
Designers, Women, and Hostility in Open Source - abraham
http://smarterware.org/7550/designers-women-and-hostility-in-open-source
======
quanticle
_On the modern web, where far-flung strangers collaborate on things like
authoring an encyclopedia and overthrowing abusive governments, it's still too
hard for most people to contribute to open source projects._

First, its actually not that easy to contribute to Wikipedia. Unless you've
got a lot of patience to fight with the people who _don't_ like your changes
and are more willing to revert them rather than improve them, getting your
contribution into Wikipedia is far more difficult than it first appears. Even
if you are willing to undertake that battle, you have to navigate a slew of
semi-official organizations and obscure three-letter-abbreviations in order to
make your case. For example, I've seen the following on the Wikipedia IRC
channel: "The submitter didn't like their article being AfD'd, so he took it
to AN/I and argued that it wasn't a violation of WP:N." I wish OSS commentary
would stop holding Wikipedia up as some paragon of openness, when in fact it
is just as closed and insular as every other online community.

Second, the impact of a bad submission into Wikipedia is much less than the
impact of a bad submission to a software project. A buggy patch causes the
program to fail. A single bad fact on a Wikipedia article doesn't cause
Wikipedia as a whole to be a failure. For that reason, free software projects
are justified in being more selective than Wikipedia in accepting patches.

~~~
_delirium
_Unless you've got a lot of patience to fight with the people who don't like
your changes and are more willing to revert them rather than improve them,
getting your contribution into Wikipedia is far more difficult than it first
appears._

This is often asserted, but it has never been my experience. Have you
attempted to contribute to Wikipedia and had that experience? In which areas?

My observations have been, on the contrary, that there are _very_ few areas
where reverts are common, mostly areas with political controversy or recent
events. And deletion is only an issue in a small minority of article classes
as well, mostly things like software projects, music groups, and professors,
where there's a grey area between "obvious keep" and "obviously this guy just
wrote an article about himself". Some more solid data would be nice to tell
either way, but I'm confident that if you ran the numbers, the percentage of
edits that get reverted or deleted is tiny; probably under 0.1%.

Most articles I create have the opposite problem: they languish unimproved for
years, with no edits besides the occasional maintenance bot modifying a
category.

~~~
cookiecaper
> _Have you attempted to contribute to Wikipedia and had that experience, or
> is this based on your guess as to what would happen?_

I have. I was a very active WP editor (mostly on religion articles) in the
2005-2007 timeframe. From what I can tell, it's only gotten worse. There are
some articles that you can change without having to bicker for three weeks
before your changes finally stick, but at least in the fields I'm interested
in, that's definitely not true. These days when I make a change (only a
handful per year now), I get accused of violating WP "canvassing policies",
which didn't even exist back in my day, assuming bad faith, and whatever other
stupid acronym the adversarial side can come up with.

Wikipedians who don't like your edits will drag them through so much
bureaucracy only the most determined editors care enough to push through it.
Even then there's no guarantee the bureaucracy will make the correct decision;
you almost have to get something to the Arbitration Committee to know you're
dealing with someone that at least sort of understands what they're talking
about.

~~~
whatusername
You were editing religious articles. And you're complaining about bickering.
What exactly did you expect?

Around 07 I made the first few edits to the wiki page for the small town I
grew up (added the first 2 sentances of custom text) and updated the census
statistics. It's now at 1600 words -- and I don't think has ever had any
acronyms thrown at it (the only discussion page text is my question about
census data from 2007)

For most articles -- for people who act as contributors -- the bureaucracy
just isn't there.

~~~
cookiecaper
It wasn't _only_ religion articles, I experience the same on almost any topic
of general interest. Niche articles that are primarily regurgitation of
statistics like articles about small towns (which consist primarily of weather
and census data) obviously don't get much attention or controversy because
there's not much interesting going on there.

"Hard science" articles are harder to bicker about, but it still happens there
occasionally. And everywhere outside of that this useless bureaucracy,
reversion, and bickering cycle is the predominant activity on Wikipedia.

~~~
scott_s
But general purpose topics are going to be popular for people to modify. As
the modifications on something increase, the more infrastructure and
procedures you'll need in order to ensure that the the end-product is always
good.

------
OasisG
Somewhat off-topic:

I had my first experience with IRC at 15. I'd recently discovered fansubbing
and wanted to find subbed copies of the yet-un-aired in America episodes of
Sailormoon. Some of the guys in my C++ class were avid IRC users and suggested
I get on to see if they were available.

Unfortunately, one of the first things I noticed was the rampant use of the
N-word. Not especially inviting to a young black girl. I asked the guys what
that was about and they suggested I just ignore it. I had enough to deal with
at 15. I never went back.

