Gender in the Internet Age

Ellen Spertus writes "The latest issue of the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) newsletter on Gender in the Internet Age is well worth reading for people interested in the dearth of female techies. From the editors' introduction: The purpose of this newsletter is to explore how the Internet and other computing advances subvert or reinforce gender roles. Will current trends in computing lead to greater opportunities for both women and men, or will it cement them in their current roles? Will women be creators of software and virtual communities, or will they be disempowered users? How will men's and women's interactions online be different from their interactions in 'real life'? What changes will propagate from the online to the real world?"

Comments

A truly equal opportunity workplace

[MPolo]

Computer programming and the Internet are one of the few really equal opportunity workplaces in the world, or at least should be. Differences in physical abilities between men and women are not applicable here. Since most feminists insist that women are smarter than men, they should even have an advantage...

Ultimately, one is judged here by what he/she/it (gotta love inclusive language) can code...

Re:A truly equal opportunity workplace

[Hrunting]

Is it really? There is, at least statistically, a bell curve against women participating in the sorts of activity that males generally participate in. That doesn't mean that they can't or they won't, they just don't, or they don't well. But statistics don't determine the person.

Then you look at how to get people into it. I think a lot of it comes down to lack of role models. I mean, think of it, how many female geek heroes do you have? I'm not talking about dead pioneers or women who helped with ancient inventions, I'm talking about people in the programming community who are famous, who get mentioned on Slashdot with reverence, like an RMS or an Alan Cox or even maybe someone less well known, like Miguel de Icaza or Alfred Kojima. There are probably a few (I can't think of any off the top of my head), but not many. Who do the women look up to? The men, right? But what's that say?

Technology, I will agree, seems like an equal opportunity workplace, but then again, so does secretary. So why aren't more men secretaries and more women geeks? History, tradition, culture. Maybe that will change. I don't know, but just because the field is open doesn't mean it works that way.

Re:A truly equal opportunity workplace

[kevin805]

"or at least should be"

What do you mean "should be"? If you mean, "would be expected to be", I would wholeheartedly agree, but suggest you say what you mean more clearly. It's very easy to read your statement as a call for people to make it the case that the internet is equal for both men and women. Of course, you can't make it equal for men and women unless you know who everyone is, so you'd have to keep track of who's a man and who's a woman.

But if you do that, then it's not level. The key to equality on the internet is that you can't tell who is a man or a woman. I happen to use my real first name, which is identifiably male for most english speakers. I sometimes use names that aren't identifiable re gender.

Quite often it happens that you can guess someone's gender based on word choice and phrasing. Sometimes you guess because "no guy would be interested in that" or something. But this is nearly impossible in doing actual business.

Preserve the anomynity and you will have an area for complete equity. But remember: "the promise of america is equal opportunaty, not equal outcomes" (bill clinton quote, if you can believe it). Women (even feminazis) don't seem to have a problem with saying that women tend to have better taste for design and art type stuff (for example). I suspect that it will come out that men are (on average) more attracted to programming and related fields, and I suspect that feminazis will take this as proof that "the system is unjust".

But who cares? If they could code, they'd have better things to do than scream about the system being unjust.

Responsibility

[sufi]

This maybe construed as offtopic but I don't think it is...

With teleworking/networking and working from home, on the increase, plus the huge rise in internet related consultancy and the slow demise of the voice phone it should in theory make the internet more genderless, as someone has already suggested I too consider everyone on the net genderless until I meet them irl, of course 9/10 I know their gender but it makes zero difference.
I also know that a lot of companies (like mine) are actively trying to find female staff, which is easier said than done. I don't think gender on the internet will make any difference at all, it's the workplace, managers, and HR depts that have to change,

The thing that worries me most about the internet and human interaction is the responsiblity aspect. It's incredibly easy to be completely anonymous on the internet, as far as the average user is concerned anyway.

This in turn means that anyone who wants to can completely re-invent themselves to be whatever they so choose, and the only thing you can really do is either a) accept everything as truth or b) doubt everything.

It looks as if doubt everything is going to be the norm, and I think that's very sad. It's an indication of the state of general society that people feel they have to do this (they always have to a certain extent, but not as much as now).

