17 ms·
I knew exactly how she felt
- noonespecial 13y agoI'm not sure the author quite understood the seeing Star Wars thing was a super low bar fitness test. Once long ago my new wife asked me why geeks always wear tshirts with obscure references that no one gets. I was slightly put out by the question until I figured it out. They're a uniform. It's how we id the friendlies on the battlefield.
- milliams 13y agoSeveral years ago I was linked to a thesis (Master's I think) discussing this exact topic. That they're a silent signal to others who might have similar interests to you. Especially obscure ones which look 'normal' to people who don't know the reference. I seem to remember that it was a little more in-depth than that but I can't find it now.
- geoka9 13y ago> I figured it out. They're a uniform. I think it's just a way of showing off. Case in point: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12532552/what-part-of-milner-hindley-do-you-not-understand http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12532552/what-part-of-mil... The guy has no idea what the notation means by still wants to wear the t-shirt.
- smacktoward 13y agoYou're both right. It's social signaling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory Your Star Wars or Hindley-Milner t-shirt tells people who see it that you're a particular kind of person. This encourages people who are like you to approach you, because it signals that you're safe -- you're "one of us." Likewise, it discourages those who are unlike you from doing the same, sparing you from having conversations with people you find boring. If you work in a community where high intelligence is seen as socially valuable -- i.e., where a way the high-status individuals distinguish themselves from the rest is by highlighting their intelligence -- like tech, it's not surprising that you'd want clothing that would signal that you are a high-intelligence person, even if you aren't one. It's an attempt to get your foot in the door of social groups that would otherwise be closed to you, by camouflaging yourself as "one of us."
- michaelt 13y agoLet's say you started a company and named it after a technical concept from computer science (for example a higher order function that computes the fixed point of other functions in lambda calculus) would that be an example of this signalling?
- thejsjunky 13y ago> The guy has no idea what the notation means by still wants to wear the t-shirt. I'd read that SO post again, you seem to have misunderstood.
- noonespecial 13y agoI read the post and got the opposite. He saw the shirt and wanted to know the meaning. He even knew the context in which it should have that meaning. I'd say he's earning the right to wear the shirt with pride right there.
- tcdowney 13y agoThanks for this. I was sick the day they taught this notation in my PL class and I need to learn it before my final exam next week!!! :)
- marquis 13y agoI saw a t-shirt once at a hacker conference that said 'I can read your email'. This was back 10 years ago now and I thought it was the best thing ever. Sadly they had run out of girls sizes and I never owned one, but I always wanted people to be just a bit afraid of me - not that I would read their email but that I could. Now I guess it was a good thing because people just might have been afraid of me, or thought I was bragging. But c'mon, email was pretty easy to hack into back then.. Oh and yeah. I wanted the t-shirt so other hackers would know I was part of their group. Because I was a girl I felt it wasn't obvious.
- breadbox 13y agoI think the _author_ understood that, which is why she was so surprised to get the question. The high school student may not have, but that was kind of the point: even this low, low bar was still too high for her female friends.
- GhotiFish 13y agoI actually didn't understand the question when that came up. I kinda got the wrong impression of the young girls demeanor.
- venomsnake 13y agoI think this article can also help http://io9.com/5928739/the-secrets-of-geek-mating-rituals http://io9.com/5928739/the-secrets-of-geek-mating-rituals geeks really value smarts in both sexes. So we always try to outsmart all and are delighted when we don't succeed. I have had a few relationships break down just because my gf would never understand that I will argue for everything just for the sake of flexing my brain.
- 14113 13y agoOn the flipside, I've had relationships that break because both sides try to argue everything. A certain amount of testing and probing is good, but continually it creates a really hostile environment that (for me at least) is just too psychological tiring to try and live in.
- geon 13y ago> I have had a few relationships break down just because my gf would never understand that I will argue for everything just for the sake of flexing my brain. ...or perhaps because you just wouldn't stop arguing. Making a relationship work requires adaption from both partners.
- rubyrescue 13y agoit's the movie equivalent of atoi()
- yen223 13y agoIt is the same reason why we insert random programming references into comments :P
- noonespecial 13y agoDon't mind him rubyrescue, he's just trying to string you along. Oi.
- protomyth 13y ago> They're a uniform. It's how we id the friendlies on the battlefield I'm not sure about that. I think people tend to wear things they feel good about. Sport jerseys, political shirts, or funny t-shirts just make us feel good. Some people feel better when were the in-crowd things, some are our for themselves. // this is my favorite http://www.openbsd.org/tshirts.html#30 http://www.openbsd.org/tshirts.html#30 the 4.4 t-shirt
- fennecfoxen 13y ago> > They're a uniform. It's how we id the friendlies on the battlefield > I'm not sure about that. I think people tend to wear things they feel good about. Both of these things can be true. There are deep-seated reasons that people seek to project their identity through personal appearance and other techniques... :)
- InclinedPlane 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
- fudged71 13y agoIrony: how do you pronounce that? IPA isn't exactly readable.
- InclinedPlane 13y agohttp://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=shibboleth http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=shibboleth
- andor 13y agoRTFM ;-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key
- fudged71 13y agoRight, but it's unintuitive and takes a while to decrypt. Browser extension idea: hover over IPA to see only the relevant glyph pronunciations.
- jholman 13y ago1) It's pronounced like a native English speaker would guess. SHIH buh leth. 2) IPA is tough, but in Wikipedia's case, if you mouse-over each IPA symbol, it'll give you a "/ʃ/ 'sh' in 'shy'" and so on.
- rekwah 13y agoThis isn't limited to just geeky t-shirts with obscure references. Clothing is one of the easiest ways for a person to indirectly advertise their interests. This helps lower the 'awkward approach' barrier for strangers that might like to strike up a conversation. Instant conversation starter. Even living in the PNW, I still get plenty of waves and cries of "Go Pack!" whenever I wear a hat or shirt supporting the Packers. I wear the memorabilia for myself, but the social benefits don't go unnoticed.
- petercooper 13y agoI've not seen Star Wars. Well, I tried to but fell asleep 10 minutes in. Oddly, I'm not feeling like an odd one out here, even so :-)
- lotharbot 13y agoI refused to watch Star Wars as a kid, because people kept telling me that if I was a nerd I had to watch it. I considered it a protest against their definition of "nerd". I did finally watch the original trilogy after I was married. It's OK I guess...
