Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!uwvax!dogie!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!cheryl@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu
From: cheryl@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (cheryl)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: Moving from humanities to software
Message-ID: <11735@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 6 Jul 88 20:27:33 GMT
References: <11101@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <11165@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <11535@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
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Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
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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




Trish asserts that the old-fashioned organization of companies
kept an isolated technical core (where supposedly it was easy
to keep women out simply by making them uncomfortable and unwelcome)
wheras new-fangled organizations have more fluid boundaries,
where technical employees are less easily distinguished from 
managerial, support or sales employees.  I agree with Trish that 
there are these differences in organizational style.

But it is then argued that this would make new-fangled companies more 
congenial places for women in general.  I disagree.  A new-fangled
company might be more congenial for the woman who is not explicitly
technically qualified by dint of training or education or experience.
And it may even be CONGENIAL for the highly qualified woman.  But it
might not be the best place PROFESSIONALLY for the highly motivated, 
highly qualified, technically ambitious woman who wants to be the
next Willhemina Gates or Winnifred Joy.  It's downright demeaning
and stifling for everyone to assume you were somebody's secretary
who figured out how to type 'ls' and 'vi' and were suddenly made
Technical Coordinator in Charge of Xeroxing Documentation or Manager
Of Changing The Paper In The LaserWriter And Doing The Dumps.  

Particularly annoying is the patronizing attitude on the part of the
managers of such newfangled companies, the fact that they portray
themselves as some kind of fairy godmother being so kind to these
traditionally unqualified women and cutting them a break -- you,
Ms. Graduate of Top-Knotch Engineering School INCLUDED.  You find
yourself wishing there were greater distinctions between the fully
qualified engineers and the former secretaries, simply because your
education STARTED with calculus, differential equations, physics, 
chemistry, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, numerical analysis and
so on, and here you are being asked to do the same things that 2 doors 
down someone's doing that was a secretary 2 years ago, and when somebody
seeks your advice, it's your former-secretary-female-boss's former-secretary-
female-boss asking you "Is Fluid Mechanics a kind of Turbulence?"  

I have NOTHING against secretaries moving into technical fields,
but I DO have something against women being promoted to positions
of administrative power over fully qualified women technical
core employees, only to have those administrative women impose
or encourage their own career path on the subordinate for whom
it is completely inappropriate.  It is NOT necessary for women
graduates of engineering or CS programs to be asked to do a stint
in User Services or Customer Support or Technical Writing.  Most
top MALE graduates of engineering or CS programs wouldn't be.

Yet in the New Fangled organization, you can have a woman and
a man with exactly the same salary, the same educational background
and the same position doing VERY different things after a couple 
years--the woman having been asked to do a lot of essentially 
user services, tech support and tech writing tasks; the man having
been asked to do (or been allowed the freedom and initiative to 
choose) purely individually creditable technical accomplishment-
oriented projects.

It seems to me that the minute women started making it into the
technical cores of old-fangled companies complete with their 
stupid rigid explicit guidelines as to what kind of education
and experience qualified you to hold what kind of job--the
whole scene had to be changed in order to continue to make 
women indistinguishable from one another and neutralize women's
growing mastery of the old-fangled system.  


Cheryl