[primitivesuave]

I run a private education organization that teaches kids how to code at a physical facility, and we get a gender breakup of male and female students that is similar to that of the industry (around 80 - 20). Because of the overwhelming male presence, it is difficult to make a comfortable learning environment for the female students, who may often feel uncomfortable, at odds with, or ostracized by pseudo-masculine efforts undertaken by adolescent males. It's at this level that computer education becomes challenging for females, at that awkward stage where not all the boys have yet learned how to shower daily.

Our solution was to simply make a small set of our classes for girls only. This provides girls with the option of learning either in an all-girls or a regular environment, so girls who feel uncomfortable are not discouraged to the point that they drop out.

[kamaal]

>>Our solution was to simply make a small set of our classes for girls only.

Your solution will make the problem worse. Because nothing will really change in the way boys work, and you will see the same late night, whole night, full weekend culture among them.

Girl's classes will see a far little attendance totally detached from culture in the other part of world. Soon the rewards will dry out and move towards crazy work culture and attendance in girls classes will decline.

[primitivesuave]

I think you missed the description of my organization - we're not doing professional development. We're training kids on how to better access technology, and quite frankly people on HN don't really understand what our atmosphere is like. Girls and the parents of girls really appreciate our all-girls classes and events, they have excellent attendance and the girls really come together as a community.

I honestly couldn't care less about idealistic principles when the all-girls classes have been working great for us and have boosted the number of enrolled female students.

[kamaal]

I can understand purely from an academic perspective- attending classes, passing tests, completing assignments. But again this model breaks down in the real world.

One must really treat engineering as a practice and not as a degree. More like law and medicine.

Throughout India, girls outscore boys in nearly every exam. Somehow that doesn't last at workplaces.

[tomp]

I disagree, not just on this issue, but in general. I think academic education should be more the learning and less training - teach creativity, abstract thinking, curiosity, thinking out-of-the-box, ... The student's then become faster learners of the more mundane things, because they have a better mental abstraction framework, and can learn the things that are required on the job starting to work on the job!

[kamaal]

Yet, despite doing all that we don't see it going well in practice.

The problem is stuffing things in the brain isn't a great use of one's time especially when years of doing that can be replaced by Google query.

[MichaelGG]

How about just being harsh on "psuedo-masculine efforts"? Just like if you had mostly white kids and they made the black kids "feel uncomfortable" by "awkward" kids, the answer is to meet the stupid jokes and what not with sincerity and make them realise how absurd the behaviour is. Just like in other co-ed classes if boys make whatever jokes, it gets slapped down.

Separating things sounds like it'd just make the male stuff even worse since there's no negative feedback. And it doesn't strengthen the girls to speak out when a guy tries some dumbass posturing or whatever.

And I say this even while planning to send my daughters to all-girls school just for possible reduction in the general adolescent "distractions". I just don't see what's comp-sci specific.

[primitivesuave]

We don't segregate, we simply offer the all-girls class as an alternative. We still have girls in our regular class and they are very chill. I'm not saying we have an issue with boys acting out, I'm saying that when we get that occasional kid who makes things uncomfortable, some girls get visibly put off by it. I train all my instructors on how to deal with inappropriate comments and to let me know about them, so my decision to provide girls with a more comfortable environment is rooted in the observation that 100% of the inappropriate comments we've had to deal with come from a male student.

When any student, regardless of gender, is uncomfortable in a class, they will pay less attention and perform noticeably poorer.

[animus9]

An all boys class sure would be a breath of fresh air: it might be possible to focus on the actual education for once. Voluntary segregation seems like it would solve a lot of problems and eliminate our favourite scapegoats.

[_bfhp]

I agree -- kids receive all kinds of messages about how girls and boys should act, from the media, their parents, and their peers, and a lot of it is just plain toxic and manifest in masculinity-affirming posturing and violence. It's essential to look at these things if we really want "equality".