People are going to get hurt, and with the move/transition of official functions moving to the internet this could also be damaging for official lines too. It's much easier to spoof an internet document at the moment than it is an official document, although there are many many technologies to combat that.

I don't claim to have any idea about how to put the personal reponsiblity back into users, but I do worry about the validity of the kinds of people I talk to every day.

Re:The women won't have a say...

[otis wildflower]

The first computer coders were women. Check your history of computers: they were initially coded by connecting wires in a switchboard configuration. Who do you think did that work?

Hedy Lamarr (besides being a sex symbol) helped design and patent spread-spectrum wireless technologies that were half a century ahead of their time. If you have a PCS phone or 802.11 networking (among other products), you have her to thank.

There are lots of female pros in even the modern sysadmin game. 2 of my most prized sysadmin books were either written (ORA's Unix System Administration) or co-written (USAH, or the Red Book) by women.

Think before you speak.

Your Working Boy,

Come on!

[Hrunting]

We can barely get women to like us! Now you want us to get them to be us?!

Note: this post not for the humor (or humour) impaired

Re:Gender neutral

[GoNINzo]

I think that the knife cuts both ways in employement. The lack of geek women in the field increases the likely hood that they would be hired by a heavily male team.

Given two people, with equal technical backgrounds, most techs will think a female would be the nicer one than the male. hence, she has a small advantage. Also, managers prefer at least one women in a team so it isn't quite so lopsided.

The problem starts much much earlier than getting a job. You can get a job by just being able to pronounce unix these days. (ugh). It starts in school, and where interests lie, and what they want to do when they grow up. not after they are in the field.

The job market in any IT profession is very very strong, so don't say 'they can't get a job'.

--
Gonzo Granzeau

womyn and computers

[Luyseyal]

why do women want to define themselves by a man's standard? why try to get in on the internet and computer phenomenon? can't they think of something equally cool all by themselves? ;)

seriously though, you are defined more by what you say you are not than what you say you are. by saying that they are co-opted out of computing, they legitimize the status quo. they want to stigmatize it, but what do they contribute in return?

what the hell is "women's computing" anyway??!!

C++ for Women?
HTML for Women?
Cosmo Online?
subscribe linux-kernel-for-women

technology itself is genderless.
the content you make of it is the responsibility of the author.
soooooooooo... why don't they make some useful content instead of bitching?



-l

Re:womyn and computers

[jacobm]

A translation:

"Those goddamn sexist women. Getting all uppity about how 'things aren't fair for us.' They don't have any skills and can't teach (despite the fact that many forms of feminism are academic movements by college professors- see my next point).

"I hate how the whole academic system is a conspiracy against men- all those dumb women who get special favors on their report cards piss me off. Clearly they're stupid- I mean, after all, they don't do as well as us men on standardized tests, and they aren't as successful in business, so they must be just idiots.

"The great majority of feminist activism is so dumb, those stupid women. I did an exhaustive study of feminist literature and concluded that the great majority of it is just arguing that men are stupid- I can't believe those stupid women would be so stupid! (By the way, my 1000-page rigorous study of the field is being published in March- here's a web link to it.)

"I hate sexist people."

Moderators- before you mark this post 'flamebait,' reread the post I'm responding to. Thanks.

Re:womyn and computers

[jacobm]

Other than the fact that I sprinkled the phrase "dumb women" throughout my post, I just about repeated your post back to you. I'm not quite sure where the "heavy-handed lie" comes in. Perhaps you think that I'm lying by suggesting that you made sexist remarks? I tend to think that you suggested that one yourself.

And besides, parody is a rather fun and expressive way to make one's point, often cutting to the quick quite a bit more effectively than other rhetorical devices. In fact, I like it so much I think I'll use it again: "If you want to posit a systematic conspiracy against blacks everywhere but in our schools, that's your privilege. It is up to the intelligent reader to decide which environment is likelier to be bias-prone -- the world of the standardized test, the great wide world of events, or the cloistered, black-sympathizer-dominated world of school. While you're at it, you can hypothesize about black helicopters and New World Orders. Thinking adults are unlikely to join you in your fantasies." In fact, I certainly do not think that there is a conspiracy against women that extends to all of society except our schools- I think there is a conspiracy against women that extends to all of society including our schools. Let me remind you of the topic under which we are posting- amazingly, we find that virtually no women are learning science, even though the modern economy is driven very largely by technology. Does this add up to economic empowerment for women? I'd say no.

