It’s how women have to be excellent to make a male dominated thing a part of their life. It starts long before uni so you’re seeing it after other women have been knocked down and out of it.
Tbh, in Italy there is no much “before university” in terms of “being excellent”. The admission test was extremely easy, with a very high number of admitted students and on topics that are common to all high schools (we have a completely different school system in Italy). In fact, the vast majority of people in my class never studied those topics in high school. Also university costs were low (from 0 to ~2k/year depending on family income).
But I think that a mix of stereotypes (I.e. gender stereotypes), peer pressure (do you want to go study in a class 90% men) and other social issues definitely discourage all but the most motivated women to join, which is a shame.
The same exact thing applies to many other faculties of course. Psychology and “educational sciences” (literal translation) are basically just women (at least in Italy), which is exactly the same phenomenon.
Before university = the whole life lived as a girl before university is even in it. The whole time being held to a different standard, encouraged one way, discouraged another way, etc etc. Any interest or persuasion being dismantled and/or dismissed for decades before uni.
But what you are saying doesn’t match much the data (at least in Italy).
In Italy females consistently get higher grades than miles, in all levels of school, and they do that from other women teachers (including STEM subjects).
How this matches “being held to a different standard”, for example?
They are the vast majority of schools in humanities (languages, classical studies, etc.) and all “licei” (=high schools created with the purpose of forming the ruling class back in 1920s) and they are the minority only in technical schools (which are generally lower quality schools more oriented toward professions than university) and in the scientific high school.
This also doesn’t seem to suggest any encouragement or discouragement in one direction or another, BUT it does match perfectly the culturally rigid gender stereotypes about women being more creative and fitting roles of care.
Also worth noting that women attend university in a higher % (56%) compared to men (also a result of gender stereotypes IMHO) and with higher grades on average. They are also the majority of PhD students (59%).
So my question I guess would be: why medicine and psychology are mostly and overwhelmingly women faculties, while engineering etc. are the opposite?
any interest or persuasion being dismantled and/or dismissed for decades before uni.
I wouldn’t say “any”, but I would absolutely say that interests in fields that are traditionally male-dominated are discouraged for women and viceversa (I have written in another comment, the imbalance in educational science is even higher than the one in engineering).
So I do see gender roles, I do see cultural influences about what is " for men" and “for women”, I don’t see the different standard women are held up to.
im sorry, i want to answer you but you need to rewrite that whole mess, it’s intolerably difficult to read (unless you’re really just tellin a woman “this unrelated data doesn’t match your life experience”).
that would be comically stupid and sexist, and proving OP right!
I must be missing something. Maybe you’re doing a bit of satire? Embracing the stereotype of “italians=super-sexist”?
naw. I gotta be reading it wrong.
please rewrite this in italian so i can see the nuance lost in the translation
unless you’re really just tellin a woman “this unrelated data doesn’t match your life experience”
I am saying that the very relevant data (ironically, gathered as part of the respect-stop violence project) indeed doesn’t match that lived experience.
Which means that perhaps that experience cannot be generalized?
If someone claims that women are held to a higher standard, I think asking “how is it possible that on average, at all levels, they get higher grades and they are the majority of students?” is a fair question.
The hypothesis that women are held to a higher standard in this context would imply the obvious conclusion that only the “best” would make it, which is in direct opposition with the data that women are a substantial majority of students everywhere.
On the other hand I perfectly acknowledged that gender stereotypes exist and these do explain both sides of the equation that I presented with “unrelated data”: they explain both having a mere 13% of females in IT faculties and having 8% of males in education faculties. The same exact dynamic applies to males and females, which both - due to peer pressure, and fixed gender roles - end up being discouraged to pursue certain careers.
If “women get discouraged their whole life” was a generally valid statement, then asking “why then they are the majority of medicine students, a faculty with the toughest admission exam, a scientific faculty and also a long and hard one - 11 years in total” is also a valid question in my opinion.
So yeah, despite what you might think, while I have no interest to debate or invalidate one’s experience, maybe this cannot be generalized if there are quite glaring issues with statistical data.
