STEM is an acronym. It stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. All these fields have low women participation rate, both at educational and later at professional stage. Statistics show only 8 percent of IT students are female at Polish universities, and this number even lowers when we're looking at the data from the job market.
Low participation rate may be caused by a myth that women are not skilled in mathematics, hence not “good enough” to pursue career in IT. But history proves otherwise, showing examples of women that achieved great success in the computing field on its different development stages. The aforementioned Ada Lovelace was the first person to design a computer program and imagine the future of the computers. A century later an actress, Hedy Lamarr, decided to drop her career and devote her time to research on frequency-hopping idea that we now know from Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Grace Hopper developed the first compiler which became the cornerstone for modern programming languages. These are only a few out of hundreds of examples of great women in computing. But the myth seems to remain, preventing girls from choosing education in the field.
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| Shown from the left: Ada Lovelace, Hady Lamarr, Grace Hopper |
Studies show that teams with equal number of women and men are more likely to experiment, be creative and share knowledge than teams with different a ratio. Also, it's indicated that groups comprising diverse members consistently outperform those comprising of "highest ability" members. That research also shows that women on average have higher emotional intelligence and are better at multitasking than men. IT companies seem to have done their homework and are now desperately looking for female employees and failing due to their small participation in STEM fields.
The problem seems to be so severe that various groups started showing interest in encouraging girls to study IT, either by creating actions like Ada Lovelace Day, free programming workshops or making educational materials, like she++ Documentary shown below.
Do you think that there's actually a problem? Do we need more women in IT?
And why are there so few women in the field. What do you think are the reasons?
In my opinion the question that was asked above concerns not only IT area, but also all other professions related to science. The main reason for that are social-cultural stereotypes, that are deeply rooted in our heads. In polish society there is still a very traditional division for what is a men 's domain and what is typical for women. According to it women are delicate, sensitive and contemplative, so that they fit more to humanities or jobs demanding lot of empathy and care of others. The result of this way of thinking is that girls are not motivated and encouraged to develop their scientific talents and capacities. What is more the environment imposes on women to be modest and to lower their abilities, so girls do not try to verify whether science is something for them, they feel insecure and doubtful of their capabilities. That is why women believe that they can not compete with men in such areas like maths, physics or engineering. In consequence so little women work in science. And a lack of positive example reinforces opinion among whole society, that these fields are simply not suitable for women, or reserved for men only.
ReplyDeleteIt's all completely true, about whole society not making it easy for women to pursue science-related fields. But do you think it's ok, should we change the trends and encourage women to participate in these "manly" jobs? I'm curious about your opinion in the matter :)
DeleteYou should not be surprised if I say "yes". Of course every next person who tries to make a career in science-related fields is an additional competition at the labour market :), and women are “extremely dangerous” :) because they have additional advantages as workers - not only they are better educated than men, but also own personal features such empathy and emotional intelligence, which are frequently more valuable in management. But in spite of all that, I feel that everyone deserves a chance to develop own interests and should not be isolated because of the sex. But how we can achieve that? The best way to do that is to get rid of stereotypes. Of course they are so deeply rooted in our culture that it seems impossible to make a change.
DeleteBut perhaps it might interest you what I just have found:
http://www.promocjanauki.pl/uploads/Jak_mowic_o_przedmiotach_scislych_uczennicom.pdf
It is a document prepared by Gender Awareness Participation Program and provides a guidance how to teach sciences taking into account gender differences. Implementing that in teaching programs seems to be easier than getting rid of stereotypes.
I have an impression that this document you linked is based on stereotypes. That what "gender differences" are for me. I believe we are who we are no matter of the gender and going to the gender path is just going deeper to stereotypes. And that is why I prefer to spend my time with "STEM people". And what I liked at school the most (and what I like now) was completely different than it's described in this document. Am I less girl?? :)
DeleteStereotypes....stereotypes everywhere. Yep. It's true. But I have only one answer to the question "Why so low percentage of STEM women?". Because the percentage of man is higher...
