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When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

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Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#51

Post by lizzard »

akoumjian wrote: post #19

What I find interesting is that "tech jargon" is listed as the number one reason these women feared getting involved in the technical side of there businesses. It is not as though men are born knowing this jargon; they spend both work and free time learning it as a part of their interests. I know this is an old question, but how are we raising our young women to shy away from these things? Why is it acceptable to let…

Why? Because misogyny is a tool that can be wielded in many directions. And it gets wielded to defend privilege and power. Once a field is defined as powerful, part of an elite, girls often are driven out of it as that field or interest is redefined to be a male thing. Boys, and girls too, ostracize and mock girls who are "into computers" because they are going outside a gender norm. If you think this doesn't still happen, hang out with some kids in a computer lab.

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#52

Post by cpeterso »

rabidsnail wrote: post #16
antirez wrote: post #10

> “If we allow the future of the web, software, hardware, video games, etc. to be conceptualized, created and maintained by just one sector of the population, it’s impossible to expect that it will serve the needs of the entire group. I don't think it is so bad, if there is an user base soon or later a web site will be created serving the needs of this user base, because this means profit for the site creator. It see…

The population of players of video games is dominated by teenager males because the developers of video games have teenager males in mind. Game developers have teenager males in mind because the original game developers _were_ teenager males. Farmville and Wii Sports show that there is a vast market for video games aimed at women that is only now starting to be explored.

> The population of players of video games is dominated by teenager males because the developers of video games have teenager males in mind.

As of 2011, the average age for a video game player is 37, a number slowly increasing as people who were children playing the first arcade, console and home computer games continue playing now on current systems.

Plus, video games (and consoles) are expensive. It helps to have a job. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_culture#Demographic...

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#53

Post by ceol »

lrhot9 wrote: post #43
ceol wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women becoming programmers is hyped for the same reason women becoming doctors and lawyers was hyped decades ago: diversity fuels innovation. They're interested in other professions because the culture surrounding programming is such a "boy's club", it's like a nigh-impenetrable shield. And it's not so much they're interested in other professions as they are pushed away from programming. The lack of women in programm…

Please name a couple of diversity-fuelled innovations

Here are a couple of links to lists of contributions by women to various fields.

Medicine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_medicine#Pioneering_wo...

Computing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Computing#Timeline_of_...

Engineering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_engineering#Notable_wo...

Geology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_geology#Female_geologi...

Hopefully it's apparent that having a fresh viewpoint on a problem or in a profession is valuable.

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#54

Post by lrhot9 »

ceol wrote: post #53
lrhot9 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please name a couple of diversity-fuelled innovations

Here are a couple of links to lists of contributions by women to various fields. Medicine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_medicine#Pioneering_wo... Computing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Computing#Timeline_of_... Engineering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_engineering#Notable_wo... Geology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_geology#Female_geologi... Hopefully it's apparent that having a fr…

Surely you can see that those lists doesn't answer the question. "Nineteenth century British geologist" isn't an innovation, and a woman contributing to a field does not mean that "diversity fuels innovation".

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#55

Post by mekoka »

ceol wrote: post #37
mekoka wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population of players of video games is dominated by teenager males because the developers of video games have teenager males in mind. I would not be so sure. We all played games like pac-man, goonies, super mario and such. I remember when we were kids that we had tons of somewhat gender neutral games, but boys were the ones mostly interested in playing. Looking back, I'm more convinced today that it was a cultur…

Look at the three games you listed. Pac- Man , Super Mario , Goonies (a game about young men ).

Are you making the point that characters in the games were male, hence they were guy games? There have been a number of famous female protagonists in games, it hasn't necessarily made them popular with girls, or unpopular with guys (Samus Aran, Lara Croft, etc).

My Dad actually bought me Ms Pac-man with my atari 2600, I never had the original Pac-man (there was no point, it was the exact same game). I only listed Pac-man because it's the more renown title of the series. I also fail to see what makes a game like pac-man, goonies or super mario gender specific. I was introduced to the Mario character by my much older sister when she had these little electronic games that Nintendo used to make (she had the classic Donkey-Kong). Nintendo eventually entered the video game arena and released their adaptations of such classics as Tetris. Even back in those days the spectrum of game themes was already large enough to cater to a diverse audience. I'm not denying that there was a gradual predominance of male oriented themes, but many of the classics were pretty much gender neutral and I don't hear many females reminiscing on them. I don't know why it should be difficult to consider that girls were simply conditioned (parents? society?) to believe that it was a guy thing.

