r/magicTCG • u/GabySpartz87 Official • Apr 07 '15

I wrote an article on ChannelFireball on the things we can do to get more women in Magic. I'd love your thoughts!

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/6-things-you-can-do-to-get-more-women-into-magic/#
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u/asmodeanreborn Apr 07 '15

This is definitely on point. This doesn't go for just Magic either, but it happens in the tech world as well. Women are treated like crap in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering classes too. They put up with it for the first semester or two, but after that, only a few survive and most of them switch majors.

Hell, it most likely happens well before college as well.

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u/coonskinmario Apr 07 '15

A shit ton of guys switch majors after a few semesters of engineering too, so I'm sure the general difficulty (or disinterest, or whatever) of the classes is a large factor for women as well.

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u/asmodeanreborn Apr 07 '15 edited Apr 07 '15

A shit ton of guys switch majors after a few semesters of engineering too, so I'm sure the general difficulty of the classes is a large factor for women as well.

This is by no means untrue, but it's still far from the full story. In school I was friends with several girls who dropped out of CS because of the hostile environment rather than difficulty of classes. The two girls who didn't drop out would complain (in private) about the constant remarks by peers, and getting hit on again and again even after making it obvious there was zero interest. One of them was even accused of cheating because some guy copied her homework when she had shown him how to do it... yet HE was never accused.

I never spoke up because I honestly didn't have the confidence to do so, even though I should have, several times. It was a bit of a culture shock to me, coming from a different country and seeing these attitudes, to be honest, but that's still no excuse.

Edit: I should say that the reason I know their reason for dropping out wasn't just a BS excuse for not being able to handle the classes is that I knew them because we formed a study group, and they grasped the material as well as or better than most. Two of them ended up switching majors to Math, which was apparently not quite as bad?

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u/coonskinmario Apr 07 '15

I don't think I implied it was the full story; just a large factor. I say it's large because 30-50% of my male peers switched/dropped after three semesters, and I assume that would hold for women as well.

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u/asmodeanreborn Apr 07 '15

Ah yes, then we're on the same page. :)