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Posted By: ElizabethN Gifted girls - 05/11/15 05:06 PM
Difficult Passage: Gifted Girls in Middle School

Quote
What can you do to help?

  • Help gifted girls appreciate their innate abilities. Gifted girls need to be reminded that they are smart. This contradicts recent claims from "growth mindset," advocates, who imply that informing gifted children of their abilities will somehow destroy their drive to achieve. Yet, most research related to gifted girls has shown that they lack confidence, doubt their innate talents, and already attribute their accomplishments to hard work. They need to recognize their abilities, and also receive encouragement to challenge themselves, work up to their potential, and take risks.

This article nicely encapsulates some of the ambivalence I've found about the growth mindset viewpoint. I understand that it's better to praise effort than ability, but I think there's a role for helping children to understand their own ability, too.
Posted By: deacongirl Re: Gifted girls - 05/11/15 05:18 PM
Yes, this is well said.
Posted By: HowlerKarma Re: Gifted girls - 05/11/15 05:21 PM
Yes!!

Thank you so much for posting this, Elizabeth. Our own journey through adolescence with an HG+ girl has been bewildering in terms of battling her distorted, and even downright bizarre, sometimes crippling self-perceptions.

Mostly she feels inadequate or even fraudulent-- and what is mystifying is where on earth such an attitude could possibly have come from in the first place. ???

Posted By: Mahagogo5 Re: Gifted girls - 05/11/15 05:56 PM
also yes - as someone at the beginning of this journey this is what my gut tells me. I so wish someone would have taken me aside as a kid and told me I was really smart and maybe I just needed to study a bit differently. I think it would have been life changing for me.
Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 05/11/15 06:21 PM
No worries here, as I've been ignoring that particular bit of advice on the growth mindset for years. I've always felt that a fundamental belief in your abilities is a great counterweight to fear of failure.
Posted By: madeinuk Re: Gifted girls - 05/11/15 07:45 PM
I have made sure that my DD doesn't think that boys are naturally better at Maths. Also, one of the reasons that I encouraged her to play chess was so that she could beat boys at it and learn that they are not inherently smarter.

I have also started to broach my DD's LOG with her to help her understand why she is different and is treated differently by her age and her grade peers. I absolutely want her to have faith that she is intrinsically smart and that having to work something out instead of just almost instantly groking it is ok and something to expect as stuff gets harder. Just another reason why I love what AoPS is doing for my DD.

The need for bonding and fitting in (the physiological/biochemical stuff) is why we have put the family vacation money into a CTY camp for our DD this year.

Hopefully my DD will come though adolescence with her sanity, self confidence and sense of humor intact LOL

Posted By: indigo Re: Gifted girls - 05/11/15 09:00 PM
Originally Posted by ElizabethN
I understand that it's better to praise effort than ability, but I think there's a role for helping children to understand their own ability, too.
This seems to be agreement with mindset.

The quoted article in the original post mischaracterizes the linked material. For example:
Originally Posted by Difficult Passage: Gifted Girls in Middle School
Gifted girls need to be reminded that they are smart.
is in agreement with
Originally Posted by "growth mindset," advocates
In particular, attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame.

While it is difficult to condense years of research and a book of nearly 300 pages, these two quotes summarize it well
Originally Posted by "growth mindset," advocates
Our society worships talent, and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability—along with confidence in that ability—is a recipe for success. In fact, however, more than 35 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.

The result plays out in children like Jonathan, who coast through the early grades under the dangerous notion that no-effort academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted. Such children hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart. This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.

Praising children's innate abilities, as Jonathan's parents did, reinforces this mind-set, which can also prevent young athletes or people in the workforce and even marriages from living up to their potential. On the other hand, our studies show that teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on “process” (consisting of personal effort and effective strategies) rather than on intelligence or talent, helps make them into high achievers in school and in life.
and
Originally Posted by "growth mindset," advocates
Some students reacted defensively to mistakes, denigrating their skills with comments such as “I never did have a good rememory,” and their problem-solving strategies deteriorated.

Others, meanwhile, focused on fixing errors and honing their skills. One advised himself: “I should slow down and try to figure this out.” Two schoolchildren were particularly inspiring. One, in the wake of difficulty, pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips and said, “I love a challenge!” The other, also confronting the hard problems, looked up at the experimenter and approvingly declared, “I was hoping this would be informative!” Predictably, the students with this attitude outperformed their cohorts in these studies.
Meanwhile this "teaser" introduction to the article does not summarize mindset well:
Originally Posted by [b
The Secret to Raising Smart Kids[/b] ]HINT: Don't tell your kids that they are.

This thread on gifted girls, their confidence, and self-esteem, flows well, I think, from the observation on foils from a recent post on another thread
Quote
The KIDS may be great... and the parents may be another story if they feel that your kid is not a...'good foil' for his/her excellence...
"Feeling threatened by the success of others" is a tendency of a fixed mindset, whereas "finding lessons and inspiration in the success of others" is a tendency of a growth mindset. (page 245, mindset )

This thread is also reminiscent of the recent thread, Against the growth mindset.

Some articles on mindset may be written to encourage audiences with children having lower IQs to not create self-imposed limitations based on those numbers. That audience of readers may be different than those who frequent this forum. However in the book mindset and the author's articles flowing from it, I've not seen a recommendation to withhold information from gifted children regarding their IQ (other than the teaser referenced earlier in this post); These kids often have already observed that they are different and may find it a relief to have their observations affirmed and explained. While maintaining motivation may be best achieved by a focus on praising effort rather than praising intelligence, this does not preclude informing gifted kids of their IQ, class rank, etc... it simply does not emphasize these things.

For anyone who has not read the book mindset, I do recommend it. It is based on years of research. Not that I agree with every idea/application, but on balance found a number of ideas to be useful. Beyond implications for children's classroom learning, there are lifelong applications of this motivational theory, including "Mindsets in love (or not)."

Some may say that "being reminded you are smart" and having a "fundamental belief in your abilities" would include not only a belief in one's innate intelligence, but also a belief in embracing challenges, persistence in the face of setbacks, effort as a positive path, interest in learning from feedback as well as from mistakes, and reaching ever-higher levels of achievement, in a manner which is genuine and emotionally satisfying.
Posted By: staceychev Re: Gifted girls - 05/31/15 11:35 PM
Interesting thread--stumbled across it in a search for achievement tests. I've been uncomfortable with the growth mindset thing myself, but haven't been totally able to put my finger on why. (And yes, I did read the book.)

One thing that was a revelation to me, as a gifted girl in adult form, was to discover the concept of "impostor syndrome." It was so gratifying to be able to put a label on how I've felt my whole life, and has opened up some wonderful conversations with other grown-up gifted girls. It's a concept that is concept that's constantly in the back of my mind as I raise my two gifted girls, neither of whom are in middle school yet, though one is getting close!
Posted By: madeinuk Re: Gifted girls - 06/04/15 11:20 PM
Quote
One thing that was a revelation to me, as a gifted girl in adult form, was to discover the concept of "impostor syndrome." It was so gratifying to be able to put a label on how I've felt my whole life

Girls don't have the monopoly on this. I spent a lot of my life feeling it too.

"Huh? Is that all there is to this? I thought it was going to be hard. And difficult to follow/understand.."

Was a thought I had a lot as a kid followed by:-

"I must be missing the deep insight that everyone must be feeling"

they weren't LOL
Posted By: intparent Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 01:24 AM
Unfortunately, our girls still have to be pretty tough to succeed in some of the male dominated fields, even with their high IQs. My D20 is researching on campus in computer science at her college this summer (second summer on this project, so getting pretty knowlegable). Her prof arranged a conference call with some teams at other universities doing similar research so they could compare data and issues. Partway thru the call, my D recognized a problem a young man from another college was describing, and asked a question. Dead silence on the phone, then the guys says "Is there a GIRL on this call??". I give her prof credit, he said, "Yes, there are three WOMEN from my team on this call." Followed by awkward silence -- then the guy went on, and didn't acknowledge or answer her question! She was embarrassed and angry. It sure doesn't help her feel intellectually validated when that kind of crap happens. frown
Posted By: intparent Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 02:49 AM
Yes, that would have been great! But she was flustered and embarrassed, and tends to be shy to start with. She said later that she should have said, "Wait, there are BOYS on this call?" But she didn't think of it until later, of course.
Posted By: RobotMom Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 03:18 AM
HowlerKarma - we've had the same sort of thoughts about our DD12 a few times. No idea where she gets the idea that she is a fraud, but it is definitely there.

I have also seen it often in my students. One in particular was so convinced that she was a fraud she stopped being able to function in class because she was convinced that she shouldn't be able to do things as easily and as well as she could. It was very sad, and she is still working through these issues.

I think that middle school girls benefit so much from being told how smart they are AND how this effects others' perceptions of them before they start puberty. Because once puberty starts they seem to have an even harder time understanding that they really could be as smart as they are. I think this is one reason why so many girls opt out of science and math at this age - they no longer believe that they should be able to do those subjects and no one is explaining that they should be able to and that they can do it. I have colleagues who just take girls' sudden lack of confidence in themselves at that age as the norm and nothing to be concerned about. When I have explained why it is important to support them and help them through they call me crazy and walk away! Needless to say, I continue to pester them. wink
I have a master's degree in physics, so I have lived similar situations of having people shocked that I am a female physicist and can carry on conversations about complex physical situations. It is a drag, and does make you feel embarrassed and frustrated. I have had many times when I have thought of great comebacks later on. However, over the years, I have learned how to respond in the moment. The interesting thing is that it doesn't always help - it has ended up with the other person deciding I was being a bully or worse. (A reaction that they would not have had if it had been a male questioning them.)
Posted By: aquinas Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 03:33 AM
Intparent, I just relayed you a personal experience for your DD in PM.
Posted By: aquinas Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 03:35 AM
Yes, Kerry! It's so frustrating! Ironically, in many circumstances, it is both men and women who demean or underestimate young professional women.
Posted By: indigo Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 05:13 AM
Regarding imposter syndrome, the original post's quoted article's second link discusses this:
Originally Posted by doubt their innate talents
Effort and ability are internally perceived causes, according to attribution theory (Weiner, 1986), and understanding the relationship between them is important. Many high achieving students tend to attribute their successes to a combination of ability and effort and their failures to lack of effort. On the other hand, some individuals who accept their own failure often attribute their successes to external factors such as luck and their failures to lack of ability. As children approach adolescence, they begin making a distinction between effort and ability, and gender differences emerge. The academic self-efficacy of young males is enhanced based on their belief in their ability; during failures, they attribute failure to lack of effort. The same does not appear to be true for young females. Girls may accept responsibility for failure but not for success. Researchers believe that although girls may perceive themselves to be bright, they interpret any failure quite negatively, believing that it is caused by lack of ability (Dweck, 1986).
(emphasis added)

Note that attributing failure to lack of effort reveals a growth mindset;
attributing failure to a lack of ability reveals a fixed mindset.

