,
11 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
Growing up in Egypt, the idea that women can't be engineers or scientists did not exist. This may be due to the fact that "nerd" or "geek"
Is not in the Arabic vocabulary. It was common to see a 50/50 ration in CS courses, and the top performers in universities were often female
But sexism kicked in with marriage, when women were expected to be a "house wife". It was never about the intelligence of the woman.
The idea of STEM being only for men was only introduced to me when I moved back to the US. And I'm not alone: hcixb.org/papers_2017/hc…
Another wonderful article showing that the STEM gender disparity does not necessarily exist in India cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015…
This is why it is agitating to no end to be told it may be biological, with anyone who is not western completely seeing it is cultural.
This is why we also need multicultural feminism, as you only need go across cultures to understand that the STEM gap is not biological.
If you want to know more about gender versus biology, and see that most of our gender constructs are taught everydayfeminism.com/2015/08/scienc…
I was 12 when I moved to the US, and took an advanced science course in Middle school. My teacher spoke to my parents and told them
I should drop the course as I'm not smart enough. My dad, a stereotypical Egyptian with strong patriarchal beliefs told her it was nonsense.
He kept me in the course not telling me about this till years later. And here I am, weeks away from submitting my dissertation in CS.
