Interesting article

[ironphoenix]

An article about women leaving tech fields in their thirties and forties, related to recent discussions. The article's main point is good and seems pretty sound to me, but there's a line that's tossed in about "the hostile macho cultures — the hard hat culture of engineering, the geek culture of technology or the lab culture of science" which doesn't get any further discussion. What are your impressions or experiences of that, and why is it one of "[t]he top two reasons why women leave" work in STEM fields?

Ganked from dracodraconis.

Comments

[soul-diaspora.livejournal.com]

As I've said before, from my perspective, the whole thing is overblown.

#1: What exactly is wrong with "geek culture"? I am a computer geek. And proud of it.

#2: "hostile macho?" In the nearly 20 years I've been into computers I've run into almost no hostility from my fellow geeks, and quite a lot of "wow, you're a woman and you're into this stuff! cool!" and other expressions of surprise and friendliness. After submitting several patches to fvwm, I was given CVS access. In my AP Comp Sci class in high school (in which I was the only female), guys came to me for homework help and one guy and I traded software for our CoCo 3's.

I just don't see the problem people talk about. Maybe I've been really lucky.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Admittedly, my flist is a pseudo-self-selecting sample, but you seem to be in the majority on this one.