What prevents you from taking a man as a role model?

I do! And many of them. But imagine you have a strong, particular physical trait and you are in a room with others who do not share that trait. Usually you forget about it, but sometimes it matters because you have to use a different bathroom, or you don't get easily invited out for drinks because of tension or maybe you don't speak the language well, or maybe there are perceived cultural barriers. If you saw someone on television or in the news about someone with your trait and excelling in your field, imagine how delighted you would feel! That somehow, after all you do belong in that field. It's a natural human response to want to feel part of a community, and that's hard to do when you are a singular type of a clearly-visible trait.

Except in most of STEM there are already an equal number of women. As soon as the baby boomers retire itll be obvious. Women get more PhDs than men, and have been for a while.

Do you work in an office with low-level programmers and hardware designers? I do, and I'm one of a handful of women in the building. Actually at the moment, I'm the only one and I'm lobbying for our new hire of managing director to be a woman but it's likely not going to happen because I can't find someone qualified. When I teach in the field at my university, I'm the only woman. And I live in a very popular, large city. Even less, as owners - when I go to a conference of hundreds of businesses, I'm maybe one or 3 or 4 in my field who owns her company. We're not equal yet. Maybe California and the East Coast have some slight more balance, but it's not distributed to the rest of the world yet.

In spite of this, I'm lucky to have an amazing network of other women in my field, and thanks to the internet and cultural exchanges, we don't feel so alone these days.

EE is from what I have seen one of the most, if not the most, male dominated field in STEM though. I am not sure why, but it could be that it is not old enough to be traditional, but not new enough to be accessible. Wouldn't surprise me if there are more women in EE research than in EE.

Unfortunately, we're not there yet in California, either.

I worked at one of the most progressive / women-friendly companies in San Francisco, and as of last year, only 34.3% of our technical roles were filled by women (company size ~1,000). I'm eager to see this year's numbers, and hope they've improved, but there's undoubtedly a lot of room to grow.

Your "lobbying for our new hire of managing director to be a woman" is fuel for rage and even return fire. I hope you can see how it might be used to justify discrimination in the other direction. You aren't being fair.

Your statement is ignorant of office and network politics: I work surrounded by men who communicate professionally with men, primarily. At conferences they drink and socialise with each other. It's harder as a woman to get into these networks. When there is an opening, this information spreads via the network. Which has few women in it.

You may feel uncomfortable knowing the hiring process is weighted. But I feel uncomfortable being in an office that doesn't have other women. If I can change that WHILE at the same time meeting my hiring standards AND not consciously turning away a clearly better candidate then absolutely, I'm going to use positive discrimination.

I'm a man and I am ignorant of this alleged man-only social network that supposedly helps me get notice of job openings. Doesn't that suggest that it doesn't exist? If it does exist yet I'm ignorant of it, doesn't that suggest that the same might exist for women? I propose that there is a woman-only social network that is helping you to get notice of job openings, and you are exactly as ignorant of it as I am ignorant of the one helping me.

The women-only network is tiny. It's true, we rally together and encourage more women to work with us, for fear that the field of STEM will continue to be unbalanced. Where the continued creation of technology is primarily designed by and for the global minority (non-working class men), we lose out on innovation and this affects everyone.

Women make up 48 percent of the total work force, yet only 24 percent of STEM workers https://haasinstitute.berkeley.edu/women-stem-its-not-just-n...

https://www.commerce.gov/sites/default/files/migrated/report...

15% of engineering professionals are women https://ngcproject.org/statistics

Women make up less than 10% overall in computer science and engineering https://www.higheredtoday.org/2015/03/03/where-are-the-women...

It seems very likely that as a woman, you would have an easier time to get into those assumed networks (and so would other women). Don't believe all the propaganda.

A 'role model' is someone who shares your background and is successful in an area of interest where you would like to participate/contribute (science, art, sports, politics, ...) . It's someone who demonstrates that 'someone like you' can be successful, too. Therefore, the closer this role model is to your inherent and unchangeable properties (age, sex/gender, origin, social class), the more it can inspire you.

Surely, a man can be a role model for a woman in science (and vice versa) - e.g., if you are from the same small ethnic minority as the role model. However, male/female lifestyle, upbringing, interests, challenges, etc. are quite different in general, even in otherwise very homogeneous (western) societies. Therefore, the role model having the same sex/gender is very important.

(Just my view - I don't have evidence or experience in this regard).

>the closer this role model is to your inherent and unchangeable properties (age, sex/gender, origin, social class), the more it can inspire you. //

Citation?

I call bunkum on that. TBH it seems both sexist and racist to say one can only be inspired by people of one's own characteristics (in science).

In this case the sex and race are irrelevant to Bouman's contribution AFAICT.

If you were talking about someone like Payne-Gaposchkin, then she overcame a deal of sexism, fair enough.

The whole she did it and had ovaries, omg, seems so condescending and unnecessary.

Dude where does it say we can only be inspired?

> The whole she did it and had ovaries, omg, seems so condescending and unnecessary.

it's not omg she had ovaries, it's omg she did it, knowing she's going to get shit on by people (e.g. these comments) instead of applauded for what her and her team did for science. That's how it's inspiring to me.

