Are your skirts cut above the knee? Do your blouses show cleavage? It is perfectly possible to dress professionally and attractively (ie. not "manly") without being distracting. I'm not making an unreasonable assumption, I have no idea how you dress, but if guys are going "bazonkers" when you walk by I assume you are giving them some reason to.
Apparently, you've never gone shopping for women's clothing.;-) I've heard there's this place in France, where they have people dress up funky and walk down a narrow stage, and then that determines what everyone stocks in their stores that year. A couple of years ago, I swear, it was nearly IMPOSSIBLE to find anything that wasn't this particular shade of pink.
In other words... you don't really get to browse among different skirt lengths and collar styles. The vast majority of the skirts will be the same length, and the collars will be of similar cuts. Some years, clothes look great on me; some years, they suck for me. Luck o' the draw.
But no, in general, when I wear professional skirts (and it's been a long time since I've done that, to be honest, but a lot of women do feel more comfortable in a skirt), they're cut right at the knee. And in general, I don't show cleavage. But I've still been in a lot of "professional" situations where when I walk into a room, the mood just... changes... like blood in the water. Heck, I don't even wear makeup much of the time. I like to think I'm reasonably attractive, but no one's ever called me a "knockout." I do look distinctly female, though.
And it is *not* a reasonable assumption that, if a woman is getting ogled, she gave them "some reason to." In fact, the reasonableness of that assumption diminishes proportionately with the percentage of women in that particular field.;-)
Yeah, I know. I was just having some fun because this is stupid slashdot and I didn't want to write an entire serious post. I would've included a winky emoticon if it wouldn't have resulted in unrelenting flames of wrath from the flocks of nerds circling above.
Well, on your behalf then,;-). (See, I can get away with it, because I'm female.)
Supervisor tells supervisee "stop being a wimp" when it complains about something. If that's a man-to-man conversation it's not an issue but if it's man-to-woman it's asking for a discrimination suit.
Is there *any* professional situation where it's appropriate for a supervisor to use namecalling? If men put up with that kind of response, I feel sorry for them. I wouldn't put up with that from *any* supervisor, regardless of gender. If I have a complaint, I want it responded to, even if the response is "I'm sorry, that's part of the job. It's something you'll have to get used to." I would be pretty p*ssed off if someone decided to try to shame me into recanting it with name-calling.
It's a 100 person company. No on-site childcare if they want to stay in business.
Under the current model, that's true... but that should change.
Management can't telecommute and be anywhere near effective.
There may be a few types of jobs that's a truism for, but in general, that's an artifact of the way the company is built, not a given.
Part-time VP of marketing? More paid leave? My whole point is that they're taking time off is a bad thing.
And my point is that our current system sees things this way, but that is bad for society, because it (a) forces a false dichotomy of choosing work *or* family, and usually forces it on women; and (b) forces the family to bifurcate, leading to one parent losing out on the opportunity to fully bond with the children.
She made plenty more, she just didn't want to work any more, she wanted to raise kids.
And there are no men who up and quit because they want to change careers? Because that's what this is... changing careers. Not quitting working; just doing different work. Would you be just as judgemental (and gender-biased) if she'd decided to quit and go back to school for a law degree, because she discovered she'd rather be prosecuting slumlords?
You don't get both. Reproduce, or be productive. Deal with it.
No, it doesn't work that way. Far too much of the human race is biologically geared toward reproduction for that to be feasible. We *need* a workforce. We can't tell people they only get to have kids if they give up any chance of developing other talents, too.
I'd love kids, but I'm too into my job to have them right now, and you better believe I'd want to spend as much time with my kids as my wife, dirty diapers and all.
Yeah, that's exactly my point. You're too "into" your job *now*; will you be forever? Will you quit your job at some point to be a dad? Will you start taking more time off, working from home, etc.? Maybe you'll change careers to something you can mostly do from home. But our socioeconomic system is stacked against you. It doesn't *want* you to spend time with your children. Does that make any sense at all? Is that really good for the human race? Does that really truly result in an increase in "productivity," or do we actually LOSE productivity by forcing people to make these impossible choices? I'll tell ya, the data are pretty clear on some of the measures I suggested; on-site childcare and lactation support really lowers absenteeism among employees who are parents. The numbers show that it's CHEAPER to provide those services than to deal with the absences and retention problems companies have when they don't provide them. So why don't more companies do it? I'm guessing it's because the biases you're revealing in these posts are pretty widespread among management. Who really cares about the numbers; they resent women for... what? Having children?
But it didn't take me long to figure it out from context.
You did say it was "spelled out". Not something one had to deduce.
It was spelled out, in the sense that it wasn't abbreviated. It required context because no one said "VT, which stands for Virtualization Technology..." rather, it was used in its full form without capitals.
I'm sure if this was a conventional article, they would have hit you over the head with the definition. The medium is different, but I think the average slashdot reader can probably adapt.
