I used to be the bright one
Smart as a whip
Funny how you slip so far when
Teachers don’t keep track of it
–The Dresden Dolls/Perfect Fit
Back in the olden days, as I have mentioned before, I used to be a Smart Girl. I loved school in grades 1-6. I still liked it well enough in grades 7-9, but then came High School. I hated it. I hated the social maneuvering. I hated the constant pressure to conform. I hated the expectation to look and act cheerful all the time*. For the first time I also hated my classes, which had become items to check off in order to graduate instead of places to learn cool new stuff.
It didn’t occur to me at the time, but in retrospect I think I was probably treated differently by the guidance counselor because I had girl parts under my clothes instead of boy parts. Need an elective?
Him: I will put you in Home Ec this term for your elective.
Me: I’d rather take shop or auto shop.
Him: I think you’d be happier in Home Ec.
Me: I would really rather take shop or auto shop. (Quietly wishing I could disappear physically since I seemed to be completely invisible in every other way)
On the other hand, even though I was in the top tier of students of either gender, he did not raise any objections when I stopped taking science and math the minute I had enough credits to do so. What made him have fits? When I dropped choir. To drop choir, I had to go and get a note from the choir director. It didn’t seem to be a concern at all that one of the smart kids was dropping out of all of the smart kid classes, but not singing? Cause for a red alert. I suspect that boys at my GPA level were strongly encouraged to keep taking math and science so they’d be ready for college. I don’t recall college ever being discussed as part of my future until the year I was supposed to graduate, when I had a different guidance counselor. It’s quite possible that we just had a particularly useless guidance counselor at our school who gave everyone bad advice.
Of course, things were a lot different then. It was a long time ago. The Equal Rights Amendment was at the end of its slow, painful death. A lot of people really did not understand that just because girls are different from boys it didn’t mean we couldn’t be equal under the law. That’s all better now. Right? Isn’t it?
Uh.
If you fast forward to 1999, I was one of the first two women hired at my company to do PC support. That still seems impossible to me. It was practically the 21st century after all. Even now, in a team with about a dozen PC techs there are typically only 1-2 women in the group at any given time. In 2004, I was the second woman hired there as a network administrator. There are a lot of women in IT, but we are still mostly in less technical roles. Application analysts and so on. The number of times I’ve had to explain that I *am* the technical contact on a project in the relatively few years I worked in networking and firewall administration is indicative that there is a pretty big gender gap there. Don’t get me wrong– jobs as application analysts pay very well. However, it does make me wonder how many more women would be working in more technical areas of IT if we’d been encouraged to stick with math and science beyond the minimum requirements to get out of school.
Or in more technical areas period. I always wonder what discoveries have not been made because so many girls were allowed to opt out of science and math.
That does seem to be changing to some extent. Women are outpacing men in Medicine. Women are enrolling in college at higher levels than men now. And you know what?
It’s considered a problem.
It should be.
It should be considered a problem when any kid is not encouraged to do the best they can regardless of their gender. Not everyone can or should go on to university, but everyone should be encouraged to do better. To do the best they can.
We need to get that balance right. It’s not really about boys vs girls, it’s about giving all people the best possible start to their lives as learners. The better we help young people learn to learn, the better they will do as adults.
That might mean treating boys and girls differently in order for them to be at their best. We learn differently. We do a lot of things differently. We are not the same.
But we’re equal.
*Note to self: ask your male friends if they get told to smile when they are out and about living their lives. They don’t. Then ask your female friends. Men love to tell women to smile. I can’t speak for all women, but it makes me want to hurt them.