Yes, really. This latest Verizon ad cites the statistic that 66% of female fourth-graders say they like math and science, but only 18% of all college engineering majors are women… then goes on to blame the discrepancy on parents telling their daughters they’re pretty.
Um, okay.
Nice try, Verizon, but this ad almost sounds like a parody of pseudo-intellectual feminist BSing: “Isn’t it like, sooo horrible how women are like, encouraged to wear lipstick and stuff?” I’ve heard deeper thoughts from 18-year-old college freshmen trying to impress their liberal professors.
In all seriousness, did you ever notice how no one is concerned about areas where women outnumber and outperform men? Entire books have been written on the troubling trend of boys falling far behind girls at all levels of education — leading NPR, of all sources, to describe boys as “at the back of the class.” Boys are more likely to be enrolled in special ed classes. They get worse grades and are less likely to graduate. They take fewer college prep and Advanced Placement classes, and today, more than 60 percent of bachelor’s degrees are awarded to women.
Admittedly, fewer women choose math or science majors. What explains the discrepancy? A combination of socialization and biology is likely at play. For reasons rooted in both, women usually prefer to work with people, not things. That’s probably a gender difference that’s not going away any time soon. But as long as women have equal opportunity in education — which they have since the 1970s — why does it matter? If there are a handful of fields with more men than women, I can live with that, considering all the other fields where women are dominating.
Oh well. At least Verizon didn’t go whole hog with the feminist cliches and try to blame the lack of feminist engineers on the fact that little girls play with Barbies.