
Women in tech can have it all – even an arts degree  - groundCode
http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2013/sep/10/women-tech-arts-degree
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leiroc
Actually, imposter syndrome as presented here, is not real. Just a handy
political fiction.

Sometimes people feel like they do not know what they are doing, and
generally, such feelings are accurate.

Claiming despite any evidence to the contrary that they are actually geniuses
seems to be all the rage with womyn_in_tech right now, and I find it pretty
silly.

They do seem to feel that men are better programmers than them:

> Struggling with the course work, perceiving her peers (mostly male) as doing
> much better with much less effort, feeling a misfit between herself and a
> cultural norm that associates success with an all-consuming love of
> computing, she questions whether she belongs in the department. [1]

But this difference is not a false belief implanted in their minds by a male
conspiracy, this difference is real, and kind of obvious. If anything, people
chronically overestimate their competence [2].

1\.
[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/gendergap/www/p...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/gendergap/www/papers/anatomyWSQ99.html)

2\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

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melindajb
As someone with an arts degree I have found that knowing how to tell a story
really well; and working collaboratively with subject matter experts has made
me a successful and valued contributor on technology teams. Theatre people
know how to hit a deadline, to make the tradeoffs necessary to do that, and
how to handle immense pressure with a spirit of humor and focus on quality.

