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General Motors has announced a new partnership with education nonprofit Girls Who Code that's intended to encourage more young women to pursue STEM subjects. The auto manufacturer will offer up a $250,000 grant to help fund after-school STEM clubs in schools, universities, and community centers.
"Becoming an engineer paved the way for my career," said GM CEO Mary Barra in a statement posted to the company's website. "It's one of the reasons I am passionate about promoting STEM education to students everywhere. Partnering with Girls Who Code is one more step in GM's commitment to inspiring and growing diverse future leaders."
[...] GM and Girls Who Code are pursuing this collaboration is [sic] response to the decreasing proportion of women in jobs related to computing, even as the field continues to grow. In 1995, 37 percent of the computing workforce was comprised of women, but today that has shrunk to 24 percent.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Wednesday January 11 2017, @07:42PM
You're right, it's definitely not the case, since the truth of a compound statement of this form requires all elements to be true, and this is only partially true (and completely deceptive.)
"Worse paying careers on average" - that one's true. Good job, I always say lead with the best thing you have.
"within a given career they're paid less" - eh, sort of yes. They also put in fewer hours of work for that smaller amount of money, however. Arguably true, but deceptive in the context you have put it.
"controlling for every possible confounding factor they're still paid less" - and now you slide all the way into full on falsehood. Because once you control for a few well known and quite obvious confounding factors this "wage gap" magically disappears. Yes, the average woman has made less money than the average man of the same age. She's also worked fewer hours in better conditions and taken more time off. She's much less likely to have died on the job or committed suicide because of unbearable stress. These are 'confounding factors' but you're completely overlooking them and attributing their effect to anti-female sexism.
In reality, it's more complicated, and probably more true to say it's the result of *pro-female* sexism. No one's organizing campaigns to encourage more women to enter mining or fishing or sanitation.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 11 2017, @09:09PM
No one's organizing campaigns to encourage more women to enter mining or fishing or sanitation.
Women in Mining Foundation [womeninmining.org]
International Women's Fishing Association [iwfa.org]
Angling for gender equality in the seafood industry [fao.org]
National Waste & Recycling Association Women’s Council [wasterecycling.org]
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday January 11 2017, @09:11PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 11 2017, @09:12PM
Nice job moving those goalposts.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday January 11 2017, @09:18PM
You haven't tackled the actual summation, however, because you can't dispute it. Women are not treated as property in the US or in any developed country, they are not second class citizens, they are not a minority, and when they are treated differently it is almost always *in their favor.* Those are simply facts.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 11 2017, @09:28PM
If you had made an argument that was more than a wordy version of "nuh-uh" I would've addressed it. Since you didn't, and "yes-huh" would've been redundant, I could only address your factually incorrect statement.
I'll also point out that your statement was absolutely, indisputably, FALSE. Being completely wrong is a bit more than a technicality.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday January 11 2017, @09:44PM
I checked out women in mining. Nice quarterly newsletter. Appears to be about 20 women at the national level who go on field trips to mines. It appears none of them work in mining and are mostly appear to be elder members of the traditional cat lady industries. The president, I kid you not, is a graybeard dude, unless he's trans I donno about that. They appear to be self funded, or if they're getting grants they're stiffing their donors by never advertising.
Girls who code, in comparison appears to receive huge steaming piles of funding from every megacorporation, SV startup, and NASDAQ member. Hats off to them for acquiring lots of money while doing apparently nothing with it, or doing nothing that requires money. I imagine salaries are nice and high at that charity.
There's a whole weird segment of American business revolving around finding a problem, collecting money, and not doing a damn thing about it other than paying salaries and collecting even more money. WIM is not like that. Girls who code, well, I'm just saying I'm seeing wheelbarrows of money going in and ... a nice looking website and volunteers guide going out. That money's going somewhere. I'm not even claiming somewhere illegal. I now have a lot more respect for WIM than GHC, just sayin.
Twenty female mining fans seem to actually accomplish more documented "action" with basically no money, so I have to respect the female miners more that the girls who code inc. The problem with your goalposts comment is WIM budget looks like its about 3 or 4 digits about like a small cub scout pack both in funds and activity level, whereas you claim thats equivalent to a fundraising industry professional non-profit NGO with maybe a 8 digit budget, and they're hardly the only group pimping one of the dozens of variations of "girls in stem".
So sure, moving the goal posts seems fair when the claim is a budget of zero and you found a whomping 3 or 4 digits, but its unfair to compare that to one fundraising org that runs 8 or so digits in a movement at least ten times as big. Find us a "women in waste handling services" movement with a billion dollar budget and get back to us.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday January 12 2017, @10:05AM
I followed you on checking out WIM, and I have to say I am also impressed with them. No bullshit, and a genuine enthusiasm for their subject goes a hell of a long way.
They also seem to be aiming primarily at anyone who might be interested, with an emphasis on females, rather than pushing it on just a bunch of girls who don't want to know about it.
This is the way gender equality should be pushed. Men and women are different and that is inevitably going to result in unequal participation in fields. As long as no one is coerced out of or into a field solely because of their gender, I don't see a problem.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.