Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!mailrus!ames!pasteur!agate!marcia%hpindl8@hplabs.HP.COM From: marcia%hpindl8@hplabs.HP.COM (Marcia Bednarcyk) Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Women Wizards? Message-ID: <11734@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: 7 Jul 88 00:40:22 GMT Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 42 Approved: skyler@violet.berkeley.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts) Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu 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. 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. 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? Another possibility comes from a comment made on soc.singles awhile ago (I don't remember by whom - sorry I can't place the credit where it is due), in which the author said that when giving aid, if the recipient is a male it will be "Let me show you how to do X"; if a woman, it will be "Let me do X for you". This would certainly decrease the amount of a woman's experience. These are just some first impressions that came to mind. I look forward to any insights others have had into this phenomenon. Note that I don't see it as a problem, per se; rather as a puzzling set of circumstances. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Marcia Bednarcyk ADDRESS: (hplabs, sun, ucbvax, uunet)!hpda!marcia "Sweaty Snugglebunnies."