Women - Geeks - Culture

I found an interesting example of stereotyping technology between genders in Judy Wajcman ’s book "Technofeminism". In her explanation, the typewriter keyboard remains the primary interface for connection to cyberspace. In historical context, typewriter keyboards and all the relative words were associated with the feminine:

1. typewriter (machine)
2. typist (occupation)
3. typing (skill)

Typewriters were used in sewing machine factories, in piano, and in embroidery in 1870s. These were all feminine tools. "Hundred years before it is natural for men to be seated in front of the keyboard typing , and the practice of typing to lose its sex...."

Photo taken from Wikipedia

By preparing my presentation for the computer science class in "IT and society", I got to some interesting fact. The English language on the Internet. In fact, what I wanted to underline was that among other factors who discourage women from entering the computer science field, is the fact most of the common computer languages are written in English. In Linux, if you don't speak English, it is difficult to remember all the commands of the shell.... we often need to guess them, with some small tips from the memory.

Wikipedia proposes a number of interesting articles and facts on the topic. Enlighs in computer science is one, and the other is Global Internet Usage. The first one provides examples of computer languages, written in other-than-English languages (how cool!), and the second one shows the top 10 world used languages. English is dominant on the Internet, but its rate diminishes each year, to become from 37% (in 2004) to 29% (in 2008). On the contrary, Chinese on the Internet gets more and more popular, by raising from 14% in 2004 to 20% in 2008.

By speaking 5 languages, I had long time difficulties defining my website's language. The old one had 3 languages, where I would write in whatever one I feel for the day. This definitely did not work out, because I managed to have 3 types of readers, so for more than one group to be able to read, I was stuck translating my posts all the time. Now I thought English will be my language, for more people to read it. However, whenever I quote an already ready text, of for my cook-book in general, I use French or Bulgarian. This does not relieve my identity troubles, but at least does not imply me more work. Regular writing is difficult enough.

If it would be just writing an thesis, it would be too easy. Just in a week time at the country, I managed to write a whole chapter, and read about 600 pages (with notes). And then, I will need about 3 weeks off in order to write a paper for the JoCI, and to make a presentation at a colleague, who is doing for the first time a course in "Computer science and society" at the Technical University. I will need to prepare for a 5 weeks missing from home, a wrap-up for my thesis for the end of August....

Dans le cadre du cours "Informatique et société", donnée par M.Robert Dupuis aux étudiants en informatique. Le cours cherche à insister sur la responsabilité professionnelle des finissants-finissantes en informatique. Ma présentation, d'une durée de 30-45 min, portera sur la place des femmes en TI actuellement.

След повече от 2 години се прибирам отново. Нямам търпение да се видя с приятели и близки, но пък и малко ме е страх да не се разочаровам още повече.

Миналият път като се прибрах, още първият ден щяха на 3 пъти да ме блъснат на зелено, на пешеходната пътека. Единят път бях с количка с бебе. Навсякъде безумни, изнервени и груби хора. В банката ти се карат, минаваш от гише на гише, и никой не иска да помогне. Скъпотия. Криза. Цигарен дим навсякъде. На метрото рампите за колички неизползваеми. Улиците задръстени, тротоарите - също. В центъра с количка с бебе не се минава - счупени павета, по тротоарите паркирани коли. Единствената светлина беше Витошка, по която от метрото можех да стигна до НДК. Други маршрути просто не можех да поема.

За първи път се радвах, че идвам на гости, а не да живея тук. Чувството е мъчително - нито е да плачеш, нито да се смееш. Че не искаш да останеш в родината. От друга страна, това ми помогна да си тръгна спокойна и да знам, че отивам някъде, където ще бъде добре за моята дъщеря и по-добре за мен. Сега фактът, че тя говори френски и съвсем малко български, че е далече от баби, лели и други роднини - не ми тежи толкова, колкото преди. Просто си давам сметка, че не може да имаме всички, и че изборът, който сме направили не е бил напразен....

Все пак си мечтая за един ден, в който ще се прибера в България и ще си кажа - сега искам да се завърна тук. Тук ми се живее. Отново. А този път ще празнувам с приятели. Приятелите, които останаха. Те надявам се не са се променили и надявам се все още ме чакат.

While the Oekonux conference in Manchester (27-29 March 2009), I was interviewed by Dan Lynch, for their podcast Linux Outlaws. I was nicely surprised the other day, when he wrote to me and told me he added the edited version of it in the 90th podcast, dating from May 6, 2009.

I must admit it is not my best performance, it was after a 1,5 hour lecture, so I was quite in a mood to not to care much about the what I am saying. I notice I tend to sometimes not finish my thoughts, but... this is my speciality, when I am told I have a couple of minutes, and I want to say plenty of things. However, it went quite well, and I can see Dan has left almost all of it... about 30-40 min.

So, here is the podcast : in Mp3 and in Ogg.

And, of course there was some fierce discussion on the topic, which I could not really follow because of time restraints, but also because I am fed up of the same sexist trolling, and the same excuses...

