So we punish children for the sins of their father?
So we remind of the overhang into today's societies. There are in fact men who think women are less capable, less worthy, less deserving of the equality that is theirs under rule of law. Without attention to the inequity, it is perpetuated even if by inadvertence, by tradition (or... by intention). We don't have to know the motivation but we do need to interrupt the systemic aspects of inequality of opportunity.
There is nothing stopping someone from starting a tutoring program that's not gender specific, of course! The more, the merrier. It's like Mac user groups are open to all comers, or were when I hung out in them. It's quite true there were more "boys" than "girls" at that time.... and that sometimes you could feel invisible as a girl there.
It sometimes made me think we needed a promotion to "bring a girl to the meeting, get a free floppy disk" lol. We who were "girls" at those meetings all did have female friends who were fellow mac users on the job or at home but weren't necessarily Mac-user group members. I guess enough of us just didn't usually think to say "hey why don't you come along next time, it would be fun."
Today from looking at younger kin and their friends I think young women are often more mindful of how we can need a little nudge to end up in clubs or jobs where it's fine for us to go. I hope so.
I do get it that girls' families are not always as encouraging of their daughters as of their sons to go into STEM related fields, even today. It was much more common when I was a kid. So I appreciate the efforts of today's tech companies to offset that and to encourage and try to attract more women to the field. By the way, those efforts do not seem to be deterring males from entering and indeed continuing to dominate career paths in some technical areas.
At any rate, just because you may have a daughter in STEM does not mean all daughters have been encouraged as yours was, or have opportunities that your daughter may have been able to avail herself of. Looking back in time: just because there were exactly two token blacks in my class at college most certainly did not mean there was equal opportunity for blacks to obtain higher education when I was in school in the early 60s. Hardly!
Similarly even now with minorities and women. "We've come a long way baby" was a nice slogan for cigarette ads at the time. Ironic that it was an ad for stuff that was harmful no matter one's gender. Gee, women were finally free to sign up for lung cancer!
And we haven't come as far as we might yet on equal opportunity for everyone under our rule of law -- or we wouldn't have had to keep spelling out more and more detail on what "everyone" means in assorted situations at school and on the job.
Bottom line I happen to regard the complaints in this thread over this tutorial program as a bit over the top. Just my opinion. I admit I bring the coloring of an older generation that was more aware of outright discrimination against women in tech because they were "women! in this job?!" and "in over their heads" or "trying to make a point" or "trying to make a buck when a guy could be feeding his family on it." Wow... yeah. Heard all that. It used to be pretty loud. On the other hand it's still pretty clear that not all of that sentiment has gone away.