- yew 13y agoI've decided to protest against protesting against definitions, on the grounds that they're words and protesting against them will redefine them to something that someone else will protest against, ad infinitum, and I don't want to die from a stack overflow ;)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mogrim 13y agoWatching it as an adult was always going to be a recipe for failure, I think you really need to have grown up with swapping Star Wars cards, playing with the figures, etc.
- ahoyhere 13y ago
- memset 13y agoI am guilty of this (using the term "guilty" because, as we're discussing in this thread, this can really turn people off of being in our field.) My HN name is "memset", and if you've ever written C, you are quite familiar with this function. So if this comes up in conversation with other tech people, and they don't "get it", it tells me something about them. "Hm, we don't have the same background." It remains to be seen how useful this is as a way to decide what kinds of people I feel I could learn from or want to work with in the future.
- marquis 13y agoMy great mentor taught me that every time someone might have a blank face at what you say, look at it as an opportunity for learning. Most people love it when you get excited and say "yeah, memset is this awesome way of getting data ready to copy on a computer. You know when you watch a movie on Youtube it preloads while you watch? Memset is helping make sure your computer is prepared so you can watch it without annoying buffering". People start thinking it's pretty cool as they can relate to it.
- skrebbel 13y agoI see your point, yet I have a really hard time associating something like memset() with "awesome". I think if anyone would actually respond "wow, cool!" to a story like that, the message to me is that this person finds everything (s)he doesn't understand cool.
- marquis 13y agoMemset isn't aweseome. It's what you do with that's cool. Explain what you do, not that you use Python or Go or C#. People want to hear a narrative, a story. What gets you really interested in your work? Why do you do it? Tell that.
- ams6110 13y agoThey're saying "Wow, cool!" to be nice. In their head, they're thinking "gawd what a dweeb"
- bluedino 13y agoShe shouldn't feel bad. I've never seen more than a few minutes of Star Wars or Star Trek. Never seen Dr. Who or any of the Monty Python stuff. I've never seen a single Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movie (or read the books). But I keep telling myself that one day I'll binge through them all online.
- klipt 13y agoMonty Python varies in quality (especially some of the shorter sketches), but Life of Brian is a hilarious satire of religion and political movements in general: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krb2OdQksMc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krb2OdQksMc
- pavel_lishin 13y agoDon't force yourself to sit through something you hate just to get an imaginary badge. I can't stand Dr. Who, I'm often baffled by British humor, and LotR is the geek equivalent of having read all of Dostoyevski's novels.
- manish_gill 13y agoHeh. Even though I like fantasy very much (big Robert Jordan fan), I really can't stand Lord of the Rings. It's just so utterly boring. :(
- alex_doom 13y agoBut at least you'd understand what the references are coming from.
- silencio 13y agoBut it's okay. There will always be something else to talk about, and it's not like every technical person out there loves everything you name and then some. That's not what defines us. Sadly... I have received criticism and ridicule from some for liking things like knitting (talk about a minority), WoW, and My Little Pony. Doctor Who, LotR, Firefly, EVE Online and all that stuff is usually "awesome!" and untouchable. Beyond me why this stupid double standard exists. Or, how I spent one Harry Potter midnight book release waiting in line watching Grey's Anatomy (the medical romance/drama on ABC). Big freaking deal.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jerrya 13y agoI said that’s what happens when we hold events for women in IT when there aren’t that many women in this industry – we tend to broaden the definition of women in IT. I can't really speak to this point, but I am curious, when did computer science and software engineering get rolled into IT? 15 years ago, I would not have said software developers, software engineers, or test engineers were part of IT. IT was that department that kept the corporate computers working and worked for the CFO, not part of the department that shipped products and worked for the VP Engineering. In the past 5 years, it's become much more inclusive (or so it seems to me.)
- rdouble 13y agoOutside of Silicon Valley anything that has to do with a computer has always been called IT.
- bitwize 13y agoI always tell people I'm a developer; and IT is "did ye try tairnin' it off and back on again?"
- mynewwork 13y agoThis is entirely wrong. I've always thought one of the peculiarities about the UK is that they refer to all things computer as "IT" while the rest of the english-speaking world differentiates. I don't work in IT and I never will, it's a different job with a different skill set. I'm not tech support, a dba, or 'the network guy'. I'm a software engineer and I work in R&D.
- lostlogin 13y agoI'm not sure it is - in the same way the battle for the word >hacker< has been lost, I know that in New Zealand >IT< is a catch all that means someone does computer stuff.
- jiggy2011 13y agoIn the UK too. While I'm mainly a developer, most of the jobs I've worked have also involved being a defacto IT person. Thing is , I work with unix 99% of the time so when it comes to fixing driver problems in Windows 7 or whatever I'm just as clueless as the next man most of the time.
- xradionut 13y agoI've observed that most people allow themselves to go along with the social norms gender wise, with a few exceptions. Then I realize what a wonderful geeky outlier of a spouse that I have. My female coworkers are amazed by my tales of my wife's exploits in auto repair, gaming, hunting and appliance repair.
- pavel_lishin 13y ago> One of them told her to stop making them feel stupid all the time. The world is full of idiots. What she experienced isn't unique to women, it happens to anyone who ends up spending time with people who do not care about knowledge.
- NoPiece 13y agoYou are right, but it is a really useful geek skill to share knowledge without making other people feel stupid. It is one of the differences between being the geek who runs the company, and the geek who is just as smart, but gets stuck on projects no one else wants.
- pekk 13y agoYou're glossing over something significant. Some subcultures (and demographics) suffer more from norms against intellectualism. It is more stigmatized as a woman, among the general population of other women in the US, to be into technical stuff, than to be a man into the same things. It is similar to how bookish black kids may be told to stop 'acting white'.
- pessimizer 13y ago>It is similar to how bookish black kids may be told to stop 'acting white'. As someone who was an absurdly bookish black kid (pre-edit: from a segregated black neighborhood in Chicago, lower middle-class, never knew a white person until I was 13) in the 80's I never heard this once except as a declaration by white people about the pressure felt by black children not to achieve. I agree with your overall point, though, just not the example.
