GirlyGeekdom

The issues of male and female gender and stereotypical jobs have been around ever since I was tiny. I grew up wearing nothing but pink. Was given Barbie dolls and Sylvanian Families as toys. When I was at school I was advised that I should work in marketing, HR or design. Fortunately for me I had other ideas.

Once old enough to make my own decisions on clothes I stopped wearing pink. I played more with my little bro’s car’s, lego and meccano set than anything else. Then I got into playing on the computer and soon started playing about programming it. (Old Commadore 64 in case you were wondering)

Today I was looking through some news articles and came across two items the first one made me cringe and wonder when people will start to realise how much social stereotypes are damaging careers of women today. The first article I came across was one from New Scientist about Gender Bias in Science publications. Articles like this make me sad to see that we haven’t moved on from those old fashioned ways. The calls for anonymous papers and such start to come into play when it just shouldn’t matter who the people are. The interesting thing in the article that also comes out is reputation. You appear to be more likely to get an article published if you have a good reputation, I wonder if that works for the women or not…

The second article that I came across that I found a bit more heartening was one in The Guardian – Schools face ban on Sex Bias in careers advice. My first thoughts were about time! And my second one was a bit more thoughful. It made me realise that someone up there in the UK govornment is starting to get it about how dangerous social stereotypes can be.

I also started thinking about the other side of social stereotypes. Where they originated from, how out of date they really are and what todays modern social stereotypes actually are. I’m sure Maz will be able to add her own insights about social stereotype groups that she’s been able to identify. I wonder what others you see around you. Do you give people social grouping tags? What would you do to classify them and why do you think it is necessary to create such classifications?

About Sarah Lamb

Sarah is the founder of the Girl Geek Dinners & GirlyGeekdom. She is a lover of gadgets, geeky things and sport! Find out more about her on her website.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 7:35 pm and is filed under Education, Engineering, Science, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Sarah Blow

@Julie:
Gender equality is one thing but understanding of gender and where stereotypes and gender assumptions are misaligned is what this post was about. It wasn’t about political agendas or abuse of women or emotional and psychological warfare. I guess somewhere along the way the point was missed.

I understand where you are coming from with bringing your point up but it’s such an extreme area and totally unrelated to the technology industry and gender information included in this post.

And before I get told but it’s important, yes I believe it is but forcing information like this at people in this way isn’t helping solve that problem. How about making suggestions on how the govornement can help and better understand the situation and something might just happen.
Julie, writer surefirewealth.com

Unfortunately, the movement for gender equality has not been won yet. Take the situation if Darfur for instance. Mass rapes are going on there and it is the women who suffer. And it’s not something to be found in history books. These mass rapes are happening right now. In real time. Rape is being used as a weapon of war. Just type the word Darfur and you’ll be bombarded with loads of information about it.
Miss Maz Hardey

@ Dominic,

I think that you are partially ‘right’. Whilst, like yourself, I have never experienced a situation where ‘women suffer from just being women’, I would like to point out that in terms of academic career equality the favour i very much on the footing of the male shoe. Apologies for using such an obvious (and gender based) metaphor, but pay options, career bonus’s and even academic credibility still have a long way to go to being ‘equal’ amongst the sexes.

An article by Melanie Ward on Birtish Academia reveals an aggregate gender salary differential for academic staff of 15% – now that’s hardly fair is it?!… Why am ‘I’ not worth the same as my male counterparts and how is this justified by a 15% differential?!…
Dominic

“You appear to be more likely to get an article published if you have a good reputation…” Well, of course you are. The whole process of recognition without the scientific community comes from a large number of past papers. Everyone has to start with obscure journals and conferences before they can get their papers in Nature, unless a newcomer sent something exceptional. No academic would seriously question the wisdom of this.

As to whether women suffer from just being women, I don’t think so. It’s not something I ever noticed in my days in academia, where people citied female authors just as often. Also, plenty of authors use their initials anyway. If I didn’t detect bias in computer science then I doubt other areas suffer from it…

Dominic
sniffles

I think as women in tech/sciences we do have an insight into the bias more readily than some other professions – we hit more ceilings and need to develop thicker skins.

The best book I’ve read on the subject is a book called “Misogyny” by Jack Holland. He describes how the woman’s role in society had been progressively cast in dark light through the evolution of our very own myths. It explains, therefore, why these social stereotypes still exist today, because these myths still live.

What I’ve found most troubling is that women themselves believe in these myths, and in our fight to equal the playing field, we also give ourselves unfair disadvantage by virtue of how we perceive ourselves.

One of the most offending piece of marketing bullcrap that drove me to write a complaint to the BBC was their “Brain Sex” survey/quiz. This is a horrible way of perpetuating the myth that would allow a less-than-educated public to mis-associate stereotypes to traits and skills. This should have been placed in “Entertainment”, not “Science & Nature”. Yes, there are statistics, but what is the real benefit of making such a division? I can see nothing good (apart from attention for the BBC), but potentially a lot of harm.
Miss Maz Hardey

Really enjoyed this post Sarah and find this area more than fascinating (as you well know). I think that Wade makes a good point that gender sterotypes are 2-fold; i.e. men experience them too!

However, care needs to be taken not to conflate ‘stereotype’ and ‘discrimination’. So to be controversal, and when speakding to my male friends about this, when they experience what they label as ‘discrimination’ is more a stereotype that has social significance, but not a formal consequence. By formal consequence i mean less pay, glass ceiling, maternity resources etc.

Wade’s Middle Way is a straight-forward and easy to implement approach. What say we all take that on baord and not get hung up on stereotypes or discriminatory practices. Or am i just living in la la utopic land?…
Sarah C.

You bring up a marvelous point about women in scientific and technological fields; basically science and applied science. To speak to your question about whether reputation helps a woman in getting published, I would say that the answer is ‘maybe a bit’. Unfortunately it still goes back to the old adage that a woman in the sciences has to be twice as good as her male counterparts to be considered half as good. I think the prejudices towards women in science and technology is not as far-reaching as it was and it’s more well-hidden, but at its core is, essentially, the same as it always was.

I don’t know if you’ve heard about the recent firing of Canadian nuclear watchdog head Linda Keen by the governing Conservative party after she, basically, did her job in shutting down a nuclear reactor that was in violation of safety regulations. It was an obvious and loathesome display of partisan hackery, but I do truly wonder if they would have made her the scapegoat for their little manufactured crisis so readily and easily if she had been a man.
Wade M | The Middle Way

Great Post, and it’s great to read some steps are being taken in the UK to erase the gap.

I find Stereotypes not just limiting for females in career, but for the world in general. Everything has a gender bias, ideas, thoughts, even words, actions, and associations. We have trapped ourselves.

I believe we’re still a long way to the male side of things, with the female side having so many important and timely lessons that need to be not just accepted but put into practice.

Peace,

Wade
http://themiddleway.net

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