[animus9]

This is one sided. No doubt there are those men who are violent and indecent: But nobody ever suggested that we mould man after these barbarians, or generalize masculinity based on such poor examples. The same character flaws exist in the opposite sex but manifest themselves differently (with comparable detriment).

Equality is a one dimensional metric and a kind of tunnel vision that undermines true ethics. Should a small man eat the same quantity of food as a large man? It would be equal. Have you given away most of your wealth to the poor and needy so that everyone has an equal share? Shall we cut the legs off the tall so that they are the same height as the short? Or throw acid on the beautiful so they have no advantage over the ugly?

[MichaelGG]

No one is suggesting that opposite sex negative things (cliques, shaming girls based on clothes, whatever other things they do) is acceptable.

But I've yet to hear anyone complaining about boys being intimidated and not participating in a class because it was full of girls being bitchy. And to the extend that it happens (someone mocking an ugly kid in class), I'd assume it'd get slapped down in the same way.

The "masculinity-affirming posturing and violence" that the parent refers to is pretty much entirely negative. There's no benefit to praise, accept, or encourage that kind of behaviour.

[animus9]

That's right you haven't heard any complaining: because they just go to a different field to avoid it. And then all the noise eventually follows along and complains that the field is all male. And the cycle repeats.

Men are interested in doing something and creating something, and we will continue doing this forever. Those who cannot do this will continue to complain and blame someone else for their situation. A lack of personal responsibility (independent of gender) will always result in failure.

[watwut]

Isn't there a way how to teach those adolescent males to behave like humans? If their behavior is that bad that it makes uncomfortable learning environment for other students, then it needs to be addressed.

I'm woman and my experience is that most adolescent males are not apes and are able to act like human. Separating them by gender is accepting bad behavior as norm when it actually is not a norm. Young polite males are often off putted by pseudo-masculinity too, but you just told those that they have to suck it up.

The stereotype of adolescent male being half ape is as a accurate as the stereotype of woman being way too much emotional. Despite stereotypes, most young males are ok people and most young females are able to reason rationally.

[primitivesuave]

I don't think you're thinking young enough. When's the last time you tried to control an impulsive 6th grader?

[watwut]

You mean 12 years old? Yes they are immature, but oddly enough I did not encountered all that much uncontrollable pseudo masculinity in them. Someone occasionally acts in a way uncomfortable for girls, but it is usually considered "bad behavior" and he is called on that.

Maybe because such behavior is not considered "normal" here. They do display such behavior more often when they are in boys only group eg. physical education class. Not coincidentally, it is class where it is tolerated more.

[Cthulhu_]

Nothing wrong with traditional classrooms and teachers for those, tbh.

[notastartup]

This is extremely sexist and needlessly hostile. It's like being male and interested in coding is somehow associated with all the stereotypical male attributes which turns off women from coding. Ah, so we need to have boys acting less like boys because it's clearly why we don't have more women in tech. So we all need to teach teen boys to become meterosexual so it can be more inviting and suitable for females?

I think if you want more women to be coding, you have failed definitely. Why not show that women can be as strong as the boys, can rub shoulders and brain and still come out on top? By segregating based on gender, you only support that women have stereotypical attributes which prevent them from being as good as men, and men are good because of their stereotypical attributes.

Your genitals do not make you a coder, it's really down to the culture and societal expectations of both genders.

[primitivesuave]

I respect your idealism and definitely did not want to sound sexist or hostile with my comment. I completely agree that segregating by gender doesn't do much good when it comes to lifelong skills of working with the opposite gender, but at the age group levels that we deal with, it becomes incredibly difficult to handle the disparity in average maturity levels between genders.

I merely wanted to point out a practical experience and was not trying to advocate gender segregation.

[wetmore]

Yes explain to me how keeping things the way they are will fix the situation.

[flebron]

I will do that as soon as you explain how treating female coders as if they were freaks, segregating them in their own class, decreases the problem of integration of more female coders in tech.

Perhaps the issue of "feeling alien to the community" would be improved by, you know, not alienating females from the community, with sexist behavior such as this.

