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by Ian Bicking.
Original Post: Feminist Computer Science
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James Robertson has been postingrecently about women in technology,
which got me to thinking about it again.
One possibility is that it's discrimination, or that women are
unwilling to enter a field that is dominated by men even if there
isn't other discrimination. However, I don't believe that offers much
of an explanation. While geekiness in general has a masculine feel to
it, I believe this is descriptive, not prescriptive. Simply, the
tendencies that make a person well suited to computer science are
tendencies that are primarily found in men. The priorities,
interests, skills, and inclination of women simply don't point in
those same directions.
One could say that few women probably have those tendencies which
would be best for accountancy either, and yet there are many women
accountants -- I would counter that men aren't particularly inclined
towards interest in that area either. You don't become an accountant
because of a deep passion (at least, I don't think so... a passion for
accountancy seems a little sad), you become one because you are
sufficiently adept at the necessary skills, and because someone will
pay you to do it.
The same could be true of computer science -- there are women who are
sufficiently adept with the necessary skills, and someone will pay you
to do it. When that is the only requirements, there tend to be more
women. But when there are people who do have a passion, those
people tend not to be women. There are subfields of IT where people
do have a real passion, and there are much less women in those fields.
I think programming is one such subfield of IT.
I don't want to make this post too long, so I'll end it here and
continue another day.
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