Oh, and as for your, "I'm not going to have babies" argument, that's great, and that's exactly what our VP of marketing said. She was great at her job too, just amazing and I respected the hell out of her. Then, she got pregnant, and quit with two weeks notice. VPs don't do that. There was no grooming a replacement, no passing on of contacts, just a Rolodex and "I'm done working now, have fun, tee hee!" and our company got fucked. Yeah, it's a sample size of one, but don't tell me it doesn't happen, or that it shouldn't be considered for critical positions.
Not only should it not be considered, but it is ILLEGAL to consider it.
Now, there's a lot of things we could do to make the scenario you described above less likely, such as:
* On-site childcare * Increased telecommuting * Benefits for part-time workers (Google "four-thirds solution" for more on this) * More paid family leave for fathers, like California's Paid Family Leave, which is a good start (but only 6 weeks) * Closing the pay gap; if one parent is going to stay home, it usually makes more financial sense for it to be the mom * Providing more lactation benefits (on-site hospital pumps, dedicated lactation rooms) * Change in societal attitudes about birth control and abortion (half of pregnancies are unplanned; that's RIDICULOUS, IMO)
There's others, too. Some of this is out of the control of employers, but a whole lot of it is within their exclusive control, or stuff that governments would do if they thought businesses wouldn't have a hissy.
Our family would love to have two part-time incomes, instead of my husband being at work all the time and me being at home... but it would cost us an additional $8000/year or more in health benefits alone, leaving aside the loss of retirement plans and other full-time benefits. And then there's the fact that most of the jobs we'd be doing aren't willing to hire people for less than 40 hours a week, period.
Different backgrounds, experiences, and educational grounding are far more important than imagined uniqueness because of meaningless physical differences.
Funny thing is, backgrounds, experiences, and educational grounding are highly correlated with "meaningless physical differences." So if you want variety of the first, you'll probably end up with a variety of the second. For that matter, there are experiences that one has as a woman that one does not have as a man (and vice versa), so it's IMPOSSIBLE to get your second criterion without representation from both genders.
The same goes for any job. If you are new, you are low-(wo)man on the totem-pole. That's life. If you've proved your merits and still get demeaned, you're at the wrong company. This has nothing to do with being female, it's common business-sense: an employee is always best served at a company that appreciates its talents.
And if it happens to be much rarer to find the "right" company for people of one gender than the other, that's just tough luck, right?
I've had a lot of different jobs, some in IT, some not. I've worked with other people in IT, some female, some male. I've even had non-IT jobs where I was rare as a female. And, here's the kicker: I've worked in non-IT jobs where I was specifically valued for my tech knowledge, and respected for it. You know, I have to thank you... until responding to this post, I didn't realize that there's actually a difference in how people (men) responded to me professionally depending on whether or not THEY considered themselves endowed with tech knowledge. In non-IT jobs, it's a lot easier to be a female geek.
Not necessarily, but dressing & acting like a ditzy blonde is not a good way to get ahead in a tech field.
Way to go with the unreasonable assumptions. Wearing skirts and makeup is not "dressing and acting like a ditzy blonde." Yet it certainly cuts down on the number of people who will trust you with their computer. (See, it's exactly that kind of attitude that makes it difficult for women who don't want to pretend to be men to get ANYWHERE in technology.)
Did you just say that the workplace is not a natural habitat for women?
Sorry, pronoun issues. I was saying that women are not a typical part of the "natural habitat" of male tech employees.
The conditions you describe are not exclusive to the tech industry nor are they female-specific issues.
As I've clarified above, the particular stuff I've encountered has been specific to tech jobs, and to females as opposed to the men they work with.
Women, just like all other workers, need to come to work ready to work with no expection that bosses & policies will cater to their every whim.
Yep, got your number now: if women are having trouble succeeding in tech jobs, it MUST be because they have unreasonable expectations. But for some reason, that desire to be "catered to" is specific to this industry, since women (as has been pointed out several times on this thread) succeed in a great many other demanding professions. So, what's the deal here? Are the women who want to go into technology, but feel discouraged about it, just naturally more whiny and demanding? Or is it that what you term "catering to their every whim" is what most professions have realized should actually be termed "providing a non-hostile work environment"?
Also, if we really want to think about gender gaps in professions, why are there not more male nurses?
Because after completing a post-Bachelor's nursing program of one to two years, you can expect a starting salary of $39,000. Men can make more money with less education as police officers, fire fighters, construction workers, etc. Women take these jobs because, with a 3-12 schedule, they can be with their kids more and pay less for childcare.
I am so sick of hearing about software 'engineers'. An engineer is a graduate of an engineering school. Their degree will sound something like mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, or chemical engineer. A graduate of the computer science department is not an engineer, they are a programmer. Now we have the whole software part being completely stripped away from the faux title to simply 'engineer'. Can you possibly call anyone an engineer who has no training at all in anything close to an engine?
When my husband was earning his Computer Science degree in the UCLA School of Engineering, he certainly was required to take classes in electrical engineering (all CS students had to pick an "allied field" from the other engineering disciplines). Don't think any of them worked on anything much like engines, though... mostly building circuit boards and stuff.
So amusing. I mean, if you have slightly darker skin, lighter skin, have tits, have testicles, etc...
You mean, if you're Michael Jackson?
And yes, men know what women want in terms of engineered products, the same thing women want.
