While I don’t want to appear sexist or sth I observe that women generally aren’t too good with IT. Ofc there are exceptions – I personally know several women that are great programmers or admins (and I know loads of men that can’t copy a file if it could save their lives), but most of women don’t have the proper way of thinking required to be good with IT. I think it boils down to some historical or even evolutionary reasons. It’s the same that you don’t see too many female car mechanics or miners. On the other hand you don’t see many male child care, teachers or artists (maybe artist aren’t a good example but I can’t think of other right now).
This of course doesn’t mean anybody should be discouraged of working in a field they like. It just should be accepted that there are differences between sexes in what they are better at. Is this something bad? IMHO no, as long as ppl don’t dis anybody based on only stereotypes.
And then there was my mother, who built 8086s for the giggles, and was one of only a handful of technicians during the mid-to-late 80s and early 90s who was qualified to assemble and program automated “press 9 for more options” phone hotline systems (she apologizes for all the hours you’ve wasted, trying to talk to a real human – she still regrets not installing some sort of “backdoor-to-humanity” in every system she worked on). On more than one occasion she had to work through a male co-worker, or client’s technician, because the client did not believe she could possibly know what she was doing (being a woman).
Cyber Killer- First off, if you feel like you have to quantify your statement with, “While I don’t want to appear sexist”, then you *are* being sexist; you’re just using that to fool yourself and others. ;p As for men and women and their various roles, I can tell you from personal experience as well as societal knowledge that the reason that you don’t see a lot of female mechanics or miners, or male child care workers, teachers, or artists, is because our society has a stigma against both. As a woman and an IT professional, I have to prove I can do any computer job twice as well as a male counterpart, because of the exact stigma you put at the beginning of your statement. Heck, my ex’s dad went to *him* instead of me with computer problems, and my ex had to ask me for every gorramn thing he needed to fix his dad’s computer — because his dad was misogynistic when it comes to women’s roles.
You apparently are one of the exceptions. You are interested in this stuff, you want to learn, and starting from this point you can be as good as any other person. But the point is that most women that I’ve seen in the past weren’t interested, they didn’t want to learn, they’d just prefer if computers didn’t exist.
One of my friends was once denied a job just because she was a woman (and she was better then all the other candidates). This. Is. Bad. No doubt about it, but plainly stating based on observation that different sexes are different at other jobs isn’t sexist imho.
Currently I’m attending a webminar about IPv6. Among the ~130 ppl, there are 90% couldn’t handle computers, including 90% of those that were on the same year at college in the computer science course as me. I don’t imply that if somebody is a woman then they are bad at IT. This is dependent on that single person. My observations are just a statistic.
As a fellow female IT, I totally agree with Courtney’s arguments…
Female IT professionals are rare because of how our society works.
Our society doesn’t consider it “normal” for a female to be in IT, or for a male to be in child caring. Even though there may be way less discrimination than there used to be, it’s still not considered quite normal.
Also, when I was a kid, video games were mostly male-targeted. Because girls aren’t into this sort of things, right…? No, this is a vicious cycle we were stuck in (and probably thanks to many feminists, we’re slowly starting to get out of it).
Technology targets males, so males tend to feel more attracted to technology than females, and then people tend to think females have no interest in technology (even females themselves), so the technology industry keeps targetting the males.
Personnally, most of the women I know in IT are very competent.
I know you didn’t mean to offend anybody and those are your observations, but I strongly disagree with your conclusions.
Also, my personnal observations showed me the total opposite, I’ve met a higher percentage of competent females in IT than males.
Please bare with me if there are some grammatical errors, English is not my primary language.
I love arguments like yours. “Out of 100 professionals here, 5 are women, so therefore, women aren’t good with computers.” Generally, that’s what your paragraphs-long statements are saying.
Whether men or women, humans only give out what’s put into them. While growing up, girls are given dolls to play with while boys are handed chemistry sets. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’ll happen in about 20 years.
You are misreading what I said. I stated clearly that I do not mean to imply anything. Well, other than clear facts based on observations, which in this case were that apparently not too many women were interested in the training.
