Hi Kathryn! I'm new too. I'm a database person too (data wrangler is the term I prefer). I wouldn't worry too much about the male dominated part of the IT industry. I'd worry about the idiot-dominated part.. people with business degrees that spout trendy terminology but think copying and pasting data into spreadsheets is an effective way to generate reports. HAAHAHAHAHAHAA (and because Larry Wall won't try to shmooze them with some fancy weekend resort extravaganza they don't even consider Perl). Good thing FOSS stuff really is FREE so you can focus on just getting your stuff done and not justifying your tools to the powers that be ;D I installed Ubuntu on my main work machine and my managers and coworkers have been a bit in awe about it. I might get treated a little differently at first but once they get a taste of my madd skillz they forget about the female part (or maybe i get even more respect because of it?)... Work it girl! Socially I tend to feel a little different, but if you don't focus on the gender differences then they usually won't either. Augustina <div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Message: 2 Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:19:28 -0500 From: Kathryn Killebrew < <a href="mailto:kathryn.killebrew@gmail.com">kathryn.killebrew@gmail.com</a>> Subject: [UbuntuWomen] Greetings! To: <a href="mailto:ubuntu-women@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-women@lists.ubuntu.com</a> Message-ID: < 1174691968.6681.8.camel@kat-desktop> Content-Type: text/plain Hello everyone, Let me introduce myself. I am Kathryn, I've been using Ubuntu for about eight months, and I've been in the Linux igloo for about a year. I work as a proofreader (of English) and would like to perhaps contribute to the Ubuntu documentation effort. Also, I am a student of database administration who worries a bit about how I'll make my way through the male-dominated IT world. I'm glad I've found this group! Cheers, Kathryn </blockquote></div>