Re: gender mix

Uri Guttman [[email protected]] quoth:
*>
*>randal, when we met at that party after that web conference, i was
*>talking with 2 women about this. it makes some sense as web site
*>building in the whole is graphic and content and not all
*>technical. women have long been in the graphic arts, writing and editing
*>fields so it makes sense fo rthem to be comfortable in the web design
*>fields. and they will want to learn perl if they get into the web any
*>deeper. whereas CS types are usually more from an engineering/academic
*>background which is still mostly male.

It would seem MIT stopped teaching logic :) women learn perl if they need
to...but cs majors are mostly male. It makes sense for them to be in
positions where the atmosphere isn't completely male dominated and
hostile. I still experience gross instances of 'the boys club' at my level
and it takes a very tough skin to make it part of your daily life without
becoming completely embittered. Fortunately, I love what I do and wish it
were a non-issue for women to consider the computing field. I still get
paid less than guys with similar experience...I suppose it is because I
have a man at home and am just doing this as a hobby until I have
children. :)

More women are in 'web design' because it is hot and the industry is
hiring anyone who can spell http. Women who are starting to find that
they can make more money than being a lowly research assistant with a
masters degree in a hard science and can easily make this jump. If you 
contend that women are more often associated with the aesthetics of the 
design, this is probably true but has nothing to do with ability to grok 
all three volumes of Knuth.

And, web site building IS technical and I wish more people would get that
so we would get better web sites that wouldn't be quite so punishing on the
users/surfers and on the sysadmins like myself charged with keeping the
bloody things running when someone has made extremely poor design choices.
Web sites are a heck of a lot more than HTML these days...

*>the web in general (surfers and designers) seems more attractive to
*>women than programming and CS stuff.

Actually, statistics show that there are still more male surfers than
women...probably because the women like to eat and are out grocery
shopping. 

<aevil> purl, be perl barbie
<purl> Easy things are hard!

Sterotypes and generalisations are made and enforced by both sides of the
coin. I wish the human race would simply evolve a little faster.

I don't think that Grace Hopper is alone in history or in the present of
computing and the sciences. There are just too many people saying that chicks
don't dig math, etc. If you say something often enough it starts to become
a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

e.