Terrific blog on sexism in science/tech
Posted: July 20th, 2006 | Author: alicetiara | Filed under: feminism | 4 Comments »After posting my rant about C|Net’s stupid article about women and gadgets, my call for people to write more about sexism in technology was answered with a link to Thus Spake Zuska. Zuska has a BS in Engineering, an MS in nuclear engineering, a PhD in biomedical engineering and a grad certificate in WoSt, and thus is eminently qualified to write about the topic of sexism in the academy and industry.
This blog is HARD CORE and I cannot believe how egregious the practices she writes about are. For anyone who wonders innocently “why aren’t there more women in the sciences?” a brief skim through the front page of this blog alone will answer that. Zuska focuses on sciences in the academy, although we all know that sexism is hardly confined to one particular sphere.
In full disclosure, I am not a scientist, I am a dot.commer (and a humanities major to boot). I’ve been doing dot.com stuff since 1998 (with two summers at Microsoft before that) and I can honestly say that although I’ve generally worked in all- or almost-all male environments, I have rarely if ever experienced outright sexism against me by any of my superiors and co-workers. I could dredge up a few incidents, but they are not representative of my overall experience. (I do understand that many women would not be comfortable working in all-male environments, which in themselves discourage women from the field). But obviously liberal web2.0 companies in Seattle and San Francisco are very different from academic science departments, which are cut-throat and backstabbing to begin with.
I’d be curious to hear from any women engineers about this. Perhaps my experience is because I work in product planning and consulting and researching, which are more female-friendly (I guess). Anyway, read the blog, it r0x0r.
Off to LA tomorrow. Finally met danah last night, and had a nice long talk with Clay Shirky. I have to say that the SF tech world beats the pants off NYC in that department (not in transportation, weather, nightlife or shopping, though).
Technorati Tags: women in technology, women in science, sexism
Hello Alice, and thanks for talking about Thus Spake Zuska on your blog. I would really welcome non-scientist, non-engineer readers who want to learn more about what goes on in our crazy world. The women who do this kind of work are very passionate about it – and we need more of them, because they can make a real difference in life for all of us, for the better. Airbags in your car that won’t kill the average sized woman, because the average sized woman is finally being thought of when airbags are designed. The majority of disabled individuals in the U.S. are women. Do we really need another thin cell phone – or do we need some new products that take into account the needs of disabled individuals? What are the questions not being asked, the problems not being solved, because women are not there to do the asking and solving? This, it seems to me, is why women who are not scientists or engineers have a real stake in caring about the conditions in which women scientists and engineers labor.
Depressing, ugh. Absurd that computer science is apparently so much friendlier to women than the harder sciences, given how unfriendly it can be.
I work as a software engineer in the Seattle area and I can testify that the environment is hostile to women. You will never get as much credibility as a man because you are a woman even if you have a masters in computer science from MIT. This is the reality.
I discuss a lot of issues about women…
psychomom.blog.com