DeleteI’ve never felt that in our society is any force pulling women out of STEM world. It’s rather that most of women DON’T like it. Of course it’s connected with culture. But culture colours our life, not exactly makes decisions on behalf of us (as culture I don’t mean government etc.). There are places in the world where woman cannot do some things, but really – as far as our culture is not ideal – there’s very little stress on gender division in STEM professions nowadays. In company I’m working for we are looking for “STEM women” all the time, as it’s true, that having woman in project makes it easier to manage and overall efficiency is higher. STEM professions are usually connected with better salary so at younger age I’ve never heard of parents discouraging their daughters from taking STEM as an educational direction. (Of course I know there are different cases).
On the other hand I’ve never really met woman that exceeds man in strictly technology matters. As they can outperform some man in management and planning abilities for sure. I don’t judge, as my opinion is not worth it and I have no enough knowledge to do so. I just guess, that differences between woman and man are not just made by culture. As I discussed with my superiors, that have vast experience with managing big project groups, I always heard that managing groups consisting of more than a half woman is impossible during longer projects. That is because of their emotional sensivity that can easily generate outrage situations. That’s the main reason for stereotype as where woman cannot handle working in STEM environment without manly management - that is not the real case.
My personal opinion is that company without woman is really dangerous place. Why? Because man can be easily accustomed to such environment and they forget that it is not optimal state for company goals as well as human mental state. But it’s just generalisation of mine here.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2Y8Jt06ep-s/S8qUdxu2CWI/AAAAAAAAAfM/ljs0j6ZED7k/s400/Math.JPG
Grzegorz – I cannot agree with you in one case.
Delete"That is because of their emotional sensivity that can easily generate outrage situations."
There is the difference between lack of emotional stability and emotional involvement, although sometimes from the outside it looks like these are the same. Women are sometimes used to scream and cry in the same way as men use foul language - as a catalyst. But this again is another stereotype, because men are not the only ones use the foul language.
From my point of view, the lack of professionalism will easily generate outrage situations much faster.
Grzegorz, do you think the knowledge is everything? I know a lot of men who have a lot of knowledge in some field but they are very lazy and do nothing at work, don't go to school, etc. And they go back since they don't learn anything new. In my opinion this is the example of what Iza said: lack of professionalism. No matter what these men knew when they finished studies - in few years there will be a lot of people, including women, who still want to learn and will exceed such lazy people.
DeleteI had rather on mind that man can more easily cope with harsh situations even by using foul language. It's not always the lack of professionalism. Man just "don't care" for so many things at work in a social way if you know what I mean. They are emotionally simpler to maintain :P
Delete@Agnieszka,
I don't think the knowledge is everything. I just said what I said.
"On the other hand I’ve never really met woman that exceeds man in strictly technology matters."
I see being lazy as completely different matter. Please don't take it personal. It's just that in STEM there is so many places where efficiency of work is less significant than just knowledge. Efficiency is hard to measure for company as well. And it's no mystery that there are "lazy people" everywhere on both sides :).
And still...I just say what I can see at work and heard from many people. I don't say that it cannot be otherwise because "women are women".
"Man just "don't care" for so many things at work in a social way if you know what I mean."
DeleteI'sorry but I don't. I just simply think that it depends of character.
And I have so many philosophers at work that I completely not believe in your theory...
Agnieszka, what you are saying is true, this document is based on stereotypes. Unfortunately stereotypes lead to racism or sexism, but they were created and are used so often to help people to understand the reality. Stereotypes still create the rules which outline how our society works. Of course, many stereotypes are unjust and harmful and label people in an awful way and we should disagree with them. But we have to remember that biases will exist as people use them to translate the ongoing socio-cultural phenomena. Changing stereotypes requires time and some deeper consideration as well as a consent that people can be different than stereotypes make them. With a lot of effort that it can be done.
DeleteMaybe you have heard about two families, one live in GB and another in Canada:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2090169/Sasha-Laxton-Gender-neutral-childs-reaction-mothers-questions-sex.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1391772/Storm-Stocker-As-gender-experiment-provokes-outrage-poor-childs-future.html
Those families are raising their children as "sex free" or "gender natural". Parents decided to do so because they want to bring them up without all the stereotypes that society use to define what is typical for male and female. They believe that living without gender limitations will make their children happier in the future. Maybe this is a solution for creating a new order without sex stereotypes. Of course we will have to wait some time to see the results of this "experiment"/"choice".
