From: shava@hermes.oit.unc.edu (Shava Nerad Averett)
Subject: Women of excellence... (Re: Learning Styles)
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 00:55:57 GMT

In article <memo.595457@cix.compulink.co.uk> shaman@cix.compulink.co.uk writes:
>I will confirm that in technical real time programming
>and electronics (at least in the UK cultural context) the ONLY women
>in that area were first rate. And in a considerable minority too.
>However I have since noticed that this seems confined to European
>cultures - Asian and African cultures don't seem to show the same
>patterns.
>
>I had always assumed that no woman in her right mind would tackle a
>traditionally male dominated discipline UNLESS she was so exceptional
>as to be able to overcome the inherent prejudice and bias. Until
>recently I would always prefer female doctors and other professionals
>for this very reason.

As a woman in a fairly highly technical field (campus network manager --
former author of x.25 drivers, former chief software engineer consultant
at DEC,...) with a moderate amount of pride in her work (and no college
education to speak of...), I've spent a moderate amount of time considering
this question myself.

There are a couple of issues here.  One is that you have to be a pretty 
compulsive/obsessive character to make it to this level as a person of
either sex.  My own career had it's crucial development years between the
time of the dissolution of my first marriage, and the time I met Eddie.
I was burying myself in work, sometimes 80-90 hours/week.  Spend that much
time on *anything* without burning out, and you will come out of the 
experience with a reasonable competancy.  Most women have more sense than
to spend that kind of time with no social life...;)

Another issue is the willingness to deal with assholes.  Many women like
the idea of staying out of confrontational situations.  These women (and
like-minded men) will never make it to the tops of their fields, unless
they are in an exceptional environment (heavily mentored in a conservative
organization, for example).  You have to be willing to deal with bad
management, fight for what you know is right in design meetings, and 
be assertive enough to make sure that things get done by people you are
depending on to complete your own work.  You have to deal with people who
see compentant co-workers as threats.  You have to deal with unsocialized
co-worker nerds who don't know how to deal with a woman in their environment.
You have to deal with upper managers who think that having a woman in 
their heirarchy who is young, competant, and sociable is an opportunity
to import the 'casting couch' into the engineering field.  You have to 
deal with people who will never take you seriously because you have tits.

Finally, I think a lot of women are more attracted by the systems-integration
level of computers/engineering/medicine/whatever.  And to many women, going
thru all the preliminary, linear stuff, and the lower levels of some fields,
may seem like unending drudgery to get to the interesting stuff.  They run
smack into Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is shit) and decide that it's
not worth the time getting to the fun stuff.  The fun stuff in a lot of
other fields -- the point at which those fields are enjoyable to spend
8 hours, 5 days/week -- can be much lower.

I wonder if this last reason doesn't explain why many women drop out of
the electronics curriculum.  Being an electrical engineer may seem much
more attractive than the lower level classes.

This maps into magick, as well.  Most women interested in magick find the
areas of traditional magick like gematria and the early bits of qaballistic
correspondences and such to be anal, dull, and unprofitable.  I have been
able to approach a number of women about qaballah by explaining the ideas
behind the Tree, who started to read 777 or something, and had decided that
the whole idea of the qaballah was rote memorization of tables of stuff
with no end in sight, and never realized what pretty stuff lay behind it.

-- 
Shava Nerad Averett				shava_averett@unc.edu
/*  all materials (c)1992, Shava Nerad Averett, and have nothing significant
    to do with the University of North Carolina, a mostly owned subsidiary 
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