Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    
    	In an Engineering class I took in the late 70s, a male student
    	asked what the instructor regarded as a stupid question.  In the
    	course of poking fun at the student, the instructor pointed to
    	a woman student, saying, "Your question is so stupid that I bet
    	even this GIRL can answer it!  Go ahead, sweetheart.  Tell him."
    
    	The woman had a 4.0 (in Engineering) and was President of their
    	Class.
    

    More subtle...but when I was at WPI I asked why there were no
    female Electrical Engineering professors.  I mentioned that I
    thought it would be very beneficial for women to have a role model
    in the EE department.  
    I didn't get a verbal response and was looked at like I had three
    heads.  I could just imagine this guy thinking, "why on earth would
    female students need a role model -  aren't we men good enough?"
    (This individual had the mindset that women were at an engineering 
    school to find a husband.)
    
    

    I worked at the University of Idaho for a doo-doo bird who was chair of
    the Dept. of Veterinary Science.
    
    He had an opening for an Associate Professor, and he ignored all
    letters of application from women and "foreigners."  Finally, when he
    saw he did not have enough applications from "proper" vet sci people to
    choose among, he replied to the women and foreigners, but the man he
    chose was a true-blue redneck vet. sci. professor.
    
    I was his secretary.  When I needed help with a new-to-me task that had
    to do with grants management, a secretary from a sister organization
    who was going to be vacationing close to us offered to come by and
    instruct me.  All she wanted were her travel expenses for that day. 
    When I asked for this, he looked down at his blotter and said
    "secretaries don't travel."
    
    Briana

    Last year I took an American Literature course in which we were to
    read 10 American authors, 8 male and 2 female.  When I asked the
    instructor why the discrepancy, he said, 'it's generally believed that
    there are no female authors during this time period that are up to the
    level of the male authors (Hemingway, Faulkner, etc. bleah!).  The
    two female authors we did read were McCullors (Sp?) and O'Flannery
    and the instructor devoted 1/2 class to each one, rather than a full
    class (week).
    
    The frightening thing is that the instructor told this to us in such
    a matter of fact tone of voice, as if it's common knowledge and true
    that 'there are no female authors of this caliber' that most of the
    class simply accepted it.
    
    The rest of us, however, reported him, and he has been asked to
    explain himself and rework his course.
    
    Maia
    

I told a close friend of mine who my student advisor at MIT would be. She told
me she had him as an ungrad advisor, and had gotten another one. The first,
most telling incident, was this story:

She had not done well in the first test in the first semester of EE (6.002)
that all CS and EE majors must take (she is briallant, but not a good test
taker). The advisor told her that all the girls were having problems in 6.002
(thereby implying it was too be expected).

This was especially dangerous as her conciousness was not sufficiently
heightened to realize what a dopey statement that was. So, of course, she
internalized it.
	Mez

    re: not remembering names. I had a (woman) professor who knew all the
    boys in the class and always mixed up or forgot the girls' names. Now
    I admit the boys were a lot more vocal than us girls, but heck we
    were only four girls in a class of twenty odd. The most ironic part
    was, the course was "Psychology of sex roles"
    
    manisha

    I had an Eng Lit prof who demanded that women wear skirts or dresses
    with stockings to class.  He also wanted us to sit up front.  He
    also stated that women wearing minis would get a good grade.

    I habitually attended wearing my usual jeans and sat anywhere I
    pleased. (Another woman attended wearing rollers in her hair but
    after a few weeks she dropped the course.)
    
    He attempted to flunk me.  (I had a 4.0 avg in all my other courses.) I
    went to the head of the dept.  I had to resubmit all my papers and
    retake the final under supervision. (A prof sat in the room with me the
    entire time to ensure that I did not cheat.  Right. How the heck
    can you cheat on a lit crit exam?)  
    
    The head of the dept explained to me that the prof in question was
    old and that I was graduating and I should not press it.  I got
    a B and left for grad school.  I felt and still feel that they were
    protecting the guy.
    
