On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 06:26:43PM +1000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> We have about 20 technical people on the books. 4 are women.
>
> The writers?
> Me.
> Catherine.
> Kate.
>
>
> What are the odds of that being random? (yes, all three of us are female)
In addition to female-socialisation being geared towards valuing and
cultivating communication skills, this is also caused by those skills
being considerably undervalued in men.
I took very high level English classes at school and they were as
heavily female dominated as physics and computing were by men (high
level maths at my school was very, and is still, about 60 - 75% women -
I believe this is unusual).
At university, my philosophy courses, which are logic and epistemolgy
(ie basically argument, derivation etc - there is some overlap with
computer science) are about 50% male, but my linguitics courses are very
heavily female dominated.
It would be nice if the same forces that will hopefully stop pushing
able women away from technical stuff at an early age will also stop
pushing men away from writing and communication skills.
However: it is interesting, and significant, that technical skills seem
to command higher salaries. I know Jenn says that she demands as much
for her writing as for her programming, but I'm not just talking about
technical writing here.
Mary.
--
Mary Gardiner
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
GPG Key ID: 77625870
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