SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A pair of researchers with the University of Massachusetts has found evidence that suggests women are more likely to continue to pursue a degree in engineering if they have a female mentor. Nilanjana Dasgupta, an instructor, and her Ph.D. student Tara Dennehy paired first-year female engineering majors with older mentors for a year and then looked at the impact mentoring had the decision to continue pursuing their degree as they moved into their second year. They have published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Far fewer women than men receive bachelor's degrees in the STEM fields (just 13 to 33 percent), despite women comprising approximately 56 percent of all students attending college in the United States. Dasgupta and Dennehy note that the disparity is most notable in engineering. They suggest the reason that women choose to drop out or to change majors is because many such environments are unfriendly, or even hostile to female students. Quite often, female students are made to feel as if they do not belong. They note also that some efforts have been made to make such environments friendlier, but thus far, little progress has been made. They wondered if female students in such fields might benefit from having a female mentor. To find out, they enlisted the assistance of 150 people (male and female) working as engineers to serve as mentors for 150 female engineering students during their freshman year. The students met with their mentor once a month and were interviewed by the research pair three times during their first year and then again, a year later.
The researchers found that the female students were much more likely to continue to pursue their engineering degree if they had a female mentor, but not if they had a male mentor (18 percent of them dropped out) or no mentor (11 percent dropped out). They report that all of the female students given a female mentor chose to continue with their major their second year. They also note that mentoring appeared to have a lasting impact, as most of those assigned female mentors reported plans to continue with their engineering degree into their third year.
Paper: Tara C. Dennehya and Nilanjana Dasgupta, Female peer mentors early in college increase women's positive academic experiences and retention in engineering, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1613117114
Additional coverage at UMass, TheAtlantic, insidehighed.com
(Score: 1) by charon on Wednesday May 24 2017, @10:54PM (10 children)
Perhaps I was unclear when I used the word want. I did not mean that women are not asking for the attention (though they are not). I meant that they do not desire, and would reject, such attention when it is obviously predicated on a "contract" in the man's mind.
Let's perform a thought experiment. Consider a man training in a female dominated field like nursing. Do you think a self-respecting male nursing student would ask for or enjoy his classmates crowding around to help him with classwork, expecting sex in return? Not just for the piece-of-meat factor, but for the implicit assumption that he needs help in the first place. I'd have to say that a person who wants to be respected for his or her skill in work is not going to appreciate being condescended to in any way.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:22AM (9 children)
That's a rather psychopathic world view to have. If they aren't interested in dating those men, the simplest thing to do is to just reciprocate by helping them out when they need a hand or turn down help that isn't being offered on a wider basis. Accepting the help, not considering dating and not reciprocating is extremely selfish and breaks the social contract.
More to the point though, women choose not to show any initiative when it comes to dating and that privilege comes with a cost. It means that if you're an attractive woman, you're going to have guys trying to get your attention in one way or another. Women whine about it when they're young and then whine about the absence of that when they're older and no longer interesting to men. It's one of the costs of going around like a selfish twat.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by charon on Thursday May 25 2017, @01:43AM (8 children)
Psychopathic what now? Men are real assholes, especially when they are young and stupid. Women are in a bind no matter what they do. Reject assistance offered and you're stuck up. Accept it and you're agreeing to an unspoken contract (purely in the man's mind) that requires repayment. If you renege on that "promise" you've been leading him on and you're a slut anyway. Avoid such situations altogether and you're a frigid bitch, and probably a dyke too.
Would you mind discussing the social contract you speak of a bit more? Are there rules for what quantity of sexual favors a man can expect for a given quantity of attention? Is it one of those contracts where neither party can change their mind?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:58AM (4 children)
Oh, please, not more of that feminist bullshit.
First off, if you've got no class, and it's clear you don't, then you're in a bit of a bind. None of those things are actual real problems to women with class. You can reject the help and as long as you've not been a stuck up witch before that, you're probably still going to be on good terms with people around you. However, if you take them up on the offer, then the right thing to do is help them out when they need help. That's part of being in a civilized society, the fact that you're even skipping to the idea that you have to screw them suggests that you're probably a whore or spend your time with whores. Because that's not normal.
What makes you a frigid bitch or dyke isn't that you've avoided these things, it's that you've been shitty to the guys around you.
As far as the social contract, only a stupid bitch would assume that any of this requires sex. Unless you're hanging around next to a prison, it's safe to assume that's probably not actually true. Men ask so very little of women, it's fucking embarrassing. I don't personally think that it's unreasonable to expect some decent treatment and a bit of help in exchange for being friendly and helpful you ungrateful cow.
(Score: 1) by charon on Thursday May 25 2017, @05:36AM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @07:58PM (2 children)
Oh please, you weren't reading my posts even before that. You're just upset because I called you out. It's the same bullshit that feminists have been spewing for years to rationalize why they aren't responsible for anything.
Half of your post was in response to things that weren't said.
(Score: 1) by charon on Friday May 26 2017, @02:47AM (1 child)
Sorry you think I wasn't paying attention. In the context of this thread, I think it was quite clear that I'm not talking about the great majority of men who are perfectly capable of platonic relationships with women without score-keeping or expectations. I was talking about the men EF brought up who buzz like flies around women (my god, even the ugly ones?) solely because they have vaginas. The kind of guy who helps a girl not because he wants to help another person out, but because maybe it will get him laid. So if you think I'm not talking about you because you are very egalitarian and free thinking and post feminist (because who needs feminism anymore, it's already gone far enough), good. You can not respond to me anymore because you're not part of the problem anymore. Bravo, #notallmen.
Just one last note: the ad hominems you used were all female related. I thought it was pretty funny that your best insults all implied that existing as a female is a negative state.
Cheers, from your friendly neighborhood ungrateful cow.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @02:59AM
No worries, I'm just rather used to women that think it's OK to waste men's time without giving anything of any sorts. Obviously, this kind of thing doesn't obligate sex as payment, that would be fucked up. But, there's a general lack of awareness in women that men haven't got unlimited time and money. Saying no is hardly a problem as long as you're generally down to earth and reasonable.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Thursday May 25 2017, @08:42AM
I prefer to split the bill on first dates, because if I don't there is a kind of unwritten expectation that I'm owed something. If we do end up in bed, it kinda feels like I paid for it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:22PM (1 child)
Man, I don't doubt this happens, but it sure wasn't the impression of the group of us CS guys who hung out in the upstairs lab at *my* college. And yes, a couple of them were female.
Helping somebody who's having a hard time on their assignment doesn't have to be a transaction. Some people don't mind just helping somebody out pro bono. I did for awhile.
There was a class or two (x86 assembly comes to mind) that I doubt a lot of us would've passed if we hadn't been up in that lab asking each other stupid questions.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:19PM
There is a distinction between "answer each other's lab questions", and "always provide detailed answers to the cute brunette's questions".
Where men are bad, it is at judging the line between "she's friendly because she appreciates knowledgeable help" and "She's friendly so I've got a shot if I keep helping" (not even counting the misguided "she's a girl therefore I need to help")