- NoPiece 13y agoIt is good to hear that was your experience, because it is disheartening to think that knowledge or education would be negatively stigmatized in any community. Interestingly, Barack Obama is one of the big propagators of that idea. I think I heard from him first, and that's probably true of many others, when in his 2004 DNC speech (where many Americans heard him for the first time), he said, "Children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.”
- lotsofcows 13y agoDepressing that neither of them seem to have heard of http://london.girlgeekdinners.com/ http://london.girlgeekdinners.com/
- katherineparker 13y agoI understand the author as a fellow woman in I.T. (programmer). I never fit in with the gossipy fashionista crowd either. I was a total geek in the library. I don't wear the geeky t-shirts though. I like to wear pencil skirts and kick my high heels off under my desk. Only downside, like noonespecial mentioned, is that nobody just assumes I'm a programmer since I lack the "uniform". Anyways, that girl she spoke to in the article seems very smart and ambitious. I wish her the best of luck in her future career :) Be who you want to be
- mehrzad 13y agoThis post could have been a reddit comment.
- ritchiea 13y agoHow old is the young woman the author spoke with? Don't most smart, geeky people in HS feel a bit out of place? There's a whole PG essay on that [1]. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
- claudius 13y agoYou should take into account that schools in Europe are not necessarily the same as schools in the US (it was an event in London). I felt quite at home in my school’s physics and chemistry classes, and maths was sometimes boring, but overall okay, too.
- ht_th 13y agoTo add to claudius's reply to your post, in the Netherlands we like to differentiate students around age 12 into levels: about 60 percent go to the vocational level, 25 percent to the general level, and about 15 percent to the academic level. Basically, all smart people are put together for up to six years of secondary education, after which they go on to university, meeting other smart people.
- memset 13y agoI will offer an experience which is the inverse of this! I am a male software engineer who works in fashion (and before this I worked in wine.) I knew nothing about wine when I started, and my fashion sense is prototypically, well, male-software-centric. People in the wine industry are palpably aware that people view it as "hoity-toity". Professionals I've worked with are usually very gracious in explaining what it means when you say a wine is "dark" or "buttery" because that pretentious image is something we want to overcome. Fashion is a bit different. "I like that chambray shirt!" What? "Erm, that's, uh, that denim material you're wearing." Oh. Or "I saw someone next door with an Hermes bag; it was gorgeous." Everyone had quite a laugh when I asked who Hermes was. Or expressed surprise that the Vogue Spring edition is the one where they show off new styles, which is why it's so thick and has so few ads. Or the difference between hair paste and hair gel. I feel like there is a bigger lesson in this story: I've got to stop making people feel silly for not getting my Star Wars references, and they've got to understand that there's no logical reason I'd know anything about the big names in fashion. I occasionally meet people who get this - you know your domain and I know mine, and we can still talk to each other without othering. And that skill - of being able to get along with your PM even though they "clearly don't know anything about code" - is one worth developing.
- seivan 13y agoThe problem isn't PM's know jack about code. The problem is the set where a PM would even be required. That means there's a structural flaw in your process. The idea of having a project manager is ridiculous. People _should_ manage themselves and take ownership of the project. Making the PM useless.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Spearchucker 13y agoThere's a place for PMs. If you're willing to step into shoes other than your own, start by reading PeopleWare [1]. And then dig into the origins of self-managing Scrum and have a read through Takeuchi and Nonaka's paper[2]. When you're done, I'd love to hear your thoughts on PMs, and why we're still making the same mistakes we made, and wrote books about, 30 years ago. [1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0932633439/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0932633439/ [2] http://hbr.org/product/new-new-product-development-game/an/86116-PDF-ENG http://hbr.org/product/new-new-product-development-game/an/8...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- oh_sigh 13y agoThis sounds like the equivalent of a male nerd complaining about "brogrammers"
- katherineparker 13y agoIs a bro equal to a drunk idiotic party boy? If so, female nerds don't like them then either :)
- Aloisius 13y agoI think of it as short for "frat brother," so yes, the drunk idiotic party boy.
- katherineparker 13y agoThanks, that makes sense. The shorter the slang the easier for them to slur the words out of their mouths.
- oh_sigh 13y agoMy point was that disparaging someone because they have different tastes from you is stupid. Okay, so you don't like fashion or gossip, and you like star wars. That fact alone doesn't make you better or more interesting than someone who likes fashion and gossip, but not star wars.
- katherineparker 13y agoIt was hard for me to grasp your point from your previous post. Sorry, I just didn't realize the tone of it and I took it as sarcasm (didn't mean to offend you, if I did by chance).
- delinka 13y ago"But for some girls, it feels like women are alienating the girls who want to be in IT." For most children, up through high school, it feels like they're being alienated by their peers for being "different."
- danso 13y agoHad a hard time understanding the OP's point...but mostly because I don't understand what the event was about. Was it advertised explicitly as an IT/engineering event? I guess you could assume that from "Women in IT", but I think it's nice that such an event shows how information technology encompasses a lot of different fields. Even on "Hacker News", there are a good number of articles about marketing and law because geeks realize that being successful is not strictly based on coding skills. As someone already pointed out, "IT" is a nebulous term. In my day, while at college, it was almost never used to refer to computer engineers, but was more intended for MIS majors, which was considered to be the "computer science of Excel". So it's kind of strange that the OP is calling for more elitism when the event used a term that's extremely vague and inclusive.
- GigabyteCoin 13y agoIt's not just the stigma that IT isn't womanly, it's the idea that a young girl... already completely dejected by her peers, is forced to endure classes made up of 100% high school boys. Unless the teacher is incredible defensive of the girl's position in the class, she will most likely drop it. I am not surprised there are so few women in IT.
- joshguthrie 13y agoIt's not just the stigma that IT isn't womanly, it's the idea that a young girl... already completely dejected by her peers (read "females"), couldn't integrate herself better in classes made up of 100% high school boys (which are her peers as much as the other girls). Unless this high school girl is incredibly hard to get along with, she will most likely make friends, males or females. I am surprised there are so few women in IT.
- noamsml 13y agoI fundamentally disagree with the idea that consuming cultural artifacts that happen to correlate with liking engineering has anything to do with liking engineering. If you think liking Star Wars is necessary for being an engineer, you're probably missing some pretty good people who just aren't that into Star Wars.
- claudius 13y agoSure, you will miss people, and you will miss good people. But since there is (according to you) some correlation, it might act as a heuristic, employed when it is simply not feasible to implement better tests.
