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
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Approved: skyler@violet.berkeley.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts)
Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu
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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?