7 ms·

My first computer was a BBC micro and I "wrote" my first code using GW Basic when I was between the age of 5 and 10. I now have two daughters, and it's my goal

My first computer was a BBC micro and I "wrote" my first code using GW Basic when I was between the age of 5 and 10. I now have two daughters, and it's my goal to give them every opportunity to do the same. Recently I sat down with my eldest and we wrote Ruby together to print out her name in rainbow colours on a terminal. She loved it. As part of the journey of being a parent, I've come to realise how gender biased the world is. It's even encoded in our picture books. My mother taught me to flip all pro-nouns to female. Because, otherwise, it's "Bob the Builder" and "Mr Fox climbs the mountain". Pick up any kids book and count the male/female ratio. Look at who does the talking, who makes the decisions. It's encoded in our kids from day 1. Until we change the foundations of our society, we will have results like this.

macintux 8y ago
I visited Toys ‘r’ Us shortly after they started shutting down, and saw a pile of drum sets. Half were black, half were pink. I was pleased to see the black sets showed both a boy and a girl using the drums. However, the pink ones showed only the girl. Progress? I suppose. We have a long road ahead.
- RikNieu 8y ago
  It's also interesting to note that not too long ago, pink was considered a masculine colour.
  - gkya 8y ago
    Would you mind expanding upon that or providing a link? That would be a very interesting read for me!
    - Mrmcfeely8 8y ago
      https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-s...
      - gkya 8y ago
        Thanks!
belorn 8y ago
If you want to see the foundations of our society, ask and investigate what create social status. Even at preschool, kids usually arranging themselves into group with a hierarchy. Usually those groups are separated on gender, through at the youngest age group they tend to be a bit mixed and by the time kids hit puberty its almost fully sorted into groups of single-gender. Age 5 to 10 should provide a bit of insight into this process. What signals is encoded in our society that make one girl to get higher social status among other girls. Similar, what signals are encoded to give one boy higher social status among other boys. In that difference between the two strategies for social status, what incentives has parents if they want their child to have high social status among other children. From that point we can look at what puberty does to the incentives to maximize social status among one own gender, and the relation to dating. Add a few additional years and they have to pick career paths with accumulates all those incentives into a point where gender segregation really start to pick up speed.
- threatofrain 8y ago
  I think there's discussion about how segregation of the sexes during a period can lead to improved outcomes, and that children cross-culturally self-segregate.
  - belorn 8y ago
    I could not reply to this earlier since the topic was dead and flagged. There has been some data to show that gender segregated schools can create improved academical outcomes, through I have not seen conclusive meta studies if the improvement is statistical true or how large the effect is. A common criticism to gender segregated education is that it harms gender segregation in society and reduce pro-social behavior, which in context of this article would be counter-productive.
voidr 8y ago
> My mother taught me to flip all pro-nouns to female There are languages where pronouns are not gender-red, they are neutral and you see the same results. > I've come to realise how gender biased the world is A lot of it is due to biology itself being "biased" and a lot of society evolved to accommodate those sex differences. I think tech is over glorified and is presented as this boy's club where everything is amazing, ignoring the downsides. I don't think most people would find it fun to maintain a legacy financial application or to work every weekend to finish off the video game because the publisher refuses to adjust the release date.
- lomnakkus 8y ago
  I think the poster may have meant proper nouns rather than pronouns? (Well, I mean the "builder" part of "Bob the Builder" may need to be flipped in some languages, but I'd assume there aren't that many women named Bob, so...)
- gkya 8y ago
  My native tongue (Turkish) is one language without grammatical gender. Learning languages with it, it was immediately clear to me that that was a problematic thing. Luckily no revolutions are needed, as languages tend to become more analytical and lose grammatical gender progressively. I think that what enabled women to gain many rights and at times actual equality in most societies was/is technology. Before widespread use of advanced technology, we needed actual muscle power to survive, and that was what shaped the societies since hunter gatherers through various stages of agrarian societies. As machines substituted raw muscle power in many areas of production, women could become part of the workforce too. And thus we had a virtuous cycle of more potential and more power, which affected in turn women's rights and their participation in many other areas. Since the decades following industrial revolution, they became more and more present steadily in politics, academia, culture, etc., becoming quickly co-protagonists of modern life. Thus, I believe women should really get into technology, and become actual tech people instead of many faux-techie types we see that are promoted as symbols of how feminist a workplace/org is or as figurines to "lure" women into STEM and IT. I really want women to be the change they want. Today, there are few women in FOSS that are famous and revered for their technical skills, actually only Jessica McKellar comes to my mind (and I'm not talking the designer types here). I think they should just force their way in into the building blocks of the ecosystem. As males, what can we do? Well, a Linus-y mailing list turns me as a male (from Turkey where both men and women enjoy casual swearing). So we get rid of it, not only to include more women, but also more men from among the sensible, mature demographic. We also do away with the caricaturising stereotypes. Many people think a programmer is an asocial and overweight nerd living in a cubicle in the morning and isolated in a badly-lit room in the evening/night. So we can just not spread misinformation about us. We also maintain our decency around females, because many weird shit guys do that I read in similar threads here in the past is just straight-out psychopatical and very cringy. Other than that, it's on women to make the decision and pursue the careers. I dream of a world where one's sex is just a biological detail that matters in their amorous affairs and private life. And, futhermore, I know that it's totally possible ATM. It's only a matter of time.

macintux 8y ago

I visited Toys ‘r’ Us shortly after they started shutting down, and saw a pile of drum sets. Half were black, half were pink. I was pleased to see the black sets showed both a boy and a girl using the drums. However, the pink ones showed only the girl. Progress? I suppose. We have a long road ahead.

