DailyMail: Male engineering student becomes online sensation after writing a letter to his female classmates about why they aren’t equal to men

Male engineering student becomes online sensation after writing a letter to his female classmates about why they aren’t equal to men (because they’ve had to work HARDER while dealing with sexism)

• Jared Mauldin, a 34-year-old senior at Eastern Washington University, wrote an inspiring letter to his female peers in the school’s newspaper
• The Montana native praised the women in his major for working tirelessly just to be taken seriously in the STEM field
• His piece has been shared thousands of times on social media since it was published on October 5
• Jared is autistic and suffers from Lupus and avascular necrosis of both hips

By EMILY JAMES FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 16:18, 12 October 2015 | UPDATED: 18:34, 12 October 2015

Jared Mauldin’s letter:

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3269456/Male-engineering-student-online-sensation-writing-letter-female-classmates-aren-t-equal-men-ve-work-HARDER-dealing-sexism.html

Quote: “Speaking with the Today show about his piece, Jared said: ‘Really, when you look at this letter, I said nothing new. I didn’t say anything that another feminist writer hasn’t said before. The distinguishing factor happens to be that I am a man. That is a problem.'”

NYTimes: What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

Source: www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/what-really-keeps-women-out-of-tech.html

Quotes:

“The percentage of women studying computer science actually has fallen since the 1980s. Dr. Cheryan theorizes that this decline might be partly attributable to the rise of pop-culture portrayals of scientists …”

“… research shows that young men tend not to major in English for the same reasons women don’t pick computer science: They compare their notions of who they are to their stereotypes of English majors and decide they won’t fit in.”

“… new research demonstrates, young women today still are avoiding technical disciplines because, like me, they are afraid they won’t fit in.”

“… strategies such as creating separate introductory classes for students with no programming experience and renaming courses (“Introduction to programming in Java” became “Creative approaches to problem solving in science and engineering using Python”) led to an increase in the percentage of computer science majors who are female …”

“Computer scientists and engineers are going to be designing the future that everyone inhabits. We need women and minorities to enjoy an ambient sense of belonging in those professions if the future they create is going to be one in which all of us feel at home.”

Guardian: Sexism in the film and TV industries

Source: www.theguardian.com/film/2015/sep/27/sexism-film-industry-stories

Quotes:

“The director is considered the general, and just like in the military, they still can’t picture anyone not born with the Y chromosome with that title. The industry still insists on telling most stories from a male point of view and even if women write male-driven fare, they’re assumed to be less competent at it.”

“The figures support the idea that men are perceived mainly as the directors. This conditioning affects women as much as men, and therefore some women looking to hire directors may think about the men out there before women.”

“I have experienced sexism at work. Most of the time it’s a refusal to do what you’ve asked, or to doubt the legitimacy of the instruction.”

“Until recently, women represented less than 1% of all cinematographers. Now there are many more, but progress has been slow and double standards persist. I’ve heard, for example, that if a male director is being picky, people say he has a strong vision. With a woman, people will say she is being difficult. It’s also common to assume that kindness is a sign of weakness. The tendency is to idolise directors who are arrogant and dismissive in the way they wield their power. … Women directors have traditionally found more opportunities in independent cinema, where the focus is more on making good films than box office.”

Guardian: 67% of Europeans don’t believe women have the skills to be scientists

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2015/sep/24/67-of-europeans-dont-believe-women-have-the-skills-to-be-scientists

Source of source: http://www.loreal.com/media/press-releases/2015/sep/the-loreal-foundation-unveils-the-results-of-its-exclusive-international-study

Quote:

“Based on the responses recorded in the study, it would seem that overall 67% of Europeans think that women do not possess the required skill set in order to achieve high-level scientific positions (the figure is 64% specifically for the UK). Meanwhile, in China an absolutely staggering 93% believe that women aren’t cut out to be scientists.”

“When asked what impeded women’s rise to the top, both men and women said cultural factors were important. However, 45% of women believed that men blocked women’s progression, and 44% of them (compared with 37% of men) said there was a problem in the support management provided for women.”

“Despite all the negative connotations around women in science, those questioned actually thought there were more of us female scientists out there than there really are. They estimated that women hold 28% of the highest academic functions within scientific fields across the European Union. The reality? There are around 11% women at the top.”

“Any female scientist may or may not be impeded by men and management (as the answers suggest), but she will definitely be surrounded by a crowd of people who do not believe she is likely to succeed. If the people she talks to in the cinema queue, in the bar or the student union are prone to say ‘really?’ when she admits to loving science and aiming high, the drip-drip-drip of negativity is liable to sap self-confidence and aspiration.”

NYTimes: A Toxic Work World

A Toxic Work World

by Anne-Marie Slaughter | The New York Times | September 18, 2015

September 18, 2015

“This looks like a “women’s problem,” but it’s not. It’s a work problem — the problem of an antiquated and broken system. When law firms and corporations lose talented women who reject lock-step career paths and question promotion systems that elevate quantity of hours worked over quality of the work itself, the problem is not with the women. When an abundance of overly rigid workplaces causes 42 million American citizens to live day to day in fear that just one single setback will prevent them from being able to care for their children, it’s not their problem, but ours.
The problem is with the workplace, or more precisely, with a workplace designed for the “Mad Men” era, for “Leave It to Beaver” families in which one partner does all the work of earning an income and the other partner does all the work of turning that income into care — the care that is indispensable for our children, our sick and disabled, our elderly. Our families and our responsibilities don’t look like that anymore, but our workplaces do not fit the realities of our lives.” 
(Excerpt)

Source: www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/opinion/sunday/a-toxic-work-world.html

L’Oréal Foundation’s #ChangeTheNumbers Study

#ChangeTheNumbers: the L’Oréal Foundation’s international study with OpinionWay to understand causes of disparities affecting women in science and obstacles they face.

Quotes from press release:

Prejudice is still deeply rooted: “the study reveals that 67% of Europeans think that women do not possess the required capabilities in order to access high-level scientific positions. Only 10% of respondents believe that women possess the capabilities for science in particular.”

A real underestimation of the problem: “Respondents estimated that women within scientific fields hold 28% of the highest academic functions within the European Union, however the reality is that women within scientific fields hold only 11% of the highest academic positions.”

A change that society wants: “Society is aware of the obstacles that women scientists face, obstacles that are independent of their abilities: 49% think they are obstructed by cultural factors, 43% think they are obstructed by men and 40% think they are obstructed by their management.”

“What is more, 59% of Europeans find that the evolution of women’s place in scientific research is too slow, this being an increase from 26% in 2000, and 29% in 2010.”

“Faced with the fact that 3% of scientific Nobel Prizes are awarded to women, 63% would like to see an increase to 50/50.”

BBC: Ada Lovelace: Letters shed light on tech visionary

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34243042

Quote:

“Perhaps Ada’s greatest talent was the way she combined an understanding of mathematics with a vivid and “poetic” imagination.

She was the forerunner not of today’s coders and hackers, but of the visionaries who imagine how the next generation of technology might change the world.

She was a Victorian tech visionary.”