Anyway, I think Naomi is on to something. Perhaps women aren’t too attracted to computers cause those were designed by men for men? I wonder how user interfaces would look like today if they were designed by women with women in mind. Maybe those would be quite different, oriented around different ideas…? Hmm…
While I don’t want to appear sexist or sth I observe that women generally aren’t too good with IT. Ofc there are exceptions – I personally know several women that are great programmers or admins (and I know loads of men that can’t copy a file if it could save their lives), but most of women don’t have the proper way of thinking required to be good with IT. I think it boils down to some historical or even evolutionary reasons. It’s the same that you don’t see too many female car mechanics or miners. On the other hand you don’t see many male child care, teachers or artists (maybe artist aren’t a good example but I can’t think of other right now).
This of course doesn’t mean anybody should be discouraged of working in a field they like. It just should be accepted that there are differences between sexes in what they are better at. Is this something bad? IMHO no, as long as ppl don’t dis anybody based on only stereotypes.
And then there was my mother, who built 8086s for the giggles, and was one of only a handful of technicians during the mid-to-late 80s and early 90s who was qualified to assemble and program automated “press 9 for more options” phone hotline systems (she apologizes for all the hours you’ve wasted, trying to talk to a real human – she still regrets not installing some sort of “backdoor-to-humanity” in every system she worked on). On more than one occasion she had to work through a male co-worker, or client’s technician, because the client did not believe she could possibly know what she was doing (being a woman).
Cyber Killer- First off, if you feel like you have to quantify your statement with, “While I don’t want to appear sexist”, then you *are* being sexist; you’re just using that to fool yourself and others. ;p As for men and women and their various roles, I can tell you from personal experience as well as societal knowledge that the reason that you don’t see a lot of female mechanics or miners, or male child care workers, teachers, or artists, is because our society has a stigma against both. As a woman and an IT professional, I have to prove I can do any computer job twice as well as a male counterpart, because of the exact stigma you put at the beginning of your statement. Heck, my ex’s dad went to *him* instead of me with computer problems, and my ex had to ask me for every gorramn thing he needed to fix his dad’s computer — because his dad was misogynistic when it comes to women’s roles.
You apparently are one of the exceptions. You are interested in this stuff, you want to learn, and starting from this point you can be as good as any other person. But the point is that most women that I’ve seen in the past weren’t interested, they didn’t want to learn, they’d just prefer if computers didn’t exist.
One of my friends was once denied a job just because she was a woman (and she was better then all the other candidates). This. Is. Bad. No doubt about it, but plainly stating based on observation that different sexes are different at other jobs isn’t sexist imho.
Currently I’m attending a webminar about IPv6. Among the ~130 ppl, there are 90% couldn’t handle computers, including 90% of those that were on the same year at college in the computer science course as me. I don’t imply that if somebody is a woman then they are bad at IT. This is dependent on that single person. My observations are just a statistic.
As a fellow female IT, I totally agree with Courtney’s arguments…
Female IT professionals are rare because of how our society works.
Our society doesn’t consider it “normal” for a female to be in IT, or for a male to be in child caring. Even though there may be way less discrimination than there used to be, it’s still not considered quite normal.
Also, when I was a kid, video games were mostly male-targeted. Because girls aren’t into this sort of things, right…? No, this is a vicious cycle we were stuck in (and probably thanks to many feminists, we’re slowly starting to get out of it).
Technology targets males, so males tend to feel more attracted to technology than females, and then people tend to think females have no interest in technology (even females themselves), so the technology industry keeps targetting the males.
Personnally, most of the women I know in IT are very competent.
I know you didn’t mean to offend anybody and those are your observations, but I strongly disagree with your conclusions.
Also, my personnal observations showed me the total opposite, I’ve met a higher percentage of competent females in IT than males.
Please bare with me if there are some grammatical errors, English is not my primary language.
While reading these comments, all I could think about was the movie “Anchorman”.
Cyber Killer:
I love arguments like yours. “Out of 100 professionals here, 5 are women, so therefore, women aren’t good with computers.” Generally, that’s what your paragraphs-long statements are saying.
Whether men or women, humans only give out what’s put into them. While growing up, girls are given dolls to play with while boys are handed chemistry sets. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’ll happen in about 20 years.
You are misreading what I said. I stated clearly that I do not mean to imply anything. Well, other than clear facts based on observations, which in this case were that apparently not too many women were interested in the training.
Anyway, I think Naomi is on to something. Perhaps women aren’t too attracted to computers cause those were designed by men for men? I wonder how user interfaces would look like today if they were designed by women with women in mind. Maybe those would be quite different, oriented around different ideas…? Hmm…