[UbuntuWomen] Why Women are not Developers. (Mary Crowley)

[maia grotepass]

Just some random thoughts: I became a developer (not open source yet :) ) so
I can´t really say why women don´t become developers. I can relay some
experiences.

When I started working for the first time I was one of three women, a PA to
the boss, a librarian and me, rookie engineer/programmer. Somehow it was so
novel to my male-colleagues that they had not really developed any typical,
¨we treat female developers like this¨ behaviour. That being said, I made a
point in my own mind of giving them the benefit of the doubt, that is
expecting them to treat me as part of the team and letting them. With only a
few exceptions,  my colleagues have been helpful and friendly. Having said
that, I am sure they paid me less than the others and I do get the feeling
that I have to perform extra hard to get recognised. I do remember times
when I turned a blind eye to some sexists jokes etc because getting all
emotional and huffy would be counter productive, I wanted to get the job
done and not educate the middle aged greying engineers. Many a time the
sexist jokes are made to get me to react, people making assumptions that
that would get me to kick  into rabid feminist mode, and I have become
pretty good at mentioning a pressing technical issue when this happens.  If
I think about all this here behind my screen I feel as if by complying I am
making matters worse for me and the women that follow but somehow still when
in the situation, I´d still rather side step the gender confrontation and
focus on the job at hand and somehow the team gets used to this in the end.
I don´t think its a solution just they way I deal with it.

On the internet, I find myself doing similar unhealthy things. I don´t
explicitly make my gender known especially if I am in an IRC channel that
focusses on robot-transforming-spaceships-with-big-breasts and they all seem
to be sub 30 and male. (how´s that for a stereo type :D ) pity though that a
lot of the concept art and 3D rendering forums and channels have just those
kind of members, or it feels that way in any case. Probably because all the
women there are doing what i am. I still go there though to get the info,
lurking in the shadows. I recently witnessed a long conversation on irc
between some guys (or so they said) and someone who later revealed that she
was female (or so she said). The conversation stopped short with a one
liner, ¨show us your renders¨ I can see how this would chase someone away.
Either that or make them polish up their renders till they shone. Should I
have interfered, in superhero style? I don´t know, but I didn´t.

On another topic though, I have managed to get both my mother and my sister
from techno-phobe state to power-users in their areas of interest. My mother
on an Ubuntu machine and my sister on windows. Two things were really key to
getting them going. First to find something that they wanted to do with a
computer, something that would engage them and excite them. Secondly and
more importantly was to get them to be confident even if they knew nothing.
the mindset: ¨I can do this because I want to and i´ll figure out the detail
when I need to¨. This took some time and and some assistance when they were
frustrated and also really stressing that they could ask anything even if it
is ¨how do I get my mouse back on the table¨ combined with some mentoring
sessions where they were at the keyboard (important) and I was just nudging
them along. People who are periphery of the connected side of the digital
divide need this I think. The thrill though when they managed to get things
to work they way they wanted to is self motivating. Also important is to
have a login or machine that belongs the person, a safe place that won´t
affect other users which they can customise, where no-one will say bleargh
why did you make the default colour choice teal and the wallpaper your
favourite pet.

All anecdotal - whew what a long post.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-women/attachments/20071027/76323c34/attachment.html>