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in reply to Re^2: Women in Perl - Ada Lovelace Day
in thread Women in Perl - Ada Lovelace Day
There is of course a fine line between "raising a topic" and "attempted social engineering".
I've had more than a couple of 40-something women intimate to me their late-life anger at the realization that they felt goaded by women's activism into professional lives they would not have chosen for themselves if they had been left to really listen to their own hearts. What they really had always wanted was to be a stay at home mom, but the sheer volume of women's activism around them made them feel they could not take that option without somehow being poorly seen. The old pigeon holes had simply been replaced by new ones, this time imposed on them by activist women and their new brand of social engineering.
As you say, pretending there are no differences is Pc cow poo. How many girls just naturally turn to thoughts of programming as their ideal life? Some, for sure, and that's all fine and well, but apparently "not enough". Not enough for whom? Not enough as would suit the social engineers. Why? Because, as you point out, there are diffrences that should not be ignored. Boys and girls are made differently. This isn't an old wive's tale - educators, psycholgists, scientists agree, gils and boys are wired differently and so are bound, if left to explore their true natural selves, to have different interests in life. But rather than accept that, the new social engineers get out there and organize girl-re-education programs, raising topics, to convince another generation of girls that they have to fit their new stereotype - "and it only hurts those it pretends to help". |
Re^4: Women in Perl - Ada Lovelace Day
by moritz (Cardinal) on Mar 25, 2009 at 00:02 UTC
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I think you have a valid point there. But you also have to be very careful; the chances that the purely biological differences explain the extreme gender gap in programming are very slim.
I recommend reading these two articles about the social and environmental aspects (both found from the Debian Women project) | [reply] |
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Well I took time to read the first one. On a strictly academic level, it suffers from a major flaw common to students - her mind was made up before she started writing and went out seeking material to support a preconceived idea. This isn't a research paper, it's an argument.
From the article: A recent study found that ``women are often still depicted on television as half-clad and half-witted, and needing to be rescued by quick-thinking, fully clothed men'' really? We must be watching very different TV, 'cause what I see is sitcom dads as bumblig buffoons playing to their morally superior wives, commercials in which if there's a twit or a loser it's always the man, where the bank counselor is always a woman, where any mention of technology requires they show a female, and where if there's child playing sports 4 times out of 5 it's a girl playing soccer, or hockey if it's a Canadian commercial. This report was written to present what was desired to be presented.
Anyway - so let's assume she's right - that environment plays a large role. Neither Locke's tabula rasa nor Rousseau's plants to be cultivated, but somewhere in between, I'd easily accept it plays as large a role as biology. I'm not sure it's any different, though. Where's that environment come from? The natural instincts of the other humans around her. Sure, you can modify it to some degree with conditioning. You can teach a tiger to live on straw. You can turn men into metrosexuals and women into fembots on the outside, but doing so is de-naturing them to suit an ideology, not freeing their true selves.
Take the last 30 or so years. What we've proven is that if you bathe girls in self-esteem their entire lives, wrap them in advocacy you-go-girl programs, create a legal work environment that nearly criminalizes masculin behaviour around them, and try with all your might to drag them into certain professions, you will still end up with 80% of women employed in what are essentially specializations of of their tradtional roles - caregivers, educators, administrators, traders... At some point you gotta recognize that ideology is not enough - these other things just don't interest most girls and humanity will not be remade to suit the desired numbers.
Sure, let those who really want to do something different do it. But in recent years it's been way beyond that and verging on gender re-programming to produce the result desired by some ideologues.
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Just an observation, I really found this comment interesting:
We must be watching very different TV
Actually, you are. The report was published in 1991. TV was much different almost 18 years ago. Much of what you describe has changed during that time period. For a somewhat geeky example compare the female roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation with Babylon 5, the Stargate series, and Battlestar Galactica. Or for more mainstream viewing, how about Numb3rs, Criminal Minds, or the CSI franchise.
Television isn't the same as reality, but the roles in which women are portrayed as competent have definitely changed.
I tend to be aware of this subject because my wife has worked for more than 15 years on Expanding Your Horizons, a conference for introducing middle school girls to female role models in math and the sciences. When she started, many of the girls were completely blown away that women could do any of these jobs. Now, the girls are not surprised by the different professions at all.
Update: modify show list and minor edits.
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Take the last 30 or so years. What we've proven is that if you bathe girls in self-esteem their entire lives, wrap them in advocacy you-go-girl programs, create a legal work environment that nearly criminalizes masculin behaviour around them, and try with all your might to drag them into certain professions, you will still end up with 80% of women employed in what are essentially specializations of of their tradtional roles - caregivers, educators, administrators, traders...
So you say that the "failure" of the programs that want to push girls to tech jobs is a proof that they just don't want to, even though many of them are still permanently confronted with the traditional role models at home?
On a somewhat related note I find it interesting that you list administrators as a traditional female role; with my limited historical knowledge I think that in the medieval age it wasn't one. So it seems that these roles do change over time. Maybe we're just in the medieval age of computing, and still have a long way to go?
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From the link, "there are still people who believe,..."
But there are still people who believe that the earth if only a few thousand years old, or is flat.
"Additionally, people tend to live up or down to the expectations that are communicated to them. "
I don't know if that applies to the Natural Born Geek, who is to begin with a non-conformist.
"Bias in Toys": I think there might be more pressure against boys playing with girl toys than vice-versa. Most of them are more aptly "non-girl-specific" toys than "boys toys". The kids generally choose the toys they want to play with, and often a selection is available because of siblings or group care environments. For our purposes, isn't the bias instead the "age appropriate" toys? And how many kids, of any age, would be admonished for trying to take the thing apart rather than play in the intended manner?
Marketing of computer games: I think my niece chooses the games she's interested in based on previous experience with the game and friend's recommendations of what to try, not what's on the cover, which gets quickly lost as the disc's are in an unkempt pile. She'll naturally put in Animal Doctor or Pinada Garden rather than playing Basketball that's already loaded.
I think the effects of the biases, for the purpose of engineering and computer developers, is overstated. this is particularly true for the top echelon Geeks who would do what they were drawn to, in open defiance of sterotyping. But these are even more different, in terms of numbers of each sex.
As for remembering prominant women in computer science, in addition to Ada Lovelace I'm aware of Adele Goldberg and Grace Hopper.
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Re^4: Women in Perl - Ada Lovelace Day
by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Mar 24, 2009 at 23:51 UTC
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Not enough for mem. With you, I am for raising awareness, not quotas. At least a couple of the best hackers in Perldom are female and I think highlighting that is great. Showing young persons of *any* persuasion things for which they can be admired that don't involve theft, binge-drinking, luck, violence, or any of the manifold things the world at large pushes at them... It can only be good. Young people need to know there are options and achievements and money out there to be made in places other than the grotesque roads painted by Hollywood and pop-culture.
(updated ambiguous sentence structure.)
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