This is consistent with
Originally Posted by "growth mindset," advocates
In particular, attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame.
and
Originally Posted by "growth mindset," advocates
The students who held a fixed mind-set, however, were concerned about looking smart with less regard for learning. They had negative views of effort, believing that having to work hard at something was a sign of low ability. They thought that a person with talent or intelligence did not need to work hard to do well. Attributing a bad grade to their own lack of ability, those with a fixed mind-set said that they would study less in the future, try never to take that subject again and consider cheating on future tests.
Posted By: madeinuk Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 11:38 AM
Originally Posted by intparent
Unfortunately, our girls still have to be pretty tough to succeed in some of the male dominated fields, even with their high IQs. My D20 is researching on campus in computer science at her college this summer (second summer on this project, so getting pretty knowlegable). Her prof arranged a conference call with some teams at other universities doing similar research so they could compare data and issues. Partway thru the call, my D recognized a problem a young man from another college was describing, and asked a question. Dead silence on the phone, then the guys says "Is there a GIRL on this call??". I give her prof credit, he said, "Yes, there are three WOMEN from my team on this call." Followed by awkward silence -- then the guy went on, and didn't acknowledge or answer her question! She was embarrassed and angry. It sure doesn't help her feel intellectually validated when that kind of crap happens. frown

I have worked in IT since 1986 and have only seen this sort of behavior from a minority of Indian men. a) - pretending not to hear a question when they realise that the other person will potentially make their cluelessness obvious and b) seemingly incapable of accepting correction from a woman. Admittedly, I started out in IT when the average IQ (or PRI, at least) of a programmer was probably higher (lower PRI was weeded out via aptitude tests) and have worked at companies considered leaders in their fields.

Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 03:34 PM
Originally Posted by intparent
Unfortunately, our girls still have to be pretty tough to succeed in some of the male dominated fields, even with their high IQs. My D20 is researching on campus in computer science at her college this summer (second summer on this project, so getting pretty knowlegable). Her prof arranged a conference call with some teams at other universities doing similar research so they could compare data and issues. Partway thru the call, my D recognized a problem a young man from another college was describing, and asked a question. Dead silence on the phone, then the guys says "Is there a GIRL on this call??". I give her prof credit, he said, "Yes, there are three WOMEN from my team on this call." Followed by awkward silence -- then the guy went on, and didn't acknowledge or answer her question! She was embarrassed and angry. It sure doesn't help her feel intellectually validated when that kind of crap happens. frown

Keeping in mind that this is just another college student behaving this way, and that therefore his reaction doesn't represent the reality of the industry in any way, I'd explain this reaction to my DD in terms of, "This guy is probably 35 and joining the call from his mom's basement. The question had nothing to do with computing, and everything to do with the fact that he hasn't spoken to a female who wasn't his mother in the last seven years."
Posted By: chris1234 Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 05:23 PM
literally sitting in dr's office right now while daughter is being tested (full psychoedu. eval.).
Ran across this thread, great discussion.

Here is a ted talk, which on the face is interesting stuff about posture building power and confidence (which I believe is related to the discussion) but ALSO a great GEM towards the end where the author mentions her own struggle with imposter syndrome. She has more reason than most to have doubted her abilities; also a bit on how she has worked with others on their own imposter syndrome.
(haven't watched it in a while and I can't review it now..anyway I recollect it being pretty cool).

http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are?language=en
Posted By: ElizabethN Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 05:38 PM
Originally Posted by madeinuk
I have worked in IT since 1986 and have only seen this sort of behavior from a minority of Indian men. a) - pretending not to hear a question when they realise that the other person will potentially make their cluelessness obvious and b) seemingly incapable of accepting correction from a woman. Admittedly, I started out in IT when the average IQ (or PRI, at least) of a programmer was probably higher (lower PRI was weeded out via aptitude tests) and have worked at companies considered leaders in their fields.


For what it's worth, as a materials engineer, I have encountered this kind of behavior professionally a couple of times, both from Japanese men. One guy when I was interning in Alabama ("You go to MIT? Is your daddy president of the university?"), and a student when I was TAing graduate thermodynamics (he never came to tutorials or talked to me about his poor grades, and I got the impression from him that my sex was the reason why not). Those are the only egregious incidents I recall of the many, many men that I have interacted with professionally, although of course there have been lower-level slights. I am now a patent lawyer, not a practicing engineer, but (to be slightly crude) whenever an engineer or scientist has tried to get into a dick-measuring contest with me, I've won.
Posted By: ConnectingDots Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 05:49 PM
chris1234 - great TEDTalk. We shared it in a workplace discussion group and it had rave reviews. Amazing story.
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 05:58 PM
Originally Posted by ElizabethN
For what it's worth, as a materials engineer, I have encountered this kind of behavior professionally a couple of times, both from Japanese men. One guy when I was interning in Alabama ("You go to MIT? Is your daddy president of the university?"), and a student when I was TAing graduate thermodynamics (he never came to tutorials or talked to me about his poor grades, and I got the impression from him that my sex was the reason why not).
Maybe a predisposition to believe that Japanese men are sexist can cause one to believe a Japanese man ignored you as a TA because you were female, when there other plausible explanations, such as his not being serious about the class or his being reluctant to get help from anyone, male or female. You are generalizing based on a sample size of two.
Posted By: M-Moderator Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 06:07 PM
Please stay on topic here, as I'm not comfortable with the direction this is heading.
Posted By: ElizabethN Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 06:13 PM
Oops, sorry, Melissa. (FWIW, I didn't mean to imply that someone ignored offered help because of an ethnic difference, and I agree that their could have been many reasons. My point was really the "[t]hose are the only egregious incidents I recall of the many, many men that I have interacted with professionally.")

Our girls need to be prepared to deal with sexism, no question. Probably gifted girls in particular, and particularly because imposter syndrome can make them uniquely vulnerable to it, and because they are uniquely qualified to combat it if they don't fall prey to imposter syndrome.
Posted By: intparent Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 06:37 PM
Well -- I talked to my daughter, and she thinks this student was a Russian grad student at a US university. I do think that many (not all!) American men have gotten the message that it is just inappropriate to act that way in the workplace, but a lot of the rest of the world may lag behind. My niece (from the US) is an engineer in Australia, and she says it is a tougher battle there than here. Wish it wasn't a battle anywhere... but the reality is that it is. I would love to have seen her professor not only correct the guy in the meeting, but follow up afterwards with his professor/mentor about it -- but no idea if that will happen. I will let you know if anything more comes of it!
Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 07:14 PM
Working here on the Gulf Coast, it's quite noticeable how few women are in upper management and in primarily technical positions. They're over-represented in areas like project management, quality assurance, and positions with the word "analyst" attached to them. Positions that have the word "engineer" attached to them (systems, network, security, etc.) are almost exclusively male, and software development is about 75% male.

My experience in California... not so much. My employer there had more women in management than men. On my first day my team lead, manager, and division manager were all women. I had female peers/team members throughout my time in engineering roles.

So, in my observation, sexism in IT in the US differs by region, and is expressed quite a bit differently than is seen from other countries/cultures, but it's still very much alive and well.
Posted By: madeinuk Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 07:18 PM
Originally Posted by intparent
Well -- I talked to my daughter, and she thinks this student was a Russian grad student at a US university.

Conjures up all manner of Big Bang Theory would be scenes in my mind LOL nerd dudes having zero clue about interacting with the opposite sex.

maybe the reality of actually talking to an actual real live girl (over the phone admittedly) was too much for him and he had to blurt that out because he could hardly believe it was happening.
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 07:55 PM
I think different interests and aptitudes, not sexism, explain why there are more men than women in tech. Venture capitalist Paul Graham was asked why there are more tech startups founded by men. His answer was that more boys than girls are hacking from an early age. My 11yo boy installed Linux on his own onto a Windows PC. He thinks Linux is simpler than Windows because you can do stuff from the command line rather than dealing with a GUI. He has already programmed in Scratch, Basic, C, and Python. I bet far more 11yo boys than girls have done those things. When they get to college, more boys than girls will have programming and other tech experience, which affects their choices of majors.

YC’s Paul Graham: The Complete Interview

Quote
Does YC discriminate against female founders?

I'm almost certain that we don't discriminate against female founders because I would know from looking at the ones we missed. You could argue that we should do more, that we should encourage women to start startups.

The problem with that is I think, at least with technology companies, the people who are really good technology founders have a genuine deep interest in technology. In fact, I've heard startups say that they did not like to hire people who had only started programming when they became CS majors in college.

If someone was going to be really good at programming they would have found it on their own. Then if you go look at the bios of successful founders this is invariably the case, they were all hacking on computers at age 13. What that means is the problem is 10 years upstream of us. If we really wanted to fix this problem, what we would have to do is not encourage women to start startups now.

It's already too late. What we should be doing is somehow changing the middle school computer science curriculum or something like that. God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers. I would have to stop and think about that.

How can you tell whether you are discriminating against women?

You can tell what the pool of potential startup founders looks like. There's a bunch of ways you can do it. You can go on Google and search for audience photos of PyCon, for example, which is this big Python conference.

That's a self-selected group of people. Anybody who wants to apply can go to that thing. They're not discriminating for or against anyone. If you want to see what a cross section of programmers looks like, just go look at that or any other conference, doesn't have to be PyCon specifically.

Or you could look at commits in open source projects. Once again self-selected, these people don't even meet in person. It's all by email, no one can be intimidated by or feel like an outcast for something like that.

Ok, yes, women aren't set up to be startup founders at the level we want. What would be lost if Y Combinator was more proactive about it?

No, the problem is these women are not by the time get to 23...Like Mark Zuckerberg starts programming, starts messing about with computers when he's like 10 or whatever. By the time he's starting Facebook he's a hacker, and so he looks at the world through hacker eyes. That's what causes him to start Facebook. We can't make these women look at the world through hacker eyes and start Facebook because they haven't been hacking for the past 10 years.

It is changing a bit because it's no longer so critical to be a hacker. The nature of startups is changing. It used to be that all startups were mostly technology companies. Now you have things like the Gilt Groupe where they're really retailers, and that's what they have to be good at because the technology is more commoditized.
Posted By: madeinuk Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 08:17 PM
Which is exactly why my 10 year old daughter has her own Raspberry Pi and Arduini Uno board.

She has taken to Python like a duck to water.

I now have to get her more competent in Linux because it comes with gcc...

I want her to have the self confidence of ElizabethN when she grows up.

Loved that last sentence, Elizabeth :-)
Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 08:20 PM
Originally Posted by Bostonian
I think different interests and aptitudes, not sexism, explain why there are more men than women in tech.

Why the difference in interests and (apparent) aptitudes, though? Because they're told at an early age that those things are not for them.

This'll do for an illustration: https://gma.yahoo.com/parents-organ...-cant-193601986--abc-news-parenting.html

Furthermore, the stark difference between different regions of the same country shows it must be a social construct, not a genetic one.
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 08:29 PM
Originally Posted by Dude
Furthermore, the stark difference between different regions of the same country shows it must be a social construct, not a genetic one.
You wrote that there is less sexism in the California tech industry, but Silicon Valley firms have also been criticized for a lack of ethnic and gender diversity.
Posted By: brilliantcp Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 08:57 PM
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
Posted By: cmguy Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 09:07 PM
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.
Posted By: indigo Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 09:20 PM
I like brilliantcp's idea of being proactive in discussing these situations with kiddos:
Originally Posted by brilliantcp
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.
Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 09:30 PM
Originally Posted by Bostonian
Originally Posted by Dude
Furthermore, the stark difference between different regions of the same country shows it must be a social construct, not a genetic one.
You wrote that there is less sexism in the California tech industry, but Silicon Valley firms have also been criticized for a lack of ethnic and gender diversity.

"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.
Posted By: puffin Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 09:57 PM
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?
Posted By: madeinuk Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 10:08 PM
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...
Posted By: indigo Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 10:38 PM
This old thread Underconfidence in gifted girls seems relevant to re-visit at this point.
Posted By: brilliantcp Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 10:41 PM
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.

Posted By: Quantum2003 Re: Gifted girls - 06/05/15 11:14 PM
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.
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/06/15 02:16 AM
Originally Posted by brilliantcp
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"
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.
Posted By: aquinas Re: Gifted girls - 06/06/15 03:27 AM
Originally Posted by brilliantcp
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.

