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In Reply to: Hi Fi Fetishism posted by Tancred on February 21, 2007 at 10:02:01:
If ican comment in the same vein as E-Stat. I am a retired engineering manager. Most of my staff over the years was male. To try and meet affirmative action plans, we were exhorted to increase our female staff levels. We really did try, but female engineers, lab technicians, and drafters are hard to find; and good ones are really hard to find.If you find the answer to why so few women go into the engineering profession; I think you'll have your answer to the audio question.
Hint: I have two daughters. I raised both with technical stuff all around them and they grew up helping me work on the car and my stereo gear. By the time they were 8 or 9, they could care less. My son grew up in the same environment. By 8 or 9 he was totally into sports. All three liked music and all three can play something. My daughters both went into education in college. But for reasons I don't understand, in his senior year my son decided to go into mechanical engineering. He never built models, he didn't play with the erector set I got him, and he could care less about my hobbies. His interests turned to cars and racing and he eventually got an SCCA competition license. I gave all my kids audio gear from 12 on and upgraded their equipment along the way. The girls both have decent stuff even today, but had I not given it to them, or their husbands bought it, they most likely would not have it.
Why are there not more female physics and chemistry teachers?
Follow Ups:
I enjoyed your post very much. I feel like my current passion for audio evolved from the same source as my childhood passion for Erector Sets, electric trains, and building models. I have long felt that the audio bug is more about tinkering with gadgets than it is about listening to music, although the latter is a nice fringe benefit. My wife is a professional musician and thinks my audio addiction is nuts. She has to get my help about once a week to operate her own stereo. I have never met a female who cared a wit about trains, Erector Sets, or audio gear. Incidentally, neither do most males. I could not get my two sons to put down their Nintendos long enough to get into any of that stuff.
On the issue of women is science, there is a guy who teaches physics at the Illinois Math and Science Academy and has separate classes for girls where he gets then to do a lot of hands on guy stuff like throw balls, mess around with simple machines, take things apart, etc. Apparently, he thinks aptitude for science is nourished by that sort of activity.
I'm not sure about awakening the aptitude thing. My son, now 33, had it from day one. As a little child he was fascinated by mechanical things. For quite a while we could keep him out of rooms by just closing the door, as he didn't understand door knobs. One day I was sitting at the kitchen table and the door to the basement was open. he got a chair, pushed it over to the door, climbed up on it and began to fool with the latch. He turned the knobs and watched the plunger go in and out, he put his finger into the mortise in the door frame, he pushed the plunger in with his finger. Over and over for maybe 15 minutes. Then he got down off the chair, closed the door, and reached up and turned the knob and opened the door. He was only about 2 1/2. Later he got involved with sports with all the neighbor kids and had no interest in technical stuff until his senior year in high school.You're quite right, I've met very few people who have that inate technical ability or interest.
Why are there not more female physics and chemistry teachers?Quite a few are in medicine. My wife is a PharmD and is the dean of a College of Pharmacy. Nationwide, the ratio of female to male students is something like 60/40. And continuing to diverge over time.
rw
My younger sister is an MDPhD and also has a MS in genetics. She is a researcher at the Univ. of Chicago.
True, and there are many nurses, dentists, dental hygienists, medical techs, doctors, biologists. But damn few are in mechanical or civil engineering or physics. The ones who are in physics tend to be in theoretical physics rather than the hardware oriented experimental physics.There seems to be something about the hardware side that's more of a guy thing.
I have always been wired to enjoy various mechanical and electrical toys. And started to enjoy listening to music at a very early age.
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