And as for those links you provided, "disproving" the glass ceiling and wage gap arguments: the arguments they present seem to me to miss the point entirely. Notice how both articles say "we need to control for qualified applicants"? Why do you think there aren't as many qualified applicants? Is it because women are stupid? From everything I can figure, that is what you think, and it's why I put those words in your mouth. I don't like that answer, though: I think it's because of what you might call "institutionalized sexism" in which women are systematically marginalized, so they don't really have a fighting chance at being society's leaders.

As for why I didn't provide citations: one, I am currently on vacation and away from my books and articles, and unfortunately most gender research is published only on dead trees. Two, I find the citation game to be rather stupid. I would rather have people read and respond thoughtfully to my thoughts than go about providing ten million references and then yelling "You didn't read article X, Y, and Z!" just to cut them off from making what otherwise might be a legitimate criticism. Put another way: I find that most people hide behind citation to conceal the fact that they don't have any of their own thoughts, and I don't like that.

Re:womyn and computers

[roystgnr]

And as for those links you provided, "disproving" the glass ceiling

You know, if you put something in quotes, it sounds more dubious?

and wage gap arguments: the arguments they present seem to me to miss the point entirely.

Actually, the arguments hit the point exactly. They're not dealing with "institutionalized sexism", they're dealing with "the glass ceiling" and "the wage gap", which in at least the first case they are surprisingly good at debunking.

Notice how both articles say "we need to control for qualified applicants"?

Yes. And they're right. Both articles are looking at discrimination in the workplace, not discrimination in education. And when you're looking at salaries or promotions, any comparison of groups of applicants with different qualifications, expecting equivalent results, is ridiculous.

Why do you think there aren't as many qualified applicants?

If you read the article you'd have their answer, one which certainly sounds sufficient to me: "In 1970, when today's senior managers were graduating, fewer than five percent of law and MBA degrees were awarded to women."

Is it because women are stupid?

Note that they didn't use the phrase "dumb women" once. It's not that women are stupid. It's most likely because during the 50s when 1970 graduates were growing up, there was incredible social and media pressure against successful career women and toward homemakers. It's quite likely because in the 60s when today's senior managers were in school, there was serious discrimination against women at every level of education.

The claim isn't that the current lack of women CEOs isn't a result of bias and discrimination, just that that lack is much more a result of 30 year old discrimination than current discrimination.

The link given fails to give conclusive evidence to the lack of a "glass ceiling", though. Not nearly enough figures in what's essentially an editorial summary.

This is why I like Thomas Sowell, BTW - his newspaper columns aren't much better than you'd expect from a couple hundred words, but his books contain statistically relevant facts, something all too absent from discussion of social issues.

Why, every now and then you even run across a writer who is proud of not inserting facts among his thoughts and criticizes others for doing so. Imagine that.

I think it's because of what you might call "institutionalized sexism" in which women are systematically marginalized, so they don't really have a fighting chance at being society's leaders.

If you're talking about socialization of women, about the imbued traits that our culture tries to slap on young girls, than I'm inclined to agree with you... although the problem isn't nearly as current as you seem to think, judging by the female majority in today's college admissions.

As for why I didn't provide citations: one, I am currently on vacation and away from my books and articles, and unfortunately most gender research is published only on dead trees.

This is why I liked MajorNet (and like Usenet, if you filter out the losers) more than Slashdot for serious debates. It was always nice, when caught off guard by a point of your opponent, to be able to come back days later with a well-supported rebuttal. Of course Slashdot discussions fade into oblivion within 24 hours.

Two, I find the citation game to be rather stupid. I would rather have people read and respond thoughtfully to my thoughts

This is just stupid. First of all, those links took up a couple words space in what was otherwise all original. Secondly, while I was amused by your parody and this whole discussion, those links are the most worthwhile thing I've seen from either of you. Stupid engineer-brained me, to want to read factual numbers and see accurate methodology instead of watching two people insult each other.

Put another way: I find that most people hide behind citation to conceal the fact that they don't have any of their own thoughts, and I don't like that.

