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
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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."