Re: gender mix

Madeline Schnapp [[email protected]] quoth:
*>
*>I have interviewed several male Perl programmers that work for two
*>companies that actually develop products and services completely with Perl

Interesting perspective. Have you interviewed any of the women? One
thought I have is that many of the women don't get sent to training for
one reason or another. The computing field is *SO* homogenously white male
that I don't accept the idea that well, white guys are the only ones
either good at this or like this type of work...in fact, there are a lot
of guys who aren't that good at it :)

Perhaps ORA could poll the companies who send people to TPC as to how many
women they employ and how many they will be sending to the conference and
perhaps get them to comment. It gets really old going to these things with
all the good old married guys who talk in the conference about how the
wife or the little woman is out shopping, etc. 

*>So you are a female programmer, why do you like programming?  Was your Mom
*>a programmer?  What kindled your interest?

I'm an SA, a different kind of problem solver. :) And, my father was an
EE, mom ran out-paitient surgery and, out of 4 daughters there are 2
Martha Stewarts, me and a nurse practitioner who makes me look like Mary
Poppins. I have no explanations as to why or how I was interested in
science from a very early age.

My first computing experience was in grade school with an original Apple
computer. I asked the physics teacher to show me how to use it and he kept
putting me off until one day I saw him tutoring one of the boys on its
use. I grabbed the manual and taught myself to spite him. 

Nature v. nurture? No clue.

*>But it does start at home with "Mom" as I described in my previous email.
*>So somehow we need to fix "Mom" and things will begin to change.

I don't know as I don't have children, but I wouldn't be so quick to blame
mothers as it would seem a very popular way to excuse many things these
days. Turn on your TV and watch it for a few hours and you'll be
innundated with the very same message...when is the last time you saw a
smart chick on TV that wasn't either portrayed as unattractive or plain or
downright aggressive wench? There is a lot more at work here than girls
being told that they aren't good at math...they believe it. Math is just
another language. We need to start telling ourselves that, despite the
differences in gender, that we should be able to do whatever interests us.

For every person who says that they don't discriminate against people in
typical societal norms, I suspect that they aren't being totally honest
with themselves. I'll use myself as an example. I read Skud's article on
perl.com last week and thought it was great, but I noticed something that
bothered me. I mailed a friend and asked them to read it and tell me what
he thought. He liked it very much and suggested that it might have
examples of code but otherwise a good article. I then begged the question,
why, when I can make a sailor blush did I notice the word 'damn' and think
'hmm, is that appropriate?' Would I notice this if a guy had written the
same article? Crazy and stupid, but there it is. 

The Perl community has some of the most enlightened people I have the
pleasure of knowing, so it is possible that the tide could be turned in
some small way. 

e.