    This was 1974-1975 academic year.
    
        Margaret   
                                            

    
    It's interesting, there is clearly not only sexism there but, a
    deeply imbeded "this is they way things are" attitude thats more
    encompassing.  Tenure is an example, that dodo(re.7) should be 
    launched for his attitude.  Tenure most likely protects him.
    
    My observations of school were clearly of the conform or die
    (academically) mode, I was a cronic non-comformer.
    	
    A-

    You've been describing your experiences as students. How about at the
    faculty and administrative level? There's been several recent
    incidences within Vermont's colleges.
    
    The most significant is that a new president (first woman president)
    was hired to head a state college. Within 3 weeks of taking over, she
    resigned claiming that the Chancellor forced her to because she was
    threatening the male-dominated balance of the school. He denied it and
    she took him and the school to court. The result? She was reinstated
    and the judge (a woman) found the Chancellor's testimony to be lacking  
    substance. 
    
    PS- There's still a lot of turmiol at the school. Several of the Good
    Old Boys (and some women who supported them) have found employment
    elsewhere....

    I think you mean lynched.  Launched he has already been, due to his
    "special equipment."  Of course, if cross-fertilization of bovines were
    possible, he would be better at it than me.
    
    Briana

    I think Briana's note is in  re .8?
    
    :-)

    When I was in college I minored in English lit, a decision which was
    greatly influenced by my sophomore English professor.  She was a tough
    grader (they called her D- Davis) but loved to teach and was far and
    away the best of the of the half dozen or so English prof's I had --
    including her husband.  You can imagine my disgust when, a couple of
    years after graduation, I ran into her at the State EEO office because 
    she had been denied tenure and essentially pushed off the faculty. 
    There were a lot of "reasons" given but bottom line was they had an
    unofficial policy against having married couples on the faculty and 
    she didn't do what other WOMEN before her had done leave when she got
    married.  By the way, there were NO women with tenure on that faculty.
    
    This was back in about 1973 or so.
      

    A friend of mine was a med student and on the first day of anatomy
    lecture, someone (I think students) had taped crotch shots of women
    all over the blackboard so that when the curtain was raised, there
    they were.  The professor thought it was funny.  (1982)
    
    Another friend of mine is in graduate school getting a PhD in physics.
    There is a professor who makes it known that he doesn't want any
    women in his class.  One woman signed up for it and he verbally
    attacked her saying, "What are you doing here?  Why aren't you
    married?" and ridiculing her for not answering a question properly.
    This same professor was on the elevator with my friend and started
    saying to her,"Oh, I hear you aren't doing very well, why don't
    you drop out." etc. because it took her the max number of tries to
    pass her qualifiers.  Another professor in the same department
    tries to give her gifts of expensive perfume and candy, and tries
    to be alone with her, asks for a kiss, etc..  This man is married,
    and she is afraid to tell him off or report him, because she needs
    his knowledge/help with her thesis.  So she tries never to be alone
    with him.  As if it isn't hard enough to get the degree without
    having to worry about this sh!t.
        	Linda

    Oh yes, I remember it well. 1968, Valparaiso University, freshman
    year. I'm the new french horn player in the orchestra and the orchestra
    conductor, who also taught my woodwinds class, hit on me. When I said
    no he then proceeded to constantly call me out during rehearsal saying
    I was making mistakes. I dropped the woodwinds class because I couldn't
    deal with being with him in a small room. I then dropped out of college
    rather than return the next year.

    I was 18 and this guy was trying to get me to go for weekends in
    Chicago with him. He destroyed my confidence in my music while he got
    even with me for not giving in.