I like this! I'm definitely going to have this talk with DS. We've already discussed the fallacy of "too young" (there are almost always other objective criteria that can be referenced logically, instead), but I hadn't thought of a good way to in innoculate against sexism. Thanks!
Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 06/06/15 06:03 AM
Originally Posted by cmguy
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.

My advice would be: Treat her like a human being, not as a girl.

Also: Internalize the message that girls are just as good as boys, so when she expresses her concerns, your reaction is natural.

For example, my DD was 6 or 7, I think, when she was exposed to the notion that dads are supposed to prefer sons. She'd probably been chewing on the question for a while before she asked me if I wished she'd been born a boy. My answer: "If you'd been born a boy, then I would have played football with you, wrestled with you, taught you to hit a baseball, played violent video games with you, done computer stuff with you, put together or fixed things with you..."

And DD had a grin on her face as this list kept going on, because they're all clearly things that are usually in the "boy" category, yet we had been doing all of those things for years. And before she could wonder if I was trying to turn her into a boy or something, I pointed out how much her girl peers loved doing some of those things, and there's nothing wrong with women liking things that are fun.
Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 06/06/15 06:07 AM
Originally Posted by Bostonian
Originally Posted by brilliantcp
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"
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.

What if a Girl Scout troop formed a FLL team and it performed well enough to advance to state finals?

That's not a hypothetical.
Posted By: chay Re: Gifted girls - 06/06/15 07:56 AM
Originally Posted by Dude
And before she could wonder if I was trying to turn her into a boy or something, I pointed out how much her girl peers loved doing some of those things, and there's nothing wrong with women liking things that are fun.
lol loved the whole response but this part really made me smile. My sister and I (both engineers) have joked that we were both the sons our father never had. I remember one Monday morning when one of my coworkers said he wished his wife would fix the brakes on his car like I had just done for DH. I commented that while I was doing that DH was cooking a 4 course meal while dealing with a cranky baby. DH and I both thought we were the ones that got off easy that day so it was a perfect solution.

There are lots of things at play but our parents (and extended family for that matter) broke many typical gender roles and stereotypes. It wasn't until I was older that I realized that many things are supposedly girl things or boy things. They certainly weren't in our house. Both my sister and I have a fierce streak of "oh, you don't think I can do x, I'll show you" in us which I feel was encouraged if not actually taught somehow but don't ask me how. I'm still trying to figure it out so I can somehow pass it on to both my DS and DD.

I have encountered some mostly minor sexism in the workplace. However, for the most part I've been lucky that most of my career has been in places where skills and competence were valued and rewarded above all else. Speaking with friends in more female dominated professions, politics and other horrific behavior isn't just limited to men being sexist towards women. Many of their stories are completely foreign and shocking to me and IME men don't have a monopoly on sexist and/or nasty behavior. It has really made me appreciate the workplaces that I've been lucky enough to be a part of.
Posted By: intparent Re: Gifted girls - 06/06/15 12:55 PM
Dude, a local all-girl Catholic high school in my city has a top notch FIRST Robotics team. The first year my D was in Robotics (different local high school), these girls in pink t-shirts & tights and black skirts finished in the top 3 out of 60 teams at a regional competition. My D was stoked just watching them. I happen to be wearing one of their team t-shirts right now (volunteered for FIRST, and got the team to give me a shirt because I think they are so cool!). My D did FIRST at her school, and definitely did have to push some to get to work on the design and build teams (I don't think she aspired to drive). But it was worth it -- I think FIRST gave her the confidence to apply to and attend a top STEM college.
Posted By: FruityDragons Re: Gifted girls - 06/06/15 04:50 PM
Quote
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.

I agree. Those situations, in my mind, are a reflection of the problem -- however, the underlying problem to be solved is that capable girls are not involved in math/coding/etc.

Someone told me their son was once on a sports team with all boys and one girl, who was quite good at the (contact) sport. Whenever she did particularly well up against another player, she'd casually toss her golden curls at them when they walked out after the game, shocked to be beaten by a girl. Personally, I would've joined every boys' sports team in town if I was athletic (pretty big if).

On another note, though, I think it's also important to tell both girls and boys that it is okay to do things stereotypically of their gender as long as they are not limiting themselves TO those activities. I'd be perfectly fine with a boy or girl who programs computers to bake pink, glittery cupcakes, because those shouldn't be mutually exclusive activities. However, it is much, much easier for girls to be discouraged in STEM pursuits, and boys in "feminine" ones.
Posted By: Ivy Re: Gifted girls - 06/06/15 05:12 PM
I've worked in the IT field for 25 years (omg, I'm old). Since before I graduated from college.

I've had a few sexist experiences along the way, but only a few. In my experience (and in my experience only) I believe that there's a correlation between age and sexism (when I was young in the industry, colleagues from my dad's generation or older -- nearing retirement -- were more likely to have sexist attitudes). And there's an inverse correlation between intelligence and sexism (the smarter my colleagues were the less likely they were to have sexist attitudes). My industry is highly self-selecting for intelligence, which puts me in the fortunate position of working in a bubble of really smart people (many who are much smarter than I am).

The public education system has no such filtering, which makes me guess that those sexist attitudes are more common. My daughter's experience corroborates that. This could be the reason that fewer girls make it into those fields to begin with, which is reflected in the hiring practices of companies. Of course that doesn't mean there aren't sexist tech companies. There most certainly are. But my insider's point of view is that my problems as a woman are far fewer at work than in society at large.

* Disclaimer for full transparency. I'm not a programmer or engineer. I came to tech through the side door of documentation / usability and all my technical knowledge has come through years of osmosis.
Posted By: iynait Re: Gifted girls - 06/06/15 05:15 PM
DD's chess team organizer was also excited to have a girl in the team.
Posted By: ultramarina Re: Gifted girls - 06/07/15 11:32 PM
Quote
y 11yo boy installed Linux on his own onto a Windows PC. He thinks Linux is simpler than Windows because you can do stuff from the command line rather than dealing with a GUI. He has already programmed in Scratch, Basic, C, and Python. I bet far more 11yo boys than girls have done those things.

I am sure you're right. But for an 11yo boy to do these things, someone has to introduce him to these concepts and he has to think they are socially acceptable to do. You brought your son to these things to some extent, I am very sure. It may also be the case that his peer group is interested in them or they are dicussed in his peer group. All this is less likely for girls. Culturally, there is a divide. Children at the age of 9-11 are very gender-segregated, which I personally find annoying (and btw all the pink/blue toys and "men and women are from different planets" stuff doesn't help, IMO). If computers are not what is done by girls, then computers will not be what is done by (most) girls. It doesn't mean girls can't do it, it means they won't-- just as most 9-11 yo boys will not be found refining their drawing skills by drawing outfits and manga girls or practicing their singing in chorus or private voice lessons or their ballet. (But they could, if they wanted to.) Your argument doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.
Posted By: polarbear Re: Gifted girls - 06/07/15 11:42 PM
Originally Posted by Dude
Originally Posted by Bostonian
Originally Posted by brilliantcp
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"
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.

What if a Girl Scout troop formed a FLL team and it performed well enough to advance to state finals?

That's not a hypothetical.

It's not a hypothetical *AT ALL*. It's happened. My FIRST team competed against them and lost smile

FWIW, we had girls and boys (about an even split) on my ds' FIRST team. The teams were open to any kids who wanted to sign up. We had kids who were more interested in working on the project than programming and vice versa, but there was no gender-trend for either.

polarbear
Posted By: ultramarina Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 12:39 PM
Regarding this:

Quote
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.

Were impartial selection procedures used to determine who JOINS math team?

I'm sure DD would have been "chosen" for math team if that was done based on grades and standardized test scores, but of course, it's voluntary.

(There's a lot more to this discussion, but come now.)

IIRC, high-ability Asian girls are outscoring high-ability Asian boys on some math measures.
Posted By: cricket3 Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 01:34 PM
Originally Posted by ultramarina
Were impartial selection procedures used to determine who JOINS math team?

I'm sure DD would have been "chosen" for math team if that was done based on grades and standardized test scores, but of course, it's voluntary.

This. DD attended the math team's first meeting at our urging- it was her first and last time attending. The way it was structured/organized guaranteed that she would not enjoy it. There are girls on the team, but as UM noted, they are predominantly Asian girls, and the team is mostly male students. (Though it is notable that at this year's school awards ceremony, the class math awards and the AIME/AMC awards were dominated by girls).

My DD, and probably many other girls, are competition-avoidant- DD qualified for, but declined to participate in the school spelling and Geobees in middle school, despite urging from us and teachers. (And as UM noted, I suspect she would qualify for the math team if it was a team that was chosen, not based on volunteering). I think it is a combination of disliking competition, and not wanting to draw attention to her smarts, which contributed to some bullying in the past. As an aside, now that DD is in high school, she seems to be handling competitive activities much better, and is (mostly) embracing her abilities, so things can improve.
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 02:24 PM
Originally Posted by ultramarina
Regarding this:

Quote
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.

Were impartial selection procedures used to determine who JOINS math team?

I'm sure DD would have been "chosen" for math team if that was done based on grades and standardized test scores, but of course, it's voluntary.
Anyone can attend meetings of the after-school math club. Who represents the school at meets is determined by who scores best on tryouts. I think that is impartial.

I have wondered if some non-Asian children and girls notice that the math club (or the local chess club) is mostly Asian and male and decide that it therefore not for them. But then it is their own biases that are at fault.
Posted By: madeinuk Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 03:05 PM
Quote
I have wondered if some non-Asian children and girls notice that the math club (or the local chess club) is mostly Asian and male and decide that it therefore not for them. But then it is their own biases that are at fault.

I tend to agree.
Posted By: amylou Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 03:14 PM
Originally Posted by Bostonian
I have wondered if some non-Asian children and girls notice that the math club (or the local chess club) is mostly Asian and male and decide that it therefore not for them. But then it is their own biases that are at fault.

I think it is naive to attribute the bias *solely* to the kids vs. the environment they experience up to the point of making the decision to participate or not.

That said, my strong-willed DD *refused* to participate in MathCounts throughout middle school, despite personal invitations from the teacher who mentored the school team (and who is also the coach of the state team, which generally does quite well in national competition). I have no regrets about that, and was glad she had the time for other activities. She does not need the competition to motivate her - she has just finished Calc AB as a high school freshman, with a deeper understanding of the concepts covered in that course than most of the engineering undergraduates I teach.
Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 04:36 PM
Originally Posted by Bostonian
Anyone can attend meetings of the after-school math club. Who represents the school at meets is determined by who scores best on tryouts. I think that is impartial.

I have wondered if some non-Asian children and girls notice that the math club (or the local chess club) is mostly Asian and male and decide that it therefore not for them. But then it is their own biases that are at fault.

If participation on the math team is predicated on membership in the after-school math club, then that school is doing its team a tremendous disservice, because the majority of stellar math students have other interests besides math.

Besides, everyone knows the math club and the chess club are for NERDS*, right? Socially-conscious GT students avoid them in favor of more socially acceptable activities: sports, music, drama, debate team, robotics, etc.


*By this I mean gifted students who lag in social development. The Asian tiger-parenting method is known to inhibit social development.
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 05:36 PM
Originally Posted by Dude
Originally Posted by Bostonian
Anyone can attend meetings of the after-school math club. Who represents the school at meets is determined by who scores best on tryouts. I think that is impartial.

I have wondered if some non-Asian children and girls notice that the math club (or the local chess club) is mostly Asian and male and decide that it therefore not for them. But then it is their own biases that are at fault.

