In part based on feedback from the Squirrel, I’m giving this topic one more try. The goal is to be shorter, more thoughtful, and not quite so pissed off.(1) I’m also going to diverge from my usual style of parenthetical comments in favor of footnotes.
Savants are neither necessary nor sufficient.
The starting assumption is that a certain kind of personality, which may be more common among straight men(2,3), is a better programmer.(4)
That isn’t necessarily so. The Harvey Mudd study that Nicole cites is pretty clear: in an academic setting, grades increased after they “stop[ped] selecting for the socially-challenged-uber-nerd” in the student body.
My personal opinion: quality software comes from an understanding of its use and users. The idealized savant, which is similar to Nicole’s “code cowboy,” is not good at understanding those who are different from him. So by definition he’s not able to create the best quality software.(5)
Underrepresentation is real, and free will is an illusion.
The claim that there are as many women(6) programmers as there should be is the one that ran me off the rails last time, because it runs so completely counter both to what I’ve read, and to what I’ve seen around me.(7)
People are influenced by culture broadly, and directly by individuals as they grow up, go through school, and enter the workforce. Men are steered away from nursing or elementary education(8); women are steered away from construction or programming, regardless of the skills or interests of those individuals.
Even within a professional field, women are steered, consciously or not, away from the high-prestige jobs and towards the lower-prestiges ones. My female dentist(9) has mentioned being directly discouraged from becoming a dentist, and instead encouraged to stick to being a hygienist.
It is no insult to my nurse when I consider that in a different world she might have become a doctor, because no one is making career choices free of outside influence.
It doesn’t matter if the computer knows I’m a girl.
I’m just going to quote Andrea, because I think she says it most clearly and pithily.
fundamentally, my computer may not be able to tell that I’m a girl. But I don’t work for computers, and computers don’t arrange conferences (tweet #1)
The Man, apparently, can tell that I’m a girl. (tweet #2)
And that’s the part that matters.
Footnotes!
- There’s a part of me that’s irritated at being told that I’m too angry. It hits a nerve, that familiar complaint against women who are assertive. But I’m letting that go in the interests of trying to write something with more clarity. And yeah, I was really angry.
- There have always been people who have said that women or people of color just don’t have the brains for [X], whatever [X] happens to be, up to and including going to school at all.
- Child-bearing, as separate from mental capability, got a special mention earlier; the Swedish example shows that providing the right incentives and resources can change the gender balance of child-rearing outside of what’s biologically necessary.
- The follow-on assumption: programmers can stand in for all of IT. I’ll leave that one alone.
- Wild generalization: the most savant of the savants seem to congregate around some of the open-source projects that have the least traction. GIMP in particular strikes me as a project without sufficient understanding of its potential users.
- I’m restricting this to gender at the moment, although I think this argument about the reality of underrepresentation can be broadly generalized to other historically disadvantaged groups.
- In fact, it goes counter to actual research. MIT found actual, tangible, discrimination, which led to decreased satisfaction among women researchers/professors.
- Again, I swear I remember reading that teaching (and/or librarianship) lost prestige as the percentage of women increased. Can anybody help?
- My dentist is freaking awesome. Also, my doctor and the cats’ vet are both women. Not coincidence on the part of the doctor, but sheer random luck as far as the dentist and the vet.
You’re right. I wish you were a boy though, because some could argue you are writing this because you are feminist or so.
I do like the point about usability and programming nerds. That’s a great observation! By the way, this could mean you qualify for being a program manager (this column from Joel Spolsky explains what this really is: http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/03/09.html) and could skip hacking, take over and show the boys your back.
When you actually read and respond to the qualifications carefully included in my post and equally carefully double- and then triple-checked, let me know. In a number of cases, you are responding to claims I didn’t make, and have elided cases where we agree. I stand by everything I wrote. (Why shouldn’t I?)
I am not sure there is a harsher critic of Aspergerian nerd culture than me. I loathe the work these people produce. Unfortunately for us all, they run Google. On this count we are in violent agreement, which you also elide.
Your personal crusade, and your friends’ personal crusades, and the personal crusades of people who agree with you that women are the most important minority in computer technology is quite simply open to question. I openly question it.
It’s possible I’m suffering from cognitive dissonance on your take on the Aspergerian nerd culture problem. I’m well aware of your critiques, which I think is why the neurological/deterministic bit starting with “Merit is a misnomer” surprised and dismayed me.
The argument that “men’s brains are better suited” has been used to keep women and others out of a wide variety of endeavors, and generally proven to be false. I can’t see that it should be more true here.
On a more basic level: this is not a contest.
I’m by no means a crusader for anything; I don’t have a quota in my head. I may have more experience or knowledge or passion about women’s issues in technology or elsewhere. So I write about it, on very rare occasions. I don’t particularly think that it’s the most important form of underrepresentation, although consisting of half the human race has to count for something. If I had to “rank” that sort of thing, digital divide issues of class strike me as most critical.
But I’ve seen a lot of games of “who’s more oppressed?” play out in my life. They’re worthless. Worse than worthless, even.
I do not believe that these are competing interests. In particular, having more women working in technology does not preclude having more people with disabilities working in technology. (FWIW, my youngest sister has a significant learning disability, didn’t learn to read until 4th grade. She LOVES the “did you mean” feature in Google search. You should see her spelling!)
Beyond that, I’m a firm believer in making the pie bigger, so to speak. It’s a big internet, we can make room for everybody. People get passionate about the things they care about, obviously, which doesn’t mean that someone else’s passion is less valuable, or that one can’t empathize with someone else’s point of view.
Ok, that was longer than I meant to write.
Also, Peter: thanks! So far in my career I’ve been a web generalist, the sole web designer, developer, writer, info architect, etc., etc. in three different non-technology organizations. I am my own program manager, most of the time. 🙂