Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!mcnc!ecsvax!sethg@ATHENA.MIT.EDU From: sethg@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Seth Gordon) Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Re: Countering discrimination your children will face Message-ID: <5416@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Date: 25 Sep 88 21:06:17 GMT References: <5396@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu Lines: 29 Approved: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts) Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu pedersen%math.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU in <5396@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>: `I was supported by my parents and teachers too [in being a math major]. `The general public is a different story.... ` ` "Oh, my, math, that's unusual for a girl to do" ` "You must be really bright" ` "You don't look like a math nerd (you're really pretty)" ` "You don't act like a math nerd (you have social skills)" I have a tale of a computer science major I know. She wanted to do computer science all her life, but formally declared it in her *senior* year of MIT (if memory serves; normally, you declare your major at the end of your freshman year). Incoming women at MIT, she says, are told *explicitly* what majors Women Should Not Take. Engineering, except perhaps civil engineering, is verboten. And *computer science* -- heaven and Phyllis Schadfly forbid! I have heard one male student "joke": "Women at MIT are actually men who worked their balls off getting in here." And then, of course, the director of MIT's Women's Studies Program was a professor for fifteen years before getting tenure... but that's another story. -- * L'shana tovah... forgive me my net.sins : Seth Gordon / MIT Brnch., PO Box 53, Cambridge, MA 02139 : bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!sethg / standard disclaimer