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Women expected to take care-taker/support/social/maternal rolesWomen expected to take care-taker/support/social/maternal rolesPosted Aug 28, 2009 13:31 UTC (Fri) by Skud (guest, #59840)In reply to: Women don't have the same passion for open source men do? Really?? by BrucePerens Parent article: FSF to host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software
I just can't even figure out how to respond to this, but I wanted to flag it as problematic.
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Women expected to take care-taker/support/social/maternal roles Posted Aug 28, 2009 18:06 UTC (Fri) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] The point is that a young male programmer is often - certainly not always - the wrong person for the job. Who would you pick for a task where you must always respond calmly and without provocation, regardless of how the other side is talking to you? And they're talking about your code. I assure you, this is a very difficult position for most male programmers. Women don't all handle it well either, but among the population of women you can often find someone with the necessary ego-detachment from the topic to do the job.
Women expected to take care-taker/support/social/maternal roles Posted Aug 28, 2009 20:48 UTC (Fri) by hypatiadotca (guest, #60478) [Link]
I think that if the job requirements are actually explained as such - "you must always respond calmly and without provocation, regardless of how the other side is talking to you" - your young male programmers may be up to the challenge.
The reason I your earlier statements about putting women in this position problematic is that you're basically tailgating on a particularly shitty way that women are socialized - to take responsibility for other people's feelings at the expense of any of our own, to mediate, to avoid conflict, to have poor interpersonal boundaries. These are useful forms of social conditioning for this particular purpose, yes, but they are also frustrating ones to see perpetuated as an expected role for women.
I realize this is a bit meta, I hope it makes sense :) Fundamentally, it's socialized behaviour rather than actual skill, and that's problematic.
Women expected to take care-taker/support/social/maternal roles Posted Aug 28, 2009 21:13 UTC (Fri) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] Well, after some strong and all-too-public lessons and thorough knowledge that it's important, I still can't reliably do that job myself. So, I find it difficult to ask it of others with similar backgrounds.Is it not possible for a woman to do what I'm asking while maintaining internal strength? I see it as an area in which women often excel and something very powerful that they bring to the table as managers.
Women expected to take care-taker/support/social/maternal roles Posted Aug 29, 2009 11:25 UTC (Sat) by Skud (guest, #59840) [Link]
But many of us don't *want* to. Many of us would rather be hacking!
Women expected to take care-taker/support/social/maternal roles Posted Aug 29, 2009 17:29 UTC (Sat) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] Well, in between responding to LWN posts :-), I am working on something that is really important to society that I can't tell you about yet. And I'd rather be hacking too.
Women expected to take care-taker/support/social/maternal roles Posted Aug 31, 2009 13:27 UTC (Mon) by Skud (guest, #59840) [Link]
Sure, but presumably nobody's saying it's your duty to do so because of your gender.
Women expected to take care-taker/support/social/maternal roles Posted Aug 31, 2009 13:26 UTC (Mon) by Skud (guest, #59840) [Link]
It occurs to me to add that many women -- especially geeky women -- have trouble with this stuff too. I went through school having parent-teacher nights where the teachers said how I was poorly socialised. I got picked on in the playground. I had few friends. I hung out in the library and computer labs to avoid dealing with other kids. They considered keeping me down a year in school because of my social problems -- thank $DEITY that never happened!
As an adult, and particularly since my mid 20s, I've made a very serious effort to try and gain some social skills. It didn't come naturally to me, and I had to do it painstakingly and with lots of errors. I know other geek women who've done the same; one friend of mine treats it as a process of exploration and debugging, for example. It is absolutely possible for most people to do this (I concede that there are a small number who can't), and I don't see why men should be exempted from this.
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