To all the men saying/thinking “hey this isn’t equal and maybe women just aren’t as good at tech,” I invite you on a journey with me back to my first basketball game in the 4th grade.
I had seen sports my whole life but had never played them, and was also very good at being a good little girl. So while I got that sports was a competition (duh), in my first game I was dumbfounded as to how I was supposed to compete, because I was supposed to be nice and kind and not cause trouble. I literally passed the ball back to my teammates every time.
After the game, my Dad pulled me aside and said what would become a catchphrase of his and would change my life: “Meghan, be aggressive.”
This was mind blowing. No person, no movie, no tv show had told me in the 90s that I could (and should!) be aggressive. And still be a good girl.
Two years later, I was the kid on the team that came close to fouling out bc I would use the box out very enthusiastically. My dad never stopped telling me to be aggressive. I ended up an all state field hockey athlete in high school, primarily because of my skills as a defender who was not afraid to get in the way.
For those who say women are predisposed biologically to not be good at things: Do you think my biology changed? Was I always born an aggressive woman, or was it a learned behavior? This example is a microcosm of thousands of other examples from a life where the messages one absorbs can shape action. (Others: Had I never been sexually propositioned by sources as a reporter, would I have been more aggressive about who i invited to drinks? Or in tech world, if a woman wasn’t the only woman on their team/division/whatever for the past few decades, would they have stayed longer?) If you want to measure my testosterone, fine, but please also control for the fact that I never got any sort of message about how it could be a good thing if I was aggressive until I was 10 (plus a million other things like that.)
On the topic of bring more gender parity to nursing and teaching, please do. I would love to see more male engineers give up six figure salaries to learn what it takes to be a nurse or a teacher and wonder why they make so much less in return. Perhaps it’s because things considered “women’s work” was never highly valued to start?
I had seen sports my whole life but had never played them, and was also very good at being a good little girl. So while I got that sports was a competition (duh), in my first game I was dumbfounded as to how I was supposed to compete, because I was supposed to be nice and kind and not cause trouble. I literally passed the ball back to my teammates every time.
After the game, my Dad pulled me aside and said what would become a catchphrase of his and would change my life: “Meghan, be aggressive.”
This was mind blowing. No person, no movie, no tv show had told me in the 90s that I could (and should!) be aggressive. And still be a good girl.
Two years later, I was the kid on the team that came close to fouling out bc I would use the box out very enthusiastically. My dad never stopped telling me to be aggressive. I ended up an all state field hockey athlete in high school, primarily because of my skills as a defender who was not afraid to get in the way.
For those who say women are predisposed biologically to not be good at things: Do you think my biology changed? Was I always born an aggressive woman, or was it a learned behavior? This example is a microcosm of thousands of other examples from a life where the messages one absorbs can shape action. (Others: Had I never been sexually propositioned by sources as a reporter, would I have been more aggressive about who i invited to drinks? Or in tech world, if a woman wasn’t the only woman on their team/division/whatever for the past few decades, would they have stayed longer?) If you want to measure my testosterone, fine, but please also control for the fact that I never got any sort of message about how it could be a good thing if I was aggressive until I was 10 (plus a million other things like that.)
On the topic of bring more gender parity to nursing and teaching, please do. I would love to see more male engineers give up six figure salaries to learn what it takes to be a nurse or a teacher and wonder why they make so much less in return. Perhaps it’s because things considered “women’s work” was never highly valued to start?