On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Caitlyn Martin wrote:
[deletia]
> > I just
> > wish there were more outspoken women! :) I'm not in much of
> > a position to contribute though, as I'm still a beginniner with
> > linux myself; my talents are in programming.
>
> I think men are more outspoken by nature, but on the techtalk list there
> are plenty of women willing to jump in and help out. I don't too often
> simply because, either 1) it's a question about something (or a
> distro) I don't have expertise in, or 2) I could have answered but
> somebody beat me to it. No sense in repeating, right?
[rest deletia]
Hi Caitlyn,
Some interesting thoughts there. I treat any sort of Q&A dialog as a
brainstorming session, not a boolean question-produces-correct-answer, out
of habit. Whenever I respond to a question, my goal is to provide insight
towards an answer. There's a chance I could be wrong because I may not be
an expert, and even if I am, experts make mistakes too. :-) It may not be
what the asker is looking for, but more often than not it gets the wheels
turning in someone else's head.
Maybe this is the real problem? People are conditioned by the education
system to regurgitate the "right" answer to questions. The cultural bias
manifests itself in the form of "women internalizing unknown answers" and
"men proclaiming their right answers." The contrast between being
"right" and being "wrong" is so dramatic that the cultural norm propagates
itself. (IANAS; I Am Not A Sociologist :-)
Time for a little annecdotal: At university I was in a Math &
Engineering, Control & Communications Systems program. It was a very
small class because it was, in essence, electrical engineering undergrad
studies with graduate-level math courses. The split in my particular year
was about 50/50 fe/male ratio; not uncommon for the program. It was by no
means an easy program (I repeated more than my fair share of courses :-),
but the emphasis was on the the process used to answer a question, not
getting "the right and only answer".
By contrast, there were often times in our more "mainstream" electrical
courses when a prof would get tripped up on the math, one of my Math&Eng
classmates would pipe up with the correction, be dismissed out-right (it's
complicated first-principles math; what could an undergrad possibly
understand?), so a few more of us would have to contribute. More often
than not it was because the prof was copying something right out of a
textbook without thinking - sometimes the transcription was the problem,
other times it was a mistake in the text.
Any kind of gender-bias (intentional or otherwise) in a prof of the latter
case always came across as being very hostile, condescending, and
demeaning - resentment would last for the whole term. There were
occasions when biases crept up on our hard-core math profs, but the dialog
happening between us and them was such that we never let them get away
with it - they were forgivable politically-incorrect oops-offenses because
they were never attacking someone's intellect, just choosing words or
annecdotes poorly. (...of which I hope this isn't one. :-)
Thoughts?
Andrew.
--
Andrew Plumb, VE3SLG
mailto://andrew(at)plumb(dot)org
http://www.plumb.org/tekmage/
Today's High: http://todayshigh.webhop.net/
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