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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 21:13 UTC (Fri) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)In reply to: Women expected to take care-taker/support/social/maternal roles by hypatiadotca Parent article: FSF to host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software 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.
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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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