discuss: Review needed of 'Encourage Women in Linux' HOWTO
Subject:
Re: Review needed of 'Encourage Women in Linux' HOWTO
From:
"s. keeling" ####@####.####
Date:
8 Dec 2003 03:51:50 -0000
Message-Id: <20031208035017.GB2388@infidel.spots.ab.ca>
Incoming from Jutta Wrage:
> On Sun, 7 Dec 2003 17:17:44 -0700
> "s. keeling" ####@####.#### wrote:
>
> > reverse discrimination doesn't
>
> Where the hell is the reverse discrimination in that document?
[Please, hit a carriage return from time to time. Thanks.]
- http://www.nmt.edu/~val/howto/ar01s02.html:
"Women have fewer opportunities for friendship or mentoring":
"When the gender imbalance is as large as it is in computer
science, women find themselves with few or no other women to
share their interests with. While women have male friends and
mentors, it's often harder and more difficult for women to
find a community and then to fit in with it. Many women leave
the field who would have stayed if they had been male."
Why is, for (some) women, a "community" made up only of other women?
They have male friends and mentors, but those don't count because
they're male. Isn't this one of those silly socialization things it
would be good for women to unlearn? If not, and there's some other
reason for this dichotomy, accept that and stop blaming us for it.
It's your right to discriminate. Just don't expect us to agree with
your choices.
The converse is what you're asking for: inclusion into the mostly male
dominated mainstream, yet here you're asking for your own, walled off,
women only club since male friends and mentors simply cannot compare
to an all female "community."
"It's true that this is a feedback loop, fewer women in
computing leads to fewer women in computing. It's important to
understand that this feedback loop causes women to leave
computing who wouldn't have left if, all other things being
equal, they had been men. This is important because male
classmates often assume their female counterparts leave the
field because they "just aren't good enough."
Allow me to paraphrase: "Fewer women in computing, all demanding
female only "communities", leads to fewer women in computing." Well,
duh! Try thinking of your male friends and mentors as just other
PEOPLE in a somewhat different package than yourself and maybe you'd
find it a mite easier to find that community you're looking for.
This is a jail of your own making. Free yourself! Some of us
would love to help.
--
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(*) http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling
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