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Red Team, Blue Team: the Only Woman On the Team
ancientribe writes "Cyber security pro Kerstyn Clover in this Dark Reading post shares some rare insight into what it's like to be a woman in the field. She ultimately found her way to her current post as a member of the incident response and forensics team at SecureState, despite the common societal hurdles women face today in the STEM field: 'I taught myself some coding and computer repair in probably the most painstaking ways possible, but my experiences growing up put me at a disadvantage that I am still working to overcome,' she writes."
Who cares. Women can do anything men can do, so why is this a big deal.
Article Summary;
"I am a woman, therefore I deserve special treatment. All men have it easy because they are men. I have statistics to prove that I deserve special consideration because there are less women then men in certain fields."
Are we not counting Tex, or Griff's sister?
Every geek who is interested in programming taught themselves.
When she comes home. To herself and her preferred partners. Are you any different with your private parts?
SecureState...ah, those guys. They don't seem to quite "get it." For example, they were hyping their services, in terms of benefits towards HIPAA compliance...on a LinkedIn group that was explicitly and specifically focused (and named) on NERC compliance. HIPAA is health care, NERC is power grid. Not only totally different compliance regimes, but totally different industries as well. And the regulations don't even share much commonality: HIPAA puts the main focus on privacy while NERC doesn't even mention the word (or any synonym of the word). But everyone's career has a few "stepping stone" jobs, and it can be a golden opportunity to be the smart one among a field of twits.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Bring out the electron microscope...
You have just proved her point. Could have been a little more creative at it though.
So STEM means "I taught myself some coding and computer repair" now?
Duh no need no education...
Looking forward to the posts from males dismissing her experience because it doesn't match what they believe about the industry and how it works.
Well, not really.
Too dumb to click a link, yet somehow able to post?!
You wouldn't understand it anyway son.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I'll have you know, you'll only need an optical microscope. Smartass.
I'm so sick of women crying because (generally speaking) their gender hasn't bothered to learn technology. Qualified women get hired before qualified men. Cry me fucking river you Blue/Red Bitch!
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
From the article: "I taught myself some coding and computer repair in probably the most painstaking ways possible, but my experiences growing up put me at a disadvantage that I am still working to overcome. Throughout college, I was secretly fighting tooth and nail to understand concepts, references, and information that my classmates knew from young ages. From what I can tell, this is not uncommon."
I was a TA in college for intro CS classes, and I can tell you that not many kids understand this stuff right off the bat. Very few understood it by the end of the first semester. Most were just blindly typing and eventually, the monkeys typed Shakespeare. So, this woman not special. Nor is she special because she is a woman. In fact, I see nothing about her in this article that makes her any different from the thousands of others in the field.
The hurdles are real. If you are not doing what society approves of for your gender/race/age/etc then you will face more problems than if you are conforming to society's expectations.
And you will have less support.
Just because the hurdles will be intangible does not make the imaginary. Even the best of the best need a social structure in order to feed themselves and promote their work.
What utter tripe. I hope you're not in CS but sadly I suspect you are.
Ugh I feel sorry for you.
It's worth noting that a recent study found that only 16% of female characters in movies and TV are shown to hold a job in any STEM field.
And what percentage of men in movies and TV are shown to hold a job of that kind? I'd be surprised if it was more than 20. No need to invalidate your claims by dropping useless statistics.
In fact, I think movies and TV do a remarkable job of disproportionately representing women in fields dominated by men in reality.
The most painstaking may I can think of to learn something is to apply voltages directly to my brain to directly etch the skills into my head.
And before anybody says if you operated on the brain correctly, you wouldn't be feeling any pain from it because you wouldn't be touching your pain nerve sensors... just how accurate do you think you're gonna be if you're doing self brain surgery?
No wonder you posted AC.
Women are often attracted to problem solving positions and intellectual pursuits. And hopefully more and more women will quit caring about stereotypes and historically approved gender roles and just get out and do the work and prove themselves. Your ridiculous analysis about what women want or look for in a career makes it a turn off to think about working with people like you who will assume the woman who wants the job must be somehow aberrant.
I've seen the reverse stereotype more often: the nerdy introverted sexually repressed male who can't string a sentence together when face to face with a customer, but still thinks he's superior because if you lock him in a dark room for 4 days he'll turn out a bit of software that is perfect in its execution except it wasn't what anyone wanted.
CS is like any other field, there are a lot of different personality types who can carve themselves out a role in which to be a solid contributor. Precious few real world problems get solved solely by the nerd in the basement.
It's fine to have women in computing, but I worry about the exclusion of men from a lot of the initiatives she mentioned. If you have an analytic mind, it doesn't matter if you're female, but many of these programs seem to encourage the idea that it does matter, by inviting only women and excluding men. That isn't fixing the problem, that's just reversing it.