    And that brings up a second hurt. In high school I was denied being in
    the pep band and the jazz band because I was a girl. That was valuable
    experience that I regret missing to this day. I was first horn but they
    excluded me and let the boys below me in. liesl

    liesl, you've just reawakened one of my supressed memories:  I was
    taking an MBA course in (get this) Business ETHICS, and the professor
    started hitting on me.  At first it was subtle and easily handled, but
    the more I resisted, the more open he became.  Finally I let him know
    that no way would I be interested in what he was peddling -- just before
    the final exam.  During the last class before the final exam, he informed 
    me that everyone else in the class would be taking a written exam; I was
    required to turn in a special research paper instead.  I did it (and
    didn't necessarily consider it a hardship since research and writing
    were my forte anyway), but I did resent the "special treatment."
    
    Karen
    
    PS I often wondered if the topic of the research paper was something he
    needed to gather information about for one of his projects, and he was
    using my work as his own.  Glad I didn't stick around to find out.

    Re: .15
    
    > ...to be alone with her, asks for a kiss, etc..  This man is married,
    > and she is afraid to tell him off or report him, because she needs
    > his knowledge/help with her thesis.  So she tries never to be alone
    > with him.  As if it isn't hard enough to get the degree without
    > having to worry about this sh!t.
    
    Hmmm.  This really brings back a jolt from my past.  My Masters thesis
    advisor kept hitting on me when I was in grad school (he was married
    and had 2 small children).  I had decided for that and other personal 
    reasons to persue a Ph.D. at another school and asked him for a 
    recommendation.  Shortly after that he again tried to get me to go out 
    with him.  When I refused, he said he felt he couldn't give me a good
    recommendation, so I told him not to bother.  I also was the only
    person to get a B in his course that semester - everyone else got an A
    and I had received A's in his other courses, but I really couldn't
    prove that he did it on purpose.
    
    This was in 1971 and to demonstrate the attitude of some men back then,
    I had poured out my grief on the above to a male grad student who was a
    good friend. He (in all seriousness) said that's what female grad
    students were for, and when he became a professor, he expected to hit
    on the female grad students, too.  I almost decked him.
    
    						Jan

    
    re -1  I think it's a good suggestion.  I hope you don't really think
    you're going to get in trouble for offering a positive suggestion.
    I'm surprised by how many women (even in this fairly small community)
    have experienced such blatant harrassment.
    
    Scary,
    
    Justine

    I worked my rear off to win a scholarship to the College of Music
    at Colorado University and finally succeeded.  During the summer
    before I entered college, my fiance and I decided to get married.
     When I went in that fall to find out about classes (1965), the
    counselor told me that if I got married, I couldn't have the
    scholarship because I would get pregnant and drop out of school.
     When I asked if it would matter if I had been a man, he said "No,
    because men don't get pregnant!"  To this day, that ticks me off!
    
    Barb  (who finally started college at 36)

    My favorite reply to this type of thing (it has happened over the few
    years on one form or another) is to look at the person square in the
    face and say
    
    
    "Sure, let's go out tomorrow night.  Just one thing, tho, I *will* be
    calling your house tonight to  discuss this with your family, as I want to 
    make sure your wife can get to know me, too."  
    
    Said with a deadly serious face and voice.  
    
    Has worked wonders for me.  

It seems like mot of these examples are from people who were in school in
the 60's and 70's...is this because most people in =wn= went to school then,
or because sexism in academia is less prevalent?

While I am sure it still exists, it does seem to be a lot less prevalent
now.  The bits about a professor not calling on women or demanding they
wear skirts...that just simply would *not* be tolerated these days.

On reading this topic I looked back on my four years in college, and
examining it with what I think is a fairly perceptive, sensitized eye,
I couldn't not remember *one* *single* incident of sexual harassment,
discrimination or anything else.  The professors I have had have been
nothing but purely professional.  Even TA's have never given me a problem.
I have never even heard a grossly sexist remark from an instructor in
class.  (Minor ones, yes, but I am so used to that that it doesn't
affect me or my mood at all...and it seems to come equally from instructors
of both sexes.)  Most everyone treated me very courteously and fairly
(at least with regards to my sex.)