See, this is why it's important to have diversity of ideas. Because if everyone in the industry thinks like YOU, every product will look the same, will meet YOUR needs, and not most other people's.
And you ask real people what they want in study/focus groups anyway, it's not like you can't just, I don't know, ask a woman what she wants in a product?
And just what, exactly, are the focus groups discussing? They're looking at the designs that are on the table, and saying "I like this/I don't like this." They're not necessarily going to come up with new innovations and designs; after all, they don't have the training in the field (most focus groups specifically rule out participants who have any special knowledge of the products under discussion).
The fact is that your race or sex is meaningless in engineering.
Sure it is! So long as you're the same race and sex as the people designing the products, anyway.
Tell the women killed by first-generation air bags that sex is meaningless in engineering. Or the left-handers killed while trying to use right-handed products that even something as simple as THAT is meaningless. Engineering may be cut and dried, but human beings AREN'T. Products need to take into account the broad spectrum of humanity that will be using them.
Why does it matter? What is the business reason for developing more female engineers?
Do computers designed by women run quicker?
Does software written by women take up less memory?
Do processors designed by women emit less heat?
Well, maybe so. When someone comes out with a computer designed entirely by women, running an OS written entirely by women, with processors constructed entirely by women, we might find out.;-)
Ok, so that's the sarcastic answer... but the truth is, women and men tend to approach problems differently. They emphasize different issues. Men also design most of the parking structures in the world, did you know that? But recently, transportation engineers (who spend way too much time focusing on the 95% of the time cars are standing still in parking lots) have started getting women involved in the design of parking structures, whether through recruiting the vanishingly small number of female transportation engineers, or running focus groups. They've learned that, while men are worried about making the parking structure look less ugly on the outside, and stashing the maximum number of cars, women are looking at sight lines and street visibility. They pick up safety issues that the men don't even think about, much less know how to address.
Where are these parking structures being built? Primarily in urban shopping areas, where more money is spent by women than men. So it's worthwhile to involve women heavily in the design process, since if they like the parking structure better, they will use it more (and spend more money in that location).
There are so few women involved in designing and building computers, and so many of them are quite "unfeminine" in their thought processes and tastes, that we DON'T KNOW what effect, positive or negative, the involvement of women would have on the process. But since women USE computers probably as much as men do, if not more (I can't tell you how many times I've run across the computer-illiterate male boss whose female receptionist does all his word processing for him), chances are having more women involved in the creation of hardware and software would result in a product which is more usable to that LARGE proportion of consumers.
This point was mentioned in TFA, but maybe women just read better than men, I don't know...;-)
Most women know that they can choose to have sex for a living, and most women at some time or another have done so. It is often called 'getting married', or 'dating', but there are far more couples where the men pay the bills, and women stay home, or earn spending money, than the other way around. This takes a huge number of women out of the pool of people who are working in technical fields.
Wow, you are joking, right? I'll be greatly relieved if this gets a "Funny" mod...
In case you aren't, let's just make something clear: the proportion of women in IT isn't being compared to the proportion of women in the general population. It's being compared to the proportion of women in other fields with similar training requirements.
While many women do take several years off to be with their young children, most worked prior to childbearing and go back to work, sometimes doing something similar, sometimes in a different career, afterward. About 60% of married-couple households have two earners (see http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/anderson.pdf, page 6), and since about 46% of married-couple households have children under 18 residing with them (according to Census 2000; can't link it, as I did a lookup on Summary File 3), one can guess that a significant proportion of the 40% of couples with only one income have childcare duties.
Now, I'd like to see the system get friendlier to dads staying home with their kids too... but you're really, really reaching here.
Women don't need to be "let" into the IT field. They already are. They just don't WANT to be in IT.
Yeah, after all, obviously, if women don't want to be in a field where:
* People condescend to them and assume they can't possibly do the job * It's assumed that any woman who can hack it must look like a man * Their co-workers all go bazonkers the second a woman walks in the room, because they never get to see them in their natural habitat
...Then obviously there's nothing we can do about it, right?
It's everything, from being automatically called "sir" when using text-based tech support, once the CSR realizes I know what I'm talking about, to being QUIZZED by people when I assert that I know how to build a computer ("Oh, really? So, if I'm building a computer, should I use an AMD or Intel chip?" then looking dizzy when I start explaining why I choose AMD), to being passed over for promotions without even an interview and no explanation why. The IT industry is hostile to women. I know, because I AM one. Beyond that, society as a whole is hostile to women interested in IT. Perhaps, if we get rid of all of that, women will still only represent 30% or so of the available IT workforce... but until we get rid of all that, we CANNOT assert that women are just "choosing" not to enter IT.
There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. One can't say that all women are not interested in tech. But, in general, you're right.
However, I would ask, why incite them to join? So what? There are many more women than men in law school and medical school. For years, it was the other way around. Incentive programs and scholarships helped tilt the balance.
Well, 50 years ago, people would have said, "Women just aren't intersted in law/medicine. Besides, who would go to a female lawyer/doctor?"
Nowadays, the second half isn't PC to say, but it's true... who calls a woman when their computer is on the blink? (Besides my mom, but I'm an only child... if I had a brother it might be different.)
