I came across this email a few weeks ago. It made me think the author is incredibly naive; since she had not experienced any discrimination, she assumed it wasn’t as apparent as everyone made it seem. It frustrates me when there are women that work against something that in the end would benefit them- maybe I am naive to think that it would. Anyways, I think the “Debian Women Group” is a good way to make women in the industry visible.
I gave her argument a chance to reexamine my own; am I discriminating against men by trying to push forward to make women in this industry more visible or by trying to figure out why women and young girls are hardly interested in such a field? I hope not. At times I even receive emails from other women in the industry that just want to “say hi”, because they find it so rare to interact with another woman. Great.. excellent.. but why does it have to be so rare?
A few weeks ago, I had an interesting conversation with a Mechanical Engineer (female), who gave me her opinion when I asked her why she chose Mech Eng over Comp Eng. She is analytical, thorough, smart and loves the problem solving that goes with Computer Science. Her reason ultimately boiled down to the perception she had of people in Computer Science and what we do all day. It didn’t interest her- funny enough, if her perception was true, it wouldn’t interest me either. This is what she had to say:
- Typical anti-social immature people sitting in a computer lab having LAN parties
- Playing WoW for days non-stop
- Trying to hack into the government’s computer system
- World Domination
- People who enjoy spam/spamming
- Men’s only club
- Seclusion
While this might describe someone you know, it is not a norm among us. Everything she described was negative social behaviors. I hate that I hear this from most people… though she was being factious, she was being honest at the same time. This “image” is another reason why I think more women in the IT field is important. Of course it matters…
I agree with her sentiment that a separate group for women is disempowering. I think if think if I was a woman I’d find the idea that I needed a special group to “hold my hand” or “protect me” or whatever faintly insulting. But then I tend to be suspicious of evangelism in all its forms, so my point of view has an automatic bias in this kind of thing…
Hi Lillian,
yap, I’m male
What I think the people that are against such a group are missing is that just because there is such a group out there doesn’t mean anything to anyone that doesn’t want to be part of such a group.
There surely are groups that I don’t want to be part of, but if someone else feels that it is something that is needed, then all the power to them.
Its like starting a manga-philosophical group and people objecting because they just want to read it and have fun without thinking about the philosophical parts…
I think what such people are more concerned with is the fact that there are apparently people that feel this group actually has a right to exist. And we don’t want there to be a reason for women to need this kind of group. I certainly would really like that you, and other women would be able to feel at home enough in any group. And I’m proud to say that the women group in KDE is not active at all (and, yes, there are various women in the community).
Does that make sense?
Definitely makes sense.
My feat is to figure out why we need such a group and why women are not interested. I don’t agree that having these groups is bad- they have good intentions and are working towards a common (desired) goal.