Was I unusually lucky?  Was RPI particularly free of sexism?  Was I so
unattractive that none of my instructors *wanted* to hit on me?  ;-)
Have professors become so wary of charges of sexual harassment that they
are super careful?  Or (*gasp*) has it actually changed?

D!

    There is a report called "Barriers to Equality in Academia:  Women in
    Computer Science at MIT" which wqas prepared by female graduate
    students and research staff in the Comp Sci Lab and AI Lab at MIT,
    writen in 1983, which talks a lot about this.  I think Mez may
    have/had some copies.....
    
    It's 50 pages, and enlightening to read!
    
    -Jody
    

    re.23
    
    I just graduated in May from a small liberal arts college in PA.
    And never once did a prof make any type of a sexist remark to me.
    However, there were two profs (male) that had some peculiar habits.
    
    One prof had a coffee mug with a picture of a naked woman masturbating
    on it.  He would bring the cup to class every day and turn it so
    that it faced us.  If one didn't look too closely, it looked like
    sand dunes.  I wonder how many women this intimidated?  He was the
    head of the English department.
    
    The other prof was also an English prof.  He was the kind of male
    prof that could easily be lead around my tight skirts and flirting.
    If you played the game, you got good grades.  Not that he gave everyone
    else bad grades (I refused to sink to that level and got a B, my
    standard grade), but if you flirted enough, you didn't need to work
    as hard.  It was really quite nauseating, but nothing that you could
    really report.  Especially since the Head of the Department was
    such a jerk.
    
    Other than these two profs, I witnessed no *overt* sexism, although
    I did notice that the majority of women on campus were not tenured.
    
    karenkay

I can provide copies. I certainly hope it has changed, but I doubt it's changed
as much as I seem to think you think it has :-). I have actually been privy to
some conversations between female academics lately. There's a particularly bad
case at UPenn; last I heard the woman was being forced out of grad school there
for neither accepting the advances nor removing her presence from the rejected
advisor (ie - leaving her area of specialty).
	Mez

    In my last reply I made quite the typo-  The sentence that said
    "he could be easily lead around my tight skirts" should have said
    "BY tight skirts." 
    
    haha!!  what a typo!!
    
    kkay

    The incidences reported in this topic have shocked me more than
    anything else that's been written in womannotes, I think!  Really! 
    I've almost always known about domestic violence and child abuse but I
    had no idea things were this bad in the world of academia.
    
    Something else I missed by not going to college....
    
    Lorna
    

    D! I'm a few years ahead of you. I had a great deal of difficulty with
    a TA/Instructor who was known for hitting on freshmen. He was married.
    I'd rather not go into details except to say that its one of the
    ugliest experiences I dealt with in life. He was a smooth character...
    
    I had a dean whom I love dearly try to talk me out of getting my
    engineering degree. I had written an editorial column for the Poly, and
    he felt I'd be "happier" in technical writing. Well, I tried. I got a
    C. So much for that theory.
    
    I think the fact that you couldn't get a Biomed Engineering degree
    without doing heart massage on a live animal and then killing it was
    designed to block out the squeamish... a lot of women switched majors
    because they couldn't bring themselves to do it. I don't know how many
    men did.
    
    I think at RPI, the profs had grown accustomed to seeing nerdly women
    and accepted them... if they could prove themselves worthy. I think the
    more attractive ones tended to have to prove their intelligence more to
    get the same amount of credibility as us "plain Janes". But then, our
    class valedictorian (1985) was a woman in Aeronautical Engineering with
    a 4.0. Her dad was an engineer. I hear she had NO life outside of her
    studies...
    
    At the same time though, I can't think of a SINGLE tenured female in
    the engineering department. I think I heard that there were two
    floating around somewhere. I know there was one in the math department,
    and there may have been some in the sciences. The one woman in
    materials engineering left before she got tenure. That points out a
    problem...
    
