I've heard many stories about people who tried to raise their girls like boys, only to find that eventually they would still crave for pink stuff. Edit: pink == girly, I didn't mean explicitly pink
Why we don't need more women in tech... yet
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Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet
#32I've heard many stories about people who tried to raise their girls like boys, only to find that eventually they would still crave for pink stuff. Edit: pink == girly, I didn't mean explicitly pink
Those stories may be correct, but they are inevitably misguided. The blue-for-boys and pink-for-girls convention seems to be a 20thC invention: http://histclo.com/gender/color.html
Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet
#33I've heard many stories about people who tried to raise their girls like boys, only to find that eventually they would still crave for pink stuff. Edit: pink == girly, I didn't mean explicitly pink
Those stories may be correct, but they are inevitably misguided. The blue-for-boys and pink-for-girls convention seems to be a 20thC invention: http://histclo.com/gender/color.html
I am sure it is somehow culturally induced, but it might not be in the control of the parents to prevent it? There is other environment besides the parent's home.
Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not entirely convinced that "society starts conditioning for gender roles very early". You'd have to show me hard data. On the other hand, there is fascinating evidence to prove the reverse: Case in point is David Reimer, who received the first ever sex re-assignment surgery conducted on a developmentally normal child at age 22 months. David became Brenda. "At age 2, Brenda angrily tore off her dresses. She refus…
Hm, that's an interesting story. (Somewhat weird and immoral that they would change someone's biological gender before they have the ability to understand what's going on, much less consent, but we can look at the case.) I don't think that Reimer's case disproves what I say--I was dealing more with the roles which the genders often play, and the fields to which men vs. women are more likely to enter, while this case…
As sad as the story is, I find it a bit of a stretch that a boy would "naturally" tear off a dress at age 2 either, since children of both sexes were dressed in such manners for many centuries. It seems much more likely that he'd picked up cues that he was supposed to be male and was rejecting things that his culture told him were female.
Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet
#35Why aren't there women in technology today? Probably because they're smart enough to stay away. Technology today, particularly startups, is an ego driven, fad chasing death-march. What sane person would want to spend their time with emotional children reinventing the wheel and following every fad that comes along? Instead you could work in pr, or management, or even cabinetmaking. So why don't we have women in tech?…
That's pretty sexist, isn't it?
Trashing the field isn't sexist. Bitter, maybe.
Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hm, that's an interesting story. (Somewhat weird and immoral that they would change someone's biological gender before they have the ability to understand what's going on, much less consent, but we can look at the case.) I don't think that Reimer's case disproves what I say--I was dealing more with the roles which the genders often play, and the fields to which men vs. women are more likely to enter, while this case…
As sad as the story is, I find it a bit of a stretch that a boy would "naturally" tear off a dress at age 2 either, since children of both sexes were dressed in such manners for many centuries. It seems much more likely that he'd picked up cues that he was supposed to be male and was rejecting things that his culture told him were female.
It's entirely possible that he did. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity#Formation_of_ge...) says that "studies estimate the age at which gender identity is formed at around 2-3."
It's probably both cultural and biological in this case, I'd imagine. (it could be that he'd learned that dresses were associated with females through cultural conditioning, but he mentally knew on some level [maybe subconscious] that he was male, or something along those lines.)
Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet
#37I've heard many stories about people who tried to raise their girls like boys, only to find that eventually they would still crave for pink stuff. Edit: pink == girly, I didn't mean explicitly pink
yeah and how many of those people completely cut their children off from all external culture?
Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet
#38I've heard many stories about people who tried to raise their girls like boys, only to find that eventually they would still crave for pink stuff. Edit: pink == girly, I didn't mean explicitly pink
yeah and how many of those people completely cut their children off from all external culture?
Irrelevant to the proposal of the blog article that raising girls like boys would produce more female technologists.
Maybe if you could pull it off for every single family in the country.
Many women in eastern Europe seem to be in tech, maybe that is worth looking into.
Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet
#39I have been a professional software developer for 10 years now. Today on my way to work I have realized once again that in all those years, I have not held a single job that was any fun at all. (Not for want of switching - the longest I ever lasted at one company was one year).
Programming is fun, but programming jobs suck. At least the vast majority of them. Save for starting my own business, my hopes are close to zero to find a fun programming job in the future.*
Maybe women are just better than men at figuring such things out and going for jobs that are more fun.
This would also explain the decline of women in tech since the eighties. I suppose cubicles and all that only appeared around that time.
* I would like jobs like Data Mining for Backtype or TheSixtyOne, but jobs like that are rare. I also don't have the required portfolio yet.
Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those stories may be correct, but they are inevitably misguided. The blue-for-boys and pink-for-girls convention seems to be a 20thC invention: http://histclo.com/gender/color.html
I am sure it is somehow culturally induced, but it might not be in the control of the parents to prevent it? There is other environment besides the parent's home.
I absolutely agree with you that it is cultural influence - that's my point! There is no specific relation between gender and colour, it is entirely culturally-induced.
Parents may say that they have raised their child gender-neutral, but that is to some extent impossible since gender-norms are all around us, often unconsciously so. When they see their child craving gender-specific toys, it's more likely an indicator that they have not been as successful as they would wish to be.