I'm not pretty sure if we should discuss about why girls are not interested in IT - in this group? Where we have men - and how they can say anything about what girls can think and we have women actually interested in the field. How I can say why popele are not interested in some subject since I'm crazy about it? :)
ReplyDeleteI want to draw attention to something else. I really like the movie Magda attached to the presentation. Mostly I agree with these people and totally with the idea - including the name of it: she++? Simple, easy and brilliant! :) But what is always supprising and irritating me is this theory that computer science = programming. Is it? Someone who has nothing to do with programming but is stil an engineer and works in field is less computer scientists or what?
People from the movie are trying to convince women to be geeks but how they can do it if they shoot themselves in the foot by limiting the issue.
I think some of us here are women and are not in the field :) But I might be wrong.
DeleteAbout IT and programming - you're totally right, they're not the same thing. (And I love she++ name too, BTW :) But on the other hand the whole field revolves around computers and literally only thing that can be done with computer is programming it (either by writing a proper program or just clicking). I think it very hard to be a scientist in that field and not know how to code - can you give an example what can you do?
Ok to stay in the subject of this article I say: Let’s women decide themselves. It is not a good practice to encourage someone to do something as it mainly discourage that person if he/she is not interested in that subject. Let women decide what they want to do. In my opinion one thing that should be done is to destroy any borders in people’s minds that “women are not good enough”. The rest will done by itself – that is my opinion.
DeleteMagda – your opinion about computers is wrong from my perspective. Programming is not the only thing that computer can be used in science. Once programmed computer is mostly used not to do more programming but to use it as – data store, text editor, photo viewer and lots of other things – programming is only one of them. I know that programmers tend to see only programming as one and only thing that can be done with computer but I can say that they are like dust to tornado when we compare them with administrators ;) And every good administrator can tell you that the more woman in IT the better :)
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DeleteMagda, you're right in one thing - IT and programming are not the same thing. It's true because programming is just a part of IT. I have to agree with Sławek, programming is just one of many things you can do on your computer, there is a lot such activities and some of them Sławek already listed. And to be precise there is also a lot of job positions in IT field not requiring programming. E.g. administrators, graphic desiners, testers, information technology consultants, quality engineers, and (best regards for my classmates ;) ) project managers - aren't they computer specialists? Sometimes they can involve programming to their work but they don't have to. And I think the list is much longer.
DeleteI think that a big portion of the problem might stem from the conditioning early in life. It's predominantly boys who are given the construction sets and other toys that require some technical thinking. For girls it's mainly dolls (not that there is anything wrong with dolls, I'd just like to see more of the stimulating toys being directed towards girls) . I know it's slowly changing but for every two steps forward we take one back. E.g. look at this Lego ad from 1981: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3426/3723943890_62d1643a8f_o.jpg (the first paragraph is especially amazing) . Now compare it to the retina-burning pink of the girls' section of the Lego website.
ReplyDeleteWhat's troubling is that even though over a quarter of jobs in STEM is now held by women, the increase has stopped[http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/06/20/stem-fields-and-the-gender-gap-where-are-the-women/] If we want the trend to go back to where it should be I think the nudging toward science and engineering should start rather earlier in life. The above ad is a perfect example of how to make parents do it. It's directed towards mums and dads as much, if not more, as towards the kids.
I, for one, am starting to stockpile Lego Technic for my brother's newborn girl after publishing this paragraph.
That's exactly what some woman engineer from USA thought when she invented her technical toy equivalent for girls - GoldieBlox (successfully founded last year, collecting nearly two times more money then she needed). I think that this is really a good idea to make technical toys that look more girly (although I just hate linking gender with colors).
DeleteDo not you think that this division of the boy with a screwdriver girl with a doll is already historical? And it should not be reproduced? I think that everyone should choose what he wants to deal with.
ReplyDeleteWe had a funny situation this year because my daughter wished to make her birthday in the National Railway Museum, and the only gift she wanted to get was a toy train.
Nope, not historical at all. Let's look at the Toys'R'Us website. Popular boys' toys? http://www.toysrus.com.au/Popular-Boys-Toys/w1/i1193603/ All Legos. Girls? http://www.toysrus.com.au/Popular-Girls-Toys/w1/i1193602/ Dolls and Pay Doh.