~~~
TrevorBramble
Your experience is not atypical, and it's been a struggle to win over ThinkUp
contributers who've been around for awhile to the idea of spending time in IRC
because of it.

But just like the larger Internet, it all depends on where you go. There's
been sort of an IRC revival in development communities and I've found them
largely jerk-free.

~~~
OasisG
I would love to give it another chance then. My biggest regret about how
things went down is that I missed a lot of the cool, _web-based_ stuff that
was going on all these years (I was 15 back in 2000/2001). I was interested in
the web, but I was learning more generalized C++, Java, and working with
computer animation tools.

------
cousin_it
Why oh why do women who complain about being alienated by men so often write
articles that make me feel alienated? I refuse to believe that my revulsion at
being called a "sexist boy" is somehow an illegitimate feeling.

~~~
rauljara
I do not believe that anywhere in the article she calls you a "sexist boy"?
She calls the tech industry "by and large a boy's club". And I'm not just
being pedantic when I say that's not the same thing at all. Complaining about
the state of an industry doesn't imply that every member of that industry is
to blame, just as saying that there exists racism in the American South
doesn't imply that every Southerner is a racist.

Legitimate question: What leads you take the statement about the industry as a
personal attack?

~~~
vitovito
I'll be happy to call cousin_it a sexist boy. Statistically, he probably is.
And worse, he probably thinks he's too smart to be sexist, and hangs out with
mostly males who also feel that way, so their sexism goes uncorrected.

To be clear, in my original post that Trapani was responding to, I called most
open source projects "sexist boy's clubs with no facility for mentoring, no
respect for design, and mailing lists that are 50% dick-measuring contests."

I also call programmers abnormal, by definition of their being programmers.

Thanks to cousin_it for his defensiveness, which happens _all the time_ , and
is an excellent illustration of the problem.

~~~
wtracy
Wow.

As someone who has actively tried to make the Linux community more inclusive,
it really hurts when someone who is on the same team makes a blanket attack
that includes you.

Just because it_boy and I are male and in software, we automatically aren't
allowed to have opinions? You can throw out the word "statistically" and
dismiss us just like that? Wait, remind me again what the definition of sexism
is?

I will happily agree with you that most FOSS projects "have no facility for
mentoring or respect for design". (You're surprised that a community created
by developers is going to value developers over designers? Really?) I really
don't understand the "sexist boy's clubs" or "50% dick-measuring contests"
comments.

If I'm being unfairly defensive, then help me out here. Here's the archives
for several FOSS mailing lists I'm on:

<http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.t2.devel>
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-wget/>
<http://java.net/projects/lg3d/lists/interest/archive> (Kind of dead now.
Browsing by month on a list that only gets a message every other month is a
pain, but blame Oracle.) <http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/blfs-support/>

You could probably argue that the BLFS mailer has a certain amount of dick-
waving going on, but I truly fail to see how any of them are "sexist boy's
clubs". If I'm wrong, can you point out where we are being unconsciously
sexist? I can see lots of ways that the above mailers are intimidating to
outsiders in of both sexes, but that's hardly sexism, is it?

