TGIF!
New Stargate tonight! Whee!
asta77 tipped me off to the fact that SciFi will be airing a one-hour special on the science of SG-1 at 8pm Eastern, before the premieres. Yes, yes, I too laughed for about twenty minutes, and then wondered what they were going to do with the other 58 minutes of the hour.
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Speaking of science, the San Francisco Chronicle's website ran a very interesting article yesterday about sexism in science disciplines in academia, from the perspective of a female-to-male transsexual who had experienced both sides of the issue.
The field I work in, software, is both male-dominated (in engineering organizations, at least) and intensely meritocratic. Results, what you can produce, drive everything. I have only been working in the field since 1999 (and I suspect it was a pretty different work environment before the dot boom), but my experience has been that you could have four heads and a full body pelt and that would not be an issue as long as you delivered on time and at high quality. Which is not to say that sexism doesn't exist in the industry, especially at upper levels of the executive structure, which are also male-dominated (the female software company CEO is a rare thing indeed), but I personally haven't seen it in day-to-day work in engineering organizations. When I worked at startups, I was working with about 95% male software developers; now that I'm at a more established company, the gender mix is more even. I'm not quite sure why that is; maybe because of the stability factor, or the more predictable hours. It's never been because people didn't want to hire women; they usually were desperate to hire anybody who could code well. But the vast majority of the female software developers I've worked with have been from China and India. A fair number of the male ones have been too, but not to the same degree, not at all.
I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, except that, in software, at least, the problem doesn't really seem to be sexism in the workplace-or at least not primarily sexism in the workplace. It's the lack of women in the hiring pool. It's the fact that by the time women get to high school, they're not interested in pursuing math and hard sciences and CS, and that's a cultural problem that tips over into male-dominated workplaces later. The US has pretty abysmal science and math education in general, but it's particularly bad for women. I think it's getting better, but it's still not good.
I'm sure my perception of sexism in the software workplace has been influenced by when I entered the industry, and the fact that I've always worked for fairly flexible, "young" Silicon Valley companies; it might be quite different in other areas of the country, or in larger, more traditional companies. And obviously academia is a completely different environment. So, yeah, I'm generalizing like crazy. But the gender imbalance in science and math is something I think about a lot, because it's something I deal with every day.
* * * * *
Confession: I look at every Farscape icon post that pops up on my friendslist, just because the show is so damn pretty that looking at icons-ICONS!-is enough to give me a little thrill of happiness.
asta77 tipped me off to the fact that SciFi will be airing a one-hour special on the science of SG-1 at 8pm Eastern, before the premieres. Yes, yes, I too laughed for about twenty minutes, and then wondered what they were going to do with the other 58 minutes of the hour.
* * * * *
Speaking of science, the San Francisco Chronicle's website ran a very interesting article yesterday about sexism in science disciplines in academia, from the perspective of a female-to-male transsexual who had experienced both sides of the issue.
The field I work in, software, is both male-dominated (in engineering organizations, at least) and intensely meritocratic. Results, what you can produce, drive everything. I have only been working in the field since 1999 (and I suspect it was a pretty different work environment before the dot boom), but my experience has been that you could have four heads and a full body pelt and that would not be an issue as long as you delivered on time and at high quality. Which is not to say that sexism doesn't exist in the industry, especially at upper levels of the executive structure, which are also male-dominated (the female software company CEO is a rare thing indeed), but I personally haven't seen it in day-to-day work in engineering organizations. When I worked at startups, I was working with about 95% male software developers; now that I'm at a more established company, the gender mix is more even. I'm not quite sure why that is; maybe because of the stability factor, or the more predictable hours. It's never been because people didn't want to hire women; they usually were desperate to hire anybody who could code well. But the vast majority of the female software developers I've worked with have been from China and India. A fair number of the male ones have been too, but not to the same degree, not at all.
I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, except that, in software, at least, the problem doesn't really seem to be sexism in the workplace-or at least not primarily sexism in the workplace. It's the lack of women in the hiring pool. It's the fact that by the time women get to high school, they're not interested in pursuing math and hard sciences and CS, and that's a cultural problem that tips over into male-dominated workplaces later. The US has pretty abysmal science and math education in general, but it's particularly bad for women. I think it's getting better, but it's still not good.
I'm sure my perception of sexism in the software workplace has been influenced by when I entered the industry, and the fact that I've always worked for fairly flexible, "young" Silicon Valley companies; it might be quite different in other areas of the country, or in larger, more traditional companies. And obviously academia is a completely different environment. So, yeah, I'm generalizing like crazy. But the gender imbalance in science and math is something I think about a lot, because it's something I deal with every day.
* * * * *
Confession: I look at every Farscape icon post that pops up on my friendslist, just because the show is so damn pretty that looking at icons-ICONS!-is enough to give me a little thrill of happiness.