If participation on the math team is predicated on membership in the after-school math club, then that school is doing its team a tremendous disservice, because the majority of stellar math students have other interests besides math.

Besides, everyone knows the math club and the chess club are for NERDS*, right? Socially-conscious GT students avoid them in favor of more socially acceptable activities: sports, music, drama, debate team, robotics, etc.

*By this I mean gifted students who lag in social development. The Asian tiger-parenting method is known to inhibit social development.
Math club meets once a week. Students can participate in other extracurriculars and still be on the math team. Math team aspirants don't need need to be at each club meeting, although missing the material presented could disadvantage them. They do need to attend on tryout days. How would you choose team members for math meets?

If some kids who might benefit from math competitions think they are for nerds, that is their problem.
Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 06:21 PM
Originally Posted by Bostonian
How would you choose team members for math meets?

I wouldn't, because I wasn't into such things. Spend a Saturday taking math tests? I'll pass.

I did a couple of them in middle school anyway, though, because my teachers asked me to, and I liked those teachers. That's the way they did it... tap the top students on the shoulder, and ask them if they want to participate. The teachers know who those students are already. They don't need to see them in a math club first.

My schools picked Pentathlon teams the same way. I did it once, and it was even worse than a math competition, because it was testing ALL DAY. I refused further invitations until 9th grade, when we piloted the Quiz Bowl format. THAT was a lot of fun.

Originally Posted by Bostonian
If some kids who might benefit from math competitions think they are for nerds, that is their problem.

Okay, I'll bite. Apart from the same benefits one might attain from after-schooling in math (and if you're already such a stellar math student, what are you really gaining?), what are these benefits, and how are they different from those gained in any other extracurricular activity? Because you can win awards, pad a college application, and qualify for scholarships with any one of the other activities I already mentioned. In addition, most college admissions officers prefer well-rounded applicants.
Posted By: brilliantcp Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 06:38 PM
IMO, it is hard, but worthwhile to examine the causes of "self selection" and make changes to be more inclusive. If a specialty club attracts members that do not represent the demographics of the school, the adults need (IMO) be vigilant to make sure that this is not the result of problems in the club's organization, goals, interpersonal interactions, or some other factor not related to the specialty interest. Example: Here in my area almost all chess tournaments for elementary students are on Saturday. There are some rated quads on Friday nights, but that is all. This makes chess less appealing to families that have religious, educational, or cultural obligations on Saturday. These families children may attend the Thanksgiving tournament or some chess camps, but they will not be able to become truly competitive in tournaments. Adults helping to run the school chess club may only see that they have a "self selecting" membership that is very interested in tournament play and is free on Saturdays, but they could choose to stop and examine the reasons behind the selection. What is the focus of chess club? Will more students join chess club if the focus of the club is tournaments or by having a broader focus? Are there hidden costs to joining chess club (travel, entry fees, etc). Do students lack transportation to club activities because both parents work and may work on weekends? Are the club meetings held at a time that students that take the school bus can attend?

All of these factors mentioned above help to determine the "self selecting" population of the club or activity in ways that are clear and easy to discern.

This type of analysis seems more difficult when we start talking about gender (IMO), because adults may not know why girls and boys perceive themselves as unwelcome or "not a good fit" for a club. It may be simple and hard to solve: it seems to the child that "everyone else's dad works at [local high tech firm] and they can help. My dad doesn't" or "I don't have money for private music lessons and everyone else in jazz band takes them so…" It may be complex and hard to solve: All of the boys in math club talk over each other when trying to be the first to answer a question; the girls just go away rather than struggle with making their view heard. It may be something that I, as an adult, don't acknowledge is a real and substantial issue when you are young: there is only one student bathroom at the chess camp and girls have to share with boys; or there are no other girls at all.

Not sure what the solutions are. As parents, others have given good suggestions above, but I think the institutions need more sensitivity too.
Posted By: polarbear Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 07:09 PM
Originally Posted by Bostonian
Anyone can attend meetings of the after-school math club.

After school is actually quite tricky re who can and can't attend. To attend after school, you usually (most schools) have to have alternate transportation home after the club ends. If you're participating in a school team sport, those practices (here) often take place *every* day after school. If you have other types of lessons or siblings and a crazy family schedule, your parents might not be able to fit in one more after-school-day-per-week activity. If you are attending a before school activity, you simply might be tired by the end of the day.

It's not possible to find a time and method of selection that will work for everyone, and it's not easy to find a best-fit for things like this. OTOH, it's very easy to look in from the outside and say "Oh, only rottweilers who wear purple head bands are attending this activity, therefore they must be the best candidates."... without taking into account that it's quite likely that there is some other selection factor influencing who attends that may, in fact, be entirely unrelated to who is naturally a best fit for a competition or who is naturally most interested in the subject.

polarbear

ps - I'll offer up one situation that happened in my family. One of my dds was very interested in joining our school's chess club, so she went to the first meeting and stuck it out for another 1 or 2 meetings after school. She quit - not because the chess was difficult (she was, in fact, having a lot of fun with the chess) - she quit because she had a difficult time with the approach of the teacher sponsoring the club, and also because there were quite a few students in the club she didn't really feel like hanging out with. I don't think the quitting due to not enjoying the sponsor fit or not feeling like hanging out with the other kids is exclusive to a "girl's" personality either - same thing has happened with my ds and other boys I know.
Posted By: ultramarina Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 08:09 PM
Great post, brilliantcp. Yes, all of that.

The point I was trying to make, Bostonian, is that if someone had gone through all the stduents at DD's school (identified by number only, let us say) and taken students with the highest math GPAs and standardized test scores to nominate for math club or team, my daughter would surely have been on that list. (I don't know how she would have done on math contest try-outs, but let's leave that aside for now.) But she would never have considered joining the club (I did ask her when the letter came home, as it did to all students). It is mostly boys and she does not consider it her venue or her thing. She had already had the experience of feeling outnumbered, socially alone and ignored at chess club. Mind you, I think the worst part was feeling socially alone--you do want to have friends at your afterschool activities.

polarbear, my son had a hard time at chess club sometimes last year because he was a kindergartener who was quite good at chess, and that really did not sit well with the older boys. A few kids called him "Kindergarten" in a not-nice way. He stuck it out because he loves chess and probably recognized some of this as sour grapes. This type of atmosphere is also not fun for many girls, who have been socialized to not be into this (or are just not into it...whatever).
Posted By: AvoCado Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 10:26 PM
Originally Posted by intparent
"Is there a GIRL on this call??"

Originally Posted by Kerry
I have a master's degree in physics, so I have lived similar situations of having people shocked that I am a female physicist


Originally Posted by Bostonian
I bet far more 11yo boys than girls have done those things.


Quote
God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers. I would have to stop and think about that.

Originally Posted by brilliantcp
"you'll do fine on the reading test, but girls have trouble with the math"


Originally Posted by puffin
I have only boys and they occasionally come out with crazy statements like girls can't play mine craft.


Originally Posted by Bostonian
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?

Originally Posted by Bostonian
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.


= general mutterings of society as a whole that my DD has been subconsciously listening to her entire life. No wonder at age 6 she decided she would never again discuss her STEM interests at school frown
Posted By: NotSoGifted Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 10:27 PM
I can understand that the older chess club kids might be tough on a kindergarten kid. But as our kids got older, if it was an activity they wanted to do, we told them it was not about being with your friends. You don't need to be friends with the other kids on the chess team, math team, baseball team, etc. You just need to be polite and respectful, and be a teammate.

My eldest played her sport with kids who were not her friends - she was not in that group. They seemed to be okay with her, but they were downright nasty to some other kids. When they were about to graduate HS, these kids apologized to her for being not so nice in their younger years (though my kid certainly didn't receive the worst of it from these kids). However, they were teammates on the field and worked together on the team (even placed 4th in the state in their sport one year). They just weren't buddies outside the team.

As for conflicts, there will always be conflicts with various activities. You can't always participate in all of the activities you would like to do. As kids get older, they often must choose one or two activities and drop others. Anyone who is seriously into math competitions, a travel sport or similar will quickly realize that these things take a lot of time. My kids play a travel sport and the tournaments consume every weekend in the spring/summer (and they have played travel since 2009). They also know kids who are very serious about math competitions, as in making USAMO (one kid did so every year from 8th grade on) - then it isn't just about padding the college application.

Now after I said all of that, I admit that middle kid did Mathcounts because of the friend thing. Her friend's dad was running the Mathcounts club/team and the friend didn't want to be the only white kid there. So she asked middle kid and one other friend to come to Mathcounts so she wouldn't feel alone. They ended up having fun - the dad does a lot of fun math projects and provides plenty of snacks. When middle kid was in 7th grade, a couple of the good team members were sick on the competition day, so middle kid and the other friend had to sub on the team. Turned out to be an all-girl team (two white kids and two Asian kids) and middle kid and friend hadn't really done much practice, but the team managed third place at the county level out of about 24 teams.

So if a kid thinks they might like an activity, tell them to give it a fair chance. They don't need to be friends with the other kids, just be a good teammate and treat others with respect. This might not be a good approach for really young kids, but once our kids hit 9 or 10, this was our approach (and I think it has worked out pretty well, at least for our kids).

Posted By: mithawk Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 11:29 PM
Originally Posted by Dude
Besides, everyone knows the math club and the chess club are for NERDS*, right? Socially-conscious GT students avoid them in favor of more socially acceptable activities: sports, music, drama, debate team, robotics, etc.
Is that so? My son is heavily involved in both chess and math, to the point where he has won a national title in the former and is very competitive at the state level in the latter. He spends a *lot* of time on both activities, by choice, because he NEEDS mental stimulation every day.

He was also just elected school president in a school with 900 kids so these "NERD" activities obviously haven't affected him socially. It is not the activity that determines social acceptability. It is the child and how they interact with others that determines social acceptability.

Posted By: mithawk Re: Gifted girls - 06/08/15 11:56 PM
Originally Posted by Dude
Okay, I'll bite. Apart from the same benefits one might attain from after-schooling in math (and if you're already such a stellar math student, what are you really gaining?), what are these benefits, and how are they different from those gained in any other extracurricular activity? Because you can win awards, pad a college application, and qualify for scholarships with any one of the other activities I already mentioned.
Hopefully the main benefit is that they enjoy the activity.

I am separating this last part of Dude's statement because so many people have this incorrect perception.
Quote
In addition, most college admissions officers prefer well-rounded applicants.
Selective colleges are NOT looking for well-rounded applicants. They are looking for a well-rounded CLASS. They can put together a well-rounded class by getting the star athletes, the champion debater, the musical prodigy, the politicians, accomplished actors, and yes, even the math and chess prodigies.

Some very specific examples:

* My nephew, who graduated from Yale a few years ago had the 4.0GPA & 2400 SAT (one sitting) and had done some science research with a professor while in high school. His words were "Yale doesn't want well-rounded people. They want pointy people!"
* My next door neighbor has a daughter who is a math prodigy. She is finishing or has finished her PhD in Harvard.
* Two doors down, their son was high school President and near the top of his class, and was accepted into Cornell.
* D's best friend's older sister is now in Harvard. She was a state champion debater.
* My boss has two children in HYPSM. One child was state-level competitive in both debate and track. The other was exceptional in math.
Posted By: Val Re: Gifted girls - 06/09/15 12:46 AM
Mithawk, that's all anecdotal. It doesn't prove anything.
Posted By: mithawk Re: Gifted girls - 06/09/15 01:32 AM
Val,

My nephew's comment about pointy people was something told to him by someone in Yale (it's been a few years so I can't remember who it was).

