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

[rihanha]

I think it would be a better question to ask the scads of women that started
getting into development and quit that question. Asking the few who made it
this far may not answer the question.

I can't speak for others obviously, but I am disillusioned by my attempts to
change careers from administrative work to software systems. I had these
ideas that working among a bunch of guys that shared my interests would mean
I'd finally have a job I was excited to go to, but I no longer expect that
experience. I graduate with my bachelor's soon, but I doubt I will be
working in development teams. I've already decided that if I ever am going
to actually contribute to open source I will do it under a male pseudonym –
who needs the headaches?

On 10/27/07, maia grotepass <maiatoday at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> --
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> ubuntu-women at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-women
>
>
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