

Girls geek out over dinner - portfolioexec
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7682315.stm

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srn
It's not really an "us vs. them" thing, it's looking around the room and
noticing that in a meeting of 30 people, I am the only woman. It's comforting
to be reminded there are other women in the field during those times.

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carterschonwald
how is that different? [edit] Just to clarify, how is the different in terms
of the psychological perception? I mean disliking a monoculture social
environment is a perfectly valid reason, but that doesn't seem like an
adequate explanation.

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carterschonwald
i never understand these articles about "male dominated" tech culture with
gender barriers, granted I sort of take the approach of welcoming people who
are statistically more likely to be socially functional per unit of
intelligence above the mean.

Is the issue at the hear of the matter just that women are more likely to
interpret an environment where there are many irrelevant differences with
respect to the population in question as being an adversarial "us vs them"
dynamic?

I do think that the whole bit about not being able to talk about fashion at
the end also detracts from the article as a whole. Any thoughts?

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lsc
eh, I think the big problem is that nerds, in general, regardless of gender
have poor social skills. This is to be expected... I mean, we all have limited
time, if you spend more of your time learning about computers than you spend
learning about people, your social skills are not going to be as good as if
you spent all your time learning about people.

Ok, so we have a group of people with poor social skills. Note, people within
this group can relate to oneanother much better than they can relate to people
outside this group. Add to that an extremely skewed gender ratio, and you will
find a lot of lonely men. Lonesomeness often leads to bitterness and misogyny.
I don't imagine it's particularly pleasant to deal with someone who is both
attracted to but also has a deep-seated anger towards your gender.

Add to that the usual friction you get when people with poor social skills get
together, and I can see how you might have an unpleasant situation.

I've also heard it explained like this: Assume everyone wants to work (or talk
about technical stuff) 95% of the time, and flirt 5% of the time. Assuming
your company (or LUG) has a 1:10 female:male ratio, and furthermore postulate
that all participants are hetrosexual. The women who do show up will be
irritated, not because they don't want to flirt, but because they want to do
other things as well.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
"I've also heard it explained like this: Assume everyone wants to work (or
talk about technical stuff) 95% of the time, and flirt 5% of the time.
Assuming your company (or LUG) has a 1:10 female:male ratio, and furthermore
postulate that all participants are hetrosexual. The women who do show up will
be irritated, not because they don't want to flirt, but because they want to
do other things as well."

Though humorous, this seems a surprisingly cogent explanation.

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motoko
Well, girls _do_ interest me.

