Last year I was a Junior in highschool, which is the first year we have the option to take electives (classes not required by the district). I’ve always been interested in computers and engineering, so I decided to take a class called Intro to Computer Science and Engineering. As I expected, I was the only girl.
What I didn’t expect was the teacher attempting to explain the very basics of the computer to me when I asked a simple question about the programming format and then trying to walk me through each step (even though I already knew how to do all of it, because I’d taught myself extensively up until then) to the point where he was practically taking the mouse from me and doing it himself. Meanwhile he left the other students to their own devices, even though most of them hadn’t a clue what they were doing.
That was only in the first week. The rest of the year consisted of him continually asking me if I needed help/clarification or if I was stuck, and *for group projects* only speaking to and interacting with the boys in my group, even though I was always the one doing all the work. It was the most patronizing and demeaning thing I have ever gone through, and if it wasn’t for how much I love programming and mechanical engineering, I would have just given up on it right away. Even so, I seriously considered just calling it quits on that entire future. That’s how bad it was.
I’m in a few more tech, math, and science classes now that are electives, and it’s just as bad in each one of them. I used to think people were exaggerating when they talked about the difficulties females face in technical fields. They weren’t exaggerating.