DeleteIf you look at sales globally Hasbo and Mattel are selling boatloads of girly toys (http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/10/21/latest-toys-sales-show-girls-just-want-to-have-fun/)
I'm not judging any of it (well, maybe a little, but that's just my opinion:)), I just think there might be a correlation.
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DeletePlan to buy Lego to my future doter then!! But really toys we give to our kids, stereotypes, examples given by both parents, interests we develop in our kids... – it all influences who will they become. Heard of a feminist that bought her son cooking toy's and cleaning brush. Would you mind if it was your son?
DeleteOh, yeah, for sure! I'm definitely going to buy cooking and cleaning toys for my future sons(daughters too for that matter). Some conditioning towards cleanliness and eagerness to cook never hurt anybody.
DeleteIn this subject I just wanted to say, that in the kindergarten we’ve chosen for our daughter, all children have cleaning duties and all take part in “cooking courses” – no matter if it’s a boy or girl.
DeleteI think it all depends what we will present, as children are great observers, and they see much more than we think they do.
I also think that in major part, this kind of problem begins at very beginning of human development. It is popular, to make a princesses out of our daughters, denying on every step access to all kind of toys, that are simple tools to encourage analytic thinking. It is getting even worse every year, because of the media and advertising. Fortunately since nowadays kids have easier access to technology in relatively young age. The trend should change very soon, while high tech will become their natural habitat, no longer considered as black magic.
DeleteTo start with that throughout this century, the role of women in the society has changed. More women work than ever before, and it is accepted in European culture that many women now have careers. To begin with, the traditional views of the position of women in the society are so ingrained that frankly speaking they have not really changed so much. For example, there is the view that women should stay at home and look after their family and an example of this is that few men are seen doing housework. It is thought that this is a woman’s job. We have to admit that since families need much money in order to enjoy a good standard of living , a woman does two jobs: at home and one at the office.
ReplyDeleteAnswering to your questions:
Firstly, I don’t see any problem of working women in IT on condition that they will have the knowledge and qualifications connected with this field. Hmm… to some extent, sexual equality has been achieved. I think that women can also be good employees in IT. Nowadays, a few women are now beginning to reach top positions as judges or business leaders.
Secondly, there are so few women in IT because many women find it very difficult to graduate technical university. Women often are not interested in STEM. The another reason for that is like I have writtten earlier, sexual discrimination which we all need to face and fight against.
"Firstly, I don’t see any problem of working women in IT on condition that they will have the knowledge and qualifications connected with this field."
DeleteŁukasz, it sounds like every man can work in IT - because? he's a man? it's obvious that he'll be good at it just because he's a man? But for woman in IT there is condition.
I'm sorry but I think everyone should have proper knowledge no matter in which area he works. And in my opinion IT is not any special men's club that men could have any problems with women working in the field.
I'm sorry Łukasz, you're writing about sexual discrimination and about fighting against it but splitting fields for more-for-men and more-for-woman is for me an exact example of sexual discrimination :) But still you're right about knowledge and qualifications - but for everyone in every field!
Magda, I loved your article and the movie you posted (great english, great topic!). I'm interested in why there’s so little women in science too, but sure it’s not the general rule (in chemistry e.g. there’s lot’s of women).
ReplyDeleteIn the past I participated in some meetings of a group called “Women in technology” in Warsaw (http://ewity.pl/). It is a part of the worldwide initiative (http://www.womenintechnology.org/). Unfortunately (for me) they transformed into Geek Girls Carrots (http://geekgirlscarrots.pl) and focus now on high school girls choosing their carrier... Good initiative, but it’s a pity they gave up on Warsaw meetings.
When it comes to why there’s so few women pursuing the Science/It world I hear same repetitive comments: lack of self confidence, to high expectations for themselves and in most cases simply LACK OF INTEREST... Who is to blame for that? Stereotypes, society, education model...? The fact is I can’t really talk with my female friends about IT projects cause I very quickly lose their attention and they treat me as I was bragging... (and that’s not a nice feeling!)
Have you heard about 5by5 (http://5by5.tv) and their audio and video webcasts? They often invite women from the IT and technology world. The women asked about the topic we discuss often say “OMG ...Are we still there?” And then talk about their female colleagues being to shy and having not enough courage to make a big carrier in this world.