How long did it take before women started showing up as significant proportions of medical and law school students? How much did we have to change about our attitudes toward women in education, and in society, before all the incentive programs in the world could do a damned thing? How many women became doctors and couldn't get any clients before people became willing to go to them for health care advice?
I'm saying that current trends are no indication whatever of the true talent or interest in IT for females, just as they weren't in the past for male-dominated fields. We need a couple of decades of a change in availablility and attitude before we can even hope to draw any reasonable conclusions from the current enrollment and employment numbers.
IT welcomes (at least in my experience) women as much as men.
Hmmm... I'd love to hear more about your experience as a woman pursuing a career in IT.
I can tell you about my experience in that regard, if you're interested. It's a long story, and it ends with me going for a Master's in Transportation Planning, and hauling my IT experience over to a line of work where people appreciate it, rather than looking at me like "isn't that cute, she thinks she knows what's wrong with the network!"
The field is still quite hostile to women. Society in general is very hostile toward women with technology experience and knowledge; look at the first post in this article (when reading on +2 anyway), implying that the women who are in tech jobs all have beards! Maybe that's because it's really tough to get or keep a tech job, or be taken seriously in one, if you don't look like a guy?
You obviously already knew that and were looking for it, but the uninitiated wouldn't.
Actually, no, I've never heard of Virtualization Technology before this article was posted, and was as curious as the next person. But it didn't take me long to figure it out from context. No longer than it took to scan the posts for words beginning with the letter v, followed by words beginning with the letter t.
*shrug* maybe my pattern-matching skills are better than the average bear, but honestly, I hadn't the foggiest notion what "VT" might have been before following the link provided here.
I suspect there may be many legal reasons why it is disabled by default, whether or not disabling the option to turn it on was intentional or not.
I get the impression, though, from the forum posts, that it is only on Intel-based laptops that VT cannot be enabled. It appears you do have the option on AMD laptops.
[Insert obligatory Intel/Microsoft conspiracy theory here]
Yes, it would be nice for them to put it right in the/. post, since if you RTFA, you have to get all the way to the *fourth* post in the forum before it's spelled out for you!
(BTW, Virtualization Technology, for those whose browsers are incapable of leaving the slashdot domain.)
As is usually the case, you've set into arguing what is "theft" or "stealing" from a strictly legal perspective.
I'm sorry, you seem to have failed the reading comprehension portion of this exam. I discussed the semantic meaning of "theft" as is in the dictionary, and only got into legal definitions when finding out what copyright actually is.
When you copy my work without authorization (and it doesn't fall under fair use), you are violating my right to control distribution and are stealing from me in that respect
No, "violating a right" does not equal "stealing." That was the point to the middle of the post (again, work on the reading comprehension); we have many, many rights, and infringement upon those rights is rarely considered stealing, either colloquially or legally. The only reason the terms "stealing" or "theft" are used with copyright is because there is an assumption that the artist would have earned money if you hadn't done whatever you did. That assumption has never been borne out by any data whatsoever. So, that leaves us with infringement of a right, and then the argument is whether or not that right is justly earned and held. The terms "theft" and "stealing" are totally inappropriate to the discussion.
Copying is not "larceny" but not all theft is larceny. There are examples of theft: theft of services and theft of intellectual property for example, that do not involve the taking of physical property.
Ok, to properly understand that statement, I need to get some understanding of just what is meant by theft, and theft of services. (Theft of intellectual property does not seem to be a term with any particular legal or semantic definition, so there's not much point in using it as an example.)
From Wikipedia, "Theft of Services is the legal term for a crime which is committed when a person obtains valuable services -- as opposed to goods -- by deception, force, threat or other unlawful means, i.e., without lawfully compensating the provider of said services." So, ok, we have to use the catch-all "other unlawful means" for it to apply... but then we also have to define "services" to make sure we know what's been taken. (The Wikipedia article does go on to mention that crimes of this type are usually prosecuted as larceny... so that doesn't really make it fit as an example of non-larcenous theft.... but anyway.) Turns out there's 37 definitions of "service" in the first entry on dictionary.com, and none of them seem to have any vague resemblance to the recording of music with the intent to distribute commercially. So I'm not sure you can really argue that it's a "service."
What about theft? Well, that is, according to m-w.com, "1 a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property." (Definition 2 was obsolete, and definition 3 was as in stealing a base in baseball, so I've omitted them here.) Well, obviously, making a copy of something is specifically not "with the intent to deprive the rightful owner." So you're left with embezzlement or burglary. Burglary doesn't fit, so is this embezzlement? Dammit, I have to look up *another* word... let's see: "to appropriate fraudulently to one's own use, as money or property entrusted to one's care." Entrusted to one's care... well, if you worked for a radio station and made copies of the CDs for home use, that would work I guess, but for downloading off the web? Not so much.
But, when you read a definition of copyright itself, it isn't a property right. It's a right to do something. That's why violations are called "infringements," not "thefts." You're not appropriating something without proper reimbursement and agreement, you're violating the author's right to decide how their work is distributed. When someone is fired for their beliefs or race, we don't talk about how their "job was stolen," do we? If incriminating testimony is coerced from an individual, we don't call it "theft of innocence," right?
