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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."
She never asked for special treatment.
She told about her experiences and about her being discouraged by people who thought she shouldn't be doing what she's doing because she was a girl.
The result of the article was that they were having an even to create awareness about the field, and to offer support to any girls who would like to help but might feel uncomfortable because they're girls too, and they might feel that girls aren't supposed to do these things.
In my mind, this is some of the best kind of action to try and help women fairly get into the field. She's reaching out to girls who are already interested in the field, but nervous about how they might be perceived, and she's offering to support them. She's not pushing for special treatment, she's not pushing for special hiring practices. She's not even claiming things aren't fair.
She's saying: "I'm a woman in this field, it was culturally hard for me to get into here because I'm a woman, but I'm enjoying it and I got to be pretty good at it. If you are interested in the field but are afraid to pursue it because you're a woman, we're hosting an event for men and women where you can learn about it, and drop me a line so I can give you some support."
It takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance to claim women can do anything men can do, then ask for special treatment so that you can prove it.
I wouldn't laud her her success as a female security professional-- because that's BS-- but because she has done so at the age of 21. That's the more impressive part.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
You should search for "feminist mathematics" and you'll get some interesting reading.
I don't know how mainstream it is, but there is a feminist movement that accepts that male and female brains work differently, and that therefore different approaches are needed to include women in science and mathematics. For example, check out this preview of a paper which discusses a need for a new philosophy, pedagogy, and epistemology for mathematics. I don't have access to the full text, but for me it's previewing page 1 (just an intro) and page 276 which is dealing with pedagogy. This is one of the critiques for why current mathematical teaching is unsuitable for women:
Mathematics tends to be taught with a heavy reliance upon written texts which removes its conjectural nature, presenting it as inert information which should not be questioned. Predominant patterns of teaching focus on the individual learner and induce competition between learners. Language is pre-digested in the text, assuming that meaning is communicated and is non-negotiable. [...]
Like science, therefore, mathematics is perceived by many students and some teachers as "a body of established knowledge accessible only to a few extraordinary individuals" (Rosser, op.cit. p. 89). Indeed, the supposed 'objectivity' of the discipline, a cause for questioning and concern by some of those within it, is often perceived by non-mathematician curriculum theorists as inevitable....
I mean what do you think of that? Boys do pretty well, apparently, with this type of teaching and the view that mathematical theory is objective and that by writing things down we can communicate knowledge. But there are "feminist mathematician curriculum theorists" who think that's BS and that it's a social construct resulting from the influence of male thinking in mathematics. There's a better way to teach it to girls.
True? Or do you think these feminists are as crazy as the guy you responded to in thinking that just maybe men and women think differently? They are taking two different approaches (one criticizes the female brain for not understanding it as presented when the male brain has no problem doing so, the other criticizes the material and its presentation as unsuitable for the female brain) but the underlying message is the same. I'm curious what you think about this.