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physicists, that they CAN'T be mechanical engineers, that they CAN'T be astronauts. Let me quite from an article in the NY Times Educational Supplement published [[strikethrough]] a couple of month ago [[strikethrough]] earlier this year. The article was addressing the fact that many girls seem to be avoiding computers and computer education.

"Researchers and educators attribute girls' avoidance of computers to differences in social development and to methods of teaching computer science. Girls at an early age conclude from media, parents, and peers that computers are for boys."

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The article continues: 
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"A survey by the Johns Hopkins University [[strikethrough]] 's Center for the Social Organization of Schools,... [[strikethrough]] showed that first-grade girls were just as interested as boys in learning to program computers. But by the sixth grade, [[strikethrough]] however [[strikethrough]] boys interested in computers outnumbered girls 2 to 1, and by the ninth grade, more than four-fifths of the interested students were males."

Too many girls are diverted from careers in science because they are influenced (consciously or subconsciously) by social pressures and cultural stereotypes. Often movies, TV shows, advertisements, textbooks, even computer software contribute (knowingly or unknowingly) to [[strikethrough]]the[[strikethrough]] an unconscious association of [[strikethrough]] [[illegible sentence]] [[strikethrough]]