Now, the funny thing is, you already knew that, and said as much:
His right to control distribution is his, however, and that has been taken from him.
Taking a right away from someone is NOT THEFT. It is something else, which is illegal, but NOT THEFT.
So then the argument isn't "Did they own it?" but "Did they have that right to begin with?" They never owned the copy of their song you made, so obviously you didn't steal it from them. But the issue of whether or not they really morally and legally had the right to the distribution is what is really being discussed over and over again. The law says they did, but then there are other laws governing rights where you lose them under certain circumstances. For example, we have certain rights to privacy, which are mostly a matter of case law, but still extant. Celebrities, however, as "public figures," do not have exactly the same rights. Why? Because they benefit from being public figures, and it's very difficult to protect their "privacy" in certa
Anyone over the age of 40 I've talked to about the two formats has said, "What, you mean like Betamacs and VHS?" Just keep telling people that that's what this reminds you of, and wait for someone to start selling a less draconian product.
Um, except, VHS became the dominant format for many years, until (the more draconian) DVD unseated it. So the Betamax/VHS issue doesn't really serve to predict the failure of both formats, nor the rise of a new format which is more open.
I purchased it so that I could watch it, and watch it I shall.
"I don't like the DUI laws, so drink and drive I shall!"
"I think I deserve more pay, so embezzle I shall!"
"I don't have a problem with heroin, so deal it i shall!"
Uh... if you really think that drunk driving, embezzlement, and drug dealing are on par with activities which are technically illegal under DMCA, but actually covered within exceptions to copyright (what the OP is talking about is analogous to making a cassette tape of a CD so you can play it in your car), I gotta wonder where you get your crack.
The bottom line is this: if this study was about which modalities in Milgrams experiment could be removed without removing the perception of electrocution, then there is perhaps some (minor) value (it would answer: what minimum information is necessary for people under stressful, authoritarian conditions to believe someone is being electrocuted?). But if the answer is simply whether the same behavior is observed when you remove the real visual information and replace it with "virtual" visual information, then it's a complete waste of time that is only trying to get "Milgram" into the abstract for the mainstream media. We already know the answer to this: visual information is only one small part of the big picture (no pun intended). Admittedly, it is a larger part of the picture for humans than for many species, but we still rely on hearing, olfactory, and touch very heavily. If these modalities persist, then there will be little or no change in the results.
I never studied cognitive science intently, so much of your post didn't get far beyond my visual cortex. But this paragraph, from what I can tell, simply means "This experiment wasn't about the particular area of science I am interested in, therefore it has no value."
I see this experiment as extremely relevant for several reasons: * It's found a way to replicate a watershed psychological experiment that previously could not be replicated for ethical reasons. Replication of experiments, especially with our greater capacity to record and analyze information, is frequently valuable. In psychology, where the results can actually change over time, it's even more valuable. * It's demonstrated that people can have trouble performing "cruel" tasks even when they *know* no actual harm is done. This has implications for virtual learning... for example, perhaps medical interns can learn a great deal from performing surgery or examining virtual patients, since they may still care whether the patient lives or dies.
Now, what it implies, but doesn't actually demonstrate, is that doing "virtual violence" may have the same desensitizing effect as real violence. The reason why it's not relevant in that regard is because the vast majority of our "virtual violence" is specifically FANTASY, which definitely has a different effect than attempts at realism. In cases where such virtual violence tries to imitate reality as closely as possible, it actually *is* trying to teach people to be ok with doing harmful or potentially harmful things, such as military or law enforcement applications.
According to Blass (milgram biographer & social psychologist), "the percentage of participants who are prepared to inflict fatal voltages remains remarkably constant, between 61% and 66%, regardless of time or location".
Strange... when I was studying this during my Sociology undergrad program, we learned that there *were* definite cultural differences, with the extremes being in Germany (where about 80% went "all the way") and I think it was Australia (with barely over 50% completing the experiment).
Now, within a similar culture, there has been very little difference between rural or urban, coastal or landlocked, etc... and yes, the results remained pretty consistent over time. But I found it fascinating that there were definite cultural differences.
There was nothing special about the Nazis - we are all (collectively) capable of attrocities, and it doesn't even take much prompting.
Actually, there was something special about the Nazis. When this experiment has been replicated in Germany (a decade or more AFTER the end of WWII) it was found that approximately 80% of participants would go "to the max". It seems that Germans are culturally more inclined to follow authority, even after their experience with the Holocaust. Freaky.
OTOH, in... Australia I think it was, it was only about 50%. The lesson is, don't try to set up a totalitarian regime in Sydney.
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In other words... you don't really get to browse among different skirt lengths and collar styles. The vast majority of the skirts will be the same length, and the collars will be of similar cuts. Some years, clothes look great on me; some years, they suck for me. Luck o' the draw.
