[CS-FSLUG] Survey of Women on the List

[Sandra Capri]

I know I am usually a lurker, but I'm going to respond to the survey,
and comment on some of Kathy's comments simultaneously:

>> On Dec 28, 2004, at 5:29 PM, Don Parris wrote:

>> (1) Firstly, I'm interested to know how many women are on the list,
>> and of those how many are actually in the IT field.

I've been an engineer at HP in Boise Idaho, USA for a few millenia :-)
(started working there as a student in 1984).  I work for the LaserJet
division, so no, I know nothing about the inkjet line, for the sake of
those asking questions about the PSCs and OfficeJets.  I'm currently a
EE, specializing in ASIC design - before that, I was a firmware
engineer, doing LaserJet f/w. In the U.S., engineering isn't generally
categorized as IT, though I know it is in the UK.  

>> (2) What is your experience in working in this field?

Assuming you mean FOSS, I've been a Linux user and proponent in HP and
with my church's school since RedHat 6.0.  Before then I was a happy
HP-UX user.  Although our school uses SOS from AOP, which requires
Windows and .NET, I've been able to install a Linux file and network
server (currently on Fedora Core 2), and a free Smoothwall firewall,
which have both worked beautifully. I'm hoping to try to install Mono on
one of our machines, and see if I can install SOS on top of it - if I
ever find some spare time!
 
At HP, I've been proposing the use of Linux in the local lab, and
increasingly have been getting folks to listen.  I'm not currently
involved in the HP-wide use of Linux - we have many people whose job it
is to work in that capacity.

>> (3) How do you feel you are treated by the fellas on this list?

So far, so good.  I like the idea that this survey recognizes that there
are "challenges" being a gal in a guy's technical world.  

>> (4) Are there any changes you would like to see in terms of our 
>> behavior?

Maybe just to remember that since you are guys, you won't normally see
the poor treatment that women are sometimes given in the technical
world.  Just like I don't see the discrimination that is a daily
occurrence to my black brothers and sisters in Christ (since I am not
black), but since they have made me aware of it, I believe them.  From
the beginning of my job history, consistent attempts were made to steer
me away from the technical career path towards the management career
path.  Why?  The reason usually given was that women were better at soft
skills such as management, not technical skills.  I thought that at
first perhaps my technical work was substandard, and they wanted me out
of engineering, but talking with my peers made me realize that was not
it.  Many guys were very uncomfortable with a woman being a competent
engineer.  Now I will admit that most of these incidents occurred over
10 years ago - and there has been a lot of progress since then.  But the
glass technical ceiling for women is still alive and well in corporate
America.

>> (5) Is there anything else you would like to add?

> On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 at 00:56:54AM, K Montgomery wrote: 

> I am wary of women's groups (LinuxChix or other), because it seems
> that wherever (worldly) women band together to the exclusion of
> men, ungodly feminism comes out in force.

I have seen a strong tendency to that as well, but I have seen a few
excellent counter-examples.  I attended an HP technical woman's
conference several years ago, and was very impressed with the support of
other HP women (not on the whole a group of Christians), and the lack of
male-bashing - though I was expecting the latter.

> I'm surprised that in this day and age, many women still can't 
> reconcile their femininity with their interest in male-dominated 
> fields.  A "real" woman has learned to coexist interdependently
> with men.  Women who haven't learned that, you'll find running 
> to women's groups.
> ...  As long as a woman can find acceptance in a field without
> compromising her womanhood, isn't that enough?

Well, the problem is being able to find that acceptance without
compromising my womanhood.  For many years, I felt frustrated by being
categorized as "unbusiness-like," when the real problem was I didn't act
like a business*man*.    Examples: 1) walk into meetings and take up
maximum space with notebooks, elbow on the table.  2) Trumpet your own
ideas in meetings to make sure everyone knows they are your ideas.  3)
Be unemotional and unexcited in interactions with team-members and
management. 4) Send memos out with a big cc: list to let everyone know
what you are doing to build up your reputation.  5) Techniques to get
rid of someone who comes to you for help (especially personal problems)
so you can get back to your work and meet your deadlines.  6) Walk
around with a folder in your hands at all times to look like you are
doing something important, even if you are just taking a break.
And the list goes on.  I was actually taught these techniques, and many
others like this in the standard business classes that are taught at
many major corporations.  After several years of these classes, I
realized that following these stupid rules had changed me into a
corporate male clone - and had damaged some of my witnessing
opportunities.  I've worked hard to come back from some of these things,
but the habits are hard to break after all this time.  
Oddly enough, it took a "Multicultural Awareness Workshop" (code phrase
for diversity training) to get management off my back.  The idea was to
teach everyone to "embrace each others differences" since those unique
differences is what gave each engineer/manager individual strengths that
another may not have.  Though it was an attempt at political correctness
training, the next time a manager started the lecture on how to act in a
"business-like" manner, I brought up the idea that as a woman, I didn't
need to act like a man to be an effective engineer.  I want to be who I
am, and if I have to embrace everyone else's diversity at work, it's
about time for everyone else at work to embrace my diversity!  I am the
unique person that God has made: a Christian, a lover of technology, a
proponent of open source, and yes, an emotional, extroverted, intuitive,
feeling, perceptive (ENFP for those old enough to remember the myers
briggs categories) woman.  This doesn't make me better or worse than the
male engineers around me, it just makes me different.

As a confession, I've been guilty of the same thing towards others.  One
specific incident I remember was a Chinese woman I was working with. 
She spoke in a sing-song, very quiet voice.  Her sentences end with
words like "I think" and "