As a woman, and as a relatively well-educated woman (ph.d, university professor) who had considered going into CS professionally (instead of just as a fun side-thing), I just wanted to say a few things. In college, I declared as CS to make pursuing the fine arts more appealing for my mother--and to see if all the tinkering with basic and pascal and whatnot in high school could go somewhere for me. When I enrolled in my CS and other core classes for the major, I was one of the 2 or 3 women in the program, *maybe* 1 in any given class. Now, this might sound like a good thing for many reasons we won't go into here, but for a freshman--er, first-year college student--it was unbearable. I felt like even more of a freak than normal. I ended up majoring in English and Philosophy, which led to graduate school at Michigan, which led to an Assistant Professor position near DC. Ultimately, though, what's interesting is that I found I couldn't really maintain a fine arts major (declared or otherwise) because supplies were simply too expensive for me to purchase. My point here being that economic and material conditions--as well as gender conditions--are a part of every decision we make, period. Nothing is ever as simple as "sexist or not," "racist or not."
Was my decision to not continue in CS a result of my "interest level"? My "sex" or "gender"? A not-so-subtle feeling of discomfort and not-belonging-ness embedded in and perpetuated by a variety of institutional and sociocultural factors? The suspicious and "what the hell is she doing here" looks I'd get in class? Some combination of them all? I don't really know--but what I *do* know is that I enjoy learning how to do anything and everything. Whenever you're dealing with people, you can't make judgments that rely solely on received opinion. Dating men who use linux, while interesting and educational, is not the way all women learn what they know. I don't think I'm alone out there. Kudos to Bowling Moses for the remarks.
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As a woman, and as a relatively well-educated woman (ph.d, university professor) who had considered going into CS professionally (instead of just as a fun side-thing), I just wanted to say a few things. In college, I declared as CS to make pursuing the fine arts more appealing for my mother--and to see if all the tinkering with basic and pascal and whatnot in high school could go somewhere for me. When I enrolled in my CS and other core classes for the major, I was one of the 2 or 3 women in the program, *maybe* 1 in any given class. Now, this might sound like a good thing for many reasons we won't go into here, but for a freshman--er, first-year college student--it was unbearable. I felt like even more of a freak than normal. I ended up majoring in English and Philosophy, which led to graduate school at Michigan, which led to an Assistant Professor position near DC. Ultimately, though, what's interesting is that I found I couldn't really maintain a fine arts major (declared or otherwise) because supplies were simply too expensive for me to purchase. My point here being that economic and material conditions--as well as gender conditions--are a part of every decision we make, period. Nothing is ever as simple as "sexist or not," "racist or not."
Was my decision to not continue in CS a result of my "interest level"? My "sex" or "gender"? A not-so-subtle feeling of discomfort and not-belonging-ness embedded in and perpetuated by a variety of institutional and sociocultural factors? The suspicious and "what the hell is she doing here" looks I'd get in class? Some combination of them all? I don't really know--but what I *do* know is that I enjoy learning how to do anything and everything. Whenever you're dealing with people, you can't make judgments that rely solely on received opinion. Dating men who use linux, while interesting and educational, is not the way all women learn what they know. I don't think I'm alone out there. Kudos to Bowling Moses for the remarks.