The last person I heard that from was a creationist who was indignant that I responded to his claim that there are no transitional fossils with details on mammal, whale, bird, and horse lineages. It knocked my opinion of him down a notch, too. Not that his writing was ever as good as yours to begin with.

Reasons for stereotypes?

[belgin]

There is a definate stereotype on the net that geeks and software professionals, like engineers, are overwhelmingly male. Just look at reactions to Miranda in User Friendly.

Unfortunately, My experience is that it is true. Whether this gender segregation is based on a great conspiracy or whatever, I think it tends to occur because of the way Western cultures tend to work. I can only really speak for American culture, though.

If you look at the statistics on a recent /. article about characteristics of programmers, you will note that they score an I and a T on the Myers-Briggs almost all the time. If you expand to all enginners, you will find the same trend, but not as pronounced. The problem is that on about 20% of the population is an introvert (I), and only 20% of women are in the thinking (T) category, while closer to 80% of men are. 20% of 20% is about 4% of all women are likely to be interested in these fields. (Yes, I know statistics don't work like that, but I am simplifying.) In contrast, 80% of 20% would be 16% of all men. This would make men 4 times as likely to enter these fields if these numbers were fairly accurate.

What all that gibberish meant, was that only a Very small subset of women have the personality traits that are typical in these lines of work. Add to that the fact that many families and communities have strongly discouraged women from scientific and engineering fields in the past, and of course you have a gender imbalance in the originators of this medium. This leads to a mild chain effect that makes the female presence on the web seem smaller. Our American culture also pushes down sexist ideas from mainstream view for either sex, but there are a lot more men who are long time veterans of the net than women, for the reasons detailed above. You'll notice that the very sexist issues that come up on the net are usually porn related. Porn is almost entirely directed at men, straight or homosexual.

The end result of all of this is that it is easy for feminists and Femi-Nazis to feel that women are discriminated against. The only areas of the net where gender counts at all are usually targeted at men. This is simply because there have been more men in the past. It is changing, but change always takes some time, especially when it is to a community, even one that changes as quickly as the net.

B. Elgin

On-line usage....

[GoNINzo]

There should be another aspect that should be pointed out in the race for technology.

There have been several media related technologies advanced signicantly by the search for porn. An excellent example is VCR's. Guys bought the VCR's, the guys programmed the vcr's, the girls said 'wow these are useful!' and use them as well. Now, it is a gender neutral technological item.

The same thing will happen with the internet eventually. Many girls I know are involved in using their computers for their own purposes, but very few use their computers solely for porn. However, I've met a few guys who have bought cluster arrays to store their porn. Hell, look at Cobalt's major vendor, it's porn online!

Anyway, once again, another modivating factor for men to get online (free porn!) and another modivating factor for women to turn gay (ugh. horny geeks.)

:g/porn/s//pornography/g

--
Gonzo Granzeau

Clueless?

[LetterRip]

"[Will women] be creators of software and virtual communities, or will they be disempowered users? "

Since when does software creation and virtual communities = empowerment? Or being a user suggest being disempowered?

Women have the highest number of college graduates both for undergraduates as well as Ph. D and Masters Programs. Just because many women prefer fields other than software engineering does not imply that they are disempowered. Check the graduate rolls for Med. Schools, Law Schools, and Business Schools.

LetterRip

Why so few women in the industry

[Pyr]

I'm a female geek myself, and the reason there are so few women in the tech fields is not that they're discouraged or gender roles or glass ceiling or anything like that, it's just they don't want to. How many people REALLY want to spend all their time sitting in front of a computer banging out code - something most people find incredibly boring?

There are two types of people in the computer industry: People who are there so they could make lots of money, and people who are there because they 'identify' in an odd way with computers. they feel they BELONG with computers. Going back to the columbine thread a long time ago.. why do people identify with computers? because they were social outcasts! I was a social outcast as a kid, but most girls don't experience being an outcast the way most boys do, and thus they never will turn to computers and develop the interest that leads them into a career in computers.

If we assume this is true, it'll take a MASSIVE social shift before women will become equally represented in the computer industry. We can throw millions of dollars at the 'problem', and although it may encourage a few women to become techies, for the most part it will be a failure.

