Welcome to Computer Science, Ladies!
Without intending to encourage anyone to actually visit the page in question, here's a little story for you:
Google gave out 19 $10,000 Anita Borg Scholarships, and 28 $1,000 scholarships to the runners-up. The gist is this: "The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship was established to honor the legacy of Anita Borg and her efforts to encourage women to pursue careers in computer science and technology, and these are the really amazing young women who won this year"; you can read about it in their official press release. But they also posted this story on their blog. At the bottom of each blog post they include a section called 'Links to this post'. The first link in that section? "Freshwomen's trip to Googleplex". Freshwomen? Like, Female Frosh? Nope. Freshwomen like 'pretty girls HERE!!!!'.
In some respects, it's funny. I mean, it's kind of weird to have women-only scholarships in the first place, and now at least you get to read sentences like these: "We commend the dedication, achievement and contributions of these young, talented women in computing and technology"
"By supporting the next generation of great technical minds we pay tribute to Anita and her vision of women in the computer sciences."
"Selection criteria includes academic performance, letters of recommendation, answers to short essay questions and interviews with members of the review committee."
in a very different light than the one in which they were meant (wink, wink, know what I mean, know what I mean? Say no more, say no more..).
In other respects, it made my chest tight, my brows furrow, the corners of my mouth turn down. Things like this can make me feel like my role in life is to sit down, shut up, and take whatever is thrown at me submissively and silently: I don't matter, and no one will ever take me seriously. (Because I'm a girl, and girls are for looking at.)
In my confusion, I finally settled on sending a fruitless (but hopefully light-hearted enough to be taken seriously, just in case) email to gblog@google.com that pointed this out and ended with this:The juxtaposition of 'encouraging women in the field of computer
science' with a site that only displays women as objects to be lusted
after was pretty striking.
Also, it seems that you could use some better anti-spam detection in
your ranking of sites that link to your posts. Maybe one of your
scholarship winners can help you with that.
So that's the story. What do you think?
Poll Funny or Sad?
Google gave out 19 $10,000 Anita Borg Scholarships, and 28 $1,000 scholarships to the runners-up. The gist is this: "The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship was established to honor the legacy of Anita Borg and her efforts to encourage women to pursue careers in computer science and technology, and these are the really amazing young women who won this year"; you can read about it in their official press release. But they also posted this story on their blog. At the bottom of each blog post they include a section called 'Links to this post'. The first link in that section? "Freshwomen's trip to Googleplex". Freshwomen? Like, Female Frosh? Nope. Freshwomen like 'pretty girls HERE!!!!'.
In some respects, it's funny. I mean, it's kind of weird to have women-only scholarships in the first place, and now at least you get to read sentences like these: "We commend the dedication, achievement and contributions of these young, talented women in computing and technology"
"By supporting the next generation of great technical minds we pay tribute to Anita and her vision of women in the computer sciences."
"Selection criteria includes academic performance, letters of recommendation, answers to short essay questions and interviews with members of the review committee."
in a very different light than the one in which they were meant (wink, wink, know what I mean, know what I mean? Say no more, say no more..).
In other respects, it made my chest tight, my brows furrow, the corners of my mouth turn down. Things like this can make me feel like my role in life is to sit down, shut up, and take whatever is thrown at me submissively and silently: I don't matter, and no one will ever take me seriously. (Because I'm a girl, and girls are for looking at.)
In my confusion, I finally settled on sending a fruitless (but hopefully light-hearted enough to be taken seriously, just in case) email to gblog@google.com that pointed this out and ended with this:The juxtaposition of 'encouraging women in the field of computer
science' with a site that only displays women as objects to be lusted
after was pretty striking.
Also, it seems that you could use some better anti-spam detection in
your ranking of sites that link to your posts. Maybe one of your
scholarship winners can help you with that.
So that's the story. What do you think?
Poll Funny or Sad?