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Essay / « The untranslatable word macho” by Rose Guilbault
Girls are considered attentive, considerate, calm and helpful. They put the needs of others before their own. Girls progress through hard work, not through their natural gifts. Boys are considered lazy, but girls are considered incapable. In class, the teacher will appeal more to boys than to girls. Boys are considered better at math and science; while girls are better at reading and art. This prejudice is still at work even outside the classroom. There are more men than women employed in IT companies. The ratio of men to women in STEM fields is 3-1. In college, more women major in the humanities than in the sciences. In the field of education, women are often considered inferior; even though 65% of all college degrees are earned by women. Women are still often seen as needing to be more decorative than intellectual, as demonstrated by the Barbie who included the phrase "Math is hard!" and the shirt sold by JC Penneys that said, "I'm too pretty to do my homework, so my brother has to do it for me." » Although there was backlash on both points, he emphasizes that there is a lot of work to be done on gender bias in education.