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> The opportunities are there for those females who want it. This is a fallacy. The problem isn't that sexism in STEM isn't conscious choice; it's not like those nasty menfolk go out of their way to make women feel unwelcome. It's systemic, a culture where women are perceived as less technically competent, more unstable, less deserving of recognition or promotion. If our names are clearly female-gendered, our papers and conference submissions are accepted less frequently, even if the paper itself is the same. The old joke among women in STEM is that "you have to work twice as hard to get half the credit." I've been coding for the web since 1996, professionally since 1998. I currently work as a senior software developer for a major retailer, and as you might have guessed, I'm female. Science, tech, engineer, math - all of these fields have gotten significantly more hostile towards women in the years I've been involved with them. Under the guise of "professionality" I've been stalked, harassed, invalidated and belittled - and I've experienced less problems than most of my female colleagues. I look around at my coworkers, and of the several hundred developers and engineers there, less than 5 are women. 98% of my coworkers are male. I get talked down to by junior developers all the time; they either mistakenly assume I'm new to the field or not a developer at all. These aren't guys trying to make it difficult. They're operating under flawed, sexist assumptions, and that's what makes working in STEM an uphill battle. How many times can you get the message "you're inferior" before you believe it? 100? 1000? I have a 12 year old cousin who loved programming the first time she tried it. She's smart and driven and would be a great developer. She's already given up on it; would you like to know why? Because she's isolated as a female geek and was teased about being a girl. Arguing that if we don't like it, we can just organize our own whatever is dismissive and reductive. You know what happens when we organize our own whatever? We get harassed and threatened and tons of shit heaped on us because we're women. So don't tell us that it's "there if we want it," because it's not. |