Think of it a different way. The most selective colleges have plenty of kids that can succeed academically at their college, to the point where have to refuse about 80% of the academically capable kids.

So what makes an admissions officer say "We want this kid" over the many others with similar test scores and grades? Will it be the well-rounded kid from an upper-middle class family that dabbles in five different activities?

Or will it be the kid that achieved exceptional grades despite being shuttled around six different foster homes? Or the kid from a highly under-represented demographic. Or the exceptional oboe player that can replace the graduating senior. Or the kid that won the USAMO gold medal? Or the girl with crew ERG times better than anyone. Those are accomplishments that admissions people can point to to choose one child over another.

Now, this really only happens at the 25-50 most selective colleges, and people can make a very good case that this competition is not good for most kids. That is an altogether different discussion.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack this thread any further so I may start a new thread about this soon.
Posted By: intparent Re: Gifted girls - 06/09/15 01:48 AM
This is where my D goes to college. They are making great strides in getting women into STEM areas where there is less representation. My D toyed with the CS major, and is even researching in it this summer, but recently changed her mind and switched to physics.

http://theconversation.com/closing-...-making-a-difference-in-many-lives-41422

I find their splitting of the intro CS classes up especially interesting. My D hadn't coded much at all before college, and it was great for her to have an intro course where she wasn't trampled by kids who had been loading Linux on their machines at age 11. And after the first semester, the tracks merge and she has done fine in her CS courses.
Posted By: mithawk Re: Gifted girls - 06/09/15 02:26 AM
Quote
I find their splitting of the intro CS classes up especially interesting. My D hadn't coded much at all before college, and it was great for her to have an intro course where she wasn't trampled by kids who had been loading Linux on their machines at age 11. And after the first semester, the tracks merge and she has done fine in her CS courses.
Harvey Mudd gets very bright students, so I could see this approach working there. Programming, like many other things, is a skill. Smart kids can pick up the basics quickly and solve moderately difficult abstract problems.

However, others become reasonably proficient through years of experience in learning what problems to avoid. So I wonder how well this approach would work in a lower level college.
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/09/15 12:14 PM
Originally Posted by mithawk
Originally Posted by Dude
Okay, I'll bite. Apart from the same benefits one might attain from after-schooling in math (and if you're already such a stellar math student, what are you really gaining?), what are these benefits, and how are they different from those gained in any other extracurricular activity? Because you can win awards, pad a college application, and qualify for scholarships with any one of the other activities I already mentioned.
Hopefully the main benefit is that they enjoy the activity.

I am separating this last part of Dude's statement because so many people have this incorrect perception.
Quote
In addition, most college admissions officers prefer well-rounded applicants.
Selective colleges are NOT looking for well-rounded applicants. They are looking for a well-rounded CLASS. They can put together a well-rounded class by getting the star athletes, the champion debater, the musical prodigy, the politicians, accomplished actors, and yes, even the math and chess prodigies.
As the book "In! College Admissions and Beyond" by Lillian Luterman and Jennifer Bloom, two college admissions consultants, says, "be alike but spike". "Be alike" means have very good test scores and grades in demanding classes. Mithawk gave examples of "spikes".
Posted By: JonLaw Re: Gifted girls - 06/09/15 12:41 PM
Originally Posted by mithawk
* My nephew, who graduated from Yale a few years ago had the 4.0GPA & 2400 SAT (one sitting) and had done some science research with a professor while in high school. His words were "Yale doesn't want well-rounded people. They want pointy people!"
* My next door neighbor has a daughter who is a math prodigy. She is finishing or has finished her PhD in Harvard.
* Two doors down, their son was high school President and near the top of his class, and was accepted into Cornell.
* D's best friend's older sister is now in Harvard. She was a state champion debater.
* My boss has two children in HYPSM. One child was state-level competitive in both debate and track. The other was exceptional in math.

Power! Glory! Awesomeness!

Except for the second one in your list.

Class president? Cornell?

Kind of run of the mill. Is Cornell even considered elite or relevant these days?
Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 06/09/15 01:32 PM
The spike the elite colleges are most interested in is the one in their parents' income levels.
Posted By: ultramarina Re: Gifted girls - 06/09/15 02:25 PM
Quote
we told them it was not about being with your friends. You don't need to be friends with the other kids on the chess team, math team, baseball team, etc. You just need to be polite and respectful, and be a teammate.

It's not about being with your friends? What IS "it" about? Unstoppable pursuit of excellence? Man, these are kids. I can't blame my children if they don't want to continue in an activity where they have no friends or are treated poorly by other kids, even if they're good at it and enjoy the activities. They aren't robots. I mean, if they want to continue anyway, of course, more power to them, but not enjoying the social aspect of an activity (especially one with a heavy time commitment) is a valid concern, IMO.

FWIW, research on what kids like about sports show that what they value most about it are being with friends and having fun, with skill development also on the list. Winning and getting trophies ranked very low.
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/09/15 02:43 PM
Originally Posted by ultramarina
FWIW, research on what kids like about sports show that what they value most about it are being with friends and having fun, with skill development also on the list. Winning and getting trophies ranked very low.
That is not my impression of young chess players. On some days our chess club has tournaments with trophies as prizes, and other days are for open play. The days with tournaments have noticeably higher turnout.
Posted By: JonLaw Re: Gifted girls - 06/09/15 03:02 PM
Originally Posted by ultramarina
It's not about being with your friends? What IS "it" about? Unstoppable pursuit of excellence?

Power! Glory! Awesomeness!

The ability to truly achieve what you were destined to achieve!
Posted By: indigo Re: Gifted girls - 06/09/15 03:44 PM
Back to the OP... here is a free online resource by the Mensa Foundation which discusses internal motivation: Lit From Within. Slide 41 of 43 in the Prezi reminds us that self-concept should be realistic and skill-based. Slide 42 reminds us of the role of effort (actually, grit): destitutus ventis, remos adhibe (deprived of the winds, take their oars).

Dweck (author of mindset) is one of several sources listed in the presentation.
Posted By: NotSoGifted Re: Gifted girls - 06/09/15 04:45 PM
I'm not talking about tiny kids when I say it isn't about being with your friends. I understand that all kids (all people, really) would probably prefer to be around friends for activities. But when your kid is in middle school or high school, and your kid likes soccer and their friends like cross country (or football, field hockey, etc.) does your kid quit soccer and run instead?

My kids are not about the unstoppable pursuit of excellence. My kids are not great athletes - my older two have had interest from DIII coaches, but they will never be DI material. They do enjoy playing their sport with others around their skill level. It is not enjoyable to play on teams with others who are far more or far less skilled than you are, even if those others are your friends.

The discussion started with an article about gifted girls in middle school. They tend to lack self-esteem, lose interest in STEM, adhere to stereotypes, etc. These girls probably tend to hang out with their friends in whichever activities the friends choose. I thought it was all about pursuing your interests, being confident and not succumbing to stereotypes.

Posted By: ultramarina Re: Gifted girls - 06/09/15 05:54 PM
Quote
That is not my impression of young chess players. On some days our chess club has tournaments with trophies as prizes, and other days are for open play. The days with tournaments have noticeably higher turnout.

(shrug) These studies didn't look at chess. I'm not sure we can consider chess a typical sport. My son's chess experience has been much more focused on winning than his sports experiences have been (he plays soccer on a lower level, though).

My son declined a trophy recently at a chess event. We have a lot of them and are running out of room, something I have been known to complain about. It was a "minor" trophy, given for a certain minimum number of wins at a tournament, not for placing (he always wants that kind!) He also sometimes gets participation trophies, which, don't get me started, so we really have a lot. The people running the tournament looked at him like he was insane, but IMO it was a win-win (less cost for the organizer!)
Posted By: ultramarina Re: Gifted girls - 06/09/15 06:02 PM
Quote
. I understand that all kids (all people, really) would probably prefer to be around friends for activities. But when your kid is in middle school or high school, and your kid likes soccer and their friends like cross country (or football, field hockey, etc.) does your kid quit soccer and run instead?

No, not if they're happy with their soccer experience overall. But if soccer is socially unenjoyable and another physical activity seems like it would be enjoyable on more levels, then maybe it's time to switch. I'm not going to worry about the lost potential, unless maybe I really think a scholarship is imminent. I do think these activities are "about" making friends to a significant extent. I don't think they should be about denying your passion either, though.

I mean, I get that we don't want girls quitting chess and math club because there are no other girls in the club, but ideally, I'd attack that problem by changing chess and math club, not by telling my child (mine was in second grade when she dropped chess, and hardly a serious chess player, though she still is better than she lets on) "You don't go to chess club to make friends!"
Posted By: HowlerKarma Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 02:47 AM
Originally Posted by intparent
I find their splitting of the intro CS classes up especially interesting. My D hadn't coded much at all before college, and it was great for her to have an intro course where she wasn't trampled by kids who had been loading Linux on their machines at age 11. And after the first semester, the tracks merge and she has done fine in her CS courses.


My DD had the same experience in her CS major-- the real problem was that there was such incredible hostility from fellow (98% male) students-- and from first year faculty advisors, who were also male and dismissive of anything resembling "well-rounded" interests.

In fact, the two different advising specialists that she saw openly SCOFFED at her interests outside of engineering/CS. She was treated like a space alien in her CS and engineering courses-- a highly desirable one, to be sure, being a Real Live Girl and all-- but it was lonely and marginalizing.

It was such a huge turn-off that my DD just couldn't take anymore of it and bailed on the major. She looked around and realized that if that was who she was going to be spending all of her time with-- no thanks.

Posted By: HowlerKarma Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 02:55 AM
Originally Posted by chay
Originally Posted by Dude
And before she could wonder if I was trying to turn her into a boy or something, I pointed out how much her girl peers loved doing some of those things, and there's nothing wrong with women liking things that are fun.
lol loved the whole response but this part really made me smile. My sister and I (both engineers) have joked that we were both the sons our father never had. I remember one Monday morning when one of my coworkers said he wished his wife would fix the brakes on his car like I had just done for DH. I commented that while I was doing that DH was cooking a 4 course meal while dealing with a cranky baby. DH and I both thought we were the ones that got off easy that day so it was a perfect solution.

There are lots of things at play but our parents (and extended family for that matter) broke many typical gender roles and stereotypes. It wasn't until I was older that I realized that many things are supposedly girl things or boy things. They certainly weren't in our house. Both my sister and I have a fierce streak of "oh, you don't think I can do x, I'll show you" in us which I feel was encouraged if not actually taught somehow but don't ask me how. I'm still trying to figure it out so I can somehow pass it on to both my DS and DD.

I have encountered some mostly minor sexism in the workplace. However, for the most part I've been lucky that most of my career has been in places where skills and competence were valued and rewarded above all else. Speaking with friends in more female dominated professions, politics and other horrific behavior isn't just limited to men being sexist towards women. Many of their stories are completely foreign and shocking to me and IME men don't have a monopoly on sexist and/or nasty behavior. It has really made me appreciate the workplaces that I've been lucky enough to be a part of.


This is our household, too-- we don't really follow traditional gender-norming at all, and there is nothing that is "well, you're a girl, so...." other than stuff that is truly biological. (I wouldn't be having a talk about how to fit bras with a son, after all.)

So I don't think that my DD ever realized that some things were "male-dominated" until she WAS in college. That was a bit of a shock, I think-- to walk into her first CS class and realize that she was one of four women in a room of 160 students.
Posted By: bluemagic Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 04:29 AM
Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
Originally Posted by intparent
I find their splitting of the intro CS classes up especially interesting. My D hadn't coded much at all before college, and it was great for her to have an intro course where she wasn't trampled by kids who had been loading Linux on their machines at age 11. And after the first semester, the tracks merge and she has done fine in her CS courses.