Un article très bien explicant le concept du libre (en français) est écrit par Hervé Le Crosnier. Intitulé «Leçons d'émancipation : l'exemple du mouvement des logiciels libres», il décrit très bien la nature du mouvement, la nécessité d'avoir le code source à disponibilité par tous, etc.

Ce que j'ai aimé le plus, était le début, quant il a parlé des rapport du mouvement vers lui-même. Comme une chercheure dont le sujet touche aux logiciels libres, et comme une libriste qui participe au mouvement à base quotidienne, je suis defois d'accord qu'on fait des découvertes et de l'innovation à chaque pas, mais qu'on ne les considère pas comme tels. Ni on se mêle dans d'autres domaines...

Leningrad and Moscow. As a raised in a Russian language primary school, I have a lot from the Russian culture with me. I've learnt a lot from my teachers, mostly Russian descendants, skills for life. We were starting our classes with fiz-zariadka (физзарядка), exercising our bodies, before exercising our brains. We did a lot of hand-writing (a beautiful one), we had to organise our titles and sub-titles with different colours, to always write the date in the left field of the notebook. Once a month the teacher would pass to see if you maintain a good and ordered notebook, if you are writing in a good style, and if you have wrapped your tutorials with paper and plastic, in order to preserve them better. This looks really freaky, when we speak about 7-8 years-old children, but now I realise, 20 years later, that these are basic things for life. To be ordered in your thoughts, you need to have a well-ordered note-book. I follow many advises even nowadays.

Last night, leaving baby to her grandparents, we passed taking the computer of a friend's kids. Our task is to install Ubuntu. Thinking about the new generation, who have access to computer and GNU/Linux from such very young age... I wish I have had this possibility when I was young.

Penny Leach wrote recently a blog post about the awards given at Best of Swiss Web.

What annoyed her with this event was the special award given to women in technology (Women Wired in Web). The reaction this initiative produced was that most of the female participants felt bad and did not find it appropriate. Penny provoked a discussion on several lists and on her website (see here) in order to see what other women-in-computing think about the issue.

Before I summarize the discussion and the main conclusions, here are some facts that Penny points out about the event:

1. There was sexism throughout all the event with pretty women giving the awards, and with colouring the Women Wired in Web award in purple, etc. While they were pretending with the women-only-award to be fighting gender inequality in the Computer Science field.
2. The result from the initiative actually put women down, pointing at them and saying they are different, instead of just making place for women into a male world.
3. The female jury got to get up on stage during the presentation of their award, which didn't happen for
   any other jury of any other category.

So, I thought the discussion on this was important, since the issue is very ambiguous: yes, it is a great initiative to give place for women in a male-dominated field. But is it actually the good way of doing things? And if it is not done in the proper way, isn't it producing the opposite feelings, and actually contributing to the problem, and not to the solution? I guess, this is what happened with the Best of Swiss Web.

What are the pros of a women-only space in a CS conference, project or any other type of activity?

• It is actually a raising problem that women are absent from software development industry. This problems add two new problems: 1) women are not well represented in the decision-making about software production, and 2) the software produced does not answer women'e needs.
• For make a change, there need to be active measures, and not silence on the issue. Some groups who recognise the problem, try to work in order to solve it. Companies offer special conditions for women to join teams; others provide scholarships and prioritise women's ideas. The main reason is that if there are 2 women initiated projects out of 100, even if they are great, it might be difficult to make them visible in the pile. So, what is done is to assign quota.
• I tried to define the above as "positive discrimination", but Penny came out with a better idea: affirmative action (Def: A policy or a program that seeks to redress past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity, as in education and employment.).

BUT....

• The problem I see with this event is that it was promoting a stereotypic underestimation for women in general (with the pretty women giving awards, etc.), while they wanted to show off that they care about "bridging the gap" by organising this women-only award event. In this, they actually mocked the female participants. Therefore, even if they had good intentions, they did more harm than fixed anything.
• Since the question is so delicate, every wrong move contributes to the problem, rather than to the solution. In a polarised male field, to give a tribune to women, creates a lot of food for contempt and hate. The badly presented activity of positive discrimination can easily turn into humiliation. And if you women felt like this at the ceremony, this has obviously not been the best way to do.
• Sarah Currier talks about tokenism on Penny's blog: "The trouble is of course, when any movement reaches the point where tokenistic attempts to solve the problem are made like the one you describe, it becomes difficult to know exactly what to bitch about and how."
• Nicolas Connault says (in the same post): "In my experience, whenever a minority group feels they are being discriminated against, they tend to adopt the victim frame of mind, and interpret people's actions through that frame of mind. It usually makes things worse because, if you play a victim role, you usually stay a victim, even when the initial annoyances have gone".

To summarise the good ideas and suggestions that came out of this really constructive and rich discussion, I would support Penny who thinks the event was organised with good intentions (although road to hell is covered with good intentions!!!), and that it would be probably important to contact the organisers and to let them know how women participants felt. To point them out some of the problems, and to make propositions on how to do next time. In a good tone, and with humour, of course. As someone said: it comes down to treating other people with respect.

In my opinion, it has been indeed good intentions. But maybe they need some help by gender aware people who could propose better ways for involving and encouraging women to the technology field. The efforts are in place, now we need to work on the quality of the contents.