As another anecdote I was at PyGotham yesterday. When I stopped by at the beginners track in the afternoon I counted 35 men and 4 women.
My experiences at a woman's programming workshop
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Re: My experiences at a woman's programming workshop
#22This article begs the question: why do women respond disproportionately badly to the "helpful jerk"?
I wonder if they do.
I've seen a room full of men respond exactly the same way.
Re: My experiences at a woman's programming workshop
#23This article begs the question: why do women respond disproportionately badly to the "helpful jerk"?
The real question should be: why does a class respond proportionately badly to the 'helpful jerk'?
We can't reasonably say this is a female specific phenomenon when our only point of reference is a female-only class. Send the guy to a bunch of different classes (of mixed and single gender, and of mixed skill-level) and see how they all respond.
If one guy is monopolising the time and help available in the class, it stands to reason that everyone else will lose interest, because there is no longer time and attention available to them.
And if this guy is asking questions that far exceed the average skill level of the class, it also stands to reason that the class will lose interest because they can't understand any of it.
I'd like to know why the volunteers were accepting of this guy when at least one of them (the OP) was well aware of how detrimental his presence was to the class as a whole. And I'd like to know this guy's motivations for joining a class to wave his intellectual dick about.
Re: My experiences at a woman's programming workshop
#24That's not a call for single-sex education. That's a call for good teachers who are willing to crack down on the class clown. There's always a class clown, and he always needs to be cracked down upon for the good of the class. This is teaching 101. Sorry you didn't have a good teacher. >Dave was really excited by the class, and, like me and the other volunteers, had a lot of experience with Python. Sounds like Dave w…
> That's a learned technique for getting assistance. It worked on you, didn't it? I was going to point out the same thing. A women playing dumb to get help from a man, is not uncommon at all.
actually, anygender playing dumb to get help from the teacher/TA seems to be common. especially in a TA/student situation is where I see that a lot.
Re: My experiences at a woman's programming workshop
#25Given that IME most women's eyes immediately glaze over when the word "computer" is mentioned, I doubt that "our community isn’t great at encouraging women contributors" is the reason why few women are in computing.
Given that all the women there had explicitly signed up to do programming, I doubt that any of them have eyes that glaze over at the mention of computers. Surprisingly for some people, there are variations among women just as there are variations among men. I'm pretty sure that most men also have no interest in computer programming. Finally: http://xkcd.com/385/
Re: My experiences at a woman's programming workshop
#26I had a language class once with a student that was clearly not at our level constantly asking questions that the other students all already knew. As a mature adult, I attributed this lack of consideration for others to the individual, not the entire gender.
Re: My experiences at a woman's programming workshop
#27At the risk of sounding petty let me say that, I am male and I can only speak about my part of the problem.
1. Do I feel bad about women achieving stuff in life ? Yes.
2. Am I ashamed of the above fact? Yes.
Lets face it, from what I have been able to figure out, this is the case with a lot of men in this world. Question we must be asking is : how do we go about solving this problem? This is not as simple as just developing empathy for the other sex, because according to current customs and expectations: men are expected to be taking care of women, women should be trading up etc.
Whenever the question of equality of sexes come in tech, the arguments are always split into two factions. One side argues that there is no such thing as discrimination of sex in tech. It is a meritocracy and that is the only way it can be, and women are not in tech because they do not want to be / are naturally less talented in programming. The other side argues this is not the case and that you feel so only because you have no daughter/are a virgin/you are a basement dwelling looser.This line of thinking is not productive. Painting men as super villains in some grand 'Dan Brown'ian plot of conspiracy against women will NOT work.Especially with nerds. I am not saying anything excuses sexist behaviour just that villifying them may satisfy your ego, but will not accomplish anything.
Re: My experiences at a woman's programming workshop
#28these questions seemed designed to show off his own knowledge, or to challenge the instructor.
Yes, Dave was showing off to an audience of women.
she asked me a question she giggled and told me she had no idea what the project was about, or what to do.
Yes, the woman was acting like a bimbo to elicit male help.
Congrats, you now have the grasp of female/male dynamics usually figured out by middle school.
I’d never really believed in single sex education
Wow, a thousand years of human culture tossed away in one generation by ideological fanatics pretending that women and men are "equal" and one guy finally figures out maybe tradition exists for a reason. Ask any woman who went to an all-girls school if she missed having to be in the same classroom as boys.
I saw that women only groups are not creating a more insular community of women, but rather offering these women a more comfortable entrance into our general community.
Amazing! How was this brilliant guy to know he could have asked his grandmother and saved himself all that trouble?
The jerk factor also reminded me of why we in the Free Software community need to be taking issues of civility seriously, and not letting the idea of “free speech” get in the way of maintaining a safe place for discussion.
You get your group to be 50/50 male/female and you are going to drive away lots of competent men because showing off their skills, bragging, and one-upping other men is one of the primary motivations to excel at your chosen field. A "safe space" for women is often a "boring space" for men.
But sure, go ahead, I'm sure this problem will be easy to solve with just the right technical fix. In fact, I can think of one technical fix the ancient Chinese used to make "safe men" for keeping their harems.
"There are no statutes capable of controlling the relations between men and women." -- Secretary
Re: My experiences at a woman's programming workshop
#29This article begs the question: why do women respond disproportionately badly to the "helpful jerk"?
The real question should be: why does a class respond proportionately badly to the 'helpful jerk'? We can't reasonably say this is a female specific phenomenon when our only point of reference is a female-only class. Send the guy to a bunch of different classes (of mixed and single gender, and of mixed skill-level) and see how they all respond. If one guy is monopolising the time and help available in the class, it s…
> We can't reasonably say this is a female specific phenomenon when our only point of reference is a female-only class.
Then why is the article about gender at all?
Re: My experiences at a woman's programming workshop
#30At the risk of sounding petty let me say that, I am male and I can only speak about my part of the problem. 1. Do I feel bad about women achieving stuff in life ? Yes. 2. Am I ashamed of the above fact? Yes. Lets face it, from what I have been able to figure out, this is the case with a lot of men in this world. Question we must be asking is : how do we go about solving this problem? This is not as simple as just dev…
"Do I feel bad about women achieving stuff in life ? Yes."
is there a typo there? at the moment it reads like other people's (women's) successes make you feel bad.