- Eileen Burbidge guest posts at Techcrunch: Want more women in tech? Girls, just do it. And everyone, quit the patronizing (Note: content of post is potentially upsetting/triggering.)
- Maybe not feminist, but fun: Hackid: “Hacking, Networking, Security, Self-Defense, Gaming & Technology for Kids & Their Parents…”
- Diana Eng hacks up a radio antenna that is truly chic geek.
- Super Sharpie to the rescue of little girls who want superhero sisters saving them.
- “Modesty is a dirty fucking word” Says Denise in response to Kate and Karen (from last ‘spam)
- Forbes gives us the lowdown on the best jobs for women and Computer Programming comes in 7th.
- BBC investigates tech feminism: “Women may still be a minority in the technology industry but they are establishing strong support networks to stay connected.”
- “gu” in our comments tells us that tabletopadventures.com is cherishing gaming mothers this Mother’s Day
- Wesnoth has some scholarships, and they really want one of them to be a woman. Will it be you?
If you have links of interest, please share them in comments here, or if you’re a delicious user, tag them “geekfeminism†to bring them to our attention. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).
Thanks to everyone who suggested links in comments and on delicious.
Your readers might be interested in my recent post about gender, race, and disability in Doctor Who cosplay. I mostly talk about femme!Doctors. It’s a fun time.
I’m glad Eileen Burbidge works in such an inclusive environment, but at the last two employers I worked for I witnessed a management-level employee make an explicit blanket statement that he/she did not wish to hire or work with a particular gender.
[giant rage-inducing tl; dr elided].
So if I see someone else closing the door unfairly, then I feel the need open a door of my own. If that’s patronizing, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, and I’ll add it to a long list of things that I’m sorry for. But I don’t see how I can live with myself if I just close my eyes and pretend there’s no problem.
Her article had me seething something vicious too. The whole attitude of “someone tried to fix it once and did it wrong, so we’d better not try to any more fixes” is… just… ugh!
Along the leaky pipeline theory; if something falls out of a hole in your bag, it doesn’t get back in there on its own just because you recognize that it has fallen out.
Yeah. I agree with her point that women should make sure to focus on success instead of just focusing on the hurdles we face, and that men should make sure they’re not being patronizing. But we don’t yet live in a world where a women who works hard wouldn’t naturally reach a higher (paying) position if the only thing that changed was that the people who made those decisions thought she was a man (even ignoring all the environmental and education issues), and that does mean that men can help by recognizing and responding to the fact that women do not have the same opportunities as men.
Yeah, I agree that her diatribe is just dripping with privilege in some ways. She’s controlling a lot of money as an angel investor. If people feel you have power, they treat you better. From the photo, she looks Asian, and in my experience *I* get treated better in tech communities if I’m perceived as Asian. (Since I’m of mixed race, I get a whole gamut of reactions depending on what people think I am. It’s been very educational, sometimes in a not fun way.)
But I posted it anyhow because she’s right about one thing: sometimes a little “just try!” can got a long way. You know which posts of mine result in the most personal email? Posts like Self Confidence Tricks where I remind women that they’re awesome. I get a little pile of messages from women who tell me that that post inspired them to try $cool_thing, and it’s totally inspiring to me in turn.
I guess sometimes, it’s nice to pretend we live in a world which is a little more perfect, and a reminder is all we need to do cool things?
I don’t know if it’s really relevant enough since it’s no geeky, but I wrote a blog about “Does ‘common sense’ perpetuate rape culture?”
http://scarletmoth.xanga.com/726748148/does-common-sense-perpetuate-rape-culture/?page=1&jump=1512237699&leftcmt=1#1512237699
Access to technology linked to female happiness, says a BBC report of a BCS survey.
“BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, analysed the results of a survey of 35,000 people around the world.
Access to communication tools was found to be the most valued.
It found that women in developing countries, and people of both sexes with low incomes or poor education, were most influenced emotionally by their access to technology.
It is partly because women tend to have a more central role in family and other social networks, said researcher Paul Flatters of Trajectory Partnership, which conducted the research on behalf of the BCS.
“Our hypothesis is that women in developing countries benefit more because they are more socially constrained in society,” he added.
“The next phase of our research is to test that.” “
http://www.theage.com.au/national/how-the-sex-bias-prevails-20100514-v4mv.html – debunking the myth of post-feminism, in the best way.