Eeek, everyone's talking about me in the 3rd person!
In article <049d01bf7131$b9fc0220$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Dan McGarry wrote:
>From: curious <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>In my experience, the presence of women in responsible roles in any
>undertaking (my background before I became tech-ified is in the theatre, and
>it's as true there as anywhere) can go a long way to helping:
>
> * The overall cohesion of the project
> * Maintaining a much more... uh, human experience
> * Expanding the breadth and depth of vision, particularly in how actions
>etc. will be perceived by others.
Sounds about right to me.
>All this *on top of* the systemically-based factor that, as Charlotte
>Whitton (my home town's first woman mayor) once put it, "a woman has to be
>twice as good as a man at the same job."[*]. This means that in a typical
>business situation, a woman is likely to have at least as good -- and
>frequently better -- technical skills as a man in the same position.[**}
>
>[* "Fortunately," she continued, "that's not very hard."]
An oldie but a goodie. And only too true.
>[** I suspect that this dynamic will only change when men learn to rise to
>meet the same expectations as those placed on women. This is based on
>nothing but gut instinct, mind you. But, if we consider the difficulties
>women frequently face when they're merely competent, and consider as well
>that when equality arrives in a particular workplace, the standard of work
>will necessarily have risen, I think it has some likelihood of coming true.
I wonder if anyone's done any solid research on productivity,
creativity, etc in mixed vs single sex workplaces?
I seem to recall seeing something like that in either _Peopleware_
(DeMarco and Lister) or _The Death March_ (Yourdon), but it was probably
anecdotal.
>On consideration, the first sentence of the paragraph above could be open to
>contention. I expect that part of meeting expectations will entail making
>them realistic -- accepting, for example, that working 70+ hour weeks is not
>socially sustainable, regardless of one's gender.]
Don't I know it. *sigh*
K.
--
Kirrily 'Skud' Robert - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://netizen.com.au/
"Alas, he wouldn't let me towel him off afterwards, preferring to do that
if it would run on forever?" -- Megahal (trained on asr), 1998-11-06
************
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