[primitivesuave]

I would never consider a female coder to be any different from a male one. I am merely giving anecdotal evidence that female students of the 11 - 17 age group learn significantly better when they are amongst their peers. My decision to make a few of our classes into girls-only ones was to allow the girls who felt uncomfortable in a male-dominated setting to still have an opportunity to learn in a setting they found comfortable. My underlying motivation was not to segregate them, but to give them another option - we still have girls attending our regular classes, and this is hardly the issue that some of the commenters here are making it out to be.

[obstacle1]

>I would never consider a female coder to be any different from a male one

You literally segregated males from females in your coding class. That is considering them to be different.

>female students of the 11 - 17 age group learn significantly better when they are amongst their peers.

So male students aren't peers of female students? Really?

I'm pretty sure you're not being purposefully malicious, but jeeze... Your philosophy is kinda broken, you don't really seem to realize the (incredibly sexist) assumptions you're making, and that's going to lead to reinforcing a gender divide, not solving any problems.

[primitivesuave]

I understand that from an idealistic perspective what I'm doing can be regarded as malicious or sexist, but I'd like to point out two very important things: 1. there is no requirement for girls to only attend the all-girls classes. 2. this is not my philosophy, this is a data-driven decision that has nothing to do with my perception of the abilities of males or females. The all-girls classes were a result of us seeing a significant drop in the percentage of girls enrolled in a programming class.

It was a management decision that many of the parents in our community appreciated, and quite frankly I'm a bit shocked by how quickly people on HN jump to the conclusion that I'm some kind of misogynist.

[watwut]

@DanBC There is not that much evidence and I do not see best education system in the world moving to gender educated classes. There is one experiment on few kids with all kinds of special conditions.

Plus, there are some proves that girls perform worst when reminded of all "incapable woman" stereotypes.

[DanBC]

You are ignoring all the evidence that young females learn better in single sex classes.

By keeping mixed sex classes you are already putting females at a disadvantage.

[_bfhp]

You're obviously a man, but you seem to think yourself the arbiter of what is or is not sexist against women. Why is this?

[forgotmycreds]

You make it sound like there were boys running around them in circles every class all class long. But its a good discussion, hope one of you comes with a less dramatic solution.

[vacri]

"Hey, female coder, you can choose to be in a co-ed class or a female-only one, your choice" is hardly treating them as freaks. You're completely misrepresenting the original commentor.

[shangxiao]

imho, I think we should target less popular and possibly more important situations (all relative, I know) such as helping people in 3rd world nations to get better access to IT & education.

[_bfhp]

primitivesuave was literally recounting their own experience with young children; are they "sexist", or is describing reality just not to your liking? What does "acting like boys" even mean, may I ask? primitivesuave was taking about the toxic masculinity that involves macho superiority and violence, sorry if it upsets you that that's what masculinity involves.

primitivesuave wasn't talking about genitals, they were talking about gender, and you know this -- "acting like boys" has nothing to do with genitals -- but seem profoundly confused and angry about it.

[obstacle1]

primitivesuave's post is fraught with unconscious sexism. That is the problem.

First he generalizes that all adolescent males put on "pseudo-masculine efforts". No they don't. That's just as much a stereotype as "all girls suck at coding" or whatever stereotype-du-jour militant feminists are raging about this week.

Maybe a few of the students put on "displays" that he considers to be "pseudo-masculine efforts". That is a reflection of his own judgment of stereotypes though, not something innate to adolescent boys.

Then his proposed solution is to segregate males and females to facilitate learning.

Think about that.

Rather than discipline the kids who are acting out, teaching them to act in ways appropriate to civil society, he thinks that segregating boys and girls is the correct play. Even by his own logic, he's perpetuating the gender divide. Rather than stop the "pseudo-masculine efforts", he removes the women from the situation so that said "pseudo-masculine efforts" can continue. It's a really, really bizarre 'solution' when smoothing the gender divide is a stated goal.