Magda, remember when you mentioned in your introductory post, you love to code and even learn how to do it. Would you please tell me some more about where and how you’re learning coding?
Kasia, thanks for the nice words :) My English isn't that great, but Mrs. Świerk fixed the article to look flawless :)
DeleteActually, I too participated in the Women in technology meet-ups, but only a few times, so maybe this is why we haven't met before. The funny thing is, I actually co-created Geek Girls Carrots, but the organization and meetings went into direction I really didn't like, so I split pretty early. A month ago I saw that WiT are meeting again in Wroclaw and asked them - why not Warsaw. It turns out that most of the girls from the group are either super busy, or not residing in Warsaw any more. But they told me if someone would be interested in relaunching the meet-ups, they would help. Maybe us, you and me, should think about doing that together? :)
In terms of girls not pursuing education in the field, my feeling is that they're simply scared. There's this stereotype that women aren't good at maths and there are only few role models showing the contrary. Additionally, as few people in this topic already said, young girls are not thought by society and their parents to be brave. They're often thought to be nice, not to pushy, just stay in line with other children and not draw too much attention. This all mixes into this situation, where girls, even if they have some interest in STEM field, will get afraid and go into more "womanly" direction.
As of coding - yep, I love coding :) And I love it so much, that I not only learn it a lot - I also teach it. Currently I'm an co-organizer and coach for workshops called "Rails Girls Warsaw", where we teach women without any prior CS knowledge what Ruby and Rails are.
Currently I'm learning how to code in Python from various sources - udacity.com, codecademy.com and http://learnpythonthehardway.org. I also found a neat tutorial on using Python for data mining on Kaggle.com (https://www.kaggle.com/c/titanic-gettingStarted/details/getting-started-with-python).
And thank you for the link to 5by5, I will definitely check it out!
Magda, Thanks for your reply. I’m thinking about your proposal of reactivating WIT not sure if it was for real.. and if it was if I have time... It’s very tempting though! I like such initiatives :) I’m a bit afraid I don’t know enough people that could be invited and make speeches, but on the other hand – we could design the meetings so they are interested for us ;) (see, I’m already planning...). Wonder if you ever organized any of those meetings or just participated. It’s a pity too I didn’t know about the “Rails Girls” I would definitely participate (as a trainee of course).
DeleteGirls! I love your idea of reactivating WIT - I would love to attend its meetings!
DeleteIts hard to disagree with what's been said so far in this thread.
ReplyDeleteBut I would still add my 5 pens.
As a society we still evolving, right ?
USA is probably leading that change with Europe following.
As was mentioned already, few centuries ago woman was not "allowed" to pursuit a career. Things changed now, at least in Western world and now I believe we have equal rights and possibilities.
So, in my opinion, its a question of time when there will be more woman in IT. Don't forget that IT , as domain, is very young itself.
Should we do something to increase number of woman in IT ?
well, only thing we need to ensure is that there is no discrimination of any kind (sex, believes, age, race...etc.) and then let it will care of itself.
Good examples in the following video features Marissa Mayer (probably the most successful woman in IT: one of first employees of Google, now CEO of Yahoo).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prXCrcV-T3M
Great movie, thanks for posting it! Marisa even has her own YouTube channel :)
DeleteAbout discrimination - I have read some article about this:
Deletehttp://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-165_pl.htm
What do you think about this? I think it is not fair but in the other hand if you look at some strategies applied by companies you can see some strange moves. One of the company started a program that will increase to 30% women in management. I have one question here, if they do it by force there will be some discrimination in the opposite side. I do not want to suggest anything and above all I do not want to be accused of being chauvinist, but doing something by force or by order is not good.
What do you think?
It is not about discrimination, Illuminati or things like that. I'm hopping on the bandwagon of you guys, who say it's all about lack women's interest in tech science. Or lack of awareness, I should say. It is changing, though, as in my short career I've met women occupying positions such as programmers, project managers, testers, administrators, team leaders, directors etc. This trend is coming to our country; nowadays kids are growing up in a world where all the information they desire are within the distance to their pockets. This triggers curiosity - and the wheel starts spinning.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure when a company has a choice of sign either a woman or a man with equal skills - the woman would win. And there's nothing bad about that - women have generally better skillset 'out of the box' when it comes to managing a team, should a promotion come (when the recrutation is for a 'lower' position).