Why would you consider data about gender distribution in the education sector in Italy irrelevant in the context of gender dynamics in education (in Italy, since that’s what my comment discussed), is a mystery to me. It’s even more of a mystery considering that that very same data was gathered specifically within the contest of a project about women equality.
If someone claims that women are held to a higher standard, I think asking “how is it possible that on average, at all levels, they get higher grades and they are the majority of students?” is a fair question.
No, it completely misunderstands ops point, and i am flabbergasted that you should double-down like this. Can you provide for me other meanings for ops point? what “held to a higher standard” might actually mean? Until you can tell me how “but girls grades were higher ipso facto they were not held to higher standards” does *not or might not be relevant, your refutation spurious and your refutation dismissed.
I have no interest to debate or invalidate one’s experience, maybe this cannot be generalized if there are quite glaring issues with statistical data.
i don’t believe you, because that’s exactly what you are doing. if you’re not interested, stop doing it?
what “held to a higher standard” might actually mean?
What do you mean, what can actually mean? It means that women are held to a higher standard, which means that to achieve a given result, they need to perform at a higher level compared to people not held to the same standard (males). There is no standard that women are expected to meet to sign up to - say - computer engineering, exactly like there is no standard for males to sign up to -say- psychology. In both cases though there are social pressures that make sure that the people within the spectrum of “I have vague interest in this” will be pushed one side or another depending on their gender.
In the specific case, the frame of the discussion was the women studying subjects which are male dominated (I am generalising from the specific context of computer engineering).
I don’t believe “higher standards” play a role here (in general), because otherwise we could not explain many data points.
What in your opinion means being held to a higher standard in this context?
And if that’s the case, how do you explain the fact that women seem to make plenty of independent educational choices in many (most, in fact) other fields, and that they generally have a higher success than men? Is this standard only applied for male dominated fields? Does it mean that males are held to a higher standard in psychology, medicine, literature etc.? Because if that’s the case, then I find this concept of standard really redundant to what I consider social pressure to adhere to gender roles.
because that’s exactly what you are doing.
Contesting the general validity of one’s experience is not at all talking about that experience, let alone contesting it. So no, I am not doing it and I don’t have any interest in doing that.
Dunja Mijatovic, commissioner for human rights at the Council of Europe, faulted Italy across multiple areas, lamenting that Italian courts and police sometimes revictimize the victims of gender-based violence and that women have increasingly less access to abortion services. She also noted Italy’s last-place in the EU ranking for gender equality in the workplace.
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?
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?
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.
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.
It’s how women have to be excellent to make a male dominated thing a part of their life. It starts long before uni so you’re seeing it after other women have been knocked down and out of it.
Tbh, in Italy there is no much “before university” in terms of “being excellent”. The admission test was extremely easy, with a very high number of admitted students and on topics that are common to all high schools (we have a completely different school system in Italy). In fact, the vast majority of people in my class never studied those topics in high school. Also university costs were low (from 0 to ~2k/year depending on family income).
But I think that a mix of stereotypes (I.e. gender stereotypes), peer pressure (do you want to go study in a class 90% men) and other social issues definitely discourage all but the most motivated women to join, which is a shame.
The same exact thing applies to many other faculties of course. Psychology and “educational sciences” (literal translation) are basically just women (at least in Italy), which is exactly the same phenomenon.
Before university = the whole life lived as a girl before university is even in it. The whole time being held to a different standard, encouraged one way, discouraged another way, etc etc. Any interest or persuasion being dismantled and/or dismissed for decades before uni.
But what you are saying doesn’t match much the data (at least in Italy). In Italy females consistently get higher grades than miles, in all levels of school, and they do that from other women teachers (including STEM subjects).
How this matches “being held to a different standard”, for example?
They are the vast majority of schools in humanities (languages, classical studies, etc.) and all “licei” (=high schools created with the purpose of forming the ruling class back in 1920s) and they are the minority only in technical schools (which are generally lower quality schools more oriented toward professions than university) and in the scientific high school.
This also doesn’t seem to suggest any encouragement or discouragement in one direction or another, BUT it does match perfectly the culturally rigid gender stereotypes about women being more creative and fitting roles of care.
