Yes, m’am, women are interested in different things

Yesterday some guy from Apple (I’ve never heard of) got himself into deep do-do by commenting on how women search for music differently than men.  Now he’s been forced to walk it back and apologize!  (It actually made sense to me, having been a young girl thinking about boys at one time.)  Apparently, this angel investor, Christina Brodbeck, co-founder of YouTube which made her fabulously wealthy when she and the other two sold it to Google for for $1.65 billion in stock in 2006, also chooses at least some of her investments based on relationships and “things that interest” her. Really, do you think a guy  (she does have a male co-investor) would have come up with Icebreak, which helps couples increase understanding, excitement, and connection in their relationships.

“Christina was on the founding team of YouTube, the company's first UI Designer, and then later went on to lead design for the company's mobile efforts.

Before that, she worked at NASA Ames, MRL Ventures, and Keynote Systems. She's a proud Chicagoland native and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She holds a master's in Instructional Technologies and Multimedia Design, and is passionate about building technology that makes people happy and improves their everyday lives.

Christina lives in San Francisco.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV2nxO0y78E

STEM Women

I've seen stupid stories about women, but this beats all. Feminists got their naked lady tattoos in a knot over this guy's shirt and ignored the science. Now that should help the camaraderie in the lab.

"At first, people were excited. Then some women noticed that one of the space scientists, Matt Taylor, was wearing a shirt, made for him by a female "close pal," featuring comic-book depictions of semi-naked women."

It became a bigger story than Kim Kardashian's naked butt, which as far as I could tell had no scientific merit. Women can wear anything they want or nothing at all, all in an effort to attract men, but by golly, men better stay covered in something gender neutral and pretend they don’t care about what women look like—not even cartoonish women.

 http://www.usatoday.com/…/shirt-comet-girls-femin…/19083607/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2834451/Philae-comet-probe-scientist-embroiled-sexism-row-shirt-featuring-scantily-clad-women.html

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/13/living/matt-taylor-shirt-philae-rosetta-project/index.html

Tina Brown wants to empower women

After 40+ years I'm awfully tired of hearing that women are oppressed victims. Their college graduation rate is higher than men and has been since 1982, and salaries given the same life choices are the same or higher. Brown supposedly is looking at poverty. For that, I suggest a smaller government and a freer market so women stop looking to Uncle Sam as their Sugar Daddy. Very few children grow up poor if Mom and Dad are married.

From 1999–2000 to 2009–10, the percentage of degrees earned by females remained between approximately 60 and 62 percent for associate's degrees and between 57 and 58 percent for bachelor's degrees. In contrast, the percentages of both master's and doctor's degrees earned by females increased from 1999–2000 to 2009–10 (from 58 to 60 percent and from 45 to 52 percent, respectively.)

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/01/no-women-don-t-make-less-money-than-men.html#url=/articles/2014/02/01/no-women-don-t-make-less-money-than-men.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/04/01/tina-brown-aims-to-fire-up-the-womens-empowerment-movement/

Wonder where the women went?

For 40 years, women have been getting special help in the sciences, math, engineering and computing fields. Summer camps, workshops, girly places on the internet to talk techy, special scholarships--collectively the government and foundations must have spent billions. There's been some headway--women now outnumber men in some of these fields (called STEM, science technology engineering math) as college grads, but they don't continue on to excel in graduate school. I suspect it's the "fun factor." How many nights can you spend on a problem eating cold pizza before it gets old? For guys, they think that's a blast. Not so much, gals. A high school science teacher told me that when she teaches physics to boys, it confirms what they already know. Not so with the girls, who have no intuitive or learned sense of the field.

So today I was browsing Crunch Gear and saw in its "About Us" there are no women. I clicked over to the job search and wondered how many women are even applying for these positions, let alone landing them and then advancing.

No boys allowed?

I think single sex education is very beneficial. Kids can really buckle down and study when they don't have to worry about attracting or performing for the opposite sex. But if there were special programs excluding young girls from getting a step up to a good career in the sciences, I can't even imagine the line of lawyers ready to take that case.

Here's a few summer engineering programs just for girls I noticed, beginning with Ohio State. I also noted that "fun" and "social life" were promoted features of these camps. So that's what it takes to attract girls to the sciences?

The Ohio State Women in Engineering Program is still accepting applications to the 2009 CheME & YOU @ OSU Summer Camp, a six-day residential summer program for girls who will be entering ninth grade in the fall of 2009. Participants will live in a university dorm and will explore chemical engineering through fun, hands-on activities. The camp will run from Sunday (8/16)-Friday (8/21). Applications must be postmarked by Friday (5/15).

At Penn State we have the MTM Engineering Camp for girls--An engineering day camp for girls entering grades 9 - 12 in Fall 2009. Hands-on engineering design projects and career experiences featuring 5 engineering disciplines such as: Architectural Engineering, Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Product Design & Innovation/Industrial Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering, each offered in one-day modules. Choose to attend one day, or all five! ($30/day or $125/week) A fun way to explore careers and meet friends! Full scholarships are available.

At Purdue they call it EDGE. Session I: July 19 - July 24, 2009, Session II: July 26 - July 31, 2009. EDGE is for students who have just completed 9th or 10th grade. Apply your creativity to hands-on engineering projects with teammates! Meet women engineers who are shaping our world! Discover how your talents can lead to an exciting career in engineering! Have fun working with current Purdue engineering students!

At the University of Cincinnati, the hands-on camp, which ran July 28 to Aug. 1, 2008, allows young women in grades 9 through 12 to explore careers in engineering as they work with University of Cincinnati faculty.

"Kathy Johnson, director of undergraduate student enrollment in the College of Engineering at UC, says that the camp helps motivate high school students. “It’s a chance for students to come see if they are interested in math, science and engineering,” she says. “Through the camp, the girls get a great overview of what’s available. They get to meet our faculty members and receive information on all the disciplines offered here at UC.”

My alma mater, the University of Illinois, calls it Girls Adventures in Mathematics, Engineering, and Science, or G.A.M.E.S. It is an annual week long camp, designed to give academically talented middle school aged girls an opportunity to explore exciting engineering and scientific fields through demonstrations, classroom presentations, hands-on activities, and contacts with women in these technical fields."

Oregon State University has a variety of engineering summer camps for all ages, and when the boys are very young, they are allowed to attend, but by middle school the organizers are only looking for girls. So Mom, don't get his hopes up--send the little duffer to basketball camp--it's probably co-ed.

The Women in Engineering Summer Camp at the University of Dayton is a Sunday-through-Friday experience that gives girls the chance to dabble in engineering through hands-on, learn-by-doing activities they can't get in high school [why not?].

“Guided by UD professors, you'll conduct experiments, innovate, make cool stuff, take things apart — then put them back together again — in engineering classrooms and laboratories on campus. You'll visit a job site. Meet women engineers. And spend time checking out new innovations and more.”

They've been running these special science camps for women at least since I was involved back in the 1980s (through the libraries). When will the public schools be able to pull off attracting girls to the sciences without denying boys the same summer opportunities?