Re:Why so few women in the industry

[raresilk]

I think what drives female representation in this industry is exactly what Pyr suggested: a feeling they "belong with computers" and a desire to belong with computers (not people) generated by being a social outcast. But in my opinion it's not that girls experience being a social outcast differently, it's that what makes a girl *become* a social outcast is different from what makes a boy *become* a social outcast. Traditionally (I know this is changing), girls are not expected to demonstrate "mastery" of some wordly area in order to achieve social acceptance. Boys are. An accepted boy must show his merits in some activity (sports is the best example.) But in contrast, girls' acceptance is largely premised on beauty and personality, not achievement. For a boy, the hacking world offers a psychological antidote for his failure to demonstrate the "mastery" that is demanded of boys for acceptance. Whether or not it's acknowledged, he knows he has mastered something. But for a girl, the hacking world may do nothing to remedy the sense that one's physical beauty or personality is deficient. Achieving mastery doesn't compensate for this in a girl in the same way it does for a boy. That, I think, is why you see a growing equality of male/female in use of the Internet (which allows one to transcend one's physical appearance and edit one's personality) but not in geekly fields (which are about mastery). Me personally, I should submit the disclaimer that I am a long-grown-up "girl" who does indeed find solace in seeking mastery of the bit-ly universe (when I have time.) But I'm not sure I'm the typical "girl."

FYI: Female Geeks Pages

[MAXOMENOS]

Just a few I was able to locate:

• Linux Chix
• Unix Sluts
• Girl Geek
• The Systers Home Page
• For gamers, GameGal.com
• and the slightly more gamer-oriented GameGirlz.com
• and the ever so punk GrrlGamer
• Of course, there's The Society of Women Engineers

This is just with five minute's looking.

Ain't I a woman?

[everstar]

Fairly obvious to whom? If we started trying to encourage women to be interested in technical matters, do you believe that women would continue to remain disinterested in the field?

I'm really puzzled by the ambivalence towards actively encouraging women to be interested in computers, math, and science. We're talking about actively, though perhaps unintentionally, telling half of the world's human population, No, I'm sorry, this isn't your area. You don't belong here. Why, in the name of whatever, would we want things to remain that way? Why doesn't it bother people more?

For myself, I'm a late-blooming geek, coming to realize that computers, logic, and "let's take it apart to see if it breaks or if we can put it back together" is a hell of a lot of fun. I wish I'd been into this sooner. How many more like me are there out in the world? Perhaps we need to stop thinking of this as a male/female thing (dualism sucks, anyway), and think of it more as a distributed computing thing. If we actively encourage women to take an interest in computers and technology, we'll have that much more brainpower working at problems, and therefore, probably solve those problems that much faster.

I also don't buy the theory that if women were truly interested in computers, they would have found some way to wiggle their way into the field, come hell or high water. It can be damn hard to make your way into a field you think your friends or parents or society disapproves of. If we introduced women to computers as a tool they can use and not a scary piece of equipment only men can handle, and kept trying, even if there were no immediate results apparent, I bet there would be a slow but steady swell in the number of women in computer science.

One of the worst parts about trying to be a woman who works with computers is putting up with all the damn men....

So who the heck am I?

[Alan]

I have always advocated one of the great things about the net being it's ability for anominity and how people are judged on merit, not looks, sex, age, or education.

I try to judge people by what they say and do, ie: what I can see of their work on the net. How can you do otherwise? If you thought someone had a great web page and said 'man, this person is a great designer' but then found they were ugly, old, young, gay, lesbian, or without a formal design education, would you recant?

I agree that the net's interactions with people (employment wise) are not necissarily "real life", however, I do use my 10+ years on the net and interactions with people on the net to help me in "real life". If someone is a great coder I don't give a flying fuck if they turn out to be a 12 year old colored quadrapledgic (who can't spell) or a 90 year old lesbian great grandmother. Their works are their portfolio.

I think we should all learn to deal with people in this way (or like this).

Hehehe, "Everything I learned about dealing with people I learned from Internet Chat rooms" :)

Example (probably offtopic, but....):
A while back I heard of a game company looking for a modeller. They said basically, send us some work, if we like it and it rocks you're hired.

No resumes, no interviews, nothing. They could end up hiring a 10 year old who has been playing with a pirated copy of 3ds. So what. /This/ is the kind of thing I like to see.

