Carnegie Mellon Project on Gender and Computer Science<\/a>.<\/p>\nThis book had been described to me as “Required reading for women in IT.”<\/p>\n
It’s not. [lj-cut]<\/p>\n
It’s a wonderful book detailing the work at Carnegie Mellon and institutions around the country to boost the number of women in Computer-related education programs. It does a great job of outlining the problems many women face when confronting computer science in primary schools and universities. It provides solutions for encouraging women in these places promotes a culture different than the typical “white male hacker” image that is so often broadcasted.<\/p>\n
I think this is a book that needed to be written. If the view toward women in IT is going to change, a fine place to start is on an institutional level where progress can be monitored and methods for attracting and keeping women in IT programs tweaked in a controlled environment.<\/p>\n
This book is required reading for anyone working to create a computer-related education program that attracts women.<\/p>\n
But required reading for women who are already working in IT? The book was not written to address the real issues women who have or are trying to build a career in IT face. There are only two reasons I can think of that someone would think it was required reading:<\/p>\n
1. All women in IT feel like they’re “the only one”<\/p>\n
I would find it difficult to believe that a woman heavily involved in IT would not have encountered any of the many online groups composed of women and involved with encouragement and mentoring if it’s something they were concerned about. There is LinuxChix, WorldWIT, various open source sub-projects that target women (Debian Women, KDE Women…), GenderChangers, just to name a few.<\/p>\n
And if anything, this book made me feel more<\/i> isolated. I fall into many computer nerd stereotypes, I have many of the same hobbies as my male counterparts. The book does not focus on girls like me who just love computers<\/i> but instead it tends to focus on the generic pool of intelligent women who could do CompSci but instead go into other field.<\/p>\n
2. All women in IT are involved with and concerned about women’s issues<\/p>\n
Again, not true. Not every women involved in IT is working to break down the gender barriers. Not that they’re opposed to it, but they’re just like any other geek who loves computers, just because they’re a woman doesn’t mean they have to be a feminist.<\/p>\n
In fact, I would consider myself someone “involved with and concerned about women’s issues” in IT, and reading the entire book was a bit much. I would have been happy with an article :)[lj-cut]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few months back I purchased Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher of the Carnegie Mellon Project on Gender and Computer Science. This book had been described to me as “Required reading for women in IT.” It’s not. [lj-cut] It’s a wonderful book detailing the work at Carnegie Mellon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}