Funny thing is that when I studied chemistry at least 90% of students were women - so the problem with lack of women in science definitely doesn’t concern this part of science:)
ReplyDeleteAs it comes to IT - as Daniel earlier said - this is still a very young field of science. I have a feeling that girls in high school, deciding about their future life, just don’t thing about IT, because they don’t know what it really means to study IT, what are the perspectives and possible occupations after finishing this kind studies - which brings as back to talking about science a lot and equally to all kids in schools.
I even had my small part in it - for about a year or even a year and a half I gave science classes in several Warsaw kindergartens. Five year old learned about physics, chemistry and biology by making all kinds of experiments, talking, inventing and discussing. I hope that maybe some of those kids will become scientists some day!
It's not a problem at all. I think that IT is something considered as field suitable for men by default. If woman decides to start IT studies there is much higher chance that it's well thought decision instead of choice caused lack of other ideas. We can observe corresponding examples in case of men and unpopular faculties for them. For sure, it would be difficult to find any male student of for example fashion design who decided to start studies in that field because "most of his colleagues did that"
ReplyDeleteWhether the issue is a problem ? Low participation rate of women’s in IT, whether in school, higher education, or industry, has been studied in many ways over decades. Many of the studies ask why women avoid IT, or if they enter the field, sooner or later fall away. So I think that for many, yes.
ReplyDeleteOne consistent finding of all studies is that cultural stereotypes of gender skills, abilities are deeply rooted in the academic and corporate cultures. Women as well as men share these stereotypes, sometimes subtly, sometimes offensively, and thereby reinforce them, to the disadvantage of women
Foremost among these stereotypes is the assumption that women are better at human skills of “nurturing, emotional expressiveness and communication activities,” whereas men are better at “instrumental and task-oriented assignments.”
It seems to me that men are more likely to be interested in a tech career in general, so obviously the ranks of tech companies will be filled by more men than women. This is similar to the argument that there are more male sports writers than women. But I don’t deny - men are no worse or better than women at leading companies if both are equally capable.
I think this is a very important topic. By not encouraging girls to peruse technology (or not encouraging them enough) we are keeping many great minds out of the field. Every female programmer I encountered was great at what she did. That's most likely because to enter this male dominated field, woman have to be really sure programming is what they wanted to do in life. Let's think about all the girls, that were not as determined, but would potentially make some great computer scientists.
ReplyDeleteAbout 6 months ago I watched a great short movie about this subject, called "she++" (you can find it under http://vimeo.com/63877454 - I would really encourage you to watch it). That is where I heard a great line that really struck a chord with me, by Eric Roberts from the University of Stanford: "in a west we cut our scientific population in half, because we don't really encourage woman".
The really terrifying think is the number of woman in technology is actually declining. Thankfully there are some great initiative with aim at getting more girls interested in technology. In Poland there is Geek Girls Carrots (http://geekgirlscarrots.pl/) group, doing a splendid job. 10 days ago BBC published an article by Jane Wakefield, discussing other things that can be done. I think it's a really interesting take on things - take a look: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24537621.
In her original post Magda mentioned Grace Hopper - the woman that wrote first computer compiler ever, and is a great inspiration to me, personally. There is a great old video that can be found on Youtube, of Grace Hopper on "Late Night with David Letterman". It's warm, funny and quite sweet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-vcErOPofQ
There were so many responses with which I agree, so I don't like to repeat everything all over. As many of you, I also think that the bad situation of woman in IT industry is because of the stereotypes, but there was a very important thing said in the video (08:09):
ReplyDeleteVery often women start well, but then their enthusiasm unfortunately falls (maybe some bad results, mean teacher and so on). From the very beginning, they can drop IT-related studies and change their training to eventually resign from developer or manager position . This phenomenon is often referred to as "glass ceiling effect". It’s like a psychological barrier that prevents further career development. Women are aware, that for many employers they have to prove themselves twice as hard as men would do, so every failure is very painful for them and it can cause a loss in self-confidence.
Many of my friends are making fun of me and my girlfriend, because I’m studying art and she is about to become and engineer. The complete opposite of the stereotypical career path for woman and man – she is good with integrals and I can name more colour tints then her.