    I think the other telling factor might be to weigh the number of women
    who switched into Communications and Psychology vs. the number of men.
    I think the women were encouraged to admit that they couldn't hack it.
    The men were encouraged to stick it out.  I mean REALLY: what business
    does anyone have spending $16000 a year to get a communications degree
    or a psychology degree from RPI?

>    I think the other telling factor might be to weigh the number of women
>    who switched into Communications and Psychology vs. the number of men.
>    I think the women were encouraged to admit that they couldn't hack it.
>    The men were encouraged to stick it out.  I mean REALLY: what business
>    does anyone have spending $16000 a year to get a communications degree
>    or a psychology degree from RPI?

Hmmm...I don't know about that.  In my (non statistically significant) the
same percentage of people dropped out of engineering into something else.
(No offense against non-engineering majors - but at RPI, you were either
in engineering/science, or in something inferior, because RPI's non-eng/sci
departments *were* inferior.)

Anyway, there was a *hell* of a lot of sexism at RPI that strongly affected
me and all my female classmates with whom I discussed this.  But it was
among *students*, not propagated by the powers that be.  I don't know which
is worse but it some ways it seems like it would be easier to recover
after an incident, saying "Well, he's an older type, stuck in his ways,
isn't used to this new stuff, etc."  But when it is your peers, and it's
constant, it sticks.

I heard more than one male peer say things about women being poor 
students, poor engineers, etc, and I can't even *count* the number of times
I heard people say "She just got in because she is a woman."  That
really burned me!  RPI men were often intimidated by the women, and
would say things like "I would never date an RPI woman [never mind that
he *couldn't*, there were so few] - they are so {stuck up|feminist|ugly|
your pick}."

Come to think of it, I do remember *one* sexist professor.  However it
was a case of so-called "reverse sexism."  She tended to be harder on the
guys in class - asking them harder questions, being more critical of
their oral presentations, etc.  Or so many of the men in class told me.
I don't know, she loved me and worked closely with me and was one of my
favorite professors, but it wouldn't have surprised me if she left a 
soft-spot for women.

D!

    re. is it any better now?   My second paragraph in .15 refers to
    things that are ongoing now.  I have tried to encourage this friend
    to report him, or threaten to tell his wife, but she feels that
    she will be the loser because he won't share his expertise/knowledge
    with her.
   	
    I just remembered one of my own.  I went to Bryn Mawr College and
    for a semester considered majoring at Haverford (men's college at
    the time).  It was interesting being in a male environment, guys
    wrestling in the hallways, etc..  Anyway we come into chem lab one
    day and someone had written on the blackboard:
    	Women are like translations:
    	When the are faithful they are never beautiful,
    	And when they are beautiful the are not faithful.
    Gag, so that is what some people get out of a liberal arts education.
    I really felt put on the spot since I was the only woman in the
    room.
    	Linda

    Linda,
    
    I found your memory of Haverford especially upsetting, as it is - or
    was, anyway - a Quaker school.  This really disturbs me (FWIW).
    
    E Grace

    Ray, 
      I was BMC '81, so we must have been there at the same time.
    	Linda

    re: .33
    
    When I said I was upset and disturbed, I meant saddened.  Very
    saddened.  If you read note 305, I think you will understand my
    distress at this news.
    
    E Grace

    sdt
    
    this is something that happend to me, that I didn't want to bring
    up because it was *old* history..
    
    but you and I were in college at the same time you up in Maine 
    and me at Mt Holyoke...(remember the first computer dating 
    questionaires?)
    
    anyway, in my Junior year, I went down to Cambridge with two
    friends and our entre' to the social world was a freind of one
    of the other two who was at MII
    
    I still remember this graduate student deliberately grading the
    lab report of a woman lower than her male partner because
    'to be a woman at MIT you have to be better than the men'
    
    that began my radicalization..
    
