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> feelings of isolation and frustration I am a female born in 1987 and have similarily been interested in programming for a long time. After reading several comments, I'm getting some sense of resentment that you were driven away from your passion while others were able to stay on course despite
similar obsticles. I in no way wish to diminish their accomplishments or claim any secret insight into any hardships they had to overcome or did not have to overcome;
however I feel there are some aspects that are unique to the female experience of 'isolation and frustration' in learning how to program that I wanted to clarify: Starting off, it is not at all unusual to be the only female in the class/room. The reason this is horrible is not because there's no one
to talk to or connect with, but because it's completely impossible to shake off the feeling that everyone is watching you, very closely, all the time.
Having this constantly on your mind hurts your concentration, your productivity, and your ability to freely explore ideas without judgement - a very important part of learning. This is something that the female needs to come to terms with and learn to be comfortable in her own space regardless. Second - and this one hurts to type because I can feel the coming backlash - you programming gentlemen can be a bit too... helpful.
When a female does need extra help in understanding something, help is appreciated and needed!
However, when several people, usually male, come at you at once wanting to help it can be a negative experience. As good intentioned as this is, it is incredibly frustrating for me for three reasons: 1) the more people that want to help only fortifies the pervasive paranoia discussed earlier, 2) the more people that want to help me highlights my knowledge gap and is incredibly discouraging,
and 3) gentlemen, when helping a lady in need of something, you tend to get a sense of bravado and in an effort to show us something, you end up just doing it for us.
When this happened to me, I not only missed out on an opportunity to do a task myself and learn, it also served to fortify the sense of "move aside, young lady, and let
the men take care of this." Furthermore, once a female smarts up to this enough to be brave enough to refute said help, she will often do so in an unappealing way until she learns what gets the best response. I want to point out that I don't blame yall males at all, and this is something a female will need to learn to deal with. For the record, I stuck with it and got my CS degree. I think this has more to do with stubbornness than fortitude. All this said, however, I've come to be pretty blind to the gender gap in my day to day and try to shy away from these types of conversations because there is no winner.
Starting any field of study will have its own set of unique challenges that every student needs to overcome. Right now, for females as well as males in software, one of those
challenges is how to treat the gender gap. I'm pretty much over it. |