Shireen Digital Sister wrote:
If every girl was given the same radio (boys are given) to take apart and
to
put back together instead of the Barbie doll then we wouldn't be having
this discussion. I also say this in lieu of the fact that I never had a
Barbie doll and never
wanted one.
Aha, this is what I was talking about in my earlier e-mail, these tinkering
skills. Shireen, it sounds like the interest came naturally to you and that
you just
jumped in there and pursued these interests and competed with the boys
because you
felt comfortable doing so.
The challenge becomes when we have a girl who likes barbie dolls and
doesn't
want to pull apart a radio. How do we engage her? What if she doesn't
like
competition either? As most females don't (FYI Shireen, so do I).If she's
to be successful in using technology she needs to have these tinkering
skills, it's fundamental.
Also, not every girl wants to push their way in with the boys.
We have an intern who has been with us for a year - Kemi MacCaulay
She is leaving to start her first year at UC Berkeley as a Computer Science
Major , she just turned 17. She'll go in as a third year student because
she has a 2 year community college degree in Computer Science. She has also
done 2 semester at the Cisco Networking Academy Program and gotten As both
semesters. She's a brilliant
young woman but she didn't have any hands on experience til she came here.
She has given permission for me to tell her story.
Essentially, she came to use with no hands on experience (not even loading
software, she didn't have a home computer) and now she does things like
figure out how we can do video conferencing from start to finish and trains
me.Prior to doing an internship with us, she did one for a summer at a
computer
lab, she was the only girl. The boys spent most of their time playing
games.
They had her answering the phone. She didn't want to bother to push her
way into getting to be a computer lab assistant so after several attempts
to do more than answer the phone she just resigned herself to a boring
summer.
So, I think, yes we do need training courses for instructors on gender
differences and how to watch out for the kind of thing that happened
to Kemi in the computer lab and yes how to interest girls who like
Barbies into computer technology.
Donna
<donnam@iwitts.com>
It never dawned on me that I was the only girl, because it has
> always been that way for me, not until I tried to connect with other
women
> did I find the differences and it wasn't biological. They were not as
> interested in the competition and they didn't care what the computer
could
> do. I was amazed, only because the former was how I learned.
>
> Technology today is developed in the very same frame of mind and I agree
> 100% it needs to include diverse frames of mind, not just the need for
> speed
> or the largest capacity but how it enables us to connect to our society.
> This division of gender is purely a social issue. If every girl was given
> the same radio (boys are given) to take apart and to put back together
> instead of the Barbie doll then we wouldn't be having this discussion. I
> also say this in lieu of the fact that I never had a Barbie doll and
never
> wanted one. My mother never shoved one into my hand she allowed me to
> develop with my interests and then foster my interests even if it didn't
> match the social norms. I have a clear memory of quitting dance class to
> play sports particularly basketball (basketball was not a thing a girl
> should do back then) when I was 12. My mother paid for my classes but she
> did not argue or force me to go back to dancing. This was only the
> beginning.
>
> Shireen Mitchell
> Director - Digital Sisters, Inc.
> director@digital-sistas.org
> www.digital-sistas.org
> "Technology with Women in Mind"
> **********************************************************
> Cornelia Brunner <cbrunner@edc.org> wrote:
> I think your suggestion is very interesting. I do worry a bit, however,
> about confusing gender and biology. This may seem like linguistic
> nit-picking, but I actually think it's very important: gender is a social
> construct, it refers to how we are socialized, the rules and norms
imposed
> on us by our culture. Femininity is slightly different in different
> cultures, though there are many overlapping notions throughout the world.
> The words female and make usually refer to biological status, to our
> primary and secondary sex characteristics. I just want to make it very
> clear that
> I know of NO biological differences relevant to this discussion.
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Apr 12 2002 - 15:16:50 EDT