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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?"
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,
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
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
B. Elgin
"Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."
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.
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
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"If children weren't copyrighted, no one would have babies." -- Alex Eulenberg
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.
And the brethren went away edified.
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!
..don't panic
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.