If and when I see sexism, I'm happy to call it out--I don't pretend that it
doesn't exist, but I really don't see that it's as prevalent as you claim.

~~~
vitovito
I am not very intelligent, nor very eloquent, so bear with me, here. I know
you're feeling defensive, but humor me for a moment, and let's assume I'm
right, and Gina Trapani is right, and all the people who have retweeted this
pair of essays are right.

If we're right, and you're wrong, then that discomfort and defensiveness
you're feeling right now is fear. You're afraid I might be talking about you.
You're realizing you've never examined your opinions about this issue, you've
just assumed you're smart enough to not be sexist, or racist, or bigoted in
any substantial way, and this bothers you quite a bit, to perhaps not be as
smart as you thought.

You're also afraid that I'm talking about your community, the one that gives
you a strong sense of identity, and no-one else in your community has ever
talked about this, so it must not be an issue, right? This outsider! How dare
she!

Maybe you're even afraid because it's a girl calling you out. A girl
emasculating you, just like all the others who have called you out for one
reason or another. They're all the same! Fucking bitches, man! Perhaps this is
pushing it. Perhaps this resonates with someone.

Except, hi, I'm Vitorio. I'm a guy. I've worked with Linux for fifteen years.
I grew up on IRC. I've contributed code patches to open source projects. I've
released open source software. I've written documentation and helped with
design and done support for open source software. I'm part of your community,
too. Which means I'm saying this is a problem in _our_ community.

I believe this is a serious, cultural problem. No-one talks about it in our
community because everyone believes they're too smart to be sexist. And, yet,
there's a long list of well-documented sexism-related incidents in open
source, including sexual assault at the most recent ApacheCon:
[http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Timeline_of_in...](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Timeline_of_incidents)

Do you know how I know it's a long list? Because it exists at all.

Obviously, we're not all too smart. But I don't just believe it's a few bad
apples. I think we're mostly bad apples in this regard. Why?

I believe part of the sexism is cultural from how you were brought up: as a
male in most cultures you are raised inherently sexist and the culture itself
encourages sexist gender roles and a rape culture and such.

I believe part of the sexism is cultural from the people you associate with:
it's like that xkcd comic, sometimes it's "you're bad at math" and sometimes
it's "girls are bad at math," and both are culturally damaging, but the latter
is much worse and drives a ton of people away and any tolerance for it is a
gateway for worse behavior.

You've probably recently been involved with a sexist, racist, homophobic or
otherwise bigoted joke. Maybe you made one. Maybe you laughed at one. Maybe
you read Slashleen on Twitter. I made one at dinner tonight, for example.
Everyone laughed, including the overweight, homosexual black man who was with
us. It doesn't make it funny, and it doesn't make it okay. It's still bigotry,
and it's still wrong. I also called out a coworker for calling something "gay"
yesterday. One doesn't make up for the other.

That's why I'm not going to read your mailing lists to pass judgment on
whether your communities are sexist or not. It's possible for them to all be
and for you to be unqualified to judge. It's not all or nothing, it's not one
or the other. IRC is worse than mailing lists are, in my experience. IRL is
both better and has the potential to be much worse.

That's also why the Penny Arcade "Dickwolves" issue was so important: they
made a rape joke. It was considered to be promoting rape culture. I agree that
it was. Jokes about rape perpetuate the idea that rape is somehow okay or
normal. You don't encourage anything that seems to promote a negative
behavior. For me, it was less that the comic promoted rape culture and more
that their response, their not understanding why it could possibly be an issue
since they didn't "mean it that way," was totally wrong, and that
incomprehension was completely representative of gamers and OSS developers
alike.

I also wish I had bought a Dickwolves tee. That makes me part of the problem.
But, I heard once that a sign of intelligence is being able to hold two
conflicting thoughts in your head at the same time. I can believe the OSS
community is generally sexist, perhaps even misogynistic, and be both
disappointed and unsurprised by the HN reaction to these essays, and still
comment here. It's not really my place to judge you, or even teach you,
because that means teaching self-awareness.

I believe your defensiveness reflects your lack of cultural self-awareness to
understand that not only might your community be inherently sexist, but that
you might also be.

I understand that I am. It's not that you're not allowed to have an opinion,
you are, but "I feel like this is a personal attack" is a feeling. I am
intentionally writing antagonistically to provoke you into thinking about this
constructively.

Now, you can go back to your original feeling. Thanks so much for humoring me.
Whatever opinion you end up holding, I hope it's a strong opinion, loosely
held, and I hope you actually have reasons for holding it.

~~~
Tichy
"And, yet, there's a long list of well-documented sexism-related incidents in
open source, including sexual assault at the most recent ApacheCon:
[http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Timeline_of_in...](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Timeline_of_in..).

If there is a long list, please produce it. One incident is just that, one
incident. Are there sexist developers in OS? Very likely. That doesn't imply
that they are a majority, or so dominant that it is impossible to find OS
projects without sexism.

You can find events to prove anything. There was even an Open Source murderer
(I suppose, not sure how the Reiser murder mystery was resolved), yet not all
OS developers are murderers.

You can also find lots of events where men were discriminated, or whatever. It
is irrelevant, because in OS you are free to pick your projects, nobody forces
you to put up with abuse.

(I only read half of your last post before I got bored - ever considered that
you might be too self-absorbed? People retweeting your musings does not prove
their merit, either. remember, 3% of Twitter is just Justin Bieber).

