Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!peregrine!elroy!ames!pasteur!agate!gds@spam.istc.sri.com
From: gds@spam.istc.sri.com (Greg Skinner)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: Countering discrimination your children will face
Message-ID: <12792@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 30 Jul 88 16:58:26 GMT
References: <12003@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <12502@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <12654@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: SRI International, Menlo Park CA
Lines: 23
Approved: skyler@violet.berkeley.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts)
Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu
Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu

In article <12780@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Caroline Lambert writes:
>I disagree. What if you had a girl who did well in math and science,
>but did exceptionally well in, say, languages? Wouldn't it be better for
>her to become a scientist/engineer with an interest in languages than
>a linguist who knows Stokes' theorem?

It would be best if you let *her* decide what she wanted to do, then
encourage that.

>Besides, how do you know that her
>performance in math/science isn't affected by the very fact that she
>is a girl? - how can you tell if that is a natural tendency or not?

Could say the same thing for her performance in languages.

I'm not a parent, but I believe parents' responsibility is to make
choices available to their children, rather than making the choices
for them.  The girl might become a great scientist, or great linguist,
or perhaps *both* (a natural language AI researcher perhaps),
depending on the amount of encouragement she gets to pursue all
avenues.

--gregbo