My DD had the same experience in her CS major-- the real problem was that there was such incredible hostility from fellow (98% male) students-- and from first year faculty advisors, who were also male and dismissive of anything resembling "well-rounded" interests.

In fact, the two different advising specialists that she saw openly SCOFFED at her interests outside of engineering/CS. She was treated like a space alien in her CS and engineering courses-- a highly desirable one, to be sure, being a Real Live Girl and all-- but it was lonely and marginalizing.

It was such a huge turn-off that my DD just couldn't take anymore of it and bailed on the major. She looked around and realized that if that was who she was going to be spending all of her time with-- no thanks.
This is so disheartening. I was pleased as punch to find out a classmate of DS's was going to on of Intel's 'Girls Who Code" summer program this summer. It really sounds like a great program. There are a number of groups in the Bay Area that are really trying to get women back into coding. I say back into because my first programming class back in college wasn't exactly 50/50 between the sexes but it was WAY better than 2% you describe. Although being one of the few women in a class never turned me off. It seems that programming has become MORE sexist of late.

And I do know many universities are taking this problem of women not being very well represented in computer science a big problem. Part of the issue is women aren't even applying to their programs. Our local university girls in CS has been running Coding workshops for 12-18 year old's for example. I keep thinking this is something I'd like to get involved in.
Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 03:32 PM
Originally Posted by bluemagic
There are a number of groups in the Bay Area that are really trying to get women back into coding. I say back into because my first programming class back in college wasn't exactly 50/50 between the sexes but it was WAY better than 2% you describe.

Historically it's been quite a pendulum shift, because in the 1960s, programming was considered women's work. Hardware was where all the manly-men worked. Men are hard, and women are soft, right? Also, programming meant typing.

See: Apollo Guidance Computer.
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 03:53 PM
Originally Posted by Dude
Historically it's been quite a pendulum shift, because in the 1960s, programming was considered women's work.
In the 1960s the two big programming languages were COBOL and FORTRAN, the latter used by engineers, scientists, and statisticians for FORmula TRANslation. I doubt that there has ever been gender parity among Fortran programmers -- the Real Programmers smile

Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal
Quote
Where does the typical Real Programmer work? What kind of programs are worthy of the efforts of so talented an individual? You can be sure that no Real Programmer would be caught dead writing accounts-receivable programs in COBOL, or sorting mailing lists for People magazine. A Real Programmer wants tasks of earth-shaking importance (literally!).

Real Programmers work for Los Alamos National Laboratory, writing atomic bomb simulations to run on Cray I supercomputers.

Real Programmers work for the National Security Agency, decoding Russian transmissions.

It was largely due to the efforts of thousands of Real Programmers working for NASA that our boys got to the moon and back before the Russkies.

The computers in the Space Shuttle were programmed by Real Programmers.

Real Programmers are at work for Boeing designing the operation systems for cruise missiles.
Posted By: HowlerKarma Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 05:27 PM
As a former FORTRAN geek myself-- the disparity has grown since the 1980's-- shockingly so. I was astonished that it was THAT large a difference, and while it didn't bother my DD that she was the only female in her lab section of 48, it did bother her that she was treated the way she was by virtue of being female and not being obsessed SOLELY with coding.

She was taken less seriously by everyone around her because she also has interests in the arts. Apparently-- polymaths need not apply. shocked

That particular attitude worries me in a much larger sense, honestly.
Posted By: ConnectingDots Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 05:35 PM
There are some interesting articles on this topic of coding as culture, its bizarre hiring practices and how it affects things like business performance, etc. over on LinkedIn.

My instinct is that some of it is a defense mechanism by those on the inside.

I'm betting this strangeness fizzles sooner or later.
Posted By: chay Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 06:02 PM
Love it. They stopped teaching fortran the year after I took it in University. I stopped putting it on my resume years ago because I figured it was too dating smile

Your daughter's story makes me so very, very sad. I graduated EE as one of 4 in a class of 80 some in the late 90's. I'm now surrounded by polymaths and love the bizarre topics of daily discussion. Most hiring managers I've encountered are looking for people that can not only code but that have interests outside of computers and can hold a conversation. It's sad that these kids are being turned off before they even get started.

Bostonian - your story reminds me of my first day in the computer lab in first year. I had NO CLUE about computers, like none - hilarious considering where I've ended up. I was following the instructions line by line which walked us through using vi to write a fortran program (complete with escape :wq in the instructions). I was seriously in WAY over my head but doing my best not to show it. This guy walks behind me looks at my screen and screams "you're using vi? vi is for babies, real programmers use emacs!". Luckily it was obvious he was a complete dork so it was more entertaining than insulting. Luckily I have yet to encounter someone so..... um, special in my career.

I think it's a problem when kids feel they have to eat, sleep and breath one thing in order to be a success at it. The post secondary arms race probably isn't helping things - they are trained in high school to keep their eyes on the singular prize and maintain focus on it alone - interested in ..whatever..? Will it help you on your college application? No, well you need to find a better interest that does. All of the success stories of tech founders that came up with their big idea and started companies as teens or really young adults probably isn't helping either. They think they can be the next Jobs/Gates/Zuckerberg/etc if they ignore all else and become a coding fiend. A little eccentric? Lack people skills? No worries as long as you can code or at least that is often the narrative in the media (although less so IME IRL). Never mind the failures, detours, timing, luck and/or genius that helped many of the success stories actually become success stories.... ok enough rambling but hopefully some useful tangents in there.
Posted By: indigo Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 06:03 PM
Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
the disparity has grown since the 1980's-- shockingly so.
I've been made aware of this also, and have wondered whether it was due to the shrinking of the economy over the past decade or so... analogous to the aftermath of the "Rosie the Riveter" campaign of the 1940's, when women were temporarily called to work in factories when men going off to war created a labor shortage... and then were expected to remove themselves from the labor force when the economy no longer needed the "excess" human capital.
Posted By: amylou Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 06:20 PM
Originally Posted by Bostonian
Originally Posted by Dude
Historically it's been quite a pendulum shift, because in the 1960s, programming was considered women's work.
In the 1960s the two big programming languages were COBOL and FORTRAN, the latter used by engineers, scientists, and statisticians for FORmula TRANslation. I doubt that there has ever been gender parity among Fortran programmers -- the Real Programmers smile

Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal
Quote
Where does the typical Real Programmer work?

It was largely due to the efforts of thousands of Real Programmers working for NASA that our boys got to the moon and back before the Russkies.

The lead software engineer for Apollo 11, whose team is credited with software heroics that saved a nearly aborted landing, was Margaret Hamilton, a woman.

Enrollment of women in undergraduate degree programs in computer science peaked in the mid-80's at over 40%, and then has since declined by about a factor of 2.
Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 06:42 PM
Originally Posted by amylou
Originally Posted by Bostonian
Originally Posted by Dude
Historically it's been quite a pendulum shift, because in the 1960s, programming was considered women's work.
In the 1960s the two big programming languages were COBOL and FORTRAN, the latter used by engineers, scientists, and statisticians for FORmula TRANslation. I doubt that there has ever been gender parity among Fortran programmers -- the Real Programmers smile

Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal
Quote
Where does the typical Real Programmer work?

It was largely due to the efforts of thousands of Real Programmers working for NASA that our boys got to the moon and back before the Russkies.

The lead software engineer for Apollo 11, whose team is credited with software heroics that saved a nearly aborted landing, was Margaret Hamilton, a woman.

Enrollment of women in undergraduate degree programs in computer science peaked in the mid-80's at over 40%, and then has since declined by about a factor of 2.

It wasn't just that a woman was the lead software engineer (a term Margaret Hamilton coined, btw, in an effort to gain some well-deserved respect from the hardware folks), but the programming team was woman-dominated.

They wrote it in assembly language. The man who invented FORTRAN did so, he candidly admitted, because he didn't like programming, and coding in assembly was too hard.
Posted By: indigo Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 07:20 PM
Introducing Grace Hopper, a woman, into the conversation.
Posted By: bluemagic Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 07:49 PM
Originally Posted by ConnectingDots
There are some interesting articles on this topic of coding as culture, its bizarre hiring practices and how it affects things like business performance, etc. over on LinkedIn.

My instinct is that some of it is a defense mechanism by those on the inside.

I'm betting this strangeness fizzles sooner or later.
There is a reason I worked for 15 years as a computer programmer but have been unemployed (stayed at home with the kids) for the past 10 years. Company went out of business and I had some health issues that redirected my life's priorities. I tried to do some consulting at home for a few years but the whole coding as culture made it hard for me to every want a full time job in the industry again. Now that my kids are older I've been rethinking what I want to do next.
Posted By: Val Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 08:51 PM
I've been reading about the Dunning-Kruger effect (DKE) lately. For the uninitiated, this means that incompetent people not having the ability to recognize that their performance is poor (even if it's pointed out to them). This is because the skills you need to recognize poor performance are the same skills you need in order to perform well. The flip side of the DKE is that highly competent people tend to underestimate their performance relative to others (because if something is easy for them, they tend to believe it's easy for everyone). This effect has been documented many, many times.

Basic example. Many Americans say, there's two of them instead of there are two of them. They presumably believe that there's two is correct usage. Say they're given the phrase there's two of them on a grammar test. They'd mark that expression as being written correctly and would be sure they got the question right. They don't know what they don't know, and therefore are incapable of recognizing their own poor performance. Likewise, they wouldn't be able to recognize someone else's good performance. Now scale that, and you get the idea about the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I read the following information in a review article, and it applies perfectly to the debate about whether boys are inherently better at math and science:


Quote
Women, for example, tend to disproportionately leave science careers along every step of the educational and professional ladder (Seymour, 1992). We began to wonder if top-down influences on performance estimates might contribute to this pattern. Starting in adolescence, women tend to rate themselves as less scientifically talented than men rate themselves (Eccles, 1987). Because of this, women might start to think they are doing less well on specific scientific tasks than men tend to think, even when there is no gender difference in performance. Thinking they are doing less well, women might become less enthusiastic about participating in scientific activities.

We put these notions to a test by giving male and female college students a pop quiz on scientific reasoning. Before the quiz, the students were asked to rate themselves on their scientific skills, and the women rated themselves more negatively than the men did. The students’ estimates of their performance on the quiz showed the same pattern, with the women thinking that they had done less well than the men thought, even though there was no gender difference in actual performance.

In other words, males may overestimate their abilities (due to being less competent), while females underestimate their abilities (due to being more competent).

Source: Dunning D et al. (2003) Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence Current Directions in Psychological Science 12(3): 83-87. PM me if you want a copy.
Posted By: FruityDragons Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 08:54 PM
Quote
My DD had the same experience in her CS major-- the real problem was that there was such incredible hostility from fellow (98% male) students-- and from first year faculty advisors, who were also male and dismissive of anything resembling "well-rounded" interests.

In fact, the two different advising specialists that she saw openly SCOFFED at her interests outside of engineering/CS. She was treated like a space alien in her CS and engineering courses-- a highly desirable one, to be sure, being a Real Live Girl and all-- but it was lonely and marginalizing.

It was such a huge turn-off that my DD just couldn't take anymore of it and bailed on the major. She looked around and realized that if that was who she was going to be spending all of her time with-- no thanks.

HK....that's just horrible. Hugs to you and your daughter. I hope she has a better experience with her other interests! They were probably just jealous of her many talents and, you know, manners.
At least she figured it out now, instead of five years from now when she's stuck in a miserable career.
Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 09:58 PM
Originally Posted by Val
In other words, males may overestimate their abilities (due to being less competent), while females underestimate their abilities (due to being more competent).

