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I knew exactly how she felt

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Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#221

Post by anotherevan »

memset wrote: post #25

I will offer an experience which is the inverse of this! I am a male software engineer who works in fashion (and before this I worked in wine.) I knew nothing about wine when I started, and my fashion sense is prototypically, well, male-software-centric. People in the wine industry are palpably aware that people view it as "hoity-toity". Professionals I've worked with are usually very gracious in explaining what it m…

An anecdote this brings to mind: I use to work with a lovely lady who managed the running of a large number of training courses. Whenever we were discussing software needs she was always apologising for not knowing or always understanding some of the things we were talking about.

It took me a few weeks of this to notice the pattern, but one day I just said, "You know what? I couldn't do you're job if my life depended on it. Please don't apologise for not knowing every little arcane thing about software development, it's a whole other skill set and expertise. That's why you hired me. I couldn't do what you do either."

She was so chuffed that I don't think her feed touched the ground for several days, and things proceeded apace with a lot less anxiety on her part.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#222

Post by lgieron »

vec wrote: post #110
nhebb wrote: post #96

This actually explains why more women do not get into tech careers. In the same way that this young woman felt alienated from her schoolmates, many women who are not into geek culture would feel alienated by CS classmates and the tech industry. There's been a lot of talk about getting more women into this industry, and it's often looked at as a failing of the industry itself. What's plainly obvious to me is that many…

> What's plainly obvious to me is that many (most?) women just aren't interested in the field. Which is exactly the problem. There's no strong reason to suggest that this difference is due to anything other than social pressure. Something in the way we socialize children is convincing half the potential talent pool that they shouldn't develop an interest in technology fields, almost certainly because they see few if…

I've read about studies [1] which shown that boys and girls under 1 year old already show preferences which we attribute with stereotypical gender roles (boys were more appealed to mechanical objects while girls were more interested in human faces (=>social interactions)).

[1] Since there are also studies which show that a nontrivial part of results in social science papers are not replicable, it has to be taken with a tiny grain of salt.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#223

Post by vacri »

dragonwriter wrote: post #197
vacri wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working in marketing and law for Google isn't working in IT. It's working for IT, but it's working in marketing and law. Would anyone seriously think that the sysadmin for a law firm could seriously present at a 'women in law' presentation?

> Working in marketing and law for Google isn't working in IT. It is working in the IT industry. It is not working in an IT profession. "Working in IT" can mean either. I suspect that there is a group of people who would be interested in a presentation on issues facing "Women in the IT industry " as well as one with interest in issues facing "Women in the IT profession ", and I suspect that those groups overlap consi…

It would seem pointless to have an education faire for an industry rather than a profession. "Come and see what you can do working in the Water industry!" -> you could be a hydrologist, a lawyer, a receptionist, a pipelayer, a sysadmin, a farmer, a payroll officer... it's nonsensical, given the context. It'd almost be easier to list the jobs that can't be shoehorned into such a broad industry.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#224

Post by dspeyer »

mirkules wrote: post #196
InclinedPlane wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth

Thanks for the light bulb. I honestly thought Randall Munroe made that term up in http://xkcd.com/806/ Edit: just realized it was cleverly modified to include "leet". And edit 2: which I then realized is a shibboleth inside a shibboleth.

While it does produce leet, the "th" sound doesn't exist in the original hebrew, so it's kind of appropriate.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#225

Post by vacri »

s_baby wrote: post #206
vacri wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feminist discourse is usually 1 dimensional. No, it's not. It really, really isn't. You only notice the stuff that mentions female-victim/male-perp because you don't really care enough about the issue to notice anything further. There is heaps of feminist discourse on women judging women and limiting their options by doing so, the topic of this article. And there are plenty of complex narratives rather than black and…

A) Those edge cases you speak of are not part of the dominant discourse. When woman on woman sexism is approached in the dominant discourse it's in the form of... >In the few cases where other women are shown as the problem they are framed as victims of patriarchal socialization not responsible for their behavior. B) You're making some big assumptions about my awareness of sociology.

A) 'Edge cases'? 'Few cases'? Ha.

B) I like how you elect to stay mysterious on this point. Since you didn't bother to actually clear anything up and explain where you're coming from, you sound just like yet another pride-wounded MRA mouth-frother.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#226

Post by tezka »

well, maybe the big part of what kills women's interest in programming/CS is the unnecessary nerdiness that comes attached with it. As if watching starwars or Dr. who or reading marvel comics is essentially related to competency in CS. Note that this is largely a US phenomena. I am not making a judgement about the value of said material, just that they need not be bundled and presented as part and parcel of computing.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#227

Post by jimmyjazz14 »

I found the references to geek pop culture items odd, what does liking Star Wars, Doctor Who or comics have to do with working in IT? I have nothing against those things (nor would I consider myself of fan of them) but, I certainly don't think someone who doesn't embrace geek culture is any less intelligent or less able to fit into the IT industry as this story seems to imply. I don't presume to know the entire situation for the girl in the story but, to me it seems as if this she was dismissing her peers in much the same way they where dismissing her.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#228

Post by tezka »

pflats wrote: post #91
memset wrote: post #25

I will offer an experience which is the inverse of this! I am a male software engineer who works in fashion (and before this I worked in wine.) I knew nothing about wine when I started, and my fashion sense is prototypically, well, male-software-centric. People in the wine industry are palpably aware that people view it as "hoity-toity". Professionals I've worked with are usually very gracious in explaining what it m…

That's a good insight, and Star Wars is a good parallel. Not knowing a Hermes bag is probably akin to not knowing who George Lucas is. You're aware there are big name designer handbags out there, but never cared about the details. They're entry level bits of geekery, just in different fields.

it's not quite a good analogy. Hermes bag is related to fashion. Starwars in unrelated to computer science.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#229

Post by Tycho »

Most articles on this topic take the starting position that 'most IT workers are male, therefore the industry must be putting up barriers to female candidates.' However, I wonder if it's not more accurate to say that society puts barriers in front of anyone who's interested in an IT career, and males just find these barriers less difficult to circumvent. Nobody wants to be called a 'geek' but it seems more catastrophic for girls and women.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#230

Post by tezka »

Myrmornis wrote: post #219

I agree that female teenage culture has a lot to answer for in dissuading girls from studying technical subjects. But this article is full of silly stereotypes. I'm not particularly interested in science fiction or playing video games, and I would not find software engineering very appealing if it were full of darth vader t-shirt wearing nerds.

"I agree that female teenage culture has a lot to answer for in dissuading girls from studying technical subjects" such as what? sounds like blaming the victim. Female teenage culture may happen to be just fine, and the techie culture is what alienates women from participation.
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