Example 2: I was hired 2 years ago by my current employer as a perl programmer. I had a degree but they didn't care about that, I had some OK C/C++ knowledge, but my perl experience was about good enough to do a hello world but thats it. But they didn't look at education or what I could do, they wanted me for what I had the potential for doing.

This is what I like to see :)

Links directly to the articles

[Ellen Spertus]

Very few of the comments have been about the articles in the news letter. Here are some pointers to the articles that I think would be of most interest to slashdotters. (Disclosure: I was a co-editor of the newsletter.)

• Ge nder Differences in CMC: Findings and Implications, by linguist Susan Herring gives the results of empirical studies of gender and CMC.
• Where Have Women Gone and Will They Be Returning provides the latest statistics on women and computing.
• Forb idden Technology is a fun piece on "the technology of the female orgasm".

On pr0n

[Greyfox]

My room mate was complaining to me the other day that there's lots more pr0n on the web for men than there is for women. I assume this is a disparity she'd like to see corrected. I further assume that doing good pr0n for Women would be significantly different than pr0n for men. I don't know that a whole lot of research has been done into what visual stimulii arouses women. I'd like to volunteer for that task and will be needing a government grant. Won't you be glad to know your tax dollars will FINALLY be put to a GOOD use? We could be looking at a multiple-billion dollar untapped industry here...

On a side note, notice how at least 90% of the pr0n on the net is very low-quality stuff that usually ends up making you just go "Eew!"? I'm thinking that life's too short to wade through all those bad images for the few good images that are out there. To that end, I think and "Internet Pr0n Review" web site should be set up in order to review all the Pr0n on the internet at any given time (And possibly even dead tree pr0n as well.) How's that for a business model? All I have to do is start it off and wait for the IPO.

Re:Female Slashdot Readers: Your attention please

[ForteBravo]

Of course there are female Slashdot readers. If any of them are like me, they are thinking that this subject is purely sociopolitical, not technical, and therefore gets a 'Whatever' on the scale of Dull to Ubernerdly. But what the hell, unlike the vast majority of these posters, I did peruse the newsletter...let me address a few choice quotes that made me scoff.

Invisibility: Some games contain no women characters at all--many sports simulations are typical of this absence. Girls and women aren't included in such games as the NHL Hockey or NFL Football.

Fancy that. Those male coders out there are writing games meant to be as realistic as possible and they're not putting female hockey players in an NHL game? Those bastards!!!

Tomb Raider 's Lara Croft (with 36-24-36 measurements) promotes an image of femininity nearly unattainable by most girls.

How many fat-ass geek boys with cheeto dust on their scraggly beards get to star in videogames? The male body as portrayed in videogames is unattainable as well. Not even with steroids could a guy end up looking like good ol Duke.
Sure, we all "know" that duke and lara aren't real, aren't meant to be real, but if we are going to throw up our hands about body image, let's not forget boys -- there have been plenty of studies showing that boys and girls are pretty much equally subject to body dysmorphia. Since the standards are different, the effects are different -- bulimia vs steroid use.

I will go out on a limb and say that this particular article, though, is not as bad as these two quotes represent. However, it has a tendency to fail to call on real data, instead using dubious logic and/or anecdote-style "proof".

Some of the articles are more interesting -- actual research documenting female behavior online, or good ideas about the real problem (fewer women going into science and engineering).

If you are a man reading this and you are particularly clever, you will have noticed that I have a gender-neutral login. Whatever you think is the reason for this, you'll probably be wrong.

Here's a theory for you -- our good buddy and cybergod Steve Wozniak left coding to give something back by teaching. Do you think maybe that there is a form of reverse sexism that discourages boys from going into such non-macho fields as education? I've seen quite a few posts on slashdot from tech support guys who say that they feel quite rewarded when they educate a customer about this or that...perhaps their true calling was teaching, but they were discouraged. Maybe this is the reason that there is a bias -- it's not that there are no women in tech, it's that there are no men in other women-dominated fields. Polarization from multiple forms of sexism.

Amanda G.

There is no sig

There's just so much to say on this subject...

[CaptainCarrot]

I may ramble a bit. It's a big subject, and in my view there's a lot wrong.

