@SlamPow
I'm pretty sure the point was that sexism isn't there cause people acknowledged it was wrong at some point and are now actively going out of their way to encourage an influx of women....Thus the fields aren't sexist, but the gender disparity has carried over from the past. Thus meaning that if they want to show that their not sexist and/or fix the "perceived" sexism caused from gender population disparity, they must try to draw in new blood of the female persuasion. Which they're doing.
It's actually pretty mind boggling how much they'll bend over backwards and throw events, emails, speeches, and on and on at female members of my engineering school to support them and make doubly sure that theirs a steady influx of female freshman to enter the field. A bit here and there would've been understandable but it's so mindbogglingly even my girlfriend and her female friends and my housemate made fun of it.
It's also very illegal, not to say a touchy topic, to be sexist in the work place or even be perceived as sexist.
There are real reasons for gender disparity in engineering and STEM, but it's not cause of the people in the industry itself.....Well, at least that's what I got from all that
Hmm, thanks for trying to clarify.
I disagree, of course, as this has not been my mother's experience so far. In college, there were tangible incentives for her to become an engineer, and that's actually how she believes she's gotten some of her jobs. But the sexism is definitely still there. Not to mention, how blatantly sexist the whole "incentives" thing is. Sexist or no, though, the last time she showed me a chain email from work displaying a very questionable comic strip and comments on women's roles in the workplace, I completely lost faith in all of the "efforts" and "initiatives" that are taking place. Because all they address is the disparity itself, not the cause of it. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, as Skallewag mentioned, the primary reason for the disparity in many areas nowadays is that just not enough women are applying themselves. But I feel that there are societal and cultural reasons that they are not doing so which are not being addressed.
