Quote:
Originally posted by butterrfly:
I guess you could call me a minority ...because I am a woman. Allow me to explain. When I was in college, I was only one of a few women working on a B.S. in Chemistry. [SNIP]I didn't want to win a scholarship just because I was an outstanding "female" student. I wanted to win a scholarship because I was an outstanding student PERIOD!
Does that make sense to anyone else?
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To a degree I agree with you, To another I don't...
Being an engineer, I too was a female minority in my classes. On average only 15-20% of a class was female. And I had several classes where I was the only female. I never wanted to be given any special treatment because I was female. I resented one of my scholarship had a graduated scale (Group X had to score amount alpha, Group Y = alpha+2, and Group Z = alpha+4 for the same scholarship) and that because I was female they assumed I shouldn't do as well as a male counterpart. At my first job, I shared a phone with a male co-worker. By the tone in people's voice, many thought I was a secretary - and to me that was infuriating!
Woman are slowly infiltrating the science world - adding their own point of view. But over the course of my college and my few years out - I learned an opperunity is an opperunity. I'm not saying to manipulate the system. But I doubt I would have turned my back on the scholarship. Many times scholarships like outstanding female are established because someone donated money to that cause because they saw a need for it. I've thought about several times (given when i have the funds) to donate money back to my university for a female aerospace engineer.
Such is a fine line - to be just one of the guys and yet maintain your feminite wiles. My sisterhood promotes women in technical fields. Many technical women feel they have to go the journey through college, the work force alone. And we don't. Amazingly enough, others exist in the same frame of mind with a "nasty" independant streak. While we know we can if we have to - Why should we?
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With regards to some of the other posts -
* Until one does research (including reading forums like Greekchat) or asks questions, the NPHC brother/sisterhoods do have the perception of being only black. I know I had such a misconception.
* With regards to refering to NPC/IFC brother/sisterhoods as WGLO's - to a degree I'm somewhat miffed (Offended is to strong a word for it). Mostly because in the initial years of many NPC sororites some biases did exist against other caucaisans based on religion and heritage.
* ZetaAce: Have a question - In an initial post on this thread, you made the reference that blacks were not a minority. I wanted to know frame of reference you were using. Mostly because with news reports from this last census, I heard that that the census bureau was estimating that blacks were no longer going to be the major-minority in the United States. And it was followed by that the Hispanic population was to be considered the major-minority at a percentage of 15-20. I don't remeber the number. Does anyone know if the census has any data published yet?