But no, in general, when I wear professional skirts (and it's been a long time since I've done that, to be honest, but a lot of women do feel more comfortable in a skirt), they're cut right at the knee. And in general, I don't show cleavage. But I've still been in a lot of "professional" situations where when I walk into a room, the mood just... changes... like blood in the water. Heck, I don't even wear makeup much of the time. I like to think I'm reasonably attractive, but no one's ever called me a "knockout." I do look distinctly female, though.
And it is *not* a reasonable assumption that, if a woman is getting ogled, she gave them "some reason to." In fact, the reasonableness of that assumption diminishes proportionately with the percentage of women in that particular field.
Well, on your behalf then,
Is there *any* professional situation where it's appropriate for a supervisor to use namecalling? If men put up with that kind of response, I feel sorry for them. I wouldn't put up with that from *any* supervisor, regardless of gender. If I have a complaint, I want it responded to, even if the response is "I'm sorry, that's part of the job. It's something you'll have to get used to." I would be pretty p*ssed off if someone decided to try to shame me into recanting it with name-calling.
There may be a few types of jobs that's a truism for, but in general, that's an artifact of the way the company is built, not a given.
And my point is that our current system sees things this way, but that is bad for society, because it (a) forces a false dichotomy of choosing work *or* family, and usually forces it on women; and (b) forces the family to bifurcate, leading to one parent losing out on the opportunity to fully bond with the children.
And there are no men who up and quit because they want to change careers? Because that's what this is... changing careers. Not quitting working; just doing different work. Would you be just as judgemental (and gender-biased) if she'd decided to quit and go back to school for a law degree, because she discovered she'd rather be prosecuting slumlords?
No, it doesn't work that way. Far too much of the human race is biologically geared toward reproduction for that to be feasible. We *need* a workforce. We can't tell people they only get to have kids if they give up any chance of developing other talents, too.
Yeah, that's exactly my point. You're too "into" your job *now*; will you be forever? Will you quit your job at some point to be a dad? Will you start taking more time off, working from home, etc.? Maybe you'll change careers to something you can mostly do from home. But our socioeconomic system is stacked against you. It doesn't *want* you to spend time with your children. Does that make any sense at all? Is that really good for the human race? Does that really truly result in an increase in "productivity," or do we actually LOSE productivity by forcing people to make these impossible choices? I'll tell ya, the data are pretty clear on some of the measures I suggested; on-site childcare and lactation support really lowers absenteeism among employees who are parents. The numbers show that it's CHEAPER to provide those services than to deal with the absences and retention problems companies have when they don't provide them. So why don't more companies do it? I'm guessing it's because the biases you're revealing in these posts are pretty widespread among management. Who really cares about the numbers; they resent women for... what? Having children?
I'm sure if this was a conventional article, they would have hit you over the head with the definition. The medium is different, but I think the average slashdot reader can probably adapt.
Now, there's a lot of things we could do to make the scenario you described above less likely, such as:
* On-site childcare
* Increased telecommuting
* Benefits for part-time workers (Google "four-thirds solution" for more on this)
* More paid family leave for fathers, like California's Paid Family Leave, which is a good start (but only 6 weeks)
* Closing the pay gap; if one parent is going to stay home, it usually makes more financial sense for it to be the mom
* Providing more lactation benefits (on-site hospital pumps, dedicated lactation rooms)
* Change in societal attitudes about birth control and abortion (half of pregnancies are unplanned; that's RIDICULOUS, IMO)
There's others, too. Some of this is out of the control of employers, but a whole lot of it is within their exclusive control, or stuff that governments would do if they thought businesses wouldn't have a hissy.
Our family would love to have two part-time incomes, instead of my husband being at work all the time and me being at home... but it would cost us an additional $8000/year or more in health benefits alone, leaving aside the loss of retirement plans and other full-time benefits. And then there's the fact that most of the jobs we'd be doing aren't willing to hire people for less than 40 hours a week, period.
I've had a lot of different jobs, some in IT, some not. I've worked with other people in IT, some female, some male. I've even had non-IT jobs where I was rare as a female. And, here's the kicker: I've worked in non-IT jobs where I was specifically valued for my tech knowledge, and respected for it. You know, I have to thank you... until responding to this post, I didn't realize that there's actually a difference in how people (men) responded to me professionally depending on whether or not THEY considered themselves endowed with tech knowledge. In non-IT jobs, it's a lot easier to be a female geek.
Way to go with the unreasonable assumptions. Wearing skirts and makeup is not "dressing and acting like a ditzy blonde." Yet it certainly cuts down on the number of people who will trust you with their computer. (See, it's exactly that kind of attitude that makes it difficult for women who don't want to pretend to be men to get ANYWHERE in technology.)
Sorry, pronoun issues. I was saying that women are not a typical part of the "natural habitat" of male tech employees.
As I've clarified above, the particular stuff I've encountered has been specific to tech jobs, and to females as opposed to the men they work with.
Yep, got your number now: if women are having trouble succeeding in tech jobs, it MUST be because they have unreasonable expectations. But for some reason, that desire to be "catered to" is specific to this industry, since women (as has been pointed out several times on this thread) succeed in a great many other demanding professions. So, what's the deal here? Are the women who want to go into technology, but feel discouraged about it, just naturally more whiny and demanding? Or is it that what you term "catering to their every whim" is what most professions have realized should actually be termed "providing a non-hostile work environment"?
