I feel like this thread has turned into life advice
yeah, it feels bizarre. Geeks have girlfriends? Hey mate, go to a dating website for that info. I really don't think you should be asking geeks for girlfriend advice, unless your girlfriend is a geek also
no such thing as a TRUE female geek..
The majority of women are incapable of high-level Geekitude..
The reason is, they are hardwired to have children... and that seriously gets in the way of keyboard collecting.... or any other forms of inane devotion to a purposeless cause.
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I'm really not sure if you are serious or not. I hope not.
I am totally serious.....
Why is it that typically men go much further in the professional field....
Because on average it's the women raising kids and producing them..
Look at it this way in terms of "time costs"...
having children is 1 year of low productivity straight up (morning sickness, emotional swings).
+ recovery time, another year
+ raising the baby, sleepless nights, another 1 to 1.5 years.
+ monitoring and soccer practice for another 18 years before college.. another 5-8 years in total time spent on the kids...
So that 7 to 11 YEARS of time-cost from the female's age starting when she's 25-35.. which happens to be the MOST productive and physically fit time of that female's lifespan..
what is she going to do, come back at 40 and thrive in the workplace? seriously?
Tell me that 7 to 11 years does not impact devotion to a career..
Why do so many women drop out of their career path after taking maternity leave...
Given the complexity and greater focus required of today's professional workforce.. women are ill-suited, because they are the primary population tasked with the biology to procreate and take care of children..
That's not to say they couldn't choose to not have babies, or couldn't be truly exceptional in focus, and possibly do the baby and the job equally well...
HOWEVER, that is the exception..
The majority of women will not be able to do that..
This relates to Geekitude in a similar way... women will not put so much pointless time (like men) into some dumb hobby unrelated to the well-being of their offspring...
They just wouldn't...
There are ones who do... I suppose... but let's not discuss that, because you can't do so without alot of name calling and depressing apologies in term choice.
O.O Holy **** you have no idea what it's like. First of all, the reason you don't see women in advancing in professional fields is because of people like you. Women, for whatever reason, are treated differently. I'm not saying they get paid less (although sometimes they do get lower starting salaries), but that there's an inherent gender bias that going to discourage them. Take the hard sciences as an example, specifically my field, physics. There aren't many women in physics: http://www.aps.org/programs/education/statistics/womenphysics.cfm. Why? Well part of it is that we're never really told it's something we can do. There are tons of women in biology. In fact, I think the field is almost dominated with women at this point, but biology isn't so taboo anymore. You're encouraged to go into biology and pursue med school/become a nurse/whatever you want to do. There are women already there, so you aren't going to get the weird looks or people acting differently around you because you're a different gender. It's much easier to stay in a field where you feel people can related to you.
But physics? The first thing that happened when I said I wanted to go into physics was: why would you want to do that? I got discouraged from the get go. Of course, I'm the type of person who doesn't care what people say, especially if all their life amounted to was being a high school counselor (yes, I was kind of an ass, but to some degree I'm glad I held that view). But other women? If there's someone there saying you can't do this or judging you for why you want to do something, you're going to think it's wrong to do so. Especially so when you're in high school and have no idea how the world really works. So women don't bother applying. My university has something like a 1:9 ratio of people entering physics/physics related (astrophysics is basically a physics degree), and in the upper classes it gets even worse. Why? Because women leave. You'd think the idea of getting easy scholarships would be enticing, but it isn't when you're being treated differently. And it's not just college you're treated differently, it's through the rest of your career: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/2012/09/23/study-shows-gender-bias-in-science-is-real-heres-why-it-matters/. I will always have to try that much harder to get people to respect me because I'm a woman in a minority field. I'm just glad I'm smart enough that I don't struggle with it. I've seen so many women leave because they couldn't quite get it and it just wasn't worth it to them to stay. And most of the women I know are actually in astrophysics. I don't know the stats on it, but from my experience, there's certainly less women is something like condensed matter. I think that's because there are astronomy clubs in high school telling women it's okay to be interested in this stuff.