    Bonnie

	I have to agree with D!'s reply a while back regarding things
	being better now.  I think she and I graduated at about the
	same time: May 1988.  I graduated from UConn with a Computer
	Science Engineering degree.  I've been wracking my brain trying
	to come up with some blatent sexist incidents, but I just can't 
	think of any.  My professors were very fair, I think I was called 
	on regularly, they knew my name, and two of them hired me to do 
	research. 

	However, there was *one* incident that I remember ticked me off.
	The sad part was that it was caused by a *female* TA.  I was
	taking an electrical engineering class (required: believe me, I
	would NEVER volunteer for such pain), and barely getting through.
	I went to my TA's office hours to ask for help on a problem.  
	There was one other guy there.  Apparently, he was near flunking
	and completely clueless.  Well, I sat on one side of my TA, this
	guy sat on the other side, and I asked her if she could please go
	over Problem X.

	Well, she turned to the page, read the problem, then proceeded to
	TURN HER BACK ON ME and explain it to the guy!!  I was so pissed!
	I couldn't believe it!  It was like I wasn't even in the room.

	Sue

    Sue, I am not sure that that was sexist, it might be might not,
    sometimes a teacher just gets used to teaching to the
    clueless!  :-)  

    I went to RPI one year before D!, I did see some sexism there
    that was not through other students.  A friend's TA circled 
    random letters in a paper that she wrote.  When these letters
    were put together they formed a threatening sexual message.  Also,
    I had 2 (that I remember) profs who treated the men and women 
    different.  The first time that I remember noticing it was during
    a role call.  "Smith, Jones, Brown, Miss Pinck, Byrnes..."  After
    I noticed that I started looking for more sexism in class... it 
    was all around.  

    I think many people can get through four years at school without
    hitting any (many) sexist people,  but that does not mean that
    it is not there.  This is also true for other kinds of 
    bigots... race, religion...

    Amy

.0 NANCYB 

> ... discussing sexism ... to the very subtle.

It can be subtle!  Even hidden.

I was a committee member on an English department scholarship
committee and saw the academic records of the top 40 students.
Across the board, Dr. Gardner gave the men A's and the women B's.  
It was grotesque.

I called it to the attention of the professors on the committee.
Their replies were verbose but incoherent. And no, I didn't 
raise holy hell about it. Didn't evey point it out to the
professor. Why? I dunno.  

Then there was the poetry professor I had twelve years ago.
He *loved* to read poetry in a highly dramatic fashion.
I still cringe remembering the night he read a poem, finished, paused
and looked at us meaningfully, and pronounced "THIS is a
MASCULINE poem."  My entire body was full of sarcastic remarks ...
but I needed a good grade from this a**hole. 

ps In case you wish to carp ... "masculine" was his synonym 
for "great." Yeah, Great A**H***.

    Interesting that discussion of Bryn Mawr and Haverford should come
    up here, because the one event I've been meaning to enter here
    happened to me at Haverford (in 1984, after the advent of coeducation.)

    Although a Bryn Mawr student, I was planning to major in Haverford's
    math department because they offered a computer science concentration.
    I was talking to the head of the math department (whom I'd never met
    before), and we were trying to put together a program of study.  I had
    listed all the courses for the computer science track on the form, plus
    other requirements and a couple of electives.  It was a very plain-vanilla
    sort of program, straight from the catalog, nothing out of the ordinary.

    His reaction stunned me.  (and the gist of this next part is faithful,
    though I can't remember the exact wording).  "This isn't realistic," he 
    said.  "The hackers' world is a male one, and there's no place for women
    in it.  If you want to take computer science courses as a sideline, fine,
    but you shouldn't be basing your major on it.  You should add some more
    theoretical courses - Topology, Number Theory.  Combinatorics and
    Numerical Analysis are really not appropriate".  And, with this (to which
    I was preparing to respond with an attack worthy of Attila the Hun :-) ),
    he crossed out all the courses for the computer science concentration,
    and wrote in theoretical Math courses that interested me far less.