RikNieu 8y ago
It's also interesting to note that not too long ago, pink was considered a masculine colour.
- gkya 8y ago
  Would you mind expanding upon that or providing a link? That would be a very interesting read for me!
  - Mrmcfeely8 8y ago
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-s...
    - gkya 8y ago
      Thanks!

belorn 8y ago

If you want to see the foundations of our society, ask and investigate what create social status. Even at preschool, kids usually arranging themselves into group with a hierarchy. Usually those groups are separated on gender, through at the youngest age group they tend to be a bit mixed and by the time kids hit puberty its almost fully sorted into groups of single-gender. Age 5 to 10 should provide a bit of insight into this process. What signals is encoded in our society that make one girl to get higher social status among other girls. Similar, what signals are encoded to give one boy higher social status among other boys. In that difference between the two strategies for social status, what incentives has parents if they want their child to have high social status among other children. From that point we can look at what puberty does to the incentives to maximize social status among one own gender, and the relation to dating. Add a few additional years and they have to pick career paths with accumulates all those incentives into a point where gender segregation really start to pick up speed.

threatofrain 8y ago
I think there's discussion about how segregation of the sexes during a period can lead to improved outcomes, and that children cross-culturally self-segregate.
- belorn 8y ago
  I could not reply to this earlier since the topic was dead and flagged. There has been some data to show that gender segregated schools can create improved academical outcomes, through I have not seen conclusive meta studies if the improvement is statistical true or how large the effect is. A common criticism to gender segregated education is that it harms gender segregation in society and reduce pro-social behavior, which in context of this article would be counter-productive.

voidr 8y ago

> My mother taught me to flip all pro-nouns to female There are languages where pronouns are not gender-red, they are neutral and you see the same results. > I've come to realise how gender biased the world is A lot of it is due to biology itself being "biased" and a lot of society evolved to accommodate those sex differences. I think tech is over glorified and is presented as this boy's club where everything is amazing, ignoring the downsides. I don't think most people would find it fun to maintain a legacy financial application or to work every weekend to finish off the video game because the publisher refuses to adjust the release date.

lomnakkus 8y ago
I think the poster may have meant proper nouns rather than pronouns? (Well, I mean the "builder" part of "Bob the Builder" may need to be flipped in some languages, but I'd assume there aren't that many women named Bob, so...)
gkya 8y ago
My native tongue (Turkish) is one language without grammatical gender. Learning languages with it, it was immediately clear to me that that was a problematic thing. Luckily no revolutions are needed, as languages tend to become more analytical and lose grammatical gender progressively. I think that what enabled women to gain many rights and at times actual equality in most societies was/is technology. Before widespread use of advanced technology, we needed actual muscle power to survive, and that was what shaped the societies since hunter gatherers through various stages of agrarian societies. As machines substituted raw muscle power in many areas of production, women could become part of the workforce too. And thus we had a virtuous cycle of more potential and more power, which affected in turn women's rights and their participation in many other areas. Since the decades following industrial revolution, they became more and more present steadily in politics, academia, culture, etc., becoming quickly co-protagonists of modern life. Thus, I believe women should really get into technology, and become actual tech people instead of many faux-techie types we see that are promoted as symbols of how feminist a workplace/org is or as figurines to "lure" women into STEM and IT. I really want women to be the change they want. Today, there are few women in FOSS that are famous and revered for their technical skills, actually only Jessica McKellar comes to my mind (and I'm not talking the designer types here). I think they should just force their way in into the building blocks of the ecosystem. As males, what can we do? Well, a Linus-y mailing list turns me as a male (from Turkey where both men and women enjoy casual swearing). So we get rid of it, not only to include more women, but also more men from among the sensible, mature demographic. We also do away with the caricaturising stereotypes. Many people think a programmer is an asocial and overweight nerd living in a cubicle in the morning and isolated in a badly-lit room in the evening/night. So we can just not spread misinformation about us. We also maintain our decency around females, because many weird shit guys do that I read in similar threads here in the past is just straight-out psychopatical and very cringy. Other than that, it's on women to make the decision and pursue the careers. I dream of a world where one's sex is just a biological detail that matters in their amorous affairs and private life. And, futhermore, I know that it's totally possible ATM. It's only a matter of time.