12 Comments
DSpar wants you – to live in a non-sexist society!
Bwog’s favorite strong, bold, and beautiful president (sorry Prezbo) published an opinion piece in the Washington Post on Thursday regarding the experience of women in higher education and in its effects on their experience in the work place–specifically the lingering pay-gap between them and their male counterparts. President Spar reminds us that, even though it might be easy to imagine the university as a beautiful world of gender equality, this is generally 1) not the case once we pull back the curtain of safe spaces, PGPs, and co-educational mystique and 2) certainly not how things are beyond our big iron gates.
Out there the reality is pay gaps and glass ceilings, which Spar argues take root in the the approach to education of our very own elite institutions of higher education. DSpar credits The Athena Center (obvs) and the program Mentor it Forward as being steps in the right direction, but when things like this are lying just beneath the surface you’ve got to wonder whether or not it’s enough. Her take on it?
We don’t need to become trade schools, or demand that every undergraduate take courses in accounting or marketing. But we should offer our students more exposure to the real skills they will eventually need. We should make practical courses in areas such as finance or negotiation more widely available, even if not for academic credit. And we should be urging more young women who continue to shy away from math, engineering and computer science to go into these high-growth, high-paying fields of study.
Read the article for yourself, put it in the context of her other recent writings, and sound off in the comments below.
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12 Comments
@Anonymous Another clueless hack. Well done Spar.
@BC'16 If I wanted to major in math, engineering, or computer science I wouldn’t have gone to a small liberal arts college.
@BC'16 If I wanted to major in math, engineering, or computer science I wouldn’t have gone to a small liberal arts college.
@Anonymous If I were a Barnard student or professor in the humanities or social sciences, I’d be pretty offended by its president’s not-so-subtle dig at my subject.
@Dude from the real world Personally, not a fan of working with go getter style feminists. I don’t watch Rachael Maddow for a reason, she’s the most annoying thing on the planet. I prefer working with leggy blondes, which is why Hugh Hefner is the man.
Get real people, a job is just a job. A bunch of people sitting around surfing the internet till payday. If you don’t like what it pays find a different job.
@Anonymous Ugh at that “don’t let this turn into ‘a slew of sexist and sexually degrading comments in an online forum'” tag… nice reverse psychology shit stirring there bwog, keeping it classy as ever
@speculation Hoodie Allen performing in NYC the night of bacchanal … could it be, he’s our show?
@Anonymous Misread her name as “Despair,” think it’s more fitting.
@its a catch 22! If humanities aren’t “practical” (which I guess in mainstream opinion, they aren’t), why offer so many humanity majors? It’s hypocritical to judge people as “shy” by not going into math-related fields when Barnard is a liberal-arts school. It may be possible that people aren’t majoring in those fields because they aren’t forced to, like students in developing countries, in order to earn society’s respect.
@Dick Tracy Why do so many attention-seeking girls dye their hair blonde? It doesn’t make them any hotter and often, the juxtaposition of their blonde hair and brown eyebrows / roots results in some freaky, cartoon-esque blend. Even if it did make you hotter, that doesn’t mean your chances of us fucking you are any higher. Or dating you for that matter. But at least it gives us men the rare opportunity to judge the inside of someone based on their outside: fake.
@Anonymous lol “dying” of laughter hehe
@well great now i feel super guilty for majoring in art history. THANKS, OBAMA.