It's akin to a company's HR getting complaints from female staff that the male executives are swearing too much or making sexual jokes or _insert_stereotypical_sexist_male_exec_behavior_here_. Rather than addressing the offending behavior, HR chooses to give females the "opportunity" to go have their own meetings down the hall on different days. No sane person thinks that will make strides towards gender equality. It will end in females being relegated to admin/secretary land while the executive boys club carries on.

[primitivesuave]

I'm not saying all males put on pseudo-masculine efforts, I'm saying it only takes one kid who makes an inappropriate joke like changing "public void" to "pubic void" when we're doing a code review. In such a situation, the boy will suppress a smile while he innocently exclaims he made a typo, while his friends all giggle innocuously. If you don't work with kids, you will not fully understand how the adolescent mind manifests itself in the classroom environment, and how difficult it is to suppress it. In the situation I just described, all we can do is mentally make a note to not call that same student up again. And in this situation and all related ones, we're dealing with a male student. Girls simply don't find stupidity that funny, and as an instructor I get pretty sick and tired of it.

I've spent the last 30 minutes defending myself on HN so I will conclude with this. We are not segregating our classes. We are not trying to shield female students from the realities of the world. We are simply making a business decision to offer an alternative environment for our female students who would otherwise have to deal with awkward situations like the one I just described. The all-girls classes are ridiculously chill and my instructors leap at the opportunity to teach them, because girls in middle and high school are on average more attentive and respectful than their male counterparts. You can tear apart my real-world observation all you want, but that is the simple reality of it and once you open your mind beyond some idealistic vision of what education should be, you'll understand that my reasoning is not just "unconscious sexism".

[dsuth]

Thanks for your posts, primitivesuave. I have to say I was surprised and extremely disappointed with the ridiculously defensive (of mostly strawman arguments) and needlessly accusatory posts in response to yours.

Needless to say this is an issue which constantly generates weird hate from certain aspects of geek culture, but I'm glad you're taking actual steps to improve the situation.

[_bfhp]

It's upsetting that these men, who seem uncomfortable at the prospect of someone describing reality, have bullied you into silence. Thank you for your anecdotes and viewpoint, your experience is valuable and contribution appreciated.

[shangxiao]

You may well be justified in doing what you do, I'm not arguing for or against it, but comments like the ones you make contribute to the whole popular "women are better than men" trend that we are experiencing.

[theorique]

I'm saying it only takes one kid who makes an inappropriate joke like changing "public void" to "pubic void" when we're doing a code review. In such a situation, the boy will suppress a smile while he innocently exclaims he made a typo, while his friends all giggle innocuously

This is an expression of "masculinity", pseudo- or otherwise?

Seems more like a silly juvenile joke that some kids (or adults) of both sexes might enjoy, and some might roll their eyes.

[obstacle1]

I thought this too. There is nothing inherently masculine about pubic hair, or jokes about said hair.

[rimantas]

  > Girls simply don't find stupidity that funny

This is gold. Almost as "girls cannot code".

[_bfhp]

What do you mean by that? OP was describing what they saw in real life.

[_bfhp]

"ostracized by pseudo-masculine efforts undertaken by adolescent males" - I don't see the word "all" in there

"militant feminists"? Really?

Masculinity is a socially constructed, we can identify [1] masculinity as a phenomenon, that's what the field of sociology is for.

I do agree that segregation is not a solution, but you're assuming bad faith on primitivesuave's part, who apparently was is trying to give kids the best environment to learn in. One has to wonder why you do this.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI

[obstacle1]

I'm not assuming bad faith. I stated explicitly that I think his sexism is completely unconscious, i.e. he doesn't recognize it as such.

So go ahead and wonder if you want. Alternatively you could just read what I actually said.

[theorique]

primitivesuave wasn't talking about genitals, they were talking about gender

No difference. Genitals are gender - they define the sex or gender of a person.

(And transsexual / transgendered persons feel like they have they 'wrong' genitals compared to what their brain feels like - the brain of a woman and the body of a man, or vice versa)

It's all connected.