    The next semester, I ran into a Math professor there who *would not
    call on, listen to, or answer questions asked by* the women in the 
    class (there were 2 or 3 of us, out of maybe 15 students).  Rather than
    face another semester with this turkey, I switched my major to Bryn Mawr's
    math department.

    Revenge is sweet, though.  I'm now working as a software engineer 
    despite the best efforts of professor #1, and when professor #2 applied 
    for a job in the Bryn Mawr math department and the search committee asked 
    me for a recommendation.  Needless to say, I told them the truth.

    D!, I think you were "just lucky" not to have encountered this sort of
    stuff.  It may occur less, or less overtly, but I'm convinced it still
    happens.

	Sharon (BMC '86)

    I seem to have also been just lucky, or perhaps blind, in three
    different schools in three different states from 1971 to 1979.
    There were subtle incidents but nothing blatant or beyond the
    ordinary.  In fact, on the whole I found less sexism inside the
    university environment than outside it. 
    
    I heard second-hand stories from other women at all three schools,
    but I had no first-hand experience of it.  My advisor at my second
    undergraduate school had quite a reputation, and hit on at least
    two friends of mine (both married with small kids), but he never
    said one word that was even remotely out of line to me.  
    
    I dunno.  I guess some of us carry an aura of innocence around
    like a sheild.
    
    --bonnie

    	'S funny...I don't recall anything overtly sexist while going
    through undergrad.  Maybe I just wasn't paying attention, who
    knows.  But, boy, did I notice things last night!

    	First night of my grad finance class...professor is doing all
    his normal intro type stuff.  Going over schedules, and makes a
    comment about how he knows women don't do as well on exams when
    they have their period, but the schedule is set....someone 
    (female) asks him to talk about his background and experience and
    he holds up his left hand and says "Sorry, I'm taken"...comments
    on how we don't have to carry our book to class - especially for
    the women who only carry small purses....describes his likes -
    like various sports, making love - especially during the day...says 
    he doesn't mind getting asked out...talked about "chasing the pretty
    girls" when he was in school....

    	EGADS - WHO CARES???!!  He did mention however, that he is
    Korean, and in Korea, it's certainly the men first (father, first
    born, then comes the mother in the "pecking rank", so to speak).
    I was glad when he actually started in on the lecture, so I didn't
    have to listen to the garbage anymore.

    	Gonna be an interesting semester....

    	amy

    	RE: .45  Eagles

    	You may not realize this, but there are a heck of a lot of classes
    	within Digital (Ed. Svcs) that have only one woman (or no women) in
    	some (most?) sessions.

    	The majority of the hardware classes (*all* the Support level ones)
    	that I've had in Digital had no other women in the class but me.  
    	All the rest (I can't think of any exception to this) had only one 
    	other woman besides me.

    	What was the environment like?  As opposed to what?  Never having
    	had a hardware class in DEC that wasn't like this, I have nothing to
    	compare with this scenario.

I have been in one situation where I was in a class with 20 boys and me.
At first I found it very unnerving...in fact, the first time I tried to take
the class, I dropped out.  The second time I stuck with it, and it worked out
fine.  The instructor was a jerk in lots of ways, but as far as treating his
students he was *unfailingly* professional.  He always addressed the
students as Mr. So-and-so, except for me who he addressed as Ms. Carroll,
until he was comfortable with everyone in the class and started using
first names.  His interactions were strictly fair and unbiased.
(His tests sucked, his requirements were unreasonable and he was totally
without pity or mercy, but that's different.)

I did however feel a little uncomfortable with the fact I was the only
woman during lab time (the course was a lab course in Intro. Electronics.)
because it felt like I had a harder time finding lab partners because I
made the guys uncomfortable.  Eventually I was accepted as "one of the
boys" and for the last 4 months never even noticed that I was the only
female in the room.

