Last Saturday morning, during a break from German class, my classmates and I started discussing how some professions that used to be mostly male are now mostly pursued by women. That causes some tension, and it brings about the need for cultural change, as I described in my last entry.

This subtle antipathy can surface unexpectedly in day-to-day life. For instance, my classmate Mariana is studying biology. She told me that once, in a physics class, she and the other students had to make a circuit. The male teacher, after communicating the task, said: “Let’s see how women can manage this one,” clearly assuming electronics was totally a “guy thing.”

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