>A 'role model' is someone who shares your background and is successful in an area of interest where you would like to participate/contribute

That may be your personal definition, but that is not the actual denotation of "role model". Some definitions I found are:

"a person whose behavior, example, or success is or can be emulated by others, especially by younger people. "

and

"a person whose behavior in a particular role is imitated by others"

There is no mention or qualifier of it needing to be someone who shares one's background

This is exactly the kind of comment that make these threads toxic.

Gender, like it or not, shapes the life experience of an individual. Why would you not want to have a role model that had a similar life experience to your own?

Except, inevitably, when a woman expresses that desire, it gets called "toxic feminism", and the justification is, wait for it: the personal anecdotes and experiences of a male.

I am shocked that in 2019 there is still so little self-awareness around this.

So the personal life experience of a male doesn't count for anything? THAT is what I would call the actual toxic attitude. What makes women unable to have male role models, but men able to have female role models? Is there a difference between men and women, then? Is that what you are saying?

By that logic, why shouldn't I as a man say "fuck women in STEM", because apparently we will never be able to communicate about anything meaningful anyway. People who make it clear they don't care about my opinion, why should I want them in my life?

I stated my reasons why I think focusing on gendered role models is misleading and harmful. Fine, you may disagree. But calling it toxic and "mansplaining" - that's not furthering discourse, and frankly, if that is your attitude, STEM may be better off without you anyway. After all, science is about keeping an open mind, among other things.

>So the personal life experience of a male doesn't count for anything? THAT is what I would call the actual toxic attitude.

Ah yes, the classic: "I'm not toxic, you are!".

Where in my original comment did I say the male perspective, anecdotal as it may be in a given context, counts for nothing?

I didn't.

What I did say was that a singular, anecdotal male perspective was not appropriate as a justification for depicting a woman desiring a similarly-gendered role model was somehow indicative of "toxic feminism".

>What makes women unable to have male role models, but men able to have female role models?

No one said they couldn't, but you're depicting what was said as far more benign than it really was. You didn't ask an open-ended question about it, you specifically categorized said desire as "toxic feminism".

>if that is your attitude, STEM may be better off without you anyway. After all, science is about keeping an open mind, among other things.

Maybe one of the STEM fields will be able to develop a device that can accurately measure the immense amount of irony bundled up in that sentence.

Same merry-go-round as usual in these threads:

Subtly patronizing comment(mansplaining if you will), someone points out "hey that's kind of toxic", original commenter retreats to victimhood and "I'm not toxic, you are! No one has an open mind about this kind of thing etc...", and around we go.

If you want to pretend like STEM doesn't have a centuries-long history of fairly uneven footing for other genders and minorities, and accuse everyone of suddenly being close-minded and toxic, fine, but you're going to have a hard time cashing in the victim card when someone points out the ridiculousness of it.

You twist all the words - I suspect you are not really reading, just rerunning your stereotypes in your head.

I did NOT say desiring a female role model is toxic feminism. Feminists claiming women need female role models is toxic feminism. There is a difference.

And that is what feminists claim, because they need this claim to support their victim narrative of why fewer women are in STEM.

No point commenting your other stuff, because you completely misrepresented what I said.

And by the way, you directly called ME toxic, whereas I made a general comment about feminism.

Yes, "role models" are a good indication of how weak or strong our social capital is. Our society is increasingly fraying apart, so much so that people are now unwilling to view others as fundamentally sharing the same humanity and social outlook as themselves, unless they happen to share some shallow but somehow salient features like gender, ethnic background, religion, sexual orientation and so on and so forth, that make them a part of some increasingly narrow "tribe". This kind of thing used to be seen as a significant social faux pas, but increasingly we see it being accepted.

(FYI I'm not directing this anger at you dude, it's generalized) what the fuck don't people understand about a woman wanting a woman role model? I got the same questions asked to me in the Marissa Mayer thread a day or two ago.

Like yeah I got some male role models too, but fuck I want some representation! Someone who I can relate to! Someone who I know went through what I did!

"Someone who I know went through what I did!"

Which is what, exactly? What is so fundamental different abotu your experience? The immeasurable pain of being a minority in a group of people?

A few things. I wouldn't say these if I didn't think you had the capacity to listen and learn.

1. Your tone is excessively combative for Hacker News. If you're put off by my saying that, ask yourself what a non-combative way to take that in and reflect on it would be. As a concrete example, you said "What makes women unable to have male role models, but men able to have female role models?", in a thread after the OP had already replied to you that she had/has men as role models. It implies either that you aren't listening, or that you're being antagonistic for the sake of being antagonistic. Neither is welcome here.

2. Using phrases like "toxic feminism" make you sound intellectually feeble. Try to be more specific and concrete about what you're addressing without using charged words like that. Unironically using the phrase "toxic feminism" instantly undermines any argument you might make. Again, if your point really is to learn from / share with others, find ways to communicate that don't put up walls.

3. If you're legitimately interested in finding out about why representation matters — and I sincerely hope you are — this is a good piece on it: https://medium.com/@uxdiogenes/just-a-brown-hand-313db35230c...