- pessimizer 13y agoBut what if it's a better heuristic for finding young men than engineers?
- claudius 13y agoI would argue it is also a very good heuristic for finding Star Wars fans. Your point being?
- pessimizer 13y agoMy point being that if 80% of programmers are young men, and knowledge of Star Wars jokes (or whatever) can find young men at an 80% accuracy from a general list, but good programmers at only a 64% accuracy from a list of programmers, you should just cut out the rationalization and just hire based on sex and race. You haven't discovered a heuristic for hiring good programmers, you've discovered a heuristic for confirming your own preconceptions, and for reenforcing stereotypes.
- claudius 13y agoTake false positives into account – you will find more young men who are not engineers than Star Wars fans who are not engineers (for suitable values of engineers and personal experience). Since such false positives are extremely annoying[0] when looking for interesting people in a party, you want to minimise them first, not the false negatives. [0] A false positive takes you n minutes to discover and abandon, whereas a false negative ideally doesn’t concern you at all, assuming there are enough interesting people.
- mwfunk 13y agoLifelong geek here, and I can totally understand the appeal of this story. Reading some of the comments is kinda depressing though. There's no "us" and there's no "them". There are groups of people in the world with similar clusters of interests, and I guess that one of those clusters corresponds to traditionally geeky interests. But sometimes it seems like people internalize the whole us and them thing way too much. I guess it makes social navigation easier but it gets in the way of really understanding people (and yourself) if taken too far.
- csense 13y agoThank you for pointing this out. A bias toward viewing situations as "us vs. them" is part of humans' tribal nature. Any time someone points out that something isn't an "us vs. them" situation (or that a particular position is predicated on a situation being "us vs. them"), you should really give weight to that criticism because it's a very easy mistake to make. Look hard at whether it really is an "us vs. them" situation, and if it isn't, what are the consequences that flow from that? In this particular example, the case is pretty clear: The parent's spot-on.
- abraininavat 13y agoI knew exactly how she felt? That's really the best title you can come up with? This "use the original title" guideline is stupid, and makes for a shittier site because there's absolutely no way to scan headlines and decide which ones may be interesting. Think about the difference between: "I knew exactly how she felt" or "Is this what it's supposed to feel like?" and "Exoplanet discovery count by year" or "Earth's core far hotter than we thought?"
- gcb0 13y ago> makes a event for women in IT > does not understand why women does not participate in broader (i.e. non sexist) events in IT sound logic.
- nayefc 13y agoI wish I could understand what the relationship between Star Wars and technology/hacking/software engineering is, that everyone is talking about here. (P.S: I'm a Software Engineer but never watched Star Wars).
- coldtea 13y agoThe relationship is that lots of people in the technology/hacking/software community like Star Wars and Star Trek and science fiction in general. To the point that you get references to said things all the time in programming circles. I'm sure you are aware of all this, but still wanted to make your point. But the fact that you have some outlier experience ("engineer who never watched Star Wars") should not come into the way of you researching the matter. It's as if I, as a fat person, say "who are those all those fat people with diabetes? I'm fat and I don't have diabetes".
- nayefc 13y ago> I'm sure you are aware of all this. I'm not sure how you're sure. I haven't. I've heard Star Wars references before in general, but not particularly from the tech/software community. Your second analogy doesn't really make sense to me.
- stared 13y agoI have quite a few female friends who have mostly male friends (just because of being interested in a particular technical field). And, to be honest, I have never got idea why someone _needs_ to have friends mostly of the same gender. Once someone has interest beyond cliche "gossip, fashion, diet & nail painting" or "football, cars, sports, binge drinking", well, then why to lock contacts inside only one's own gender? And if it turns out that most of people interested in X are of the opposite gender, is it wrong? (Unless it is them who make a barrier.) Especially as when there is a heated discussion between two people interested in (say) the respiratory system of Drosophila melanogaster (a fruit fly, not to intimidate anyone), then the simplest social characteristics (i.e. gender and, to some extent, age) very often go away. And, in fact, what I like _the most_ about people being passionate about their interests, is that very, very often it goes beyond social status (sometimes even if one is talking with a professor, who is 50 older than a teenage geek).
- ianstormtaylor 13y agoSorry, but you're arguing against no one. No one said she needed to make friends with girls because she's a girl. She clearly _wants_ to become friends with them. And it's unfortunate that she clearly wants to be friends with some people of her own gender, and yet has such a hard time of it because she's alienating the other girls and they're alienating her.
- stared 13y agoIt wasn't an argument, it was a side comment, supporting her approach (similar to one of many of my friends) and to some extent mocking the (culturally implicit) premise that one should align with one's own gender[1], see in e.g. "[...] and how none of the other girls in her class understood anything she was talking about". Would ever a tall person said "but none of tall people at my high-school can understand my jokes"? [1] And to some extent supporting also: "It’s funny because the evening started out with a lady giving a speech about how the IT industry is alienating women. But for some girls, it feels like women are alienating the girls who want to be in IT."
- narrator 13y agoI'm going to annoyingly meta on this one because I'm feeling really philosophical today. There is a constant dissonance in the western world between assumptions about "ideal" or "moral" statistical probability distributions and actual statistical probability distributions over a large sample size when it comes to any politically sensitive topics like the one implied in the article (i.e women having an interest in science and technology). This happens over and over again. There are thousands of articles a year on this kind of thing and millions of human years spent mulling why the ideal curve doesn't match the actual curve. It's the perfect topic for non-productive rambling because it's always dissonant and it never goes anywhere. The dear reader probably already knows this, but to the idealist, the ideal always equals the actual in a just world and evidence of a mismatch is evidence of injustice. Those who accept or tolerate the actual not matching the ideal are presumed to support injustice. These arguments are endlessly repeated. Nevertheless, seemingly endless repetition is a very effective means of political discourse. I realized this most profoundly when studying religious texts. Points that are intended to be remembered are mentioned over and over again to the point of mind-numbing boredom. Repetition is good for remembering and people only believe what they can remember. Thus the most effective strategy of any activist is to repeat their message over and over again and have the adherents do the same and approve the same and ostracise those who criticize and those who don't care, thus spreading the idea through the society via social psychological principles and the pure intellectual brute force of repetition.
