The spammers, united, will never be defeated
- The Haecksen women’s miniconference at linux.conf.au (Brisbane, January 2011) is calling for submissions, closing very shortly on September 24.
- Abbie Heppe gave a critical review of Metroid: Other M, and the backlash was immense and (unsurprisingly to many readers here) incredibly anti-feminist, anti-woman.
- Jolie O’Dell discusses the difference between seeking mere gender parity in technical organizations, and actually developing more women technologists (evokes women near tech)
- The (homogenous male geek) culture at the Mozilla Summit 2010, described by an attendee
- Yet another barrier to women in male dominated offices: It’s very hard to find a mentor/sponsor because men mentoring women apparently screams “potential scandal” to many folk:
The CWLP research shows that sponsorship is the critical promotional lever for women stuck just below the top layer of management. However, fear of being even suspected of an illicit sexual liaison causes 64 percent of senior men to pull back from one-on-one contact with junior women; conversely, for the same reason, 50 percent of junior women are hesitant to have one-on-one contact with senior men.
- A woman tries to start a female-only starcraft clan, and is met with harassment of a distressingly predictable sort, and no help from the admins either.
- Math Careers and Choices: Tanya Khovanova writes
More and more I stumble upon the claim that the difference in individual personal choices between men and women is one of the main contributors to the gender gap in mathematical careers. Let me tell you some stories that I’ve heard that illustrate some choices that women made
- Blind prejudice: Ben Goldacre writes about research by Noola Griffiths about how women’s clothing influences the evaluation of their musical performances.
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.
pfctdayelise:
September 22nd, 2010 at 12:06 am
Re Jodie O’Dell’s article. It reminds me of the discussion which was surely on this blog… although I can’t remember where… about how doing things for girls, literally female children, is laudable, but it is not as if all women over age 10 are a write-off as far as getting into a technical career goes.
Yes, there are not enough women coming through the ranks, yes, right now we wouldn’t be able to achieve 50:50, but that is no reason not to try for _any_ increase. There are not only problems for school age girls – it’s all the way through into the workplace.
I totally just paraphrased someone who said all that much better than me… maybe someone else can locate that discussion??!
Melissa:
September 22nd, 2010 at 4:37 am
I also recall reading somewhere (specific location eludes me right now) that women are notably more likely than men to join in technological fields at a later point, moving over from their original (or even subsequent) careers. Rather than having the head-start a degree or whatever would provide, they work their way up from the bottom with the help of independently funded night classes etc.
Rick:
September 22nd, 2010 at 4:39 am
A point that comes out of the linked post on the Mozilla Summit — if only male geek types are building web browsers, then everyone’s view of the web (and experience of the internet, really) is going to be mediated by this single perspective.