I'm willing to accept that women aren't treated well in tech because it's often repeated by people who are women, and who are in tech, but I think it's reasonable to expect entrants to a world as close-knit as this one to conform to the culture, rather than asking the culture to conform to them. Again, outright sexism is bad, but there's been so much hostility toward innocent people because of imaginary sexism that the situation is getting worse, not better. Why can't we all just get along?
Yes, it's true. Some professions are dominated by men, some by women. Nature made it that way. People should be allowed to go into whatever profession they desire without being hindered by some asshole with a sexist complex (of either gender). If they can't cut it, they should be let go like anyone else without screaming "discrimination".
That said, I think more men should be allowed to go backstage to compete at lingerie shows,
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
We're being over run by giant snails.
her name isn't Alice. ;)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
An anecdote: My wife works in an accounting department that was, until recently, all women.
When they hired their first male accountant (a new college grad with absolutely no experience), he was given an office all to himself, despite the fact that my wife (a controller, no less) has been sharing an office with a temp worker for the past several years.
Why did he get his own office, when she has more education, experience, and seniority? Because, as she put it, "all the other women here are scared of his dick."
So yea, women being treated differently is an issue in the workplace, but don't try and bullshit me by saying men are the only ones engaging in discrimination.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
This woman's argument is poorly made at best and (I think) intentionally disingenuous at worst. She makes allusions to gender bias without ever really making the statement directly (which is, I believe, because she can't). She makes claims about difficulties that essentially are not faced by a particular gender but rather EVERYONE - man, woman, child, parakeet etc. And then finishes with a lot of talk that vaguely centers around equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. Equality of outcome is a pernicious piece of feminist logic because it tacitly supports and endorses INEQUALITY as a means to an end as long as women control it and are the main beneficiaries which is EXACTLY the behavior they decry as being so unjust in the first place. It is hypocrisy and as usual, women are just fine with it as long as they benefit.
This is an early twenty-something, so I'm going to be reasonably gentle. The bulk of the most cringeworthy comments can be as likely put down to the age as to the gender, and I'm going to try to be as charitable as possible.
"...there is something to be said for finally seeing someone you can relate to, who looks like you..." - Might want to steer clear of explicitly saying that you want to work with someone that LOOKS like you. I get your meaning, but since you're pretty much writing the essay to criticize males for acting exclusionary, the answer isn't to be equally tribalistic in turn. You might imagine, with some empathy, that men TOO like to work with someone THEY can relate to, who looks like them, without the (let's be frank, as we're talking about 20-somethings who are still relatively awash in hormones) distraction of a woman in the largely-male, mostly-hetero environment.
"...the long list of people (mostly women) who have published ...about the gender disparity in STEM/tech fields and faced incredible backlash..."
ANYONE that posits a position, right or wrong, faces incredible backlash today. Welcome to the world. Take a political position: you can pretty much be assured that the number and vehemence of threats is directly related to the size of your audience and how broadly your message is reaching. See it as a compliment. (That is, unless you want special protection from 'stalking' or 'come-ons' because you're female - you know, the 'weaker' sex?)
"...I taught myself some coding and computer repair in probably the most painstaking ways possible..." Really? Like, well, teaching yourself in your room, in the garage, in the basement? I'm going to bet that at least 80% of your male peers learned the same way. And none of them would call it 'painstaking'. Generally, it would be seen as a mark of honor that you earned your knowledge the hard way.
Meh, it's not worth dissecting the essay further.
Stop walking around with a chip on your shoulder. Women can do anything a man can do, and pretty much any man under 40 (and most of them over that) would consider utterly without question. The others you can just disregard.
Tip for Kerstyn, as I'm nearly certain she'll read these comments: I know you think you're grown up. It feels like it, I'm sure. You aren't. You have nearly zero life experience outside the cloistered halls of academia. Keep fighting, keep struggling, but understand that you are very young and have likely earned nothing of note in the eyes of your peers....you get that through time served.
Fighting assholes in the workplace is part of life, as well. Various people will like you or resent you for a myriad of reasons - who you are friends with, where you park, what you like to eat, who you vote for, etc. But the truth is this: If you feel marginalized or disregarded, understand that it is most probably everything to do with your (real) inexperience, and nothing to do with your reproductive organs.
-Styopa
1) Women generally are less willing than men to do things that result in them becoming social outcasts as a youth. This will lead to a lot fewer girls doing things that lead them to STEM jobs later in life.
2) Women are a lot less willing to take jobs with low satisfaction and high working hours in order to get high pay. CS-related jobs, of course, tend to be like this. This effect is made even bigger by the fact that it's still, even in these liberated days, a lot more acceptable for the man to be the primary breadwinner, allowing the woman more freedom to choose a lower-paying but more satisfying job.
