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Wow, that's really sad. :( Maybe it was the lack of loud-mouthed dicks in my courses, but all the women I met in my compsci degree who were doing well actually really enjoyed it and, well, did well. (Or perhaps it's how our courses were set up; there wasn't much opportunity for people to be dicks). I will admit, it can be quite intimidating as a woman to, say, start going to things like Linux Users Groups though; back when I first joined my local one (late 90s, early 2000s?) there were a lot of... intimidating people there. But there were also a number of women, and a few friends of mine also there, which was good for that moral support. But then again, these people are loud mouthed egotistical dicks to everyone that has an opposing view to them, usually, not just women (e.g. if they use emacs and you use vim, be prepared!). In these very charged environments it only really came up a couple of times: one of these that happened to me was one of the main examples used in the "women in linux howto" (which I'm not a fan of actually, because I think it causes a bit of a negative feedback loop), and was dealt with very well by both male and female members of the group. Curiously, due to that howto, I still get email from concerned guys hoping that I haven't been turned off LUGs for the rest of my life! I definitely think it's a great idea to have more women in tech, especially education, but I think that they need to feel like they have a passion for it. And all the incentives, etc. make for a bit of a bad taste in the mouth w.r.t. that :) |
Showing up to some groups, posting on some boards (like this one even) and jumping into the conversation can be outright terrifying.
My XY-card doesn't make it instantly simple to show up to any event and feel comfortable.