Reply to How to answer sons who are asking me why so many girls have 'girls are better' merch

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Tell them it used to be that girls were often to,d they couldn’t do things and that these shirts are someone’s idea of correcting that. You could also tell them that you’re not wild about the shirts because they also create the message the boys are getting, so you won’t buy the shirts, but it’s important to recognize when points being made about history are legitimate, even if they are misguided. [/quote]

This. [b]DS was in a STEM camp last week. Five of the thirty kids were girls. Five. I pointed that out to him and asked him about the make up of his Advanced Math group at school, 1/3 of the class is female[/b]. He thought about it and asked me why there were so few girls. My response was similar to the above answer, that for a long time people thought that women should be home caring for kids and not in the work force. This led to people thinking that women were not good at specific subjects. He said that wasn’t true, I agreed and said that it takes time to correct past inequities.

I can’t say I like the shirts and stuff but I get the idea behind them. We don’t change how society sees stereotypes over night, it takes time, focus, and energy. And there is push back against that change because many programs have limited space for every girl who takes a space in a program means a boy doesn’t. It doesn’t matter to some that giving the space to the girl is helping to address a societal bias, even when the candidates are equally qualified, but is seeing as damaging the boy.

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As a professional woman in STEM, I can tell you it's not because teachers or parents are not supportive, they r and are!, it's because girls don't want to.  And increasingly boys don't want to either.

You're really coming at this from the wrong angle.  [/quote]

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