- saraid216 13y agoKeep in mind that the audience often changes with each repetition.
- narrator 13y agoThe idea of a normal vs ideal probability distribution makes me think about coin flips following the normal curve. The coins flip distribution over a large sample size will form a normal curve. The "ideal curve activist" will attempt to attract evidence for and possibly find ways to undermine the conspiracy of injustice that flipped the coins after they landed to some non-random pattern making the coin flip distribution appear to correspond to the actual curve. How are these coins flipped back becomes the topic of interest for the serious activist. Many leads are followed, the evidence and the picture is always murky so suspicions turn to those who deny or ignore the injustice of the actual distribution curve. An odd thing then happens. Denigrating and dis-empowering those who dispute or ignore the ideal curve becomes the mechanism of activism due to the activist's exhaustion of and the murkiness of the task of looking for the assumed malicious coin re-flippers. The coin re-flippers may exist but they may also possess impunity or obscurity such that the activists fail to act against them but it's usually much easier for the activists to direct their energy against assumed shills or fellow conspirators who's proof of membership is their disbelief or disinterest in the ideal curve.
- s_baby 13y agoI see plenty of insightful comments here but no one acknowledging the conclusion. >It’s funny because the evening started out with a lady giving a speech about how the IT industry is alienating women. But for some girls, it feels like women are alienating the girls who want to be in IT. How many of these articles/talks put the impetus on changing women alienating women from tech? How likely are you to see some twitter post about girls like this acting "not cool" even though it's a widespread problem? Feminist discourse is usually 1 dimensional. More often than not it's only interested in black and white narratives where women are victims and men are perpetrators. In the few cases where other women are shown as the problem they are framed as victims of patriarchal socialization not responsible for their behavior.
- eightpersimmons 13y agoAbsolutely - women sometimes internalize and participate in misogynistic and cruel behavior, and it can be hard to talk about. I've seen this happen with the "fake geek girl" phenomenon - some women who feel that they are legitimate parts of the community participate in this kind of destructive policing because they've bought into the cultural misogyny and are often rewarded and have their status reinforced in their community. On a much more damaging level, this happens with slut-shaming and sexual policing. One of the major factors in the recent suicides of teen rape victims was the rejection and shaming by their female peers.
- s_baby 13y ago>Absolutely - women sometimes internalize and participate in misogynistic and cruel behavior, and it can be hard to talk about. I think that's an understatement to say it only sometimes happens. From what I gather it's a part of almost every woman's life. Based on anecdotal data, while men are often a source of unintentional systematic sexism women are the more likely source of intentional malicious misogyny.
- philwelch 13y agoDo you realize how ridiculous that sounds? When women bully other women, it's because they're agents of the patriarchy?
- asperous 13y ago> "They thought she wanted to build the next Terminator or hack into Government systems, when she just wanted to build self-driving cars." Maybe she doesn't see how this is similar in terms of amazing, but I would say those other women weren't far off.
- csense 13y agoThe student was probably complaining about the unwashed masses' Hollywood-fueled fantasy of the computer hacker: Anyone who can write a program longer than 10 lines is capable of hacking into any computer system in five minutes or less, using or fixing any piece of computer-y, electronic-y, or science-y equipment, etc. Hacking systems gets easier the younger the hacker is, the more important the data being protected by the system is, and the more resources its owners have to secure it. All of these are of course ridiculous assumptions which suit narrative purposes but have no basis in reality. A lot of people don't understand that, and they can be really annoying to those who do.
- mtkd 13y agoIsn't this just a density issue - like (for lack of a better analogy) being gay in a small town? I can understand it's difficult when you are too young to choose geographic location - but once you can - the marginalisation is quickly solved by moving somewhere with a higher density of like-minded people. The challenge, I guess, is to advertise that these places do exist - but I see so many 'Geek Girl Dinners' type events I can't believe that is really the case any more.
- djcapelis 13y ago> The challenge, I guess, is to advertise that these places do exist - but I see so many 'Geek Girl Dinners' type events I can't believe that is really the case any more. I wish it was that simple and this was already solved, but even in the Bay Area it can be frustratingly hard to connect with people who come from similar perspectives. I was just at a women in tech event last night and three of us went off for sushi afterward and we all talked about how frustrating it can be to find people who feel like us and how nice it would be if it wasn't so difficult. I think the starkest variant of this I've seen was when one woman asked another: "Why should we even bother trying to increase the number of women in tech? Sometimes it's not even a good field, why should we be working so hard to get women into it?" The other woman's response was simple and to the point: "I do it because it'd be nice to have someone to go to lunch with." The truth of that statement isn't so much in that she couldn't have found anyone to go to lunch with ever, but the relative truth that exists when you feel less comfortable in a group because you're the one who is so different. For many people, tech is a place where everyone is different and different is cool and great. For women, different is often still just different.
- dcalacci 13y agoViewing it as a 'density issue' takes the root issue (dearth of women in STEM) for granted, as if that will always (or should always) be the case. The lack of women in STEM fields can be largely attributed to cultural and social pressures, not a "natural" tendency for people who identify as women to avoid those fields. Saying 'a solution to feeling marginalized is to move to a place where you are not marginalized' doesn't really make sense when you aren't applying it to a single individual.
- monokrome 13y agoSounds a lot like the way growing up as a software engineer in Utah felt... :D
- Skywing 13y agoI'm a male software engineer and I had the same experiences going through school, too. Nobody else seemed to care about programming outside of school-related assignments. Very boring few years in school, those were.
- gfodor 13y ago"To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle." If you want more geek women, you need more geek girls. (Girls, if you wait long enough, turn into women, funnily enough.)
- lgleason 13y agoThis was a great summary of what I have observed with some groups trying to inspire women in tech. Lots of marginally technical to non-technical women in events supposedly focused on women in tech. Instead of fostering the geek culture the cocktail and sex in the city culture takes over. Gender stereotypes are re-enforced and they inadvertently took the cause back a notch. What we need are more Rails Bridge, Black Girls Code and that sort of thing to re-enforce feminist geekdom. When the critical mass of any group is slanted towards non technical people it is tough to convey a message of tech being cool and make it attractive for kids to want to enter. I would also love to see a meetup that had a similar makeup and mission as the systers list. I am a guy, but would actively do whatever I could to support that kind of effort because the members of that list are great role models for women in tech.
