Some people propose female-only competitions as a way to benefit
women. However, the psychological effects of such contests are
sometimes negative.
One female
undergraduate wrote:
I [disagree] with the suggestion that they have different contests for boys and girls. I believe this has a negative effect. My high school was big on ``top boy'' and ``top girl''. I think it is from traditions like that I got the idea (now mostly eradicated) that I would be smarter if I were male. Until recently, I couldn't stand not being the top girl in a category (i.e., being beaten by a girl), but I didn't mind a guy's beating me. The award categories seem to imply that females can't compete with males. Wouldn't people find having separate competitions for whites and blacks offensive, particularly if the blacks weren't allowed to enter the white contest?It should be mentioned, however, that some women believe that the contests are worthwhile by providing rewards and encouragement to highly-achieving females. Thus, no consensus can be said to exist on the issue.
One popular way of encouraging female graduate students is through special fellowships for women. Again, the opinions are divided on the psychological effects. On the negative side, the same student who complained about female-only contests wrote:
I am a senior, applying to graduate programs in computer science, and was just offered a fellowship from [X]. At first, I was very pleased and proud (called my parents, went out to celebrate), but then I went back to my fellowship application material and saw that certain fellowships are awarded particularly to women and minorities in fields in which they are most underrepresented. (I can't tell if my fellowship is in this category. I will try to find out.) While I can understand how such awards might be good for women who were very worried about costs, the offer has left me feeling more bad than good. For a few hours, I was thinking of myself as the best of the best --- i.e. as having won the fellowship on merit --- but now I feel like I wasn't allowed to play in the big league.She reported that a male friend of hers said:In contrast, I was offered a RA [stipend and tuition waiver in exchange for research] next year by my bachelor's thesis supervisor. That made me feel great. If I thought the offer were related to my being female, I would have rejected it.
I'm glad I'm not in a similar position --- you know I'm trying to improve my self-confidence, and I'd feel so unsure in a world that wouldn't tell me whether I was good or just the recipient of a less-deserved award.Another female graduate student wrote:
I don't want anyone ever to think that I got where I am because of special favors granted to me because I'm female. I decided ... that I would not apply for any fellowships or special programs for women. I [don't want people to] think that I don't have to work as hard as a man to succeed in my chosen career.
The majority of women who expressed an opinion, however, supported special fellowships and urged women to accept them. One female computer science professor wrote:
While I was a graduate student at [X], I got a fellowship that was earmarked for women. Initially I felt ... that while I was glad to get the fellowship, ... it was second class in some way. Two things have changed my mind on this. First, I found out that my fellowship was in fact harder to get because it was a national contest rather than a intra-university contest. This solved my initial problem with respect to the particular fellowship.Many people do not realize how competitive some fellowships for women and minorities are. The competition for the top women and minorities fellowships is now so intense that a female computer science student I spoke with was not surprised when she failed to win a special fellowship for women but won the most coveted fellowship that was open to both sexes. Because outside funding makes graduate life easier and because any stigma associated with special fellowships seems to be decreasing, they are almost certainly a worthwhile way to help women further their education.The second thing completely changed my attitude about what it takes to be successful. Now that I am faculty, I realize how hard it is to raise money. I now actively search for sources of funding that are slightly unique to me: funding for women, funding for first year faculty and so forth. And why not? Others look for funding that is particular to VLSI say.... [W]e are judged on our output, and ... we should take advantage of any opportunity that comes our way. That initial ... fellowship has caused doors to open for me all along my career --- job offers, research funding, etc. In hindsight I would have been an idiot to decline it.
I now realize that my initial feelings about the fellowship said more about my attitude toward women than reality. That fellowship wasn't second class, I just thought something special for women must be. I've been taught an important lesson.
Another issue is whether such programs are morally justified. There would be an outcry against a publicly-funded scholarship for which only men were eligible, so a women-only scholarship program might not be morally justifiable. On the other hand, as this report has documented, women face so many biases that there is reason to believe that practically all women are unfairly handicapped in some way relative to men. Different people will have different opinions on whether a biased program is a legitimate response to existing bias in a community.
Perhaps the most insidious form of sexism is practiced by men who are eager for more women to enter computer science, but for social reasons. The following quotations from female graduate students are from [MIT 1983, pages 14--15,]:
More recently, in a public discussion on women in computer science, an ostensibly sympathetic male wrote, ``Sigh. I'd love to see more girls [sic] as my classmates!'' The ``sic'' was added by the moderator of the newsgroup (who can edit messages before they are posted), in protest of using that term for college-aged females. This sort of message is not uncommon. In another discussion, a man wrote:
At the time, we were really trying to hire some females into the software side and I was interviewing a bunch of new grads --- mostly girls. There was this girl whose resume looked good and since she was as they say --- easy on the eyes, I was trying hard to find reasons to hire her.Such examples occur not only in informal exchange but also in published books. On several occasions, in The Psychology of Computer Programming, Gerald Weinberg expresses opposition to sexism, decrying prejudice (page 98) and scoffing men who initially fail to take women seriously (pages 147--148). The chivalry of his appeal, however, undermines his point:
Each prejudice has its price. In a programming project, the exclusion of anyone from any position on any basis besides lack of competence robs the project of the best possible performance. Moreover, once one faction begins to feel that they are being judged differently from others, they will begin to act differently.... Possibly the greatest single action to relieve the shortage of programming and programming management talent would be to start treating women as true equals --- if indeed they are only that (page 112).Additionally, at another point in the book, he refers to a female employee as ``an attractive young thing'' (page 48). Most women would probably consider themselves better off without allies like this.