Your study showed that these gender differences in perception exist when competency is equivalent, so, no. Women are not dropping out of the sciences because they're too smart for them.

Posted By: Val Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 10:03 PM
Originally Posted by Dude
Originally Posted by Val
In other words, males may overestimate their abilities (due to being less competent), while females underestimate their abilities (due to being more competent).

Your study showed that these gender differences in perception exist when competency is equivalent, so, no. Women are not dropping out of the sciences because they're too smart for them.

That's not what I was saying at all. The DKE says nothing about how smart you are. It describes an effect of overrating skills (in general) among those who have poorer skills and underrating them (as compared to a group) among those with higher skills.

The study quoted found that women underrated their abilities in scientific reasoning, and that this problem may play a role in their higher dropout rates.

This finding is a counterargument to the idea that males are more capable than females in STEM fields. Guys say they're better. That doesn't make it so.
Posted By: HowlerKarma Re: Gifted girls - 06/17/15 10:14 PM
Originally Posted by FruityDragons
Quote
My DD had the same experience in her CS major-- the real problem was that there was such incredible hostility from fellow (98% male) students-- and from first year faculty advisors, who were also male and dismissive of anything resembling "well-rounded" interests.

In fact, the two different advising specialists that she saw openly SCOFFED at her interests outside of engineering/CS. She was treated like a space alien in her CS and engineering courses-- a highly desirable one, to be sure, being a Real Live Girl and all-- but it was lonely and marginalizing.

It was such a huge turn-off that my DD just couldn't take anymore of it and bailed on the major. She looked around and realized that if that was who she was going to be spending all of her time with-- no thanks.

HK....that's just horrible. Hugs to you and your daughter. I hope she has a better experience with her other interests! They were probably just jealous of her many talents and, you know, manners.
At least she figured it out now, instead of five years from now when she's stuck in a miserable career.

She didn't really see it as "horrible." I mean, sure-- there was definitely subtle and not-so-subtle sexual harassment happening, mostly at the hands of fellow-students. But she's not particularly thin-skinned there. She was just glad to know before getting a degree in the subject, as you say. She's quite pragmatic about that.

It's ironic that the girl who already had a research publication in the field was the one being treated as "merely decorative" by all of her classmates in those CS classes, though. I think that rather speaks to val's point. DD found it quite annoying to have to ARGUE with a lab partner about the right way to do something, when they had no clue and assumed that she didn't either.
Posted By: mithawk Re: Gifted girls - 06/18/15 12:30 AM
Originally Posted by Dude
It wasn't just that a woman was the lead software engineer (a term Margaret Hamilton coined, btw, in an effort to gain some well-deserved respect from the hardware folks), but the programming team was woman-dominated.
I have read a couple of books about Apollo but had never heard about her, (or for that matter the role of any women in the Apollo program) so I decided to look her up. From her Wikipedia page, I learned that Margaret Hamilton was director of software for Apollo & Skylab and that her software compensated for hardware alarms that were coming up during the final landing phase of Apollo 11.

The strange thing is that I can barely find her anywhere else. And what I did find was odd.

I have Gene Kranz's book "Failure is not an Option" at home. Looking through the 20 pictures in the middle of the book, there is not a single woman in any of them, except for Gene's wife in one photo. Hamilton is not listed in the index, nor did I find her mentioned during Gene's description of the alarms that happened during Apollo 11's landing.

In addition, when I searched for a description of the landing sequence, I found an article by Don Eyles (http://www.doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html) about the Lunar Module Guidance Computer, which doesn't mention Margaret Hamilton at all, or even the word "women". Don has a picture showing some of the people involved in writing this software--and not a single woman in sight.

Don instead gives credit to a person named Hal Laning for writing the software. Hal Laning has a wikipedia page, which describes some of the same work that Margaret's page does, but neither mentions the other person.

Has Margaret's role in history, and that of other women in STEM, been diminished, or is there something else going on?
Posted By: aquinas Re: Gifted girls - 06/18/15 01:00 AM
Hard to say, but NASA honoured her recently:
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/sep/HQ_03281_Hamilton_Honor.html
Posted By: aeh Re: Gifted girls - 06/18/15 01:29 AM
And let's not forget Rosalind Franklin, co-discoverer of the helical structure of DNA (there is dispute as to the exact roles played by Franklin, Watson, and Crick, but none that her crystallography image was crucial).
Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 06/18/15 06:22 PM
mithawk: I don't see her omission from Kranz's book as anything insidious. Rather, the guidance officer and the computer expert advising him at Mission Control were from NASA. The software developers would have stayed behind at MIT.

As for the discrepancies on the respective Wikipedia pages, it looks to me like Hal wrote the specific routines that provided the vital workload management functions that kept Eagle from crashing, so credit is due to him. Margaret Hamilton was the director of the entire software team, so credit also devolves to her, particularly because it's unlikely that Hal's routines were developed entirely in a bubble, with no idea exchange, feedback, suggestions, or testing/debugging/validation support from other members of the team.

And as usual, there are other team members who are being deprived of their due credit here.
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/19/15 01:15 PM
Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
Originally Posted by intparent
I find their splitting of the intro CS classes up especially interesting. My D hadn't coded much at all before college, and it was great for her to have an intro course where she wasn't trampled by kids who had been loading Linux on their machines at age 11. And after the first semester, the tracks merge and she has done fine in her CS courses.


My DD had the same experience in her CS major-- the real problem was that there was such incredible hostility from fellow (98% male) students-- and from first year faculty advisors, who were also male and dismissive of anything resembling "well-rounded" interests.

In fact, the two different advising specialists that she saw openly SCOFFED at her interests outside of engineering/CS. She was treated like a space alien in her CS and engineering courses-- a highly desirable one, to be sure, being a Real Live Girl and all-- but it was lonely and marginalizing.
Many people whose job title is not "programmer", "developer", or "software engineer" do a lot of programming. If your daughter learned some programming, likes it, and is taking that skill to some other field, her leaving computer science may not be a loss. I never took a programming class in college or grad school, and had only a course in BASIC in high school, but I have been able to do jobs that require programming. Lots of financial traders have hacked together VBA scripts for Excel, having never programmed before. Nowadays many use Python, R, and Matlab as well.
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/19/15 01:28 PM
Originally Posted by Val
In other words, males may overestimate their abilities (due to being less competent), while females underestimate their abilities (due to being more competent).
Males are more overconfident than females, but both sexes tend to overestimate their abilities. Looking at http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/gjfw827qts/tabs_OPI_intelligence_20140502.pdf , 24% and 15% of males and females think they are much more intelligent than average, and only 0% and 1% think they are much less intelligent. The survey is reported on in America the intelligent . Females' greater realism about their abilities may cause them to work harder and earn more college degrees than males do.
Posted By: Val Re: Gifted girls - 06/19/15 05:28 PM
Originally Posted by Bostonian
Females' greater realism about their abilities may cause them to work harder and earn more college degrees than males do.

The thing is, you've given the impression in the past that maybe females are under-represented in STEM fields because they have less innate talent in those areas.

The data from that study I quoted indicated that, on what was studied (scientific reasoning skills), females performed equally to males, but underrated their abilities.

This study appears to provide evidence that "females have less STEM talent" may not be true, but instead may be due to other reasons. Conversely, the statement "males have more STEM talent" may be due to overestimation of abilities.
Posted By: indigo Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 02:44 AM
Found some adorable girl's graphic t-shirts and hoodies online at Lands' End with fabulous science themes... rockets, dinosaurs, chemistry, glow-in-the-dark space designs, and elements of the periodic table spelling Ge Ni U S.

This could be a novel part of the solution: using fashion to affirm girls' interest in science.
Posted By: RobotMom Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 04:02 AM
Just checked these out - they look great!
Posted By: HowlerKarma Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 04:23 AM
This is where I admit that I got my daughter a pair of teeshirts for her recent birthday--

one is a Reading Rambo shirt (cut for young women, by the way), and the other was a more complex design involving a t-rex dividing by zero whilst a meteor hurls to the earth in the background.

She adores quirky/geeky teeshirts. Woot Shirts (Shirt.woot) makes a lot of things which are suitable for middle school girls, and as noted, they make them in ladies/juniors cuts so that they actually fit. Amazon often has a good selection of them.

Posted By: Tigerle Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 09:16 AM
I like the lands space end designs for my DD. I usually order more than one in her size and we give them to her little friends as birthday presents.
She and her best friend adored the dark blue one with Saturn in pink, purple and gold sequins!
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 02:05 PM
Originally Posted by indigo
Found some adorable girl's graphic t-shirts and hoodies online at Lands' End with fabulous science themes... rockets, dinosaurs, chemistry, glow-in-the-dark space designs, and elements of the periodic table spelling Ge Ni U S.

This could be a novel part of the solution: using fashion to affirm girls' interest in science.
I don't see the harm, but I also don't think girls are so flighty that they make career decisions based on t-shirt slogans.

Lots of my female relatives have become doctors, nurses, and pharmaceutical researchers, but none have become physicists, chemists, engineers, computer programmers, or mathematicians, as several of the males have. My daughter wants to be a doctor, like her mom, and I would not be surprised if she did. If women's inclinations and aptitudes lead them to health care rather than STEM (although biology is a science), what is the problem? The choices are not writing C code or working at McDonald's.
Posted By: Dude Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 02:47 PM
Originally Posted by Bostonian
I don't see the harm, but I also don't think girls are so flighty that they make career decisions based on t-shirt slogans.

You're missing the point. Girls are subjected to a constant bombardment of media stereotypes that say, among other things, they should not science. This makes counter-messaging, in a multitude of forms, necessary.

I mean... "flighty." Boys are rarely described as flighty, so there's a negatively-charged gender stereotype right there.

Rather, girls age 4-9 are quite impressionable (just like boys are), and something as simple as a t-shirt message can be quite profound to that audience... good or bad. By the time they've advanced from that age, a sense of identity is emerging, and gender (and any social expectations around that) is an important part of it.

Originally Posted by Bostonian
If women's inclinations and aptitudes lead them to health care rather than STEM (although biology is a science), what is the problem?

By women's "inclinations" you mean "socially-prescribed gender role." Which is, again, the entire point.
Posted By: indigo Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 02:49 PM
For children with parents, relatives, and/or others who may be role models for pursuing a passion outside of gender stereotypical roles, the affirmation from other sources may not be key.

However, to broaden the encouragement of ALL children who may have an interest in science, technology, engineering, and/or math, a layering of social messages which affirm girls' interest beyond gender stereotypical roles is a refreshing and welcome support. Positive t-shirt messages are just one way to affirm, support, and encourage the growth of girls' interest in STEM throughout their developmental years.

With affirmation, some of these children may become the FIRST in their family to become a doctor, etc. This is not a caste society; Upward social mobility is part of the American Dream.
Posted By: HowlerKarma Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 02:50 PM
Well-stated, Bostonian. The reasons for such career choices are only "wrong" in my opinion when they are influenced by external/extrinsic factors such as "why would I want to be surrounded by all of these nasty people for the rest of my working life, again??" instead of "I have a desire to devote my life to helping others," which I consider an intrinsic drive.

My daughter is being buffeted by both things, however. When 95% of your classmates in CS coursework are fairly abrasive "dudes" that see nothing wrong with denigrating the "girls" for merely being there... well, that's a pretty hostile environment.

Any ambivalence at all is going to wither in the face of that, and while women going into those physical-STEM disciplines might-- eventually-- find that applications work IS all about "helping people" the way that they are driven to do, they seldom last long enough to figure that out in the first place.

That is definitely a problem.

