Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!Q2816@pucc.princeton.edu From: Q2816@pucc.princeton.edu (Roger L. Lustig (CBD, Inc.)) Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Re: Women Wizards? Message-ID: <11787@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: 7 Jul 88 15:00:34 GMT Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 51 Approved: skyler@violet.berkeley.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts) Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu In article <11734@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, marcia%hpindl8@hplabs.HP.COM (Marcia Bedn >After reading the discussion on the technical core, a question came to mind: >why are there no women computer wizards, and what is preventing them (if >anything)? >I want to distinguish the difference between a wizard and a local expert, >because it seems that it's a lot easier to become a local expert by just >taking on the messier details of a project and becoming knowledgeable about >that project (or specific system). I see a wizard as having a broader base >of knowledge, being someone who understands the ideas and the implementations >of systems, someone who is relied upon to know the answers and almost always >does provide the solutions. Hm. I guess this area must be atypical then. PUCC's top systems people are split about 50-50, men and women -- and they ARE wizards, because the system is a very idiosyncratic, customized one. The undergraduates who dispense advice -- are they wizards of a sort? We hired one of the chief ones when she graduated, partly because of her wizardry, local expertise, whatever. The supervisor of all these people is DEFINITELY a wizard of a sort, and a woman. >With more women working in the "technical" side of computers, I would >expect to see more and more female local experts, growing from there into >wizards. However, I don't see this happening; the local experts still tend >to be male, even if there are women who have been there longer. And I know >of no female wizards. Is Grace Hopper a wizard? >I don't understand why this is so. A first possibility is that people >still don't believe down deep that a woman can be as technically >competent as a man, and subsequently won't go to her even though she has >the knowledge. This would decrease her opportunities to exercise her >knowledge, and thus miss a lot of oppotunities to learn more. I guess >I don't understand this because women are supposed to be (through their >socialization) good support people - who better to help fix problems? I've worked in several places -- big corp, university, small biz. There have been women at all levels of expertise, wizardry, etc. And the best support people were very often women. (I pointed the wife of a grad student toward a part-time programming job; she quickly learned everything there was to know about everything and became director of user support for a business school with two dec-20's.) Am I just lucky in picking jobs, or what? Roger Lustig (Q2816@PUCC.BITNET Q2816@pucc.princeton.edu) Die Gedanken sind frei! Wer kann sie erraten?