If you are so interested in psychology, maybe you should study some more.
There has to be a reason why this subject bothers you so much - maybe the same
reason people retweet your stuff. But it might not be what you think it is.
Think about it: you clam you can not even detect sexism, yet you feel you have
to accuse everybody of being sexist. What is driving you (except a trollish
desire for retweets)?

------
HedgeMage
_headdesk_

I started out in open source as a 12yo girl back in the mid-90's. I loved the
OSS community _because_ no one cared in the least that I was a farm girl from
nowhere. You know what? I came in at the tail-end of a time when we had a lot
more women doing open-source tech than we do now (some estimates have it
around a 1:2 F:M ratio if you go back to the 70s and 80s).

Anybody wonder what the differences between then and now are?

* There were no "girl groups", i.e. Debian Women and the like. Women weren't a special case in need of protection, we were as mainstream as the men.

* There was no pressure to be politically correct. Everyone was indoctrinated into hacker culture, we weren't supposed to treat one another like foreign specimens in need of kid gloves.

* The stereotype that women are more suited to design and support tasks, and men more suited to development, wasn't hanging over our heads (ironically, like the author of this article, the people pushing that stereotype are usually so-called feminists).

* No one cared about the demographics. The current obsession with gender ratios in open source has been wholly counter-productive. It's taught people they must act differently around women, that women need special help, and generally worked against the hacker ethos of "best idea first" (no matter from where or whom that idea comes).

In short, the actions of those who are obsessed with parity between the sexes
are causing half the problem: increased stress between the sexes in open
source communities. The other half of the coin is what happens long before
most young people come into contact with open source:

My 8yo son recently showed off his new netbook to some neighbors, who
commented, "It's a good thing you had a boy, Susan, what would you have done
with a daughter?"

The boys my son knows have tech toys: netbooks, robots, Snap Circuits, and so
on. The girls don't. Most of them never get more intimate with a piece of
technology than typing and printing an essay or answering email until college,
at which point it's too late.

Every great hacker I know was introduced to hacking in some form at a very
young age. I'm not on par with men because some patronizing feminists made me
feel welcome, because the community was sensitive, or because I was gently
sequestered into girl-friendly areas: it's because I wrote my first code when
I was six.

Feminists, stop whining and let the real women do what we do, without the
burden of your self-destructive attempts at shaming the men.

~~~
zebular
I understand your point about letting women "do what we do," because although
it's not common, intelligent, strong women like yourself will rise to the
level of their male counterparts despite cultural pressure. But I think you
still have to admit that the pressure exists, and keeps some women who
otherwise would succeed out of the business and out of Open Source.

Myself, and most of the girls I know, were raised to be "ladies." That means
that skills like cooking, drawing, and playing classical instruments had a
higher value placed on them than computer hacking or coding skills. Just as
you say, many of use don't learn to use a computer until we reach college and
have to start writing essays (for our acceptable "girly" majors: I chose to
major in French because I didn't even feel like computer science was an option
for me at the time I entered college.) It's girls like this who need the
support of a female community before they can feel comfortable enough to dive
into programming. No matter how talented, not all girls are going to be able
to write their first code at age six because parents often actively discourage
their daughters from spending time in front of the computer - just look at the
comments your neighbors made! My own parents frequently booted me off the
computer so that I would go practice violin, etc. My brothers on the other
hand, were allowed to use the computer and often received tech-related items
as presents. For whatever reason, computers are still perceived as a boy's
plaything rather than a girl's plaything.

While I don't think shaming men is going to solve this problem, I do think
there needs to be a supportive community that welcomes women into the tech
world, which is exactly the point of Gina Trappani's article.

------
Tichy
"Still, uptake is slow, the on-ramp steep"

So at ThinkUp she does all these things, and still hardly any women
contributors. Maybe something is wrong with her theory?

It also doesn't explain why women need special treatment - isn't it in fact
rather demeaning to claim they do?

~~~
vitovito
In my original post, which Trapani cites, someone asks me this same question.

 _So [women] have to be spoonfed? What makes them so goddamn important if they
haven’t proven they’re willing to contribute? I have actually tutored many
people before, but if they don’t express an interest to learn and willingness
to contribute I am not going to waste my time on them._

The problem isn't that women need special treatment to be accepted. The
problem is that open source projects are not accepting of anyone who isn't a
male programmer.

That is, open source projects are sexist, because their members are sexist.
They explicitly treat women worse than men. They also explicitly treat non-
programmers worse than programmers. What's worse is they think they are too
smart to be sexist or unwelcoming, so that behavior goes unchecked.