I hope that was just a typo... otherwise, you just helped prove Joyce Park's point.
See, this is why it's important to have diversity of ideas. Because if everyone in the industry thinks like YOU, every product will look the same, will meet YOUR needs, and not most other people's.
And just what, exactly, are the focus groups discussing? They're looking at the designs that are on the table, and saying "I like this/I don't like this." They're not necessarily going to come up with new innovations and designs; after all, they don't have the training in the field (most focus groups specifically rule out participants who have any special knowledge of the products under discussion).
Sure it is! So long as you're the same race and sex as the people designing the products, anyway.
Tell the women killed by first-generation air bags that sex is meaningless in engineering. Or the left-handers killed while trying to use right-handed products that even something as simple as THAT is meaningless. Engineering may be cut and dried, but human beings AREN'T. Products need to take into account the broad spectrum of humanity that will be using them.
Ok, so that's the sarcastic answer... but the truth is, women and men tend to approach problems differently. They emphasize different issues. Men also design most of the parking structures in the world, did you know that? But recently, transportation engineers (who spend way too much time focusing on the 95% of the time cars are standing still in parking lots) have started getting women involved in the design of parking structures, whether through recruiting the vanishingly small number of female transportation engineers, or running focus groups. They've learned that, while men are worried about making the parking structure look less ugly on the outside, and stashing the maximum number of cars, women are looking at sight lines and street visibility. They pick up safety issues that the men don't even think about, much less know how to address.
Where are these parking structures being built? Primarily in urban shopping areas, where more money is spent by women than men. So it's worthwhile to involve women heavily in the design process, since if they like the parking structure better, they will use it more (and spend more money in that location).
There are so few women involved in designing and building computers, and so many of them are quite "unfeminine" in their thought processes and tastes, that we DON'T KNOW what effect, positive or negative, the involvement of women would have on the process. But since women USE computers probably as much as men do, if not more (I can't tell you how many times I've run across the computer-illiterate male boss whose female receptionist does all his word processing for him), chances are having more women involved in the creation of hardware and software would result in a product which is more usable to that LARGE proportion of consumers.
This point was mentioned in TFA, but maybe women just read better than men, I don't know...
In case you aren't, let's just make something clear: the proportion of women in IT isn't being compared to the proportion of women in the general population. It's being compared to the proportion of women in other fields with similar training requirements.
While many women do take several years off to be with their young children, most worked prior to childbearing and go back to work, sometimes doing something similar, sometimes in a different career, afterward. About 60% of married-couple households have two earners (see http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/anderson.pdf, page 6), and since about 46% of married-couple households have children under 18 residing with them (according to Census 2000; can't link it, as I did a lookup on Summary File 3), one can guess that a significant proportion of the 40% of couples with only one income have childcare duties.
Now, I'd like to see the system get friendlier to dads staying home with their kids too... but you're really, really reaching here.
* People condescend to them and assume they can't possibly do the job
* It's assumed that any woman who can hack it must look like a man
* Their co-workers all go bazonkers the second a woman walks in the room, because they never get to see them in their natural habitat
It's everything, from being automatically called "sir" when using text-based tech support, once the CSR realizes I know what I'm talking about, to being QUIZZED by people when I assert that I know how to build a computer ("Oh, really? So, if I'm building a computer, should I use an AMD or Intel chip?" then looking dizzy when I start explaining why I choose AMD), to being passed over for promotions without even an interview and no explanation why. The IT industry is hostile to women. I know, because I AM one. Beyond that, society as a whole is hostile to women interested in IT. Perhaps, if we get rid of all of that, women will still only represent 30% or so of the available IT workforce... but until we get rid of all that, we CANNOT assert that women are just "choosing" not to enter IT.
Nowadays, the second half isn't PC to say, but it's true... who calls a woman when their computer is on the blink? (Besides my mom, but I'm an only child... if I had a brother it might be different.)
How long did it take before women started showing up as significant proportions of medical and law school students? How much did we have to change about our attitudes toward women in education, and in society, before all the incentive programs in the world could do a damned thing? How many women became doctors and couldn't get any clients before people became willing to go to them for health care advice?
I'm saying that current trends are no indication whatever of the true talent or interest in IT for females, just as they weren't in the past for male-dominated fields. We need a couple of decades of a change in availablility and attitude before we can even hope to draw any reasonable conclusions from the current enrollment and employment numbers.
I can tell you about my experience in that regard, if you're interested. It's a long story, and it ends with me going for a Master's in Transportation Planning, and hauling my IT experience over to a line of work where people appreciate it, rather than looking at me like "isn't that cute, she thinks she knows what's wrong with the network!"
The field is still quite hostile to women. Society in general is very hostile toward women with technology experience and knowledge; look at the first post in this article (when reading on +2 anyway), implying that the women who are in tech jobs all have beards! Maybe that's because it's really tough to get or keep a tech job, or be taken seriously in one, if you don't look like a guy?
*shrug* maybe my pattern-matching skills are better than the average bear, but honestly, I hadn't the foggiest notion what "VT" might have been before following the link provided here.
