.</p>
<p>I also think that part of it is that a lot of geeks just don’t care about certain things that the mainstream considers essential. A lot of mainstream folks are horrified that I never wear makeup, for example. They can’t imagine a woman going out in public without her “face” (a phrasing that I always find comical). They also can’t believe that I don’t want to use all sorts of products and styles on my hair each day to control and de-frizz the curl. Now, some geeks <em>do</em> care about these things, but in my experience, they are a smaller percentage than in the general population.</p>
<p>(I do not consider myself particularly attractive, by the way, but I still get irritated with the “women in technical fields are ugly” thing, because like aibarr said, it reinforces the idea that women have to choose between being good at sci/eng and being attractive.)</p>
<p>ur daughter will be in high demand if she chooses to pursue engineering. even slightly attractive girls will feel like a Goddess in engineering, and get very good help on homeworks. It’s kind of annoying when I was in school, how much attention and help, girls get in engineering, but it makes sense in engineering, where the ratio is usually 25/75 or less.</p>
<p>And Keefer, that’s precisely why I don’t wear makeup on weekdays, and why I didn’t wear makeup in grad school. I don’t particularly look like an engineer… I don’t think I’m a perfect-ten knockout, but I don’t break mirrors when I walk by, either. My husband is a musician, and when I meet his colleagues for the first time, they just kind of assume that I’m a lyric soprano (what other kind of woman would a composer marry?), and are <em>completely</em> shocked (“What?? Noooo!”) when they find out what I do. So, at work, I wear shape-hiding shirts, I pull my hair back in a bun (except if I’m on a job site… a braid is the only compatible hairstyle that I’ve found for hard-hat-wearing), I forego contacts in favor of glasses, and I don’t wear heels. I have an entirely separate wardrobe for weekends. The one time I wore makeup to a jobsite, I got so much unwanted attention that it reaffirmed my desire to not put in a whole lot of effort. On construction sites, it’s predictably worse, but even around engineers, students or otherwise, if I put in any effort on my appearance, I don’t get intelligent discussion, I get shy flirtation. I don’t want to be a goddess, I want to ask you whether you think those cracks are being caused by punching shear failure, ya big galoot. My eyes are up here.</p>
<p>I didn’t go to school, and I’m not in the profession, to make waves with my appearance. In fact, at work and at school, I want the opposite: I want to be regarded as an engineer first-- my being a woman is just secondary. Until even half of my colleagues can handle my putting some effort into my appearance without my being treated like a freak (I’m actually <em>mocked</em> for wearing pink around here) then I’ll start putting in some more effort. Until then, I’ll keep working under the assumption that y’all can’t handle the pretty.</p>
<p>PS- I shower every day and I’ve been commended by my dentist for excellent oral hygeine habits, thank you very much.</p>
<p>Wow - I stepped away for a few days and came back to a transformed thread. </p>
<p>I feel compelled to respond to the poster that suggested it was somehow wrong to factor in race and sex when considering which engineering school my D should attend. I think subsequent postings have, in some way, highlighted why it’s still necessary to ask these types of questions. I am not especially interested in recommending that my D focus on schools where the expectation is that all the female engineering students are “ugly” or ill-kept nerds. I also don’t want her to gravitate to a school where being an AA female makes her the “odd bird”, subject to unwarranted stereotypes or attention. </p>
<p>It’s 2008. Let’s be honest with one another without being defensive. There are some schools that are more inclusive and others that are less inclusive. In posing my original question, my goal clearly was to identify more inclusive schools. I appreciate the posters that have recommended specific institutions and welcome additional recommendations or reactions to the schools that I first highlighted.</p>
<p>I would definitely check out Rice, marnimom. I think it would be a good fit for your daughter. Rice is just cozy in its inclusiveness, and is comparatively blind to these sorts of issues.</p>
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<p>Yeah, and you know what? Some women don’t want to be “in high demand” from random men, especially because some of those men think they’re entitled to be supplied. Some women, much as they might enjoy being seen as goddesses by their significant others or close friends in a personal/social setting, want to be seen as <em>colleagues</em> in an academic or work setting. Some women don’t want extra help that might cause their colleagues to resent or patronize them.</p>
<p>Thanks, aibarr. We’ll add Rice to the list of schools to look into.</p>