> For those women out there who are married, how many
> of you are with people who are clueless about the
> technical side of your nature and have no interest in it?
> My guess would be it ranges from not many to none.
> This street runs both ways, many guys find it frustrating
> that society generates so many women who exist across
> an unbridgable personality gap.
Actually, it's frightening how some of the engineers I work with talk about
their wives - in a really condescending way, as though the women are
complete idiots and computers and technical stuff are completely beyond
their grasp. These are guys, IMHO, who aren't all that technically
impressive themselves. I think that some men (and probably some women) get
a real ego boost out of being with someone who doesn't have any confidence
in their technical abilities, and who depend on them for everything from
setting up the computer to programming the VCR. A lot of women are happy to
let men do that sort of thing for them, and it makes the men feel smart and
useful. The problem is, if women don't do things for themselves, then they
won't feel comfortable doing them and they'll be dependant.
BTW, I've been with the same guy for eight years (we're not married, but we
own a house together). He's even more technically oriented than I am. I
think he would have a lot trouble relating to a woman who wasn't into
computers, although he does have many other interests. We met in a computer
engineering class - Data Structures II - and interestingly, I've backed off
of programming partly because he was much more advanced at it than I was
when we first met, and now he's better at it than I could ever be (He's been
working in the field for 8 years, I've been doing other things). I want to
stay off of his turf. I don't want to put myself in a teacher-student
situation. Once I'm working as a structural engineer, if I find things I
want to do that I can't do on a spreadsheet or with existing software, I'll
get back into programming. Still, I feel as if I'm guilty of what I was
talking about above, only at a higher level.
Deidre Calarco
Robert Darvas Associates
(734) 761-8713 (ext. 16)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
************
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
