- Assistive Technology Public by Mike Mann, MS, PT, ATP
- Speech Language Pathology Sharing by Eric Sailers, M.A., CCC-SLP
That being said I can't help but notice that in the AT/Disability/Special Education Blog world men seriously out number women, in spite of these corners of the helping professions being dominated by women. I am happy to give a hand out to anyone who wants to start a blog in the field, but I especially would like to see more women bloggers.
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Thanks so much for the support! You're comment about men is too funny! I actually like the fact that guys are dominating a field in education. I can't tell you how many times I've been the token male in speech-language pathology.
ReplyDeleteI am in the AT program at Simmons College. I am the only man and there are twenty something women. I was floored to be the only guy and think it is hilarious that you hope that more girls get involved in the blogs!
ReplyDeleteI can understand how it must feel to be one of the few men in a setting, I imagine it is not always easy. Although my brother did major in special education because he liked the dating odds. He did turn out to be one of the best autism teachers around though.
ReplyDeleteHowever think for a minute about the social implications of a field that is 90% or more women only have 3/30 or so bloggers being women. What does that say? It says the same thing that mostly male administrators in schools say - that women are ok to teach the children (women's work) but not ok to engage intellectually in writing about teaching (or to act in a leadership capacity and lead schools).
I am not knocking men here. I wish that internalized sexism and systematic enforcement of gender roles didn't keep men out of teaching. I honor the men who are willing to breach social roles and some of the stigma of working in a "women's field", my brother and the only male in the program I work for (who is an inspiring teacher) among them. I also wish that internalized sexism and systematic enforcement of gender roles didn't keep women out of blogging.
And Matt, I went to Simmons for undergrad and grad school, you could not have expected that an undergrad women's college would have a better male:female ratio at the grad level? When I was in grad school there were two men in my seminar of 16 students. Other AT programs (CSUN, George Mason) have much better ratios because the colleges are coed at the undergrad level. On top of that in your comment you refer to a man (yourself) as a guy and the women I am hoping will blog as "girls". What does that say? I am positive you didn't mean anything by it, but it does show that on some level women who are engaged in serious study about AT are just "girls" to you, children who are not intellectual equals of men.
I am sorry if I offended you. I have a great deal of respect for the women in my AT program. I have learned a lot from them and I hope that more women do start writing blogs. I thought it was funny because of my perspective of the female-dominated AT world. My perspective is only the AT program that I am currently enrolled in. I did expect there to be more women than men in the program I was just surprised to see that I was the only guy.
ReplyDeleteIf you knew me then you would know that I do not see women as children and think that it is absurd that you accused me of having that view. I went to Wheaton College (MA) which is very slanted in its gender ratio and with my Simmons experience, have been around a lot more women than men in my education programs. Many of them refer to themselves and other females as "girls" and many if not all will say they are going out with their "girlfriends". I rarely refer to myself as a "man" but more often as a "guy". I would never mean to offend anyone and apologize if anyone reading the comment found it offensive. I was just offering a quip on how my perspective in the AT world is different.