Category: Technology

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Clay Shirky left a gracious comment attached to the Dripping with Irony post. I’m glad because this helped the thread reach a positive note, rather than continue into a downward spiral based on the old “she said/he said” pattern (of which I, unfortunately, contributed my share).

When I replied to Clay, I repeated something I told Tim O’Reilly in response to a statement that Tim made in his comment:

Not to mention the dripping irony that, with three women out of twenty-odd participants, this group was more sexually diverse than the typical computer geek gathering…

I told Tim and Clay: We are out there.

The diversification they want, we all want, we all need is out there. There are women, and Blacks, and Latinos, and accessibility challenged folks and other non-represented people out there. But we can’t continue following the same old patterns of connectivity and communication and expect to see something other than the same old faces, time and again.

If we are discussing social software, then we have to first understand the society we’re trying to enable with this software. And to do this, we have to understand the limitations and challenges each of us, as individuals and as a members of one or more “categories”, is facing.

Clay mentioned that he did try to ensure more even representation of gender at the meeting, and I’m sure he did. As he commented, some of the women invited were academics and most likely couldn’t attend because of school commitments. And two women cancelled at the last minute.

However, rather than not have this representation, couldn’t Clay have used technology to enable these women’s participation without their physical attendance? Most people now have access to conference call capability, and most have access to video cameras for their computers. In fact, the software application Groove enables this type of participation, and the creator of Groove, Ray Ozzie, was there — could this not have been used? What a wonderful opportunity this would have been.

With this type of already available technology, these women could have participated and every one would have been richer.

And let’s take a moment to consider the reasons why the women couldn’t participate. Was it just school commitments? Or was it other constraints, such as family responsibilities or finances?

Speaking only of the United States, over 31% of families are now single parent, and only 5% of these families are headed up by men. When you’re a single-parent, especially if you don’t have extended family around you, it becomes virtually impossible at times to physically attend conferences. Or to even attend meetings of user groups at night.

Additionally, money could be more of an issue to both women and minorities. Statistically, women do make less than men, and are not as prevalent in the positions of technology leadership. I believe the same could also be said of many minorities. Both of these circumstances can make it more difficult for a person to buy a ticket to come to a meeting or conference; or to pay for the priviledge of attending the conference. Or even be in a position whereby the company pays the costs.

If we’re discussing social software, isn’t the first place the discussion should start is the constraints preventing potential audience members from becoming full participants? By doing so, we might begin to understand that what we don’t necessarily need is ways of getting the under-represented to meetings and conferences and training; but ways of getting meetings and conferences and training to the under-represented. This outreach, to me, is what social software is all about. It isn’t about sharing music files in such a way that one isn’t busted by Hollywood.

I don’t want to keep picking on Clay and his social software gathering, because I happen to know that he is a decent person who is trying very hard to open closed doors, and give voice to those who are quiet.

However, I will continue speaking out when I see these opportunities.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

In the comments attached to the Girlism post, an Assistant Professor of Computer Technology, Dr. Elizabeth Lane Lawley mentioned effort at Carnegie-Mellon to understand why there is such a large discrepancy based on gender in the computer sciences. I found a web site devote to this project and have been spending some time reading publications associated with the work.

The publications have been a revelation, not because I don’t know first hand what they’re discussing, but because I’m reading someone articulating my experiences. For the first time, I don’t feel alone in many of my own observations about the field, and my own position within it.

For instance, one publication, Undergraduate Women in Computer Science: Experience, Motivation, and Culture mentioned that women had significantly less experience with computers prior to attending college then men. However, what was surprising was that this lack of prior experience didn’t impact on their ability to do the work in the classes:

“Despite this difference in how students evaluate themselves, there is a gap between women’s perceived ability and their actual performance. Despite their modest estimates of their own standing in the class, three out of the seven first-year students made the Dean’s List (which turned out to be about the top third of the class) in the first semester, and six of the seven women made a B or A average for the first year.”

I was a law student when I started college. The philosophy teacher that taught my logic class strongly recommended I try a computing class so, for grins and giggles, I signed up for a VMS Basic programming class. My only experience with computers prior was through issues of Popular Science (borrowed from a neighbor), filling in the computer worksheets for an insurance company when I was an underwriter, and handling the strange data entry machine at the real estate company I worked at as a secretary.

However, after the first week in the class, I switched over to computer science and never looked back. Matching the results of the women in the study, I ended up a Dean’s Scholar, ranking 3rd in a graduating class of 27 students. And this was with me being a double major, studying Psychology at the same time.

According to the paper, female students were made aware of their experiential differences from the male students, and this undermined their confidence, generating feelings of self-doubt, isolation, and inadequacy. This, in spite of women performing as well or better than the men.

Now there are some major differences between when I went to college and the experiences of the women in the reports. Perhaps because the field of computer science (as separate from engineering) was relatively new, and personal computers were quite rare, many of the men in the class had as little prior experience as the women. In addition, the professors came from a diverse background: math, philosopy, and english literature in addition to engineering. This mix helped diffuse the typical arrogance associated with engineering, which I think made the environment much less competitive than current computer science environments.

Whatever the reason, I know the environment at my school was supportive and free of gender bias or differentiation. I only know now how lucky I was then. Still, my luck was to run out once I hit the ‘real world’.

Women students were faced with male students saying, “you’re a computer science student, you should know this” quite frequently, enhancing feelings of inadequacy and isolation. The reports mention how women’s isolation in the field continues into the workplace, it not being uncommon to have a man say something along the lines of “You have a degree in computer science. You should know this.”

I have had this happen to me not once, but several times, and each time my own self confidence erodes, and I become increasingly defensive. Yet, I’ve never once not been able to keep up with, or exceed, the production of the men I work with.

This does beg the question: why do men say something such as “you should know this”? This is really nothing more than a non-productive putdown. Perhaps women should be taught to say in response, “Because I learned other things you don’t know, dickhead.”

The report and others also highlighted a significant difference between women and men in how each views computing in their lives. To sum it up: Women program for purpose, men program just to program. There is a great deal of conjecture that believes this goes all the way back to our earliest years and our use of tools, or not.

For myself, when I was a girl scout years ago, we were taught how to cook and how to sew; boys were taught wood working and mechanics. This continued into school, with girls getting Home Ec and boys getting Woodshop. Girls worked with pots and pans to make a meal, or a sewing machine to make a dress. Boys worked with a variety of tools and gadgets, making a variety of different things, some practical, some not.

Now, I am assuming that times they have changed. Still, according to the reports at the C-M site, boys are more likely to spend time tweaking around on the computer then girls, while girls are more likely to spend time making something on the computer. Boys want to figure out why something works as it does, girls just want to make it work.

Is this difference a product of our genes? Is there a ‘tweak’ gene that boys have and girls don’t? Or is the fact that little girls are raised to be producers, and boys are raised to be innovators?

So many good questions raised. I can’t tell you how much I recommend that you all read these reports, regardless of your field. And my deepest and most sincere gratitude to Liz for pointing these out.