[Insert obligatory Intel/Microsoft conspiracy theory here]
(BTW, Virtualization Technology, for those whose browsers are incapable of leaving the slashdot domain.)
No, "violating a right" does not equal "stealing." That was the point to the middle of the post (again, work on the reading comprehension); we have many, many rights, and infringement upon those rights is rarely considered stealing, either colloquially or legally. The only reason the terms "stealing" or "theft" are used with copyright is because there is an assumption that the artist would have earned money if you hadn't done whatever you did. That assumption has never been borne out by any data whatsoever. So, that leaves us with infringement of a right, and then the argument is whether or not that right is justly earned and held. The terms "theft" and "stealing" are totally inappropriate to the discussion.
Ok, to properly understand that statement, I need to get some understanding of just what is meant by theft, and theft of services. (Theft of intellectual property does not seem to be a term with any particular legal or semantic definition, so there's not much point in using it as an example.)
From Wikipedia, "Theft of Services is the legal term for a crime which is committed when a person obtains valuable services -- as opposed to goods -- by deception, force, threat or other unlawful means, i.e., without lawfully compensating the provider of said services." So, ok, we have to use the catch-all "other unlawful means" for it to apply... but then we also have to define "services" to make sure we know what's been taken. (The Wikipedia article does go on to mention that crimes of this type are usually prosecuted as larceny... so that doesn't really make it fit as an example of non-larcenous theft.... but anyway.) Turns out there's 37 definitions of "service" in the first entry on dictionary.com, and none of them seem to have any vague resemblance to the recording of music with the intent to distribute commercially. So I'm not sure you can really argue that it's a "service."
What about theft? Well, that is, according to m-w.com, "1 a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property." (Definition 2 was obsolete, and definition 3 was as in stealing a base in baseball, so I've omitted them here.) Well, obviously, making a copy of something is specifically not "with the intent to deprive the rightful owner." So you're left with embezzlement or burglary. Burglary doesn't fit, so is this embezzlement? Dammit, I have to look up *another* word... let's see: "to appropriate fraudulently to one's own use, as money or property entrusted to one's care." Entrusted to one's care... well, if you worked for a radio station and made copies of the CDs for home use, that would work I guess, but for downloading off the web? Not so much.
But, when you read a definition of copyright itself, it isn't a property right. It's a right to do something. That's why violations are called "infringements," not "thefts." You're not appropriating something without proper reimbursement and agreement, you're violating the author's right to decide how their work is distributed. When someone is fired for their beliefs or race, we don't talk about how their "job was stolen," do we? If incriminating testimony is coerced from an individual, we don't call it "theft of innocence," right?
Now, the funny thing is, you already knew that, and said as much:
Taking a right away from someone is NOT THEFT. It is something else, which is illegal, but NOT THEFT.
So then the argument isn't "Did they own it?" but "Did they have that right to begin with?" They never owned the copy of their song you made, so obviously you didn't steal it from them. But the issue of whether or not they really morally and legally had the right to the distribution is what is really being discussed over and over again. The law says they did, but then there are other laws governing rights where you lose them under certain circumstances. For example, we have certain rights to privacy, which are mostly a matter of case law, but still extant. Celebrities, however, as "public figures," do not have exactly the same rights. Why? Because they benefit from being public figures, and it's very difficult to protect their "privacy" in certa
Uh... if you really think that drunk driving, embezzlement, and drug dealing are on par with activities which are technically illegal under DMCA, but actually covered within exceptions to copyright (what the OP is talking about is analogous to making a cassette tape of a CD so you can play it in your car), I gotta wonder where you get your crack.
I never studied cognitive science intently, so much of your post didn't get far beyond my visual cortex. But this paragraph, from what I can tell, simply means "This experiment wasn't about the particular area of science I am interested in, therefore it has no value."
I see this experiment as extremely relevant for several reasons:
* It's found a way to replicate a watershed psychological experiment that previously could not be replicated for ethical reasons. Replication of experiments, especially with our greater capacity to record and analyze information, is frequently valuable. In psychology, where the results can actually change over time, it's even more valuable.
* It's demonstrated that people can have trouble performing "cruel" tasks even when they *know* no actual harm is done. This has implications for virtual learning... for example, perhaps medical interns can learn a great deal from performing surgery or examining virtual patients, since they may still care whether the patient lives or dies.
Now, what it implies, but doesn't actually demonstrate, is that doing "virtual violence" may have the same desensitizing effect as real violence. The reason why it's not relevant in that regard is because the vast majority of our "virtual violence" is specifically FANTASY, which definitely has a different effect than attempts at realism. In cases where such virtual violence tries to imitate reality as closely as possible, it actually *is* trying to teach people to be ok with doing harmful or potentially harmful things, such as military or law enforcement applications.
Now, within a similar culture, there has been very little difference between rural or urban, coastal or landlocked, etc... and yes, the results remained pretty consistent over time. But I found it fascinating that there were definite cultural differences.
OTOH, in... Australia I think it was, it was only about 50%. The lesson is, don't try to set up a totalitarian regime in Sydney.