A normal community would include instructive socialization. From my original
article, "Hi, welcome to the community, here's a housewarming present, here's
how things work, we could really use some help over here and I'd love to show
you how to work on it, but anything you want to do, feel free and I'll be here
to answer and questions and walk you through every process until you feel
comfortable."

This is the process that ThinkUp espouses, which almost all other open source
projects lack.

~~~
sovande
> The problem is that open source projects are not accepting of anyone who
> isn't a male programmer.

Your are so out of touch with real life. Contributors to an open source
project are usually identified with an email and communicate online. No one
cares if you are a woman, a man or a green alien. Open source is a meritocrasy
and what matters is what you contribute.

~~~
chc
Indeed, one of the most prominent Ruby hackers a few years ago managed to
completely disappear into anonymity just by deleting his website and github —
nobody knew his name, and the only reason anyone even knew he was a _he_ is
because he chose to attend some conferences.

And I believe one of the core Ruby contributors is an open transwoman, which
should be especially reviled if there actually is this intense sexism.

------
neutronicus
I thought the quote from Vitorio Miliano in the article was too kind to
feminism (equality for everyone? It's a women's interests lobby, let's call a
spade a spade), and underestimates how eager Open Source communities are to
"discipline unruly users" and provide mentoring.

Every time I can't figure out how to do something in Clozure Common Lisp, I go
on IRC, ask for help, _get it_ , and then write about it on the Wiki, at which
point the CCL devs thank me for my contribution.

Otherwise, though, I agreed with the article's points.

~~~
britta
Feminism as a "women's interests lobby" is vaguely like calling the free
software movement a "geeks' interests lobby" - it's both condescending and
inaccurate about the nature of movements, among other things.

Anyway, sounds like the article agrees about the usefulness of helping more
people get on IRC and contribute to wikis, and I agree too. They're
fundamental tools for community projects.

------
warrenwilkinson
How can one disagree with this article without being branded sexist and
intolerant?

She asserts there are few designers and women in open source software because
men alienate them. And that we should try to make it so technical competence
isn't required to contribute.

There are some good ideas here. But they only apply to a small subset of OSS
projects. There is no cause for calling programmers anti-women or anti-
designer.

~~~
archgoon
Hi, I think you misunderstand the argument being here, and are needlessly
interpreting this as a 'men vs women' argument.

The author is not saying that OSS communities are explicitly anti-women. This
does not appear anywhere in the article. What she does argue is that OSS
projects can be unwelcoming to newbies in general. There are no gender
arguments being made here. In fact, she seems to feel that she herself has
been guilty to an extent here. She cites a UX designer who argues:

"There’s no perceived value in open source for mentoring, facilitation,
disciplining of unruly users, training of newcomers or non-technical users,
etc., which are needed to support both designers of any gender and women in
any role."

Again, I think a very poor summary of her argument is "She asserts there are
few designers and women in open source software because men alienate them", as
this suggests that the only issue is too few women being present. If you
simply introduce more women, this argument would go, the problem would
disappear. This is emphatically _not_ what she is arguing. Men and women are
equally well suited to implementing the solutions presented in the article,
and the mistakes are equally easy to be made by engineers of either gender.

------
sp332
In the old days, which was really not very long ago, geeks had to push hard
against the "mainstream" to create a little bubble where they could exist.
They catered hard to people like themselves, because it was hard to find
anybody like them. It was good to have some space that catered to geeks. But
now that pressure against geeks isn't so high, some of them are still pushing
against the mainstream just as hard as ever. The hard part is over, guys!
Geeks can now find people like themselves without too much trouble. There are
now lots of places we can go that cater to geeks. It's time to stop pushing
against the mainstream so hard. We don't have to be so defensive anymore.

------
locopati
Don't let the title fool you - these are some valuable thoughts on growing
inclusive projects.

~~~
Stuk
This is a genuine question: what do you mean by "Don't let the title fool
you"?

~~~
locopati
Some readers might be put off by 'designers', 'women', or 'open source',
thinking that the article would not be of interest to them. In reality, the
essence of the article is how one makes any project inclusive to outsiders.
This could apply to in-house corporate stuff just as easily as foss stuff and
to any dichotomy you want to look at (tech v biz, coders v non-coders, men v
women, etc etc etc).

------
burrows
This article falls flat for a couple of reasons.

