A University of Michigan economics professor recently filed a complaint against Wayne State University over a summer educational program.What if boys identify as girls?
According to The South End, a Wayne State student newspaper, the university held a “Black Girls Code” event designed for young women in the summer of 2018. The program “introduces computer coding lessons to young girls from underrepresented communities (and is) devoted to showing the world that black girls can code and do so much more.”
The event was hosted by Wayne State from July 30, 2018-August 10,2018.
The professor, Mark Perry, alleges the event only allows girls from 13-17 which violates the Title IX policy. He told The South End, “that educational program (Black Girls Code) clearly discriminates against young men from ages 13 to 17, who because of their gender, are illegally excluded from participation in that annual program hosted by WSU.
Furthermore, he stated, “it’s a prohibited form of gender discrimination that violates Title IX, WSU’s commitment to follow Title IX and the Michigan Constitution.”
Saturday, March 02, 2019
Are We Legally Equal, Or Not? Can We Discriminate On The Basis Of Sex, Or Not?
If an "only men must register for the draft" law is unconstitutional, how can a school program only for girls not also be unconstitutional? It's either legal to discriminate on the basis of race, or it's not:
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7 comments:
I would take the professor's complaints more seriously if he protested just as strongly against programs that encourage more men to go into teaching and nursing. These programs exist because there really is a shortage of men in these fields. The coding program exists because there really is a shortage of women in coding. Almost any educational conference will have sessions on how to create a more "boy friendly" classroom. These programs exist because boys really do struggle in the classroom. On the other hand, there will also be sessions on how to help girls do better in math. Most universities offer affirmative action for male applicants. Few women complain about this because most women like men and want to attend a college with a more even gender balance.
There's a difference between "how might we help these students do better" and "let's discriminate on the basis of sex".
I suppose we could just shrug our shoulders and leave boys to struggle in school, but that has consequences for society. Already male labor force participation is declining. Do you really believe that a society in which boys are left to struggle in school and grow up to be unemployed men is a healthy society?
We help other populations. Students who have dyslexia or who speak another language are given services to help them succeed. Why not do the same for boys? Males make up half the population. We shouldn't write them off.
On principle, I agree with Darren. In practice, I feel like that analysis is missing something. I disagree with the other Anonymous that a shortage of women in programming is an absolute problem- if I believed that men were somehow better suited for programming, it wouldn't bother me at all. But I see young women who could do well- and who are pursuing careers in science, which will always be strengthened by an ability to write code- avoid programming classes, and that seems to be a problem.
My experience tells me we need something like this workshop, at least until we identify and fix the underlying problem. Young women are less likely to try programming for a couple reasons. One is that many lack the confidence to be wrong. They have the abilities, but programming is a field where mistakes are part of the process. It seems that young women are more willing to make mistakes in a single-sex environment. It's certainly better to have these single-sex workshops at a younger age than to try and segregate college-level courses.
In my little corner of the world, we're seeing the numbers of women majoring in CSci go down as total numbers of majors go up. That means we aren't getting women interested early, and we aren't pulling them in from other areas (a senior colleague tells me that we used to have a significant number of double majors with English, for instance).
I don't believe that it's lack of interest or ability. Some students I have talked with indicated that they have some interest in programming- perhaps not as a career, but certainly as an additional skill to take with them. But they don't take the courses at the intro level, partly because they perceive programming as being "hard." This perception, and the avoidance of courses because of it, is not unique to young women, but it is more common with young women.
To speak to some other possible causes: half of our full-time CSci faculty are women; between 1/3 and 1/2 of our full time faculty in the sciences overall are women. We have a computational physics course taught by a woman physicist. So I don't think "lack of role models" is the cause. In biology and chemistry, we have >50% women majors. In physics and CSci, very few women majors. These numbers are consistent with other schools at which I've taught. The ratios don't change with women faculty that I can see. At one school, two of four physics faculty were women, while one of ten chemistry faculty was a woman. Women were over half of all chemistry majors, but less than one tenth of physics majors.
The willingness to be wrong, and to be wrong in front of others, is the major issue I can think of. I'd love to find ways to overcome this which do not involve sex-segregated workshops. If there are other reasons I'm missing (and there likely are), I'd like to see them resolved as well. But until we find that, I have to admit that this solution is as good as any I can see.
I'm not saying that we don't look at differences, but to have govt-sponsored programs where people are excluded because of their sex? That doesn't sound any better than excluding people because of their race or sexual orientation, and I dare say we wouldn't support *those* programs.
But schools do offer programs to meet the specific needs of various groups. There are school sponsored programs for LGBTQ students, homeless students, students who are learning English, and at risk youth. As long as the program is limited to solving a clearly identified need, I don't have a problem with it.
Here in Colorado, we have a high male suicide rate in the rural areas. Our public health department has put together an outreach program to encourage men to seek help. Many of the men felt more comfortable meeting in all male groups. It's early, but it seems to be working. Should we really just ignore the needs of these men?
Your public health program for men--does it *exclude* women? And does a public health issue--I'm still old-fashioned enough to believe that only men have penises and testicles and only women have uteruses and vaginas--require both sexes to be involved, or can we still say that men and women might have different public health issues *because* of their sexes?
Education isn't a public health issue. I see no reason to *exclude* people from educational programs on the basis of sex, race, etc.
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