[Womoz] Girls driven from Computer Science by Geeks

[Andrea Balle]

Hi there! I don't know if I introduced myself before, so I'll do it now: I'm
Andrea Balle, member of Mozilla Brazil community.

I am a Computer Science student and and I really love the "classic nerd
stuff". I can talk about Star Wars, I laugh with the jokes of The Big Bang
Theory, I like videogames. But I also like "girlie" things. I dance flamenco
and use make up, for exemple.

I'm almost in the end of my course, but in the beggining I use to hide my
girlie side, because even if people don't say, there's a pressure on
Computer Science academic enviroment for girls to be exactly the same way as
boys. It's like if you're wearing a skirt, you can't be a good programmer.

But in some point I was tired of trying to prove everybody else I could be
as good as the boys by hiding something in my personality, so I started
being myself. It was hard at the beggining, but now I can wear my nerdy
t-shirts with high heels and no one thinks that's strange. I can code, I can
love Douglas Adams and I can use a fancy lipstick at the same time. Of
course that being a nerd is part of me, but all this things are part of my
personality and they are not incompatible.

First of all, I think that girls attitude must change. There's so much
pressure for computer science girls being "one of the boys" in the classroom
that sometimes we are changing ourselves to fit on the stereotype. And
others girls do not go to computer science because they don't want to be
like this.


2009/12/20 Perline <perline at perline.org>

> Le Jeudi 17 Décembre 2009 18:47:45 Tiffney Mortensen <tiffney at mozilla.com>,
> dans un message intitulé "Re: [Womoz] MSNBC: Girls driven from Computer
> Science by Geeks" nous a informés :
>
>> Whether we like it or not, women are judged for their appearance much more
>> than men are. I think an overly "geeky" environment can send a message: This
>> is our social paradigm. It is mostly male, and when
>>
> people hang out at the coffee machine they will be talking about Battlestar
> Galactica, not Jane Austen. Don't bring your flowery dress and Gucci heels
> to this office because you won't fit in. I don't think this message is sent
> deliberately, but it can be sent through the kind of subtle visual cues the
> study indicated. I certainly wouldn't want to take a job at a company that
> appeared to be the sort of place where I had little chance of relating to my
> coworkers or felt that I had to make unreasonable changes to my personality
> to feel accepted.
>
>
> When I was an engineer student, in the 70's, in a more than 80% male high
> school, on a campus when you are more than 24 hours a day with other
> students, we had a very feminine looking student with us : dresses, nice and
> very very sexy tops.
>
> As soon as the beginning of the first year she was called "Gina" because of
> her breast and the tops she wore.
>
> To enter this school you have to prove your high level, it means that she
> was as good as all of us, males or females.
> And in fact she proved it as soon as the beginning, during the exams.
> But the pression was so high for "Gina", who had no more her own identity,
> that she leaved before the first holidays, three months later.
>
> You can imagine the way all the females were dressed, spoke, etc.
> The message of the large male majority was clear.
>
> Perline
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>



-- 
Andrea Balle
:::::
Computer Science student
Java/WEB programmer
Kurumin/Ubuntu user
Firefox Lover

http://nerdnacozinha.blogspot.com/
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