Just as an aside, also, I personally have a problem with the fact that in some professional settings, at nearly 50 years of age, I'm still a "girl" to some of my physical-STEM 'peers.' I'm pretty sure that calling them "boys" wouldn't go over very well, so it's unclear why they think that calling me a "girl" is professionally appropriate.

Yes, really. smirk




Posted By: Platypus101 Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 03:13 PM
Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
... the other was a more complex design involving a t-rex dividing by zero whilst a meteor hurls to the earth in the background.

Ordering. As soon as I can stop laughing long enough to type.
Posted By: amylou Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 03:16 PM
Originally Posted by Bostonian
Lots of my female relatives have become doctors, nurses, and pharmaceutical researchers, but none have become physicists, chemists, engineers, computer programmers, or mathematicians, as several of the males have. My daughter wants to be a doctor, like her mom, and I would not be surprised if she did. If women's inclinations and aptitudes lead them to health care rather than STEM (although biology is a science), what is the problem? The choices are not writing C code or working at McDonald's.

In my mind, the problem is that: 1) the fields themselves would benefit from greater diversity and 2) that there are kids missing out on rewarding and lucrative careers because those careers seem (or are!) unwelcoming.

Also, I think kids often reject certain professions without really knowing what they are. Doctors, for example, are in a profession most kids encounter directly. Engineers and physicists -- much less likely.

(And, selfishly, as a woman who has spent decades in an engineering profession with extremely low representation of women, I'd like more female colleagues…)
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 04:12 PM
Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
Well-stated, Bostonian. The reasons for such career choices are only "wrong" in my opinion when they are influenced by external/extrinsic factors such as "why would I want to be surrounded by all of these nasty people for the rest of my working life, again??" instead of "I have a desire to devote my life to helping others," which I consider an intrinsic drive.

My daughter is being buffeted by both things, however. When 95% of your classmates in CS coursework are fairly abrasive "dudes" that see nothing wrong with denigrating the "girls" for merely being there... well, that's a pretty hostile environment.
At MOOCs, where this should not be a problem, the usual patterns prevail, according to http://chronicle.com/article/8-Things-You-Should-Know-About/146901/ . Females make up 46% of the social science and 40% of the humanities students in MOOCs, but only 9% of the engineering and 17% of the computer science students. Men and women have different intellectual interests.
Posted By: ultramarina Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 04:16 PM
Quote
She adores quirky/geeky teeshirts. Woot Shirts (Shirt.woot) makes a lot of things which are suitable for middle school girls, and as noted, they make them in ladies/juniors cuts so that they actually fit.

Threadjack! HK, this is so up my DD's alley (she is super hard to shop for because she is picky, artistic, and small--under 5 ft, under 80 lbs). She also likes the graphics on various nerdy/geeky tees but will really only wear fitted/girly/ringer styles. I am seeing women's smalls but should I be looking for a junior sizing?
Posted By: indigo Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 04:20 PM
Originally Posted by Bostonian
Men and women have different intellectual interests.
While that may be true statistically...
1) Some may wonder how much of the difference in intellectual interests is nature and how much is nurture.
2) The difference in intellectual interests may not be true for each individual; Attempting to force all to match the statistics is detrimental stereotyping. Analogy alert: While the average IQ is statistically 100, it would be detrimental to treat all individuals as though they matched that statistic.
Posted By: bluemagic Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 04:41 PM
Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
Just as an aside, also, I personally have a problem with the fact that in some professional settings, at nearly 50 years of age, I'm still a "girl" to some of my physical-STEM 'peers.' I'm pretty sure that calling them "boys" wouldn't go over very well, so it's unclear why they think that calling me a "girl" is professionally appropriate.

Yes, really. smirk
Well.. in the tiny start-up company I worked as a programmer for 10 years I was refereed to as 'one of the boys'. The small group of us who programmed were younger (20's) than the 'administrators' (30's). We were top heavy with as many vice-presidents as programmers and the company president referred to the programmers as 'the boys' even after I joined the team. And yes the company eventually failed. At the time (in the 90's) I was flattered that they didn't see my sex only that I could do the job. But I see now how that could be seen as very offensive.
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 04:56 PM
Originally Posted by bluemagic
Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
Just as an aside, also, I personally have a problem with the fact that in some professional settings, at nearly 50 years of age, I'm still a "girl" to some of my physical-STEM 'peers.' I'm pretty sure that calling them "boys" wouldn't go over very well, so it's unclear why they think that calling me a "girl" is professionally appropriate.

Yes, really. smirk
Well.. in the tiny start-up company I worked as a programmer for 10 years I was refereed to as 'one of the boys'. The small group of us who programmed were younger (20's) than the 'administrators' (30's). We were top heavy with as many vice-presidents as programmers and the company president referred to the programmers as 'the boys' even after I joined the team. And yes the company eventually failed. At the time (in the 90's) I was flattered that they didn't see my sex only that I could do the job. But I see now how that could be seen as very offensive.
For some reason, a group of people of both sexes may be referred to as "guys" but never "girls". Regardless of the merits of this usage, it certainly is not specific to people working in STEM, so it cannot explain sex differences in STEM fields.
Posted By: HowlerKarma Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 06:20 PM
Originally Posted by ultramarina
Quote
She adores quirky/geeky teeshirts. Woot Shirts (Shirt.woot) makes a lot of things which are suitable for middle school girls, and as noted, they make them in ladies/juniors cuts so that they actually fit.

Threadjack! HK, this is so up my DD's alley (she is super hard to shop for because she is picky, artistic, and small--under 5 ft, under 80 lbs). She also likes the graphics on various nerdy/geeky tees but will really only wear fitted/girly/ringer styles. I am seeing women's smalls but should I be looking for a junior sizing?


The ladies' "small" sizing is about a girl's 14/16 or a usual "XS" size. My DD is about a size 4, and the Medium ladies' size is about right for her. They're all cotton, so they will shrink as needed in a hot dryer, too.

The other trick that I know about tees is that boys' tees can be "seamed" on the side-and-underarm to make a junior/slim-fit profile fairly easily. I hacked quite a few teeshirts this way for DD when she was younger. smile




Posted By: ultramarina Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 07:49 PM
Thanks! Might work. 14/16 is still big on her. I'm sometimes able to find her a women's size 0/2 or XS that fits well. Poor kid needs to grow.
Posted By: ConnectingDots Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 07:51 PM
FWIW, I changed my college major in my junior year when I realized that my odds of having to fight gender discrimination on a daily basis (for being female in a male-dominated field) weren't worth the intrinsic benefits of the job. I decided that I was not willing, at 21, to be the one who fought that battle for change each day. Fortunately for that field, other women did and the balance has evened out.

I share this to say that the decisions are real. Everyone gets to decide for themselves what they are willing to put up with, but we should be working toward removing such issues wherever we can. Work is difficult enough without that ridiculousness.
Posted By: Bostonian Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 09:20 PM
The Davidson site has just added an Interview with Janette Boazman on c...itive development between boys and girls. If male and female brains differ, it should not be surprising that they tend to specialize in different fields.

Quote
Gender and education research has begun to show a mismatch between boys’ and girls’ learning brains and how education is being delivered. Educators and education researchers have spent many years researching and working on correcting negative gender biases toward girls. Finding ways to have gender equity for girls in our schools has been an important focus. However, statistics indicate that approximated 70 percent of Ds and Fs and half of As are earned by boys, 66 percent of learning disability diagnoses are dispensed to boys, boys represent 90 percent of discipline referrals, 80 percent of high school dropouts are male, and males make up fewer than 40 percent of college students (Gurian, 2004). This information gives indication that it is important to give more attention to what the boys in schools need as well.

The education profession as a whole needs more male teachers. Approximately 76 percent of teachers in the United States are female. This means that roughly 76 percent of classrooms have classroom routines, instruction, assignments, projects, assessments, classroom management, and behavior expectations, that are created, planned, and implemented through the female learning brain lens. This is good news for female students but not necessarily good news for male students as their learning needs may not always be met. Recognizing the differences in brain development can help educators find solutions to some of the challenges we face in classrooms.

The function and development of the lobes in the cerebral cortex are different for boys and girls. Girls have statistically significant differences in cortical development and use of the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes of the brain. For girls, the frontal lobe develops more quickly than the frontal lobe of boys which means that girls make fewer impulsive decisions and girls more readily and efficiently use the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes of the brain. Boys show a significant difference in the use of the cortex of the cerebellum, the part of the brain that receives information from the sensory systems, the spinal cord, and other parts of the brain that regulate motor movement. It coordinates voluntary movement. This gives reason to the difference in movement by boys in the classroom.

Neuroprocessing maps of the brain show lateralization of the boy brain activity with a pronounced difference from girls in the amount of cross hemisphere activity. A girl’s corpus callosum is up to 25 percent larger than a boy’s by adolescence. This allows more crosstalk in the brain which translates in to girls being better at multitasking, transitioning, and paying attention. Girls have stronger neural connectors than boys in their temporal lobes. These stronger neural connectors in the female brain allow for more sensually detailed memory storage, better listening skills, better discrimination among tones of voice, and greater use of detail in writing assignments. A girl’s hippocampus is larger increasing the girls’ learning advantage, especially in language arts. On the whole, the complexities of reading and writing come easier to the female brain and the female brain tends to drive toward stimulants that involve complex texture, tonality and mental activity.

Where the female brain uses the cortical areas of the brain for verbal and emotive functioning, the male brain uses these areas for spatial and mechanical functioning. This makes boys want to move objects through space – balls, model airplanes, their arms, their legs…. Boys have less serotonin and oxytocin, the primary human bonding chemical, than girls. This makes them more likely to be physically impulsive and less likely to combat their natural impulsiveness which makes it hard for boys to sit still and easy for them to turn and chat with a friend. The boy brain needs to enter a rest state in order to recharge, renew, and reorient itself. This rest state may look like falling asleep, tapping pencils or fidgeting in order to stay attentive. The male brain is better suited for diagrams, pictures, symbols, abstractions and objects moving through space than for the monotony of words. The more words a teacher uses during the lesson, the more likely a boy is to “zone out” or go into a rest state.
Posted By: AvoCado Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 10:57 PM
Hm, no "ignore" function huh …

Anyway, this site looks cool: http://www.amightygirl.com

Posted By: indigo Re: Gifted girls - 06/30/15 11:36 PM
While the Janette Boazman article linked upthread mentions brain differences between genders (nature), at the same time, the article encourages creating environments which are friendly to the success of both genders (nurture): "The education profession as a whole needs more male teachers. Approximately 76 percent of teachers in the United States are female. This means that roughly 76 percent of classrooms have classroom routines, instruction, assignments, projects, assessments, classroom management, and behavior expectations, that are created, planned, and implemented through the female learning brain lens."

Bear in mind that while brain differences may exist statistically, the difference may not be true for each individual; Attempting to force all to match the behavioral statistics is detrimental stereotyping.

The book mindset, mentioned in the OP, says this about gender stereotypes:
Originally Posted by mindset book, p161
Boys who believed in the fixed mindset showed a boost in self-esteem when they endorsed the stereotypes.
Posted By: St. Margaret Re: Gifted girls - 07/08/15 01:58 AM
Originally Posted by AvoCado
Hm, no "ignore" function huh …

Anyway, this site looks cool: http://www.amightygirl.com

We love A Mighty Girl! I've found many great reads for DD8 there over the years (along with the book/annotated bibliography Once Upon a Heroine).
Posted By: madeinuk Re: Gifted girls - 07/08/15 02:15 AM
My DD doesn't even realise that she is a 'girl' in any negative sense of that word. She has a lot of self confidence intellectually and I intend to do my best to help her maintain it.
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