1) In Open Source projects people don't care about your gender, orientation,
race, etc. in large part because this information isn't even available. I'd
like you to give me some examples where people's code is treated like the
plague for a prejudice such as those.

2) Of course developers are going to be valued more highly in a community
_centered_ around development. Whose valued more highly at an art showing, the
painter or a curator?

3) Treating disrespect and generalizations with more disrespect and
generalizations has proven time and again to be an ineffective technique
that's wielded by sensationalists. I don't see how you can expect anyone to
take such melodrama seriously.

4) Your value to an open source project is directly correlated to the quality
and quantity of knowledge and code you provide to the project. It should be
obvious that more experienced people will be valued much higher than a noob
who wants to join. Everyone initially takes a beating or two for submitting
poor patches, but those who aren't deterred by petty bullshit stick around and
actually learn a thing or two while becoming developers.

Honestly I couldn't care less if people put off by blunt commentary on their
contributions don't want to participate. They aren't cut out for it.

------
jlees
The switch from the general design-by-committee approach to "look folks, we're
hiring a designer, and they'll sell their ideas to us" is a really interesting
one, and mirrors a lot of the part-OSS part-corporate projects I've recently
become more familiar with.

Is design ultimately something that can't be done in patches and edits? I
suspect so...

~~~
cschwarm
Ever tried to sell something to a committee?

I don't mean this to be disrespectful but it's not as simple as it sounds.
Especially, if the committee is clueless (or in disagreement) about the usual
questions: What do you want? What do you need? What goals should be
accomplished?

It even gets more tricky if membership for the committee is not well defined.

------
RickHull
> _Feminism is fundamentally about equality for everyone, not just women_

What on earth does this even mean? If I am to take the first part at face
value, then they sure picked a bad label for this idea. As for the second
part, what would _equality just for women_ even mean?

If feminism means that, all other things being equal, women should have the
same rights and privileges as men, then gosh darn it, I'm a feminist! I just
wish my feminist counterparts didn't get so wrapped up in these divisive side
issues like choosing a particular gender to promote.

------
Stormbringer
I had a thought the other day because one of the women I'm working with was
showing rather a large amount of cleavage.

The thought was that it must be great to be a woman in IT because all you need
to do is dress a little tarty and you get the red carpet rolled out for you.

Then I thought about _why_ that was the case. And I realised that basically
the only reason that dressing slutty gets you favours is because the industry
is so thoroughly male dominated, or, in the words of the article, a boy's
club.

So now, I don't begrudge them the advantages they accrue from dressing that
way, I just enjoy it instead :D

~~~
Mz
_I had a thought the other day because one of the women I'm working with was
showing rather a large amount of cleavage._

I think women basically have two role models for how to "dress for success":
One is basically as a "boy toy" and the other is to dress like a man, neither
of which cuts it. I think a lot of women who dress "sexy" really aren't
specifically intending to come across as "sexy". I think they are trying to
come across as "successful, as a woman" and we really don't have much for them
to draw from. We have female entertainers who make big bucks, in part because
they are sexy (Demi Moore, Madonna, etc). And then we have male role models
for business and such. Dressing like a man risks coming across as one or both
of the following: 1) Sexy, because it only serves to emphasize that she is
really a girl, not a guy or 2) Second class citizen because it only serves to
emphasize that she is not a man. In the US at least, we don't have a history
of female presidents and such, so we have clothing that signals "successful
for a woman" (which almost always means either someone's wife or you got your
money because you are sexy) and we have "successful for a man" (which doesn't
work well as a clothing style for a woman).

As a woman working in corporate America, I am painfully aware that most stuff
you see in magazines is something I would be sent home over as "not
appropriate" if I showed up at work in it. Most women who have devoted
themselves to becoming competent enough at core skills for their career to get
anywhere aren't fashionistas and won't have spent gobs of time studying this
topic. I think about it a lot and I think the lack of good clothing options
for signaling "successful business woman" significantly contributes to the
rampant amount of office-slut-wear out there (which makes me basically cringe
on a daily basis).

------
zby
Probably the main reason for this is that online is such a new environment
that it nullifies many assumptions that support our off-line culture. This
way, on-line we regress to the primitive ways of organisation - and these are
very power-centered masculine ways - because individual power is what used to
be the basis for organisation. On-line the individual strength is swapped for
intellectual mastery - but I would be surprised if this shallow change would
be enough to make that culture optimal in the area of knowledge production.

