Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Gifted girls

IMO, the "tracking" of girls starts early and runs their entire lives. When DD (then 8) tested for one of the gifted programs the testing proctor told her, before the test, "you'll do fine on the reading test, but girls have trouble with the math" My DH, who was there, was shocked. Fortunately, DD and I had talked several times prior to that incident about how you can tell when someone is really ignorant because they will use sentences with the phrases "girls can't" or "girls don't" or "boys can't" or "boys don't" and she was then allowed to completely ignore whatever they said next as being their own misguided opinion. Yup, had the sexism talk with my 3 year old. Then again and again with new and expanded topics as she has grown.

Having to do some deep breathing. The incident, among others my mathy girl has endured, still makes me wish I could breath fire and fly (think raging dragon mom).

Anyway.

Research does support you Dude, the bias is early and impactful. See the original study here:
On The Origins of Gender Human Capital Gaps: Short and Long Term Consequences of Teachers' Stereotypical Biases

http://www.nber.org/papers/w20909

or the NYTimes opEd here with additional links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/u...rom-math-and-science.html?abt=0002&abg=1

What practical steps can we take as parents to counter this? I don't know if my DD2 will want to do tech-y stuff, but I don't want her to feel like the doors are closed to her. It should be her choice.

I like brilliantcp's idea of being proactive in discussing these situations with kiddos:

"Less sexism" is not the same as "no sexism."

Anyway, I was just reporting on my own personal experiences, which were far outside of Silicon Valley.

It is crazy. I have only boys and they occasionally come out with crazy statements like girls can't play mine craft. There have been opposite assumptions though when they did ballet and now when ds8 is the only boy in his team in one of his sports (there are about 3 in the league). But really why would an 8 year old girl be worse at maths and a boy have more trouble reading?

The reality of 'multiculturalism' is that there are going to be some facets of alien cultures or sub cultures that will be found unpalatable and to some extent you just have to take it in your stride.

One of my friends summed it up best - "as a programmer the guys (1980s Bell Labs NJ) used to tell me that I didn't belong (for being a girl) with them, I took that to heart and ended up as their manager" - LOL

I am raising my daughter to expect adversity and to develope skills to overcome it...

This old thread Underconfidence in gifted girls seems relevant to re-visit at this point.

I agree, it is crazy. I've heard a robotics club coach (not the one at my DD's school) say (to a prospective member's parent) "It is really great, there is a girls tournament in [nearby large city], so the girls have a chance to drive (the robot) then. Otherwise they wouldn't get the chance" When asked, by another parent, what the girls usually do, the coach replied "most of them are in the promotion team (advertising and fundraising), which is also really important to the team and is such an important role that enables the competition team to do so much more. One or two of them help the programming squad (writing code), but not at tournaments; there's so much pressure and you have to write code on the spot" Picture me standing there with my mouth open.

I just don't understand...

1) Why don't girls get to drive the robot at regular tournaments?
2) Why would girls prefer to raise money and make posters for the robot club? I mean fine if they do, but do they really?
3) I mean it's the ROBOT club. Doesn't he think that most of the kiddos must be interested in ROBOTS?
4) Why can't girls who do write the code, write it at tournaments?
5) Does he really REALLY think girls can't handle pressure?
6) Brain locks up.

Anyway. Fortunately, at this point the coach moved on to talk about other things (non girl directed) and DD decided not to join this club as it conflicted with other things. Or so she said.

That is over the top. However, I am not quite as surprised as I ought to be. I still remember one of our elementary school administrators (who previously taught GT math for many years) making an off-hand comment about girls not being strong in math. We were discussing my mathy DS at the time and I was almost tempted to remind him that DS has a twin sister, who may not be mathy, but who could still out-perform just about every other boy in the GT class.

What if in trial runs, it were found that the boys were better at writing code under time pressure. What if girls disliked the experience? Would it then be OK to have all the coders at the competitions be boys, or should there be a gender quota system?

The math team our school sends to competitions is about 80% Asian and 80% male. I think that reflects who is best at math competitions. Impartial selection procedures often lead to some groups being underrepresented.