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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."
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.
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.
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."
If women make up the minority in one field, then they make the majority in another.
Yes, well... I suppose if Job A makes $100,000 a year and Job B makes $20,000 a year, if 50 people from Group A are in Job A, and 50 people from Group B are in Job B, then we have no reason to suggest that something could be amiss here.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
She never asked for special treatment.
Yes but this is Slashdot, a mixture of misogyny and failure to read the actual articles.