- nhebb 13y agoThis actually explains why more women do not get into tech careers. In the same way that this young woman felt alienated from her schoolmates, many women who are not into geek culture would feel alienated by CS classmates and the tech industry. There's been a lot of talk about getting more women into this industry, and it's often looked at as a failing of the industry itself. What's plainly obvious to me is that many (most?) women just aren't interested in the field.
- overgryphon 13y agoThis is how I feel. I love my job, and find computer science interesting. Why does that mean that I have to also be knowledgeable about the nuances of magic cards, star trek, or Dr. Who? The idea that every software developer must also identify as a geek is rather immature.
- paddy_m 13y agoI agree. I don't read comic books, barely watch sci-fi, play board games. I play sports and do stuff outside. I often feel like an outcast when I'm talking to a bunch of programmers and they veer off into sci-fi talk.
- vec 13y ago> What's plainly obvious to me is that many (most?) women just aren't interested in the field. Which is exactly the problem. There's no strong reason to suggest that this difference is due to anything other than social pressure. Something in the way we socialize children is convincing half the potential talent pool that they shouldn't develop an interest in technology fields, almost certainly because they see few if any adult role models. It's not really a failing of the industry, in the sense that we're probably not the ones who originally caused it. But it is a problem for the industry, and one that industry insiders are in a unique position to solve.
- SPSteinbeck 13y agoThere's no strong reason to suggest that this difference is due to anything other than social pressure. The fact that such social pressure to enforce gender roles exists and the fact that such pressure independently arose in every advanced civilization to ever exist overwhelmingly suggests it is an intrinsic feature of the human race. Certainly, this would suggest the only way to overthrow the gender roles you despise is for some governing apparatus to coerce behaviour (which we already do to some extent); organically, humans will organize themselves in what you would call a "sexist" way. Of course, even then, the shelf life on the sexless world you envision is short. American hegemony is waning and none of the candidates to fill the power vacuum will have much time for the 'isms that so occupy your mind.
- recursive 13y agoMarvel and Doctor Who and Darth Vader aren't really related to IT though. I'm aware of all three, and seen a couple of the Star Wars movies, but that's it. By her argument, Trish would be alienating to me, a male in IT as well. People in all fields have hobbies and interests outside of work. I don't think this is a sexism or even IT issue.
- kobot 13y agoI am a girl studying computer science. I never understood the whole geek girl mentality of "I don't get OTHER girls! They only like shopping! I like nerdy things!" I like shopping and makeup. I also like nerdy things like Lord of the Rings and programming hackathons. I get along with girly girls AND geeks. People are more complex than "I only like shopping" or "I only like Star Wars". It's not hard to make friends with people who have different hobbies than you - in fact it makes your social group more interesting, I find. Why does there have to be a divide?
- csense 13y ago> It's not hard to make friends with people who have different hobbies than $YOU The above statement may be true when $YOU == "kobot", but it's not true for a nontrivial subset of the nerd population.
- joshguthrie 13y agoLike someone posted right below your, because everyone wants to belong to a Grandfalloon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granfalloon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granfalloon It's easier to "belong to a club" by saying either "I like computers", "I like sports" or "I like my nails painted" than by saying "I like computers, sports and nails painted". But didn't we learn that the world isn't binary? :)
- kurd_debuggr 13y agoThis was certainly a pleasing change to read. We need more women in tech!
- coldtea 13y ago>She then talked to me about robotics and physics and programming and how none of the other girls in her class understood anything she was talking about. They thought she wanted to build the next Terminator or hack into Government systems, when she just wanted to build self-driving cars. All the other girls would talk about fashion labels and gossip and she would be bored out of her mind, wondering why nobody else watched Doctor Who. None of them understood the joke on her Darth Vader t-shirt. One of them listened to her podcast and asked her what “Marvel” was. One of them told her to stop making them feel stupid all the time. She sounds very cool. And it goes to show that "sexism is the barrier" is not the whole story. Those girls in the school never had any encounters with such sexism in the tech workplace, but they still didn't like the thing even as a hobby. Which reminds me of my university years (computer science). Those days (early to mid-nineties) we didn't even have internet at home or any outlet to know how a "tech workplace" even is. We expected to work in some bank, some big company IT department or teach CS ourselves. How that work environment would be, we had absolutely no idea. Still, it was mostly men that preferred CompSci, whereas biology was mostly women. Math and applied math also had more women. (In actual university CS nobody cared if you were a woman or a man. And we had the outmost respect for geek girls that were in the whole thing. There was just no sexism of the kind people complain about in the US. If you could do it, you could do it. And high school kids enrolling to the university had no idea either -- they were the typical high school kids, having typical high school relations). That said, it was mostly boys who cared and nagged their parents to get them computer systems and game consoles. Girls, being more socially mature earlier, had a larger social life and could not care less about spending hours every day in front of a screen. It's like girls give up the "dolls" phase much earlier, for a more serious and balanced social life, whereas boys extend the "toy guns/race cars" thing into puberty and early adulthood even, substituting their toys for FPS shooters, fantasy novels, superhero comics and RPGs. Which builds some ties to computers early on...
- rjknight 13y agoAnd it goes to show that "sexism is the barrier" is not the whole story This is true but possibly not in the way that you think. I'm not sure that girls are choosing that different way of life quite so much as they're conditioned to do so, and this is discriminatory. I think it's possible to explain the phenomenon described in the OP via "intersectionality" - in other words, there are multiple forms of discrimination and they overlap in ways that sometimes confuse us and deflect us from the true course of treating people equally. About the best intro I've seen to it is here: http://miriamdobson.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/intersectionality-a-fun-guide/ http://miriamdobson.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/intersectionali... In this case, both geeks and women suffer from discrimination in different contexts. Being a geek and a woman is doubly difficult because mainstream society (both men and women) say "you're a woman, you shouldn't be a geek". This ends up producing some pretty weird conclusions like this: http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/the-nerdy-gendered-situation-of-computer-science/ http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/the-nerdy-ge... - which argues that women can only be encouraged into computer science if we make it less geeky, which basically discriminates against those who got into computer science because it's geeky and that's what they like. A properly intersectional understanding would argue for maximum freedom for both women and geeks and, especially, female geeks who suffer from multiple discrimination.
