Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!mcnc!ecsvax!seltzer@ernie.Berkeley.EDU From: seltzer@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Linda Seltzer) Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Re: Countering discrimination your children will face Message-ID: <5424@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Date: 26 Sep 88 02:34:47 GMT References: <5396@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 41 Approved: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts) Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu #The second math major is an acquaintance of mine, who was plagued by #the same comments, and _hated_ them. Hated them so much that she #switched majors in her senior year of college, just because she had # #She is now a musician; I, a mathematician. I was struck by how #differently we reacted to similar experiences. I found it easy to #brush society's attitudes off as silly and not worthy of notice; she #felt society's lack of approval keenly. Just to show how different people's experiences can be - I used to be a full time engineer. Then I changed my major to music, and I work part time in engineering. When I was studying engineering, all I received was praise. "That's wonderful." "You really have it together." Or, one night after work, "You look like a real businesswoman." When I left my job and enrolled full time in music school, the comments I received were: "Don't come to me for help". "Composers are a dime a dozen." One man who was attracted to me when he met me at work immediately stopped paying attention to me when I confided to him that I was planning to leave to atend graduate school in music. Some other men have had the same reaction; God forbid they might have to spend some of their money on a wife's expenses for humanities graduate school, instead of having a woman shell out half the money for a down payment. I'm sorry, but my experience was totally opposite to those you described. I received lots of encouragement from most people as long as my life style seemed to follow materialistic values, and I received a lot of negativity as soon as I made a decision which some people considered "impractical" (note that my personal happiness was not considered in this evaluation of what was "practical"). Even some of my friends, whom I have known for years, cannot accept my decision to work seriously in the humanities instead of in a business career. (Luckily, I have received a lot of encouragement from the music professors here at Berkeley, and from musicians elsewhere).