Protip: Just because there are few women Coal Miners, doesn't mean anyone's preventing them from being coal miners... Men and women like different things in general... otherwise, explain sex?
If there are sick people in the hospital, that doesn't mean the hospitals make you sick. If there are few male romance novelists that doesn't mean that the field is sexist against men.
Since the 70's never married women make more than never married men. The USA is 77% white. If you find far less than 50%, say 23% of a sample is minorities... that means equality, not racism. Radicalism is bullshit.
Sorry, I just can't tolerate any of the stupid ass crime shows. Everybody please stop watching them right now. Is it off? OK, good.
As a woman who's worked in IT from the start of my career (for 35 years now), I've seen the good and the bad - the entire spectrum. And you know what? Not only have things improved (attitudes, opportunities, and salaries) but they were never all that bad to begin with compared to other fields my friends work in.
There are simply some fields where women have not historically been as active as men, and it's a social change that will take a long time to address. It's not really being reinforced such that the problem will get worse, but it's not something that has a magic bullet that will fix it.
Moreover, it really is whining to tell us all the sob stories in your career. Guys have them too, albeit perhaps ones from different perspectives. And you know what they do about them? Suck it up and keep working. Some of the girls I've worked with default to complaining, and that only conflicts with the guy's attitudes and makes things worse.
There is a middle ground that we'll reach, but both men and women have to be willing to hit that middle ground. Men seem to overwhelmingly understand this, and women are slowly getting there as well. Female IT workers can glorify themselves as pioneers paving the way for their progeny, if they want to, but they have to be willing to take the lumps themselves.
Guys have made it almost fashionable to work in IT now, whereas when I began it was viewed as a place where social reject nerds congregated. Women really have no excuse to not want to be there, unless they want to blame external factors for having a lack of courage and faith in their own abilities. Some of that might be true, but if guys were able to turn the industry kinda cool, then we have no excuse.
The amount of misogyny on /. would be comical if it wasn't so troubling.
I taught myself some coding and computer repair in probably the most painstaking ways possible
And you found yourself in the IRT. Frankly, that you got there is a miracle and has nothing to do with gender, but with the fact that if someone with half a clue put it together, he was looking for experts who know their stuff even when you wake them with an emergency at 4 am.
I've been working in IT for almost 20 years. Yes, women are few. But I'll punch the next one who whines about widespread discrimination straight in the face, because it's a lie. Most nerds are too afraid to give them any shit, most managers are happy to find a woman in the field, and most of the rest frankly don't give a fuck if you're man, woman, transvestite or an alien from Betelgeuse, as long as you know what you're doing.
If you want to complain about discrimination, there's dozens of jobs out there where even an outsider can see it still exists. IT isn't one of them.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I work in porn, you insensitive clod!
For any women, or me, interested in cyber-security, the Texas A&M system has some free, online, college credit courses at http://teex.com/
Whoah, chip on shoulder. I'm a geek, I've been bullied, but sheesh take a look around. Computers are mainstream, the IT group (99.99% male) is even more mainstream than development or engineering, there's no need to be shunned by society because you like an incredibly popular field.
So you were a geek and picked on, left out of all the stuff the cool kids did. But you found a group of fellow geeks who sympathized with you perhaps. Now imagine being a geek but the fellow geeks also picked on you because you were a girl and were ruining their fun geek computer clique.
STEM has nothing to do with being social outcasts, at least not today.
I don't doubt many women feel intimidated or unwelcome in male-dominated fields, but it's worth noting from the author's bio
http://www.darkreading.com/authors/Kerstyn-Clover
that she graduated high school at 15. This probably contributed quite a lot to her feeling out-of-place, as well, as she would generally have been much younger than her academic peers in many of the situations she discussed. It's also possible she might have intimidated some her classmates or created an impression that since she was already so advanced academically that she didn't require much in the way of encouragement or direction.
Again this isn't to say that there aren't possibly problems related to what she talks about in the article, but it does reduce the extent to which her experiences can be believed to be truly representative and points to some other potential sources of her insecurities that weren't mentioned.
Read this blog post which references actual studies and then tell me gender bias is not real. Can't read? I'll summarize it: send out a resume to a bunch of people. Sometimes use a male name, other times use a female name. Have the recipient rate the candidate and guess what? The resume with the male name scores higher in their estimation. When asked how much they would pay the candidate, the male is always valued higher. Even if the person evaluating the resume is a women.
Many orchestras now perform blind auditions, because they discovered that gender and physical appearance of the candidate skewed their perception of the candidate's performance. There are studies that test people's cognitive abilities after the most subtle forms of "priming." Stereotype susceptibility is a real thing, proven in study after study. Remind a group of asian girls they are asian before they take a math test, their scores increase. Remind them they are girls, their scores go down.
