<div dir="ltr"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2008/8/28 Sean Miller <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sean@seanmiller.net">sean@seanmiller.net</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div class="Ih2E3d">On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 7:20 AM, Lucy <<a href="mailto:lucybridges@gmail.com">lucybridges@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br> > computers is mainly because of social upbringing. For example, in<br> > India (and some other asian countries) there are more equal numbers of<br> > men and women working in programming). It wasn't so long ago that<br> <br> </div>This wasn't my experience during my 2 months at Technopark in<br> Thiruvananthapuram, training IT developers and interviewing for new<br> ones.  There wasn't one woman involved in the IT area, which numbered<br> about 20 or 30 personnel, and not one of our interviewees were female.<br>  I was actually surprised at this.  In contrast, in the call centre<br> which was in another wing of the same building, there were hugely more<br> women than men.<br> <br> What worries me about any thread such as this is that there is a<br> serious danger that we create allegations of discrimination when in<br> reality it's just the way it is - women are programmed differently to<br> men (no pun intended) and seem, from my observations at least, to<br> drift by default into different types of job to their male<br> counterparts.  The nursing profession, for instance, is dominated by<br> women whereas road builders and railway maintenance engineers appears<br> to be virtually a male domain.<br> <br> I grew up in a very exciting period when it came to computers, just as<br> the home computer concept was starting.  My school in Glastonbury<br> initially had an RML-380Z which did exciting things like text-based<br> puzzles and not much more.  The BBC Micro then arrived in my second<br> year of secondary school and we used to play "Digger" and "Space<br> Invaders" at lunchtime.  A fella called Hogan then took over the maths<br> department and set up a network of Commodore 64s in the Maths Room -<br> it was always a fight between the BBCs in the science dept. and the<br> Commodores in Maths. BBC was most definitely the better, though - you<br> could actually do things without having to use PEEK and POKE all the<br> time.<br> <br> For 'A' Levels I went to the private sports-orientated school<br> Millfield.  They had a really nifty Econet network, which ran on 5.25"<br> floppy disks.  But technology was improving at a pace and by the time<br> of my upper sixth this had been replaced with a network of BBC Master<br> Series computers with (shock!) hard drives for storage.  Interesting<br> thing here was that it wasn't trendy at all to be involved with<br> computers - you sort of got sidelined, called nerds, and so I had to<br> also do cross-country running to keep my reputation intact and visit<br> the Computer Room with dark glasses and false beard.  As for women on<br> computers, there was only Mrs Thomas (God bless her!) - no Millfield<br> girls would have been seen dead near a computer.  During my time<br> there, however, I met the mighty Hugo Fiennes who is now working (I<br> believe) for one of the major MP3 player manufacturers, having sold<br> his EMPEG business to them which was a pioneering car MP3 player which<br> achieved relatively cult status in the mid-90s.  But this was much<br> earlier... together we coded a BBC-micro based BBS system called<br> Viewdata+ which was based on Prestel and at one stage had 7-10 Sysops<br> around the UK using it.  But I never recall any females phoning my BB.<br> <font color="#888888"><br> Sean<br> </font><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c">Since posting the original age/gender question, I have been very interested reading the discussion. Working in the arts there are probably more women than men, and the use of computer technology seems to go with most of the jobs. I don't agree that  men and women are ' programmed' differently.</div> </div></blockquote><div>Much relates to necessity and opportunity. As most management is male, then there will be fewer opportunities given to women.  But I know several women working in IT, and everyone I know uses computers to some extent.  I am the only person I know using Ubuntu- does the very concept 'open source'<br> smack of blokishness and nerdimen? Is it all a question of marketing? Rather than anything to do with how men and women respond to computer  technology?<br><br>Caroline<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div><div class="Wj3C7c"><br> --<br> <a href="mailto:ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com</a><br> <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk</a><br> <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/" target="_blank">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/</a><br> </div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><br>---<br>London School of Puppetry<br><a href="http://www.londonschoolofpuppetry.com">www.londonschoolofpuppetry.com</a><br> </div>