Take a great blog like Kathy’s - you really can’t crank out many of those posts a day. I’m amazed when she does 1 a day! 2 a day gives me a heart attack (in a good way of course).

There is value in taking time to think and say. I decided to start writing more in my notebook with my fountain pen (remember?). I have lots of thoughts, but I’m not really organizing them in the long term nor am I capturing some of these ideas - I’m sure some of them are new and insightful, but yet they are formless so far. Suggestions? Just sitting down a blogging doesn’t really do it for me.

Mark Glickman wrote a
paper on why only 1% of chess grandmasters were women. In essence he found it’s not because women aren’t as good, or can’t be as good, but because not enough women start. Specifically he found that “(a) the ratings of men are higher on average than those of women, but no more variable; (b) matched boys and girls improve and drop out at equal rates, but boys begin
chess competition in greater numbers and at higher performance levels than girls; and (c) in locales where at least 50% of the new young players are girls, their
initial ratings are not lower than those of boys.”

Along the way he discounts the inherent differences, more male geniuses and other common arguments that we find in both fields. It makes for some interesting reading even if you know nothing about Chess.

Turn up into male-dominated environment, where chances are the woman is going to be ignored more often than the men, rewarded less, and paid less respect.

Oh, sure that’s all women really want to do with our spare time.

Yours is a simplistic answer, which in a way demonstrates some of the problems in the field: unwilling to listen, unwilling to consider that the problem does not exist with women and our ‘choices’.

This isn’t pushback on whether you’re right or wrong, except that I think you’re being vague.

Anne: “Adobe wanted to identify influencers on the web.”

Assume it’s true. Did they succeed?

Shelly: “Comment boxes and lack of editing is an example of male dominated technology:”

That’s a grand claim. This site runs on Wordpress. Wordpress committers are men, but I don’t see how Wordpress is “gated” against women. How does that conspire to work?

Shelly: “we’ve never seen how girls will react to an environment that has not been engineered by men for men.”

You have to ask at some, at point, why has no such environment been engineered. The answer for participation I see given for say, the IETF or an open source project, is turn up and contribute.

Also, when I see editable comments - I think “cool”. I think that not because it breaks away from male-dominated technology, but that editable comments are more work to implement - which is objectively true, but doesn’t fit the argument.

Cheers, ~ang*e

I am working this out as I go along and hear from people, but the issue I’m trying to get at is that there are more women working in technology than appeared as invitees at Adobe Engage. As David Mendels pointed out, though his engineering organization at Adobe is male-dominated, there are women working at high levels. I also know there are lots of women blogging about tech. So why was I the only woman invitee (assuming no one else was invited and wasn’t able to attend)?

I think Audrey, Shelley, and Kathy all make important points. (1) This isn’t really about individual choice, because everyone makes decisions subject to a complex set of influences. (2) Women do seem genuinely less interested in some modes of interaction than men: techmeme style heavy linking and posting just because there’s news, going to conference after conference and speaking at them to raise their profile, etc. and (3) probably women DO want to contribute to their profession but maybe in different ways. I know Audrey is working on a ‘zine and I had the idea for the Tech Tea Party–a podcast for women in technology–that has fallen by the wayside due to my overeager pursuit of new opportunities.

Lisa: I sympathize with you when you say you had to constantly prove yourself when you were a young engineer. I felt the same when I started in technology. One thing I really do appreciate about tech blogging is that most people judge me by my ideas, not by my gender. Though my modes of blogging do not lend themselves to climbing up the rankings, I have not found that people question my competence in this media.

Finally, I have to agree with Mark Cathcart: we need rational engagement on this topic. And that’s what I’ve seen here in the commenting on this post. Thank you everyone.

marketing
teaching
nursing

Funny how nobody ever asks “How can we encourage more men to go into teaching?”. Perhaps it has something to do with the architecture of the space. Maybe it’s not a male-friendly environment.
We often hear about racial disparities in the prison population. But the gender disparity is far greater. White men are incarcerated at a higher rate than black women. Does anybody think that is because black women are getting special treatment, or because white men are being discriminated against?

A while back I was sitting in a hospital waiting room reading a poster about breast cancer. The poster said that if I had breast cancer I could call and speak with a woman counselor. Hey, my uncle got breast cancer last year. Is it not possible for a man to counsel a woman about breast cancer? If not, then doesn’t that imply that women are unable to counsel men about prostate cancer?

I love little children. But as a middle-aged man, what are my chances of being hired as a caregiver at a daycare center? If you are a woman, ask yourself whether you would feel just a little uneasy about dropping off your toddler at a daycare run exclusively by men.

Walk into JC Penney and look at the clothing on display. A woman could purchase almost anything sold in any department and wear it on the street without anyone batting an eyelash. But 70% of the items in the store are “off-limits” to men. If I were to purchase those items, I would be called a “cross-dresser”. Why is that term never applied to women?

At social gatherings where the genders self-segregate, I frequently gravitate toward the females. I generally find their conversation more interesting. I played some sports in school, but have never enjoyed talking about sports. I’d much rather talk about children, which men almost never discuss in groups. So I am certainly not a jock.

But I can’t begin to count the number of times that I, simply because I am male, have been tarred with the “beer-drinking, Super-Bowl watcher” brush. I don’t like being lumped in with that crowd simply because I happen to be male.

At my previous place of employment, our female CEO once gave a magazine interview in which she stated that women were better managers than men. What did that imply about my chances for advancement at that company? Glass ceiling?

People discriminate all the time, often without realizing it. Short men and obese women have no legal status, but are frequent victims.

I think it is unfortunate that many people only pay attention to certain types of discrimination, as if no other types existed.

Remember Robert Reich, who served as labor secretary for a time under the Clinton Admin? Realistically, what would be his odds of getting elected president? More specifically, how many women would vote for a short man?

Why isn’t it “taboo” for a woman to say she’s looking for someone “tall, dark, and handsome”? If you’re a woman and you prefer tall men, then why would it be wrong for a man to prefer slender women?

Lisa