We are social animals, even those of us that lack social skills, and constant social pressure has real world ramifications. It amazes me that a site of self-professed nerds is populated with so many people that don't question their own biases.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
I see nothing about her in this article that makes her any different from the thousands of others in the field.
I see nothing that separates her from thousands of other barely average or even substandard workers in the field and millions of other average or substandard hopefuls(mostly men) who couldn't get into the field at all due to a lack of luck, breaks, or special treatment.
Gender should not be a factor in filling IT positions. Factors should be:
Ability.
Availability. (Employment status, ability to work the needed hours, travel...)
Company/employee fit.
Desire.
Just because you tried hard doesn't mean you should have the job. Having a penis or a vagina shouldn't be a decision factor and, after 20 years in the industry I have yet to see a case where it was.
But, there no shortage of articles whining on Slashdot.
Have gnu, will travel.
Especially when it comes to hacking. Just a conjencture.
Obligatory western gender-equality cliches aside, the scene imploded the second things got commercialized by mid 2000s. From that point onwards, male hackers seem to suck horribly at team work. Trust issues. This leads to a lot of inefficiency and wheel-reinvention (to the point where independent 0day re-discovery is fairly common occurrence, if you wish, academic/famwhoring publishing seems to be lagging behind severely).
Women may be generally not as good equipped with spatial/critical thinking you need to posses in this field, but are much better in the social/information management/opsec aspect. One can expect that ultimately, sheer power of team work and more humble approach might vanquish male arrogance/ego (which is a good driving force, but isolates you a great deal).
Female-friendly: emphasis on feeeeelings, consensus, political correctness, male nerdiness extinguishing, etc. is incompatible with CS
I'm not sure what the fuck 'male nerdiness extinguishing' is, but good IT teams do build consensus and do have respect for feelings.
Quite how political correctness comes into this I really don't know, either from a gender perspective or a CS one. Most people in IT that I've encountered are no more or less politically correct than people outside the field when you factor in education, background and intelligence.
That'll be why many women still resist dating people that work in IT.
It's not as stigmatized but it still involves lots of lonely hours in the basement...
WRONG.
A woman cannot pee around a corner without using special equipment. Men for the win!
Look, I know it's not much, but we have to work with what God gave us, you know? Men, be proud of your uniquely male corner-around-peeing ability, and the ease with which you can write your name in the snow. To the drum circle, boys!
I don't think her experience was gender biased against learning computers, at least not when she was a senior in high school.
I also work in IT security and a VERY common story, in most any IT field, is about how people were exposed to computers in the 6th or 7th grade getting their first computer (a Commodore or an Apple back in my day) for a birthday or Christmas present. We all learned programming in the most painstaking ways. Using different methods, we came up with on our own, we self taught ourselves our first programming languages. I used to type in games from computer magazines and download them from our local radio station (through a tape drive)... and then make changes and see what would happen, at first it tended to be very bad things, but I eventually learned. The methods vary but the theme is pretty universal, being self taught.
So, I would have had 6 years more exposure than say someone, who as a Sr. in high school just thought "Maybe I'll give computers a try?". That's a huge gap to overcome. Now you might think that it was gender biased against learning computers for girls at that age, because parents don't buy junior high school girls computers, and when I was growing up that would have been hard to dispute. Even with that said I had such a fascination with computers my parents finally gave in and got me one just to shut me up about it(also a common theme). I'm sure a female with the same fascination would have not been denied a computer either. Now what gives a larger percentage of males that fascination? I couldn't say but answer that and and you will likely have found the reason why there are more males that work in computer related fields than females.
Now taking a critical look at today's computers and operating systems is a completely different story. When I got my first computer it booted up and you were at a prompt where you could enter commands in BASIC programming language. So, learning BASIC was required. But today, the average computer user can do so many things without knowing any computer languages, point and click. So, what will happen to future IT workers that grow up in this era? We will have to wait and see. Maybe that same fascination will drive people to get into web or app development, who knows?
(although that is probably at least part of it)
It could just be about the differing level of privilege men and women enjoy in society.
I read an interesting article about this that crystallized the thought for me:
http://pgbovine.net/tech-privi...
The interesting part of this discussion is how quickly people have dismissed the content of the article when it doesn't match their experience.
Many of the posts follow a theme similar to:
"What makes her so extraordinary? I went through the same thing and I'm a guy. It was no big deal."
I wonder if reading it that way makes the privilege implicit in the question more obvious?
To answer the question:
Taking as a given that men and women have equivalent mental capacity and that women are underrepresented in technical fields, she is extraordinary because she surmounted the barriers preventing other women from pursuing similar roles.
I suppose I should not be surprised at the lack of empathy on Slashdot after reading it for decades, but the circle-jerkiness of a lot these posts finally convinced me to say something.