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From: joy@mit-vax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Stereotypes Again?
Message-ID: <2074@mit-vax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-Jun-84 21:10:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-vax.2074
Posted: Wed Jun  6 21:10:50 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Jun-84 00:24:19 EDT
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 40


To Quote Chris Minson: "You can only date so many secretaries, you know."

I hate to be annoyed, but I am.  As a secretary, I often run up against
people like Chris who treat me as an intellectual inferior just because
I do not program as well as they do or create hardware with as much
ease and facility.  Hey-- I don't treat everyone who doesn't speak fluent
French or doesn't understand the intricate details of Econometrics as
if they were uneducated!

He implies with his article that secretaries are unintelligent, and are
only good for diversion.  This insults me as it insults any woman who has
ever had to take a clerical job for lack of jobs in her own chosen field
of endeavor.  I know too many women who are overqualified in their jobs.
I certainly can't say the same for the men I have encountered.  Here at
MIT there are women with Masters' degrees working as secretaries because
they can't find jobs in Boston and can't currently relocate!

The "stupid secretary" is one of the worst stereotypes around and it's about
time someone changed it.  As for women in engineering, I suggest that all
of you who are interested in WHY there aren't more of them read a Technical
Report published recently by MIT's Lab for Computer Science.  It's called,
"Barriers to Equality in Academia:  Women in Computer Science at MIT," and
was written with the collective efforts of most of the women graduate students
and researchers (circa 1983).  It is available by writing to the Publications
Office of LCS, 545 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA 02139.

I recommend this report to all of you.  It's an eye opener for most.

As for you, Chris Minson, even if you didn't mean anything by that statement
or didn't mean to be offensive, may I politely remind you that Computer Science
and Engineering is not the only profession and is certainly not the only
one which is to be respected.  If the world contained only hackers it would
be a truly dull place! :-)

						Joy

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