Also worth noting that women attend university in a higher % (56%) compared to men (also a result of gender stereotypes IMHO) and with higher grades on average. They are also the majority of PhD students (59%).
So my question I guess would be: why medicine and psychology are mostly and overwhelmingly women faculties, while engineering etc. are the opposite?
I wouldn’t say “any”, but I would absolutely say that interests in fields that are traditionally male-dominated are discouraged for women and viceversa (I have written in another comment, the imbalance in educational science is even higher than the one in engineering).
So I do see gender roles, I do see cultural influences about what is " for men" and “for women”, I don’t see the different standard women are held up to.
im sorry, i want to answer you but you need to rewrite that whole mess, it’s intolerably difficult to read (unless you’re really just tellin a woman “this unrelated data doesn’t match your life experience”).
that would be comically stupid and sexist, and proving OP right!
I must be missing something. Maybe you’re doing a bit of satire? Embracing the stereotype of “italians=super-sexist”?
naw. I gotta be reading it wrong.
please rewrite this in italian so i can see the nuance lost in the translation
I am saying that the very relevant data (ironically, gathered as part of the respect-stop violence project) indeed doesn’t match that lived experience. Which means that perhaps that experience cannot be generalized?
If someone claims that women are held to a higher standard, I think asking “how is it possible that on average, at all levels, they get higher grades and they are the majority of students?” is a fair question. The hypothesis that women are held to a higher standard in this context would imply the obvious conclusion that only the “best” would make it, which is in direct opposition with the data that women are a substantial majority of students everywhere.
On the other hand I perfectly acknowledged that gender stereotypes exist and these do explain both sides of the equation that I presented with “unrelated data”: they explain both having a mere 13% of females in IT faculties and having 8% of males in education faculties. The same exact dynamic applies to males and females, which both - due to peer pressure, and fixed gender roles - end up being discouraged to pursue certain careers.
If “women get discouraged their whole life” was a generally valid statement, then asking “why then they are the majority of medicine students, a faculty with the toughest admission exam, a scientific faculty and also a long and hard one - 11 years in total” is also a valid question in my opinion.
So yeah, despite what you might think, while I have no interest to debate or invalidate one’s experience, maybe this cannot be generalized if there are quite glaring issues with statistical data. Why would you consider data about gender distribution in the education sector in Italy irrelevant in the context of gender dynamics in education (in Italy, since that’s what my comment discussed), is a mystery to me. It’s even more of a mystery considering that that very same data was gathered specifically within the contest of a project about women equality.
No, it completely misunderstands ops point, and i am flabbergasted that you should double-down like this. Can you provide for me other meanings for ops point? what “held to a higher standard” might actually mean? Until you can tell me how “but girls grades were higher ipso facto they were not held to higher standards” does *not or might not be relevant, your refutation spurious and your refutation dismissed.
i don’t believe you, because that’s exactly what you are doing. if you’re not interested, stop doing it?
What do you mean, what can actually mean? It means that women are held to a higher standard, which means that to achieve a given result, they need to perform at a higher level compared to people not held to the same standard (males). There is no standard that women are expected to meet to sign up to - say - computer engineering, exactly like there is no standard for males to sign up to -say- psychology. In both cases though there are social pressures that make sure that the people within the spectrum of “I have vague interest in this” will be pushed one side or another depending on their gender.
In the specific case, the frame of the discussion was the women studying subjects which are male dominated (I am generalising from the specific context of computer engineering). I don’t believe “higher standards” play a role here (in general), because otherwise we could not explain many data points.
What in your opinion means being held to a higher standard in this context? And if that’s the case, how do you explain the fact that women seem to make plenty of independent educational choices in many (most, in fact) other fields, and that they generally have a higher success than men? Is this standard only applied for male dominated fields? Does it mean that males are held to a higher standard in psychology, medicine, literature etc.? Because if that’s the case, then I find this concept of standard really redundant to what I consider social pressure to adhere to gender roles.
Contesting the general validity of one’s experience is not at all talking about that experience, let alone contesting it. So no, I am not doing it and I don’t have any interest in doing that.
Absolutely…but how does that relate to the previous topic?
Earlier you said:
Can you draw connections between what I linked/emphasized and this statement?
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?
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.
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:
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.