boy boy boy girl boy boy

<rant type="braindump">
recent happenings have brought gender bias issues in technology-based professions to the fore (again). why is this a problem?! perhaps that statement is ambiguous: to clarify, why is such a bias grossly apparent in primarily australia, us, and britain? what is the difference between these countries and cultures, when compared to europe and (south, east, south-east) asia where the so-called gender divide in IT, computer science, and engineering is much less pronounced? a quick google scholar search reveals that research (from countries with the gender divide) has shown that women prefer 'contextual' computing over, say, technology for nerd kudos (not that there is anything wrong with that!). but now that the journal papers and books showing this have been published, why has nothing changed? why are we still sitting on our hands and whinging about it?

granting scholarships to encourage (tertiary) enrolment has noble intentions but can be a double edged sword. on one hand, people jump for the money, some with sincere interest in the area and some not. but, for every scholarship that comes out, the typical response from male peers is a la "what about a scholarship for men?!". with this thinking often comes resentment and potential further alienation and (negative) attention drawn to the minority. a good thing? who knows. money certainly talks though: with the current resource boom in our sunny country throwing stupidly high paying engineering jobs around, the number of women entering mining engineering has correspondingly increased. so, with engineering managers the highest paid professionals here, why has this not been used as a (capitalist) selling point? but, when people choose a profession for the money, and they might not necessarily be any good at or enjoy it, is this the best way to propagate gender membership?!

now with technology in every nook and cranny (ubiquitous computing being the appropriate industry buzzword), the young 'uns are all growing up with nerd gear from day one; even schools teach powerpoint in year one! so what happens between year one and year twelve? societal pressues kick in? stereotypes formed from the media and parents? attitudes and expectations changed by peers? these are the types of issues that need to be studied, and to change such widespread cultural bugbears is no mean feat.

what does this all mean professionally? what happens to people in educational and work environments with a sizeable gender bias towards males? what kind of ideas, solutions, and products do gender unbalanced teams come up with and build? perhaps technology-oriented professions should pause and take a long hard look at themselves to see if the cultures and mindsets propagated are hindering their own progress and development.

yes, some people may treat you differently if you are a minority. but this is only if you let them. yes, you might have to work harder to 'prove' yourself to some people. but this is their problem, not yours. people will respect good work (well, they friggin' better!) and if they don't because of their gender issues and it bothers you then do something about it. at least try to make sure it doesn't happen to the next generation: start changing people's stereotypes, thinking, expectations, and attitutes, however mis-informed they may or may not be. and, with one third of the world's population living in india and china, making sure that our stereotypes and mindsets that cause this bias don't infect the next technological world powers is something to keep in mind.
</rant>

an afterthought: putting science-based toys and construction sets such as lego, the starter to any engineering career, under 'toys for boys' in shops really doesn't help. do you numbnuts in marketing know what damage you could be causing?!