Here's a weekend exercise by way of a mind experiment. I put forth a conclusion that one specific area where women are treated differently than men in technology has to do with debates. I have two hypotheses to support this conclusion.
The first hypothesis is that feelings of anger are more pleasant than feelings of hurt.
Empirical evidence would demonstrate that people don't avoid situations where they get angry. The whole genre of political weblogs is one of the better examples of such–as is most of the warfare committed based on some sense of 'belonging'.
Being 'hurt', though, or it's companion emotions of feeling sadness, loss, bereavement, grief, and so on, are emotions that people mostly want to avoid; in fact, will go out of their way to avoid. Fear of commitment, fear of losing a loved one, fear of putting one's creative output into the public arena because of the possible criticisms–these are events that cause a great deal of discomfort.
Therefore, given a choice in reacting to a situation, a person would rather feel anger than feel hurt. To complement this, members of a society are discouraged from hurting people, but not necessarily discouraged from making people mad.
Examining this in the context of gender, though, we see a subtle contradiction: women are more socialized to feel hurt than anger. Or perhaps a better way of looking at this is: men are not as discouraged when expressing anger as women; women are not as discouraged from feeling hurt, as men. In a debate, when a person makes a strongly negative expression, men might react angrily, while women may react in hurt. This is enough to shut down debate, because the two responses are contradictory to each other.
Technology generates a lot of debates; a lot of disagreements. The tone of discussions can run the range between the polite and the vociferous. People invest a lot of emotion in their responses: words get exchanges, names called, statements derided. My second hypothesis is that in such debates women's participation suffers.
Women, who are socialized to feelings of hurt when directly confronted with a negative expression, will avoid confrontational discussions because being hurt is a state to be avoided. Men are less likely to avoid participation because they're socialized to react more in anger, and anger is not a state to be avoided. On the contrary: the ability to express anger in a 'righteous' cause, without society's censure, can be quite a pleasant state–invigorating the mind, jump starting the body.
Additionally, in an emotional discussion or debate, where negative reactions are expressed, a seemingly 'hurt' response is not typically accepted in technology-related debates. Women are more likely to feel hurt based on negative responses, or be perceived to be demonstrating hurt when responding. Therefore women's participation is subtly discouraged, undermined, or discounted in these debates.
Not all women react with hurt, nor all men react in anger: but when we do react counter expectation, we're then given subtle or not so subtle feedback as to our personal character based on such. If a man goes against societal parameters, and reacts by expressing hurt, or a woman anger, that can throw the discussion off-kilter, and even alter other participants' opinion of the person. At our most deepest level, we may lose respect for the man who gets hurt; the use of 'shrill' is often times attached to the woman's response.
Both men and women may be uncomfortable expressing strongly negative responses to a woman. There is, at the back of the mind, an expectation that the woman might get hurt, and since society discourages us from hurting others, and censures those who do, they don't want to be put into a position as being seen to 'hurt' someone.
Yet the response they want to make is strongly negative. They've built up a level, a style, in the discussion, and it's extremely difficult to 'switch' it off for this person, when basically the emotional tone of the debate is in 'on' mode all the time. Rather than engineer the feelings of discomfort having to suddenly switch tone, they may either respond only briefly, or not respond at all.
This has negative consequences for women, because if we're only given full participation in debates that are not acrimonious, we're not given full access to all debates. If we don't have full access in this context, we lose out on full access in other contexts: we are seen less, heard less, and have to work harder just to make up this limitation. Its not much different than how people move up the ranks in the military in the US: people who serve in combat units raise in ranks faster than those who don't; women are not allowed to serve in such units.
My mind experiment than revolves around the following questions, asked of both men and women: how do you perceive women's participation in acrimonious debate? Is it the same as men, or different? If different, have you found yourself more disinclined to debate with women than men? More inclined? Finally, when confronted with a strongly negative response to something you've said or done, what's your first reaction?