Frankly, the idea of "gender issues" gives me hives. Clearly, in an ideal world career opportunities would be available strictly based on ability and performance. Relative to a community, we might speak in terms of esteem and contribution rather than opportunity and ability. That we do not live in an ideal world, and that "gender" as such plays a role in these things is self-evident - and unfortunate. But it is easy to over-analyze this fact to the point of absurdity, and to overstate the problem to the point of untruthfulness. I think that is what has been done in this issue of the CPSR newsletter.

I put "gender" in quotes because I'm a bit of a language purist. I believe that current trends in the development of English tend to make it a clumsier and less expressive form of communication. I therefore strongly dislike the use of "gender" to mean "sex." Not so long ago, "gender" was a strictly grammatical term, and "sex" was used to denote both the act of copulation and la difference. Somehow, in the process of the societal changes that made copulation so free and easy (in theory anyway), "sex" lost it's second meaning. I'm sure that a contributing factor is that there is no gender in English, and where it does occur it tends to be in loan words or neologisms from Latin. An irritant, nevertheless.

I only had time to read the introduction and selected articles, but if the sort of research exemplified by this article is any sample, the data presented is virtually worthless. The information presented about "Women's Language" vs. "Men's Lanugage" in online interactions, for example, is nonsensical. It is:

• Dated - the data are from 1994. This is an eternity online. Does the author really imagine that nothing has changed since then?
• Subjective - An example is "Explicit justifications" under Women's Language vs. "Presuppositions" under Men's. Well, maybe the author thought so. But anyone who routinely interacts with MOTOS, and is paying attention, knows that each sex possesses its own set of presuppositions which are often so ingrained as to be invisible to the individual. Besides, justifications can only go so far. Behind every justification is a set of presuppositions. Formally, these are called "axioms".
• Inaccurate - According to this table, women do not engage in humor or sarcasm online. Apparently these people have never met my wife, or the women with whom she interacts online - or, for that matter the women with whom I interact online. I could say the same about some the other characterizations.

Actually, every "fact" presented in this article is contradicted by my personal experience. While the latter necessarily constitutes nothing more than anecdotal evidence, I would expect that I would encounter at least some examples of the general case! I participate in discussion groups on a number of topics ranging from Eastern Orthodox Christianity to Renaissance Faires to PC games, to the panoply of topics on Slashdot. In every instance, where the topic may be expected to be of equal interest to both sexes, there is equal or superior representation of women both numerically and in terms of participation.

One irritating assumption is that it is necessarily a Bad Thing that women are underrepresented in the technical occupations. Why should that be perceived as a problem? Is there a great deal of concern over the preponderance of women in the teaching profession? Or nursing? As small-business owners? As recipients of college degrees? As moralistic nationally syndicated talk show hosts?

I don't know why the fact, evident from centuries of experiences of both sexes, that men and women do not think the same way, have different priorities in life, and find different things to be interesting, should be so disturbing. Women as a group are simply not interested in things geekly. I received my bachelor's degree in 1985 from a small engineering college on the East Coast. Formerly a men-only institution, they had been co-ed for at least 10 years by the time I matriculated. The male-to-female ratio was 7:1, and from what I hear this hasn't changed. Similar trends obtain nationwide. There is no bar, either legally or socially, against women attending these institutions. They don't want to.

(As it happens, my own social circle in college was split between the sexes roughly 50-50 as is my group here at work, so I obviously know a large number of women who are interested. I speak in the general case.)

I can only conclude that the author of this particular article, and the others in this issue of the CPSR newsletter, feel they have some vested interest in generating a sense of sex-based exclusion in online interactions that does not in fact exist. I decline to speculate on what that might be. I do think that as a result their views are not worthy of serious consideration - and certainly not of affecting public policy - unless they can assemble a more compelling set of data.