Everything I've said about physics can be applied to engineering to a less severe extent. The point is, this happens before baby making age. Yea, some women leave their careers, but there are still a lot who stay, and those are the ones who are determined to do so. They are the ones who have the passion, so there shouldn't be any reason these few women don't get far in their career. But as you said, they don't. Some of that is due to the fact that there is this gender bias. There have been tons of studies done that show under all things being equal, a man will more likely get promoted over a woman, even if a woman is the one doing the promotion! Women are really at fault here too. For whatever reason, our entire society likes to judge women harsher than men. And this stuff begins in high school with the way promiscuous women are called sluts and promiscuous men are applauded. Even I was guilty of slut shaming when I was in high school. There was a girl we use to call the cum dumpster. And thinking back, this girl had a serious problem. She needed attention to the point where she was willing to change her self to a great degree. She probably had a ****ty home life. But I never gave her the benefit of the doubt.
Point being, it's not because women are "wired" to have kids that we don't succeed. It's because there are more people like you telling us our dreams are wrong, that we have an accepted place in society and any deviation from it we get alienated. Men have to take care of a baby too. Sure, they don't get a long leave like women do (but honestly I think they should. Taking care of a baby is hard work and it's unfair that a father doesn't get to spend as much time with his kid and build a strong connection early on), but they're still responsible for the well being of the kid. Oh, and I forgot about all the other mothers judging you for going back to your career and not staying home and taking care of your kid. You'll get **** for that too. I don't think men really judge us here, although I wouldn't know as I haven't had a kid. But yea, all in all the reason women don't go far is because at every point in our life past graduation of high school is because the views in society tell us we shouldn't. But up until high school graduation it's all about women, so much so that I young boys' get treated unfairly and their needs ignored. That **** needs serious reform too. There's a reason there aren't as many male middle school teachers and it's complete bull****. Anyway, society has a lot of bull**** going on. If you want women to succeed, encouraging us past high school and trying to objectively view us as equals when you're in a position to give a promotion will do way more than any scholarship can. I wish I had a solution for more men to be able to teach middle school with out the risk of getting fired over some idiot child who wants to claim sexual assault because you gave him/her a bad grade on a test. I feel that would help young boys have someone to connect to. But, you know, all men must be child rapists and women can't ever be. :rolleyes:
I'm not that articulate so I'm sorry for the ****ty flow of writing. I know this probably didn't change your opinion since it sounds like you have a serious problem with women. But maybe someone reading who thought you were right might change their view, and that's all I can really hope for.
You are mistaking isolate situations for the greater picture...
The distraction from "work" is nearly impossible to avoid when it comes to children..
A male generally can push away almost everything except eating and sleeping to pursue something..
A female can not do that..
This is the biological path I am trying to explain..
Women will on average run into far greater time consuming setbacks than men, SIMPLY because they've got the procreation responsibility...
I am not against women pursuing whatever they like...
YOUR experience is anecdotal...
If you're still young... you might notice in the future in academia that what kills more female masters/ phds than anything else is "CHILDREN"..
They're pretty much always dropped from the program if they have one during that time... ages (25-30)
You want to fight-the-power... that's fine, luckily modernity can compensate for women choosing career over children.. we have more than enough population..
You seem to want to blame some malevolent external force that is forcing all women out of academia and sciences.. That is simply not true...
MORE than anything else... the physics department would LOVE to have females..
What you're doing is protecting and rationalizing your failures / inadequacies.
Perhaps you just suck at physics.. Perhaps you're not very amiable.. Perhaps you're just an unlucky, ugly female, in a society that has too rigorously pursued a vanity-physique.
Have you considered any of those things before you've created this "enemy in men" which OPPRESS YOU in the field of science....
I had many buddies that stuck with science academia... and every conversation with them has always been, "dang, wish I could meet a girl in my field, then we can talk about ----------, and I'd love her so much..."
What you have are issues to work out... and you must learn to stop pretending that problems are always external.
Edit: Now that I read the rest of your post... Notice your last line.... You're apologizing for something that no one would notice, or realistically take the time to judge you for...
Ontop of that, you admit to not being very articulate...
You may have a confidence issue... This is likely why people may not take you seriously, because you never take the aggressive stance in explaining yourself...
So you see... your complaints about men are misplaced... the problem is YOU.
