Women in (foo)
In the course of picking up various REST and Ajax blogs, I started reading Tim Bray's blog, ongoing. And from there, an article in devChix.
I have mixed feelings about these sorts of things. I have a lot of trouble identifying myself as a "geekgrrl" or a "devchix" (devchik? or whatever the singular is) or any of those things. Same way with "Women in gaming"... I never felt like an outcast in gaming either until those sorts of articles showed up. Centipede's dilemma.
I would never have given a second thought to the male/female author ratio in an O'Reilly publication if Tim (Bray again, not O'Reilly) hadn't pointed to this breathtakingly outraged post. And I can't seem to muster any particular outrage of my own over it... I tend to notice when there *are* women in a tech endeavor, rather than when they're inconspicously absent. And then only to say "Huh... that's interesting," rather than to hail it as some sort of breakthrough.
I dunno. Maybe I'm just sexist, but it seems to me that if more women wanted to program, they'd be doing it, and it's kind of stupid to be hand-wringing over it. Granted, you want to remove the actual "NO GURLZ ALOUD" barriers: chainmail bikinis in gaming (about which I confess to having a considerable blind spot, possibly because I never really identified *myself* as the same species as the women in those pictures...), and... um... wait, is there an equivalent in tech? There's the salary gap, but that seems like more of an after-the-fact thing (I certainly didn't consider my potential salary when I acquired my obsession with computers, barely out of elementary school).
Possibly some of my attitude comes from the fact that I pretty much fit *exactly* the archetype/stereotype of the female hacker. I walked into a comic book store before Father's Day, and despite the fact that I was walking around with
ravenx99's wish list, looking rather lost (which I was; I haven't been in there since they changed locations some months back so I didn't know where anything was), when I finally came to the register the clerk made a comment (I forget exactly what) on the graphic novel being by J. Michael Stra... um, by JMS, with the obvious assumption that I knew who he was talking about, even though this was clearly a "bringing son to unfamiliar comic book store to buy a Father's Day present" trip. I look like a nerd, and nerds know JMS, so it was a logical/correct assumption. I don't get treated like an outsider.
Some of this may be because I don't *act* like an outsider, but if I was more, uh, babelicious (or maybe just more generic-housewifely) I might get treated differently. I dunno.
I guess I'm just not capable of thinking of "women" as a large nebulous aggregate. I think of individual women that I know, and whether they'd like to program (or roleplay), and what's keeping them from it. Mostly... it's lack of interest. My sister, the only non-programmer I can think of who'd be remotely interested, would make an adequate programmer, but she went into accountancy (like my dad) which, when you're dealing with accounting software, is still pretty much a tech thing. I'd have to say the thing that kept her from pursuing programming proper was the fact that she didn't want to follow behind me yet again. And she's not quite as hard-core a nerd as I am, so the tech level in accountancy is probably just about perfect for her. Other women I know that would be qualified programmers already *are*, and frankly I can't remember ever sitting around with any of them griping about how difficult it is to be a woman in a tech field.
I suppose it's politically incorrect to say I think it's just that more men than women are nerds, and that's not gonna change significantly, and that provided men don't assume that NO women are nerds, I fail to see it's such a problem.
I have mixed feelings about these sorts of things. I have a lot of trouble identifying myself as a "geekgrrl" or a "devchix" (devchik? or whatever the singular is) or any of those things. Same way with "Women in gaming"... I never felt like an outcast in gaming either until those sorts of articles showed up. Centipede's dilemma.
I would never have given a second thought to the male/female author ratio in an O'Reilly publication if Tim (Bray again, not O'Reilly) hadn't pointed to this breathtakingly outraged post. And I can't seem to muster any particular outrage of my own over it... I tend to notice when there *are* women in a tech endeavor, rather than when they're inconspicously absent. And then only to say "Huh... that's interesting," rather than to hail it as some sort of breakthrough.
I dunno. Maybe I'm just sexist, but it seems to me that if more women wanted to program, they'd be doing it, and it's kind of stupid to be hand-wringing over it. Granted, you want to remove the actual "NO GURLZ ALOUD" barriers: chainmail bikinis in gaming (about which I confess to having a considerable blind spot, possibly because I never really identified *myself* as the same species as the women in those pictures...), and... um... wait, is there an equivalent in tech? There's the salary gap, but that seems like more of an after-the-fact thing (I certainly didn't consider my potential salary when I acquired my obsession with computers, barely out of elementary school).
Possibly some of my attitude comes from the fact that I pretty much fit *exactly* the archetype/stereotype of the female hacker. I walked into a comic book store before Father's Day, and despite the fact that I was walking around with
ravenx99's wish list, looking rather lost (which I was; I haven't been in there since they changed locations some months back so I didn't know where anything was), when I finally came to the register the clerk made a comment (I forget exactly what) on the graphic novel being by J. Michael Stra... um, by JMS, with the obvious assumption that I knew who he was talking about, even though this was clearly a "bringing son to unfamiliar comic book store to buy a Father's Day present" trip. I look like a nerd, and nerds know JMS, so it was a logical/correct assumption. I don't get treated like an outsider.
Some of this may be because I don't *act* like an outsider, but if I was more, uh, babelicious (or maybe just more generic-housewifely) I might get treated differently. I dunno.
I guess I'm just not capable of thinking of "women" as a large nebulous aggregate. I think of individual women that I know, and whether they'd like to program (or roleplay), and what's keeping them from it. Mostly... it's lack of interest. My sister, the only non-programmer I can think of who'd be remotely interested, would make an adequate programmer, but she went into accountancy (like my dad) which, when you're dealing with accounting software, is still pretty much a tech thing. I'd have to say the thing that kept her from pursuing programming proper was the fact that she didn't want to follow behind me yet again. And she's not quite as hard-core a nerd as I am, so the tech level in accountancy is probably just about perfect for her. Other women I know that would be qualified programmers already *are*, and frankly I can't remember ever sitting around with any of them griping about how difficult it is to be a woman in a tech field.
I suppose it's politically incorrect to say I think it's just that more men than women are nerds, and that's not gonna change significantly, and that provided men don't assume that NO women are nerds, I fail to see it's such a problem.