Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!agate!@hamlet.bitnet:tan@devvax.Jpl.Nasa.Gov From: @hamlet.bitnet:tan@devvax.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Greer H. Tan) Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Re: Women Wizards? Message-ID: <12009@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: 12 Jul 88 15:11:02 GMT Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. Lines: 37 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 Bedna rcyk) writes: > >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)? This is definitely and interesting question. Does this have something to do with biology? Or society? Coming from M.I.T. ... I was considered a pretty good expert in UNIX, and I always wondered why I couldn't derive as much pleasure in finding out the little intricacies of the system like some of my male counterparts ... I really thought it was just me. I mean, I learned what I had to ... but you would never find me spending hours on writing a shell script to "do something neat" just for the heck of it. My boyfriend on the other hand would have loved to do nothing more ... My sister describes herself as virtual memory. She doesn't actually know everything, but she knows how to get to it ... where as most men *are* disc memory ... they actually *know* the stuff off the top of their heads! Perhaps if a study were done as to how logical and factual knowledge is stored and how some other things are remembered by people and then a study on what women tend to remember and what men tend to remember ... then perhaps we will understand more about what we don't have as many technical guru-ettes. Why is it that most women tend to remember dates, clothes, places and such better than most men? Usually when there is a sentimental value to the time, person or place? I can't think of any more examples of general imbalance of male and female tendencies ... but I'm sure there are many. Of course there are exceptions to every generalization ... but, for the most part women tend to notice details and think about the finer points of life and men tend to see the bigger picture in a much more less complicated sort of way. Greer