D!

    	The first time I had a college class with no other women, it did
    	seem a bit strange, but all my classes that term were that way,
    	so I got used to it fast.

    	It's never bothered me at all that my Digital hardware classes
    	have no other women (or one other woman) in them.  It's just the
    	way it is, and I'm not aware of any different treatment.  It's
    	never difficult to find lab partners, either.

    	One thing, though, is that people in the class tend to know my
    	name sooner than I know theirs (one female name stands out, I
    	guess.)

    	One funny incident happened in a class I took on disk drives some
    	years back.  I sat down next to a man on the first day of class
    	and he seemed a bit startled.  Later, it turned out that he was
    	from a rural area in another country (nearby :)) and that he'd
    	never seen a woman hardware engineer before (and it was his first
    	trip to the states for training.)

    	He told me that when he arrived at the training facility and saw
    	women students, he thought to himself, "Oh, they must teach
    	secretarial classes here, too."  When I sat down next to him in
    	class, it was essentially a culture shock for him.

    	We ended up being pretty good friends - I just thought it was sort
    	of funny to watch him go through this new experience.

    
    	By the way, my current *college* classes in Computer Science (for 
    	the BS in CS major) have a very nice mix of male/female.  It's a 
    	male majority, but not by a very noticeable margin.
    
    	My all-male-but-me college classes were EE (in the late 1970's.)
    

    I spent every other week for three years in high school in an all-male
    shop, and then went on to college where the ratio was 7:1 - plenty of
    room for femal-few classes there too....
    
    In fact I'm probably  more used to male-majority academia than 50/50...
    
    -Jody
    

    One of my *history* classes in college was all male, with a male
    instructor.  (US Military history at Purdue - required for all ROTC
    cadets, but a fabulously interesting course.)  The guys did some
    serious double-takes during the first session.  Then about half of them
    realized they already knew me, my fiance was also in the class, the
    instructor was extremely gender-blind, and the whole thing worked out
    well.  I really never felt any discomfort, in fact it was one of the
    least stressful classes I took there.
    
    Alison

    If I encountered sexism at M.S.U., I didn't notice it.  (But perhaps
    that was involved with one of my computer science teachers, Mrs.
    Trout, practically begging me to go into computers.)  There was
    something I noticed, though.
    
    When I took the first lab course (Think of it as Crime Lab 101.)
    needed especially for my major, we were divided into groups.  There
    were four or five groups of white men, and there was my group.  We
    were: two women, two foreign `men of color' (an Ethiopian and an
    Arab), and one (Caucasian) American man.  I'm sure we all noticed
    this, but none of us said anything, then or ever.
    
    We also had a great time.  I was our leader, since I had the best
    intersection of knowledge and communication skills.  (I was the
    only one majoring in Criminalistics.)  The other woman was taking
    the course as a break from Home Ec. ("!" you say.)  It turns out
    that the Home Ec courses were some of the most demanding on campus,
    with enormous amounts of study, and a lot of papers to write.  (Why
    *this* class?  I don't know.  Perhaps it was because this lab was
    physically closest to her dorm, and fit into her schedule best.
    Olds Hall (where my mother-in-law-to-be had studied chemistry) had
    the only lab on North Campus.)  The Ethiopian was an Air Force
    colonel, and I have always hoped that he was a Communist, or in
    some other way survived the later coup in his country.  He taught
    me how to hold an automatic pistol, and his is the only name I
    remember: M'sheshe Ketema.  The Arab told us nothing about himself,
    but we used his forefinger as the subject of the moulage cast because
    it was crisscrossed with deep scars and would therefore provide an
    interesting wax mold.  (It did.)  The `regular guy' was just that,
    pleasant, friendly, intelligent, perfectly happy to stand out in
    the rain with the rest of us, taking photographs and plaster casts.
    
    							Ann B.