Re:Gender neutral

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I would have to disagree with that. I have worked in UNIX shops that always had a few women, and they seemed to be promoted on a pretty regular basis. But then again I always tended to work in the larger shops (where performance counts a lot more), Texas really seems to have more women in systems (I have worked in Mass and NY/NYC and California, so those are my comparison points), all the old mainframe shops in Texas were/are full of women, many of whom were promoted and many of whom wound up moving from punch cards through an executive MBA over 20+ years. Of course, that may also be because I am not cheap, and places that need me are probably not so poorly run as others. It depends where you are. I had a hell of a hard time in systems growing up because I was not one of the network monkeys and really liked UNIX, two things that made you an outcast in mainframe shops in the early and mid 1980s. So it isn't just women. I have had friends have very similar experiences in NT shops, when the morons had come home to roost. And a lot of them are men. Sex isn't the only thing that people discriminate against.

I am sure that it warms your heart to be on the PC side of the discussion, but things are hard all over. Most women my age (I am 39 now) who really worked hard at programming/systems/databases are doing very well, many contracting like me. Is a woman making $250,000 a year disenfranchised? Umm, I would say that the answer is "No", Bob. It took them as long as me. It would be fair to say that women face different problems in the workplace, but they are not exclusively singled out.

Furthermore, I have watched PC attempts to get more women into computing fail over and over again. Some of the engagements that I have been on have been Federal, some state, and you see that a lot. This is not a profession that the uninterested do well in. Women are not in systems because they don't want to be. It almost always is their fault. And how is this different from anyone else? Think about it for a second ... were you forced into it? Would you be here if you didn't like it? You can discuss root causes six ways from Sunday and I am sure that there are a lot of morons out there (my wife was told that it was unladylike to do math when she was in high school -- she ignored it), but ultimately you have to have the spine to persevere. On your own, alone.

I would like to be sympathetic, but hey, I am fifth generation college educated on both sides of my family (including the women) and my mother taught me COBOL as a kid. She runs Linux (Debian, 2.0.38 as of last month) and she is 71. And she did it without needed a Federal welfare program to feel better about being a woman in systems. My wife is a DB2/MVS jock. She came up the hard way, and she too doesn't feel bad about it. My daughters are now 11 and 14, and they can type 80+ wpm, both do pretty good perl, and are making pin money (that expression dates me a little) doing html scripting, and I never forced them into anything (well, perhaps showing them the SP stacks at an early age kinked them). I would like to be sympathetic to the plight of women in systems, but ...

Politically Incorrect Ranting (Take a look around)

[xtal]

No women in tech fields? God, who would have known? Are people just beginning to notice this? I've been involved with computer related activities (one of those social outcasts mentioned in many other posts) for some time now. And ya know what? I don't see (m)any females, period. Sure, there are one or two. But I've worked all across North America, and the number of women in engineering positions is low!

There are some women in technical writing and related fields (support). I have met (2), count 'em, 2, females developing C++. And frankly, I wasn't too impressed with the skills of one of them (not to be sexist or anything). I have met literally hundreds of male engineers / programmers though - the range of companies spanning everything from small shops, to academia, to big corps (hello Intel!). Some of those males had code that sucked too - but the ratios are astonishing.

Any stats on /.? This is a more general forum than I'm talking about - my background is electrical engineering - and it's still, way, way, way, way male oriented.

So, obviously, there is a serious issue here - is it an issue though? Maybe, concidering that hardcore engineering and programming/design jobs are going to make up more and more of the high paying jobs that are available in the future.

Let's get to the root of it: In western culture, computers aren't cool. Engineers, well, they're not real cool either, by association. This is not the case in many eastern societies, where engineers and tech people are pretty hot shit (pardon my french) as far as potential mates/partners/etc go.

I think a lot of this doesn't have much to do with male vs female genetic differences. It might have a little, but I doubt it. I think it has much more to do with how people (females, especially) are socialized - specifically, that social status, attractiveness, social connections, etc are much more important in the formative years than hacking away on a computer. And this is more important than a lot of people think - most of the skills I have now I can trace the roots back to hacking on my old Commodore 64, learning assembler so I could run programs on my 1541 disk drive :).

There are exceptions to the above, sure. We're talking general trends though. And one of the things that I love about this industry is there is no discrimination. If your code rocks, I don't care if you're a she, he, it, pierced, gay, asexual, socially inept - your code rocks. Being able to communicate with others helps too though :). But, that's all part of being a good hacker.. a la social engineering :).

Personally, a shortage of tech workers is a good thing - it makes me more valuable. That's microeconomics, though. hehehe.

There's my $0.02 (cdn)

Kudos!