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#57

Post by invalidOrTaken »

Cushman wrote: post #29
mekoka wrote: post #18

Avery Swartz, a mentor at another table, works as a freelance website designer. “A lot of my clients are women. They don’t necessarily want to work with a man because they are afraid of the intimidation factor, the tech speak, the ‘jargon’. I want women to feel empowered, to know that they can take an active role.” This is not a gender problem, it's pedagogical. My granddad would be intimidated to learn to code for t…

You're missing the point-- it is about gender. Women don't want to work with, and especially learn from, men because they are afraid that the man will not know how to speak to them as an equal. They're afraid he'll hide his discomfort behind jargon, and that he will be unable to be nice without being patronizing. Heaven forfend that this man, like many highly technical people, is socially awkward in general! In that…

This was on my mind earlier, but, finding myself unable to put it into words, I didn't comment.

My first thought when I read the article was "lol 'built a wordpress.org,' nice." Then I realized I was being an idiot and that it's great that they're learning. But something didn't jive---excluding my little sister, at no point can I remember teaching a female anything technical without getting either impatient or patronizing.

But, as I think about it, both are signs that I wasn't really there to teach. I was either trying to impress them, or uphold my self-image of being smart, or something else that wasn't teaching.

As a single guy of no particular attractiveness studying a technical subject, I consider myself a member of what one could call the aspirational class of the social world. I don't feel satisfied with where I am in life. Considering the low value we place on teaching in our society, I'm pretty sure teaching would not be a good way to remedy this.

I wouldn't be surprised if many male teachers of technical subjects aren't really happy to be teaching at all. Wallowing in their discontent or outside ambitions, perhaps they're unable to fully engage in the empathy required for good teaching. Questions "obvious" from the instructor's point of view will be brushed off or scorned, reflections of his self-hate. A male student hearing this will think, "Fuck him, I'll learn this anyway." A female student will think, "Why on earth am I hanging out in this environment?"

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#58

Post by radarsat1 »

mekoka wrote: post #18

Avery Swartz, a mentor at another table, works as a freelance website designer. “A lot of my clients are women. They don’t necessarily want to work with a man because they are afraid of the intimidation factor, the tech speak, the ‘jargon’. I want women to feel empowered, to know that they can take an active role.” This is not a gender problem, it's pedagogical. My granddad would be intimidated to learn to code for t…

I agree that it's not a gender problem, or at least not only a gender problem. But the problem being more general does not necessarily imply that the solution should be equally general. I think a class like this might be just thing thing to get a certain class of women interested in programming, which is never a bad thing, even if it doesn't help people like your granddad. A similar class for older people might be just as successful. Sometimes being very targeted with your demographic is a better approach than trying to solve an entire, huge problem in one shot.

Of course, I imagine there are plenty of women who would never attend a class called "Ladies Learning Code," but they might be receptive to a different strategy. The point is that having multiple fronts in this war on computer illiteracy may be more effective than having a single big one.

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#59

Post by prophetjohn »

lizzard wrote: post #45
prophetjohn wrote: post #3

> I left Ladies Learning Code having accomplished my goal. I built a WordPress.org What does this actually mean? The sentence itself seems to indicate that the class was focused around learning to program by building a WordPress clone. My suspicion based on reading the whole article is that she took a class showing her how to use WordPress to create a blog. If she doesn't know the distinction, I'm skeptical that she…

As a developer for BlogHer, a women's media company with a big network of independent women bloggers, I hear lots of people who don't know the correct terminology say things like this. When they say "a WordPress.org" they mean "a self-hosted WordPress site".

I know what she meant, just like I know what my mom means when she points to her computer tower and calls it a CPU or calls her browser a search engine. I was just trying to make the point that her vocabulary didn't reflect a person who was particularly competent at programming. I later realized that she likely only learned enough HTML and CSS to customize a WordPress page, which just means that I assumed wrong about what the "Learning Code" portion of the program name implied.

Re: When She Codes, The Revolution’s Coming

#60

Post by mpeg »

quinndupont wrote: post #2

It's a fantastic movement, and the feminist in me is very happy to see the profession moving away from such a male focus. My only concern with articles like this (and female friends who participate in similar learning) is that learning HTML hardly makes you employable as a hot-shot startup whizz. In fact, it's arguable that HTML isn't even programming, it's really just basic computer use skills these days. I suppose…

It's not really arguable - HTML is not programming, it's markup.

But the point is not to make someone employable as a "hot-shot startup whizz"; just to teach them some basics so they can communicate with devs as equals. And anyway, it would be worrying if just taking a few coding lessons would qualify someone to be employable as a programmer at all :)

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