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CNN Live At Daybreak
Young Women Being Passed By in High-Tech World
Aired June 06, 2002 - 05:19 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: The more things change, the more they remain the same. Career opportunities may have expanded in the high-tech world, but young women are being passed by.
CNN's Kathy Slobogin tells us why.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They used to call it vocational ed. Today, it's career education, and it's nothing like the shop and home ec classes baby boomers remember. Career education today is often highly technical. Students are often college bound. But one thing hasn't changed much. The ones doing hair and painting nails are girls. The ones wiring cars and computers are boys.
MARCIA GREENBERG, NATIONAL WOMEN'S LAW CENTER: There is the kind of sex segregation in career education programs that most people thought we had laid to rest 30 years ago when Title IX was passed.
SLOBOGIN: The National Women's Law Center found that despite Title IX, across the country girls are clustered in classes like cosmetology and child development, while boys dominate classes in high technology and high paying fields.
GREENBERG: The all girl classes aren't going to have the high technology equipment. They're not going to have the math and science programs. They're not going to be trained for the kinds of jobs that are going to have good wages and good chances for promotion.
SLOBOGIN: Chantilly Academy in wealthy Fairfax County, Virginia is a model for career education, offering state-of-the-art classes like this one in network design and engineering. But out of 90 students in the class this year, only one was a girl.
LESLIE PERSILY, OFFICE FOR WOMEN, FAIRFAX COUNTY: Visitors have come here from all over the world and invariably they've looked in these technology classes and said this is great, where are the girls?
SLOBOGIN: Students here say girls often feel unwelcome in classes dominated by boys.
SOO KANG, VOCATIONAL EDUCATION STUDENT: There is a lot of guys and they like to be macho about it, I know this, I know that. JESSICA FELDMAN, VOCATIONAL EDUCATION STUDENT: Girls like really fear like being ostracized by the guys in their class, especially if they're the only girl.
SLOBOGIN: These girls are pioneers. Most are in an all girls computer class the principal started to make it easier for female students. They say the message that computers are for guys starts early and can come from the teacher.
FELDMAN: Like I just remember like being in the fourth grade and whenever the VCR was broken, you know, she would call a guy up to fix it, you know?
KANG: It's that stereotype. Teachers think, well, you know, because you're a guy you're going to be interested into that like getting into the technical stuff, the computers, the tech classes, while the girls, I think they're more like well what about culinary arts or cosmetology?
SLOBOGIN: Girls who choose those classes may not realize the consequences of their choices -- getting left behind in the new economy.
GREENBERG: We've talked to young woman after young woman, parent after parent who said if only I had realized what the implications would be of this choice, I wouldn't have made it.
SLOBOGIN: As for these girls, they couldn't be happier with the choice they made.
CARMEN QUEIPO, VOCATIONAL EDUCATION STUDENT: I got a lot out of it. I mean I know what I want to do now and it's exciting.
KENIA RODRIGUEZ, VOCATIONAL EDUCATION STUDENT: By the end of the year I was really shocked about what I knew. I basically could fix a computer from scratch.
FELDMAN: You don't need to go to a man to take care of your teach needs. You can fix it yourself.
SLOBOGIN (on camera): The National Women's Law Center is asking the federal government to investigate career education programs. At a minimum, critics say, schools should make girls more aware of their choices and aware of the consequences for what they choose.
Kathy Slobogin, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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