- qzxt 13y agoI read this about 2 hours ago and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Growing up in a Latino/Black community and being of mixed heritage, it was never socially easy. My parents divorced, so I'd spend half the year with my dad - who was Jamaican - in Patterson, NJ, and I'd spend the other half with my mom - who was Italian - up in Canada. I always found it interesting how I felt more comfortable in white-as-the-clouds Ontario, than in Patterson, where there weren't just more black people, but a lot more mixed race people. I didn't quite like Star Wars or Dr Who, but I did read a lot of Tolkien, and science, tech, philosophy, or anything, really, wasn't just something I learned in school so I could do homework; they were actual things that I engaged with - not that school was any less boring for me; believe me, it was. It wasn't enough to read Catcher in the Rye, I had to find out about Salinger, the times he lived in. I liked to talk about things. What was mostly just school stuff to people were things I actually liked to think about or talk about or even do. This never really fit very well into Hip-Hop and girls, and "looking cool" Patterson - though I did rock this sweet leather jacket once, but I drew some blanks when I channeled my inner James Dean. Brampton, OTOH, was interesting. It wasn't that people were any more like I was, or that people automatically liked me any better - though there was a weird fascination with my hair - but the fact that I liked the things I liked wasn't something I had to hide. It wasn't that they understood everything I said, or that they were even all that interested, but very rarely did anyone ever alienate me for dropping a Hume quote, no one ever told me to "shove that nerd shit up my ass" when I mentioned the possibility of planting a radio in someone's skull; no one ever tried to make me socially handicapped for being interested in any intellectual development. Reading this, I felt like this girl had just touched my mind. If only I could touch hers. The feelings of isolation when people who are physically like you aren't just behaviorally unlike you, but very actively alienating to you. The feeling of shame when the teacher calls you to give the answer and you don't know what to do - give the right answer, contribute to the stigma; give the wrong answer and have others spitefully mock you for "not being as smart as you think". The absolute feeling of insecurity when innocently mentioning you don't know something, a privilege available to everyone else, is met with mocking comments about how they thought you knew everything. If only I could meet this girl and let her know that it gets better in the end. Hopefully she finds her own Brampton, ON - somewhere she can be herself with other people without the feeling of being an artificial limb, rather than a part of a fully functioning body.
- webwright 13y agoOne of my favorite concepts from Kurt Vonnegut was "Granfalloons" in Cats Cradle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granfalloon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granfalloon ) The idea is that people love to be part of a club-- not only for the feeling of belonging but for the feeling of being able to exclude others. Political parties, churches, etc. It's so fundamentally human to do this, and it's unsurprising that it should extend into the professional realm (though we should keep trying to rise above it).
- rjknight 13y agoObligatory Malcolm Tucker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5iRmPBve80 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5iRmPBve80
- copper-horse 13y agoI'm sorry, but if people don't get your Star Wars humour, that does not make them stupid. May be they just didn't like Star Wars. And may be somehow they thought that being "in marketing or law or something" is just as worthy an occupation as writing spam filters for google. I guess the reason they form a community in the short time of an IT event, and "the nerds" are always on the fringe is this same dismissive attitude of superiority that makes people fiercely unattractive and isolated. Men or women.
- vacri 13y agoWorking in marketing and law for Google isn't working in IT. It's working for IT, but it's working in marketing and law. Would anyone seriously think that the sysadmin for a law firm could seriously present at a 'women in law' presentation?
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Working in marketing and law for Google isn't working in IT. It is working in the IT industry. It is not working in an IT profession. "Working in IT" can mean either. I suspect that there is a group of people who would be interested in a presentation on issues facing "Women in the IT industry" as well as one with interest in issues facing "Women in the IT profession", and I suspect that those groups overlap considerably. Though, I would also suspect that there is a substantial subset of each group that is not in the other.
- vacri 13y agoIt would seem pointless to have an education faire for an industry rather than a profession. "Come and see what you can do working in the Water industry!" -> you could be a hydrologist, a lawyer, a receptionist, a pipelayer, a sysadmin, a farmer, a payroll officer... it's nonsensical, given the context. It'd almost be easier to list the jobs that can't be shoehorned into such a broad industry.
- sev 13y agoI know there's a bunch of quotes out there that all basically the same thing: The more you repeat something, the more you believe something to be true, the more you will cause it to be true or real. I suggest men, women, and everyone stop making this a bigger deal than it is (however big it currently is, it can be made bigger), and let's start focusing on real problems. Whoever has complaints about disrespect, belittling, or whatever, should just self-study and create something AWESOME, and then prove to the world by action, instead of blabbering off and causing pointless havoc that won't get us anywhere, let alone possibly make us take steps backward.
- Dewie 13y agoSometimes I feel alienated both by the "normal" crowd and the "nerd" crowd - it's like I am some hybrid that can't seem to feel a strong identity to either group (normal/nerdy because that is a common dichotomy). It doesn't help that being "nerdy" is now a hip/self-ironic thing, and people will flaunt how they are the most geekiest person ever because <Star Trek, math, programming, physics, geology, cosplay, [some incredibly specific interest]> - and I can't really relate to feeling such a strong identity with an archetype. I've also never seen Star Wars, for some reason.
- kenko 13y ago> All the other girls would talk about fashion labels and gossip and she would be bored out of her mind, wondering why nobody else watched Doctor Who. None of them understood the joke on her Darth Vader t-shirt. One of them listened to her podcast and asked her what “Marvel” was. One of them told her to stop making them feel stupid all the time. Believe it or not, you can be a good coder without knowing who Doctor Who and Darth Vader are, or what Marvel is. Not even having seen Star Wars will make you a good programmer! (A friend of mine who saw the linked post was astounded at the idea that girls are keeping other girls out of IT by not being enthusiastic about juvenile comic books and juvenile sci-fi. That is just about the single stupidest thing one could possibly think---unless, perhaps, the single stupidest thing one could possibly think is that it's somehow daring or transgressive to be a fan of Dr. Who. Come the fuck on.)
