(Continuing from Part 2 of the discussion of women in science and technology from last week and leading up to Ada Lovelace Day.)
Boyz in our ‘hood
Today I want to talk about the way women who study, work, or play in the world of science and technology are often discouraged by men’s actions and attitudes.
While this in no way applies to a majority of men, there is a significant and vocal proportion of men in these fields that are complete bullies and delight in making it more difficult for women. There is also a pervasive tendency to convince one’s self that women are now equal in all ways and no longer suffer from discrimination.
Discrimination does exist. It takes many forms, some subtle and some not. The subtle form includes the constantly reinforced image of the successful male techno-mage, the scientist/engineer/hacker, juxtaposed with the omnipresent image of the sexually available and/or emotionally nurturing woman as accessory.
Think about it: a man who is a scientist, appearing in a news article, a movie, a commercial is “a scientist”; he’s considered neutral by default. A woman who is a scientist, appearing in a news article, a movie, a commercial is “a female scientist”. Boys and men are not expected to identify with the character, only women. But in reality, girls and women do not identify well with the male characters either; they simply make do by a sort of mental substitution. The lack of emphasis on female role models is precisely why Ada Lovelace Day was launched.
But overt discrimination is alive an dwell too. Some men — enough men — often make it a hassle to be a woman in tech fields. There are the high school and even college classes where boys aggressively intimidate “brainy” girls. There are the chat rooms, blogs, forums, instant messaging services and other online communities where using a female handle or avatar guarantees you will be at beast harassed with “M/F?” messages and at worst shouted out and threatened of physical violence if you are identified as feminist. There are the “booth babes”, the cheesecake pictures as an automatic accessory to tech, Wired Magazine’s Sexiest Geeks of 2008, etc.
There are the men who, in person, will simply ignore anything said by a woman even if she’s the smartest, best qualified person in the room — and online will turn into vicious, moronic tools. Their arguments are so old, easily rebutted, and flimsy, and yet so frequently repeated, that we can even play the anti-feminist bingo (now in two different versions!) Next time someone answers “Women just can’t be objective about gender issues” or “I got abused for opening a door for a lady”, you can just yell “Bingo!”
I was originally going to illustrate my discussion with lots of links to many online discussions where such men show abhorrent behaviour toward women because they are women. I have an impressive yet very sporadic collection of these links, but I decided there was no point in feeding the trolls.
What am I going on about, then? I’m saying that for a large number of women, science and technology careers and hobbies appear to offer more detractions than incentives: spend years in school being ridiculed or intimidated while taking harder classes, then fight your way elbow to elbow with bullies who are supposed to be your peers, while having the prospect of putting your career on hold when it’s time to have a family because odds are low their partners will be willing to. Then, after raising a family, try to compete again with skills now outdated in a field in constant change. It may be hard to see what would be worth this (that is my topic for next week).
I’m saying that there are a percentage of men who are @$$holes, a percentage of men who are wonderfully not @$$holes, and an amorphous mass of men in the middle who don’t really notice any of this and don’t really care since it’s “not their problem”. And I’m telling the latter that it is their problem, that they have mothers, sisters, daughters, friends, spouses who need them to move into the wonderful category instead and speak up against the @$$holes. And help your daughters find female role models, because they need them just as much as your boys need their role models — nay, more so.
Other posts in this series:
- Part 1 (February 24): Hollywoodian portrayals
- Part 2 (March 3): My techie friends
- Part 3 (today): Boyz in our ‘hood
- Part 4 (March 17): What’s so great about it?
- Part 5 (March 24): Ada Lovelace Day — some role models
Links of interest:
- Has the Female Science Student Gone Extinct?
- Where are all the female scientists?
- Lack of ability does not explain women’s decisions to opt out of math-intensive science careers
- International Women’s Day — on the Bad Astronomy blog
- Women on top — a BBC article on women in the media, also applicable to the way women are treated and portrayed in video games and tech-related marketing and media.
I think most men fall into that “I don’t notice” category. I know my husband, he mostly doesn’t pay attention–which is good when he does things like choose lab partners etc. He often had women in his study groups and thought no more about it. But he sometimes can’t see beyond his thought patterns either.
Once on our local road which is maintained privately. He was acting head of the group and he was wondering aloud to me who could he get to be in charge of a certain section. I sat there flabbergasted because he never named the most obvious candidate, the woman who sat beside him at road meetings and worked harder and was better informed than anyone else but him. When I asked him why, he blushed. He just “hadn’t thought of a woman in charge of something like that.” Part of it is the woman he is married to. I’m not into tools and machines and part of that is society.
He, like most men I’ve met, are willing though–he quickly asked the woman to do the job and she is now basically head of the road committee. We just have to keep gently reminding them that women are capable of doing jobs as well as men.
[...] March, 2009 by Sophie Lagacé (Continuing the discussion of women in science and technology from Part 3 last week, and leading up to Ada Lovelace [...]