- ahoyhere 13y ago> All the other girls would talk about fashion labels and gossip and she would be bored out of her mind, wondering why nobody else watched Doctor Who. None of them understood the joke on her Darth Vader t-shirt. One of them listened to her podcast and asked her what “Marvel” was. One of them told her to stop making them feel stupid all the time. Anyone else read this paragraph and think: "Yup, I bet she really was making them feel stupid"? I was that judgmental dick of a teen and thank god I grew out of it. If I were the adult she was talking to at a party, I would have warned her against thinking that "different" meant "better." And told her that probably the best friends she'd ever make were not the ones who were carbon copies of her interests. If she would have the guts to leave aside the preferred pop culture and meet other people where, and how, they truly are.
- olgagalchenko 13y agoUgh. "Our people"? This post is alienating me. I am a female software engineer. I also cannot stand sci-fi and love fashion, romantic comedies, painting my nails and all kinds of girly shit. I can gush over a beautiful Hermes scarf or my favorite chambray shirt one moment, and automate the fuck out of the iOS app testing process the next. (Just an example that the author, because she's in testing, might be interested in.) If nothing else, we share our love for programming. So, the next time you dismiss a girl because she dare wear heels and has never seen Star Wars, you might be missing out on a friend. I totally get that it has been your experience that girls who are into traditional girly shit are lame and not worth talking to, but maybe it's because you're not giving them a chance. What happened to not judging a book by its cover? (Unless you don't like Arrested Development. Then I hate you. :)
- joshguthrie 13y agoI second that emotion. Though one could admire the issue moving away from "women in tech" to "non-geek persons in tech" ;)
- Myrmornis 13y agoI agree that female teenage culture has a lot to answer for in dissuading girls from studying technical subjects. But this article is full of silly stereotypes. I'm not particularly interested in science fiction or playing video games, and I would not find software engineering very appealing if it were full of darth vader t-shirt wearing nerds.
- tezka 13y ago"I agree that female teenage culture has a lot to answer for in dissuading girls from studying technical subjects" such as what? sounds like blaming the victim. Female teenage culture may happen to be just fine, and the techie culture is what alienates women from participation.
- rikacomet 13y agoIn India, the no of women that get outcasted for being a geek is phenomenal ! I mean really, I hate all those inferior girls who only aim to marry a successful guy to live off his income, and adjust if it isn't much, instead of going out there and doing something themselves, and if someone is doing so, let them be, or support them. My own sister have faced this problem, quite a no of times, when the girls in her class, come to know that she can play FIFA 13, they made fun of her! Can you imagine? Though she was strong enough to not get effected from it, but still, it isn't having zero effect at all. As someone who values intelligence, I tell her, that it may require her to do more hardwork, but she can be actually beautiful+intelligent at the same time. I'm thinking about taking her to some start up events with me,to meet other women, so that she knows, and their is someone to look up to for her. Thanks to this post, for making my decision firm.
- tezka 13y agowell, maybe the big part of what kills women's interest in programming/CS is the unnecessary nerdiness that comes attached with it. As if watching starwars or Dr. who or reading marvel comics is essentially related to competency in CS. Note that this is largely a US phenomena. I am not making a judgement about the value of said material, just that they need not be bundled and presented as part and parcel of computing.
- ucee054 13y agoHow fucking stupid is that? "Because the other guy interested in the same field watches Star Wars, I'm going to change career!" Whether you like a field is supposed to be based on whether you like the field, not how cool you find the other people in the field. So you're not describing girls who are interested in CS, you're describing girls who want to get into a field full of cool people. Maybe if they are intolerant to having nerds as colleagues, said girls should aim for Hollywood instead of CS
- tezka 13y ago" you're describing girls who want to get into a field full of cool people." No I am not. And you are grossly oversimplifying the process typically involved in vocational decision making. Seldom people go to a field based on pure passion, when most other things about it is at odds with their interest.
- jimmyjazz14 13y agoI found the references to geek pop culture items odd, what does liking Star Wars, Doctor Who or comics have to do with working in IT? I have nothing against those things (nor would I consider myself of fan of them) but, I certainly don't think someone who doesn't embrace geek culture is any less intelligent or less able to fit into the IT industry as this story seems to imply. I don't presume to know the entire situation for the girl in the story but, to me it seems as if this she was dismissing her peers in much the same way they where dismissing her.
- Tycho 13y agoMost articles on this topic take the starting position that 'most IT workers are male, therefore the industry must be putting up barriers to female candidates.' However, I wonder if it's not more accurate to say that society puts barriers in front of anyone who's interested in an IT career, and males just find these barriers less difficult to circumvent. Nobody wants to be called a 'geek' but it seems more catastrophic for girls and women.
- navs 13y agoFeeling out of place, I can absolutely sympathise. I haven't quite found my place yet. It's made worse with all this talk about star wars, geeky t-shirts and other pop culture paraphernalia. We aren't all fans of star wars. We aren't all jumping at the chance to make pop culture references in conversation and we don't all own t-shirts with witty slogans concerning the dark side (I do confess to owning 2 wolverine t-shirts though). Now shows like the Big Bang Theory only help to reinforce this silly idea of what a 'nerd' is. I was very into Heavy Metal growing up. Just as I was into comics. I felt like an outsider in the typical social circles at school and university and I felt even worse when I found the 'nerd' or 'geek' or 'metal' circles. Liking Metallica apparently didn't make me a true metalhead and so there you go, denounced. I'm not into D&D so there goes my invitations to D&D sessions. What about the girl in that conference that wasn't wearing a star wars t-shirt, that was just as interested in that talk? I absolutely hate how each sub-culture tries to belittle the other and how its admission is dependent on whether you all like the same things. I know that wasn't the main focus of the OP's post and I'm somewhat incoherent because I did just wake up, but I had to have my little rant. It's not just the IT industry alienating based on gender but also hobbies and interests. --- Amateur developer in Auckland that would like to meet other developers and not just to talk about star trek.
- mosselman 13y agoI was recently in Russia and there about 50% in computer science studies were women. We went to some IT companies like Yandex (biggest IT company in Europe AND THE competitor of Google in Russia) and there, from walking around, my estimate would be that about 50% was female as well! This can be a tremendous advantage to companies in Russia I feel and it is something that we in the west, be it Europe or the US, should strive for as well.
- hogfish 13y agoHi, I'm the author and I've written a follow-up post on this topic - One simple suggestion to encourage more women into IT http://trishkhoo.com/2013/05/one-simple-suggestion-to-encourage-more-women-into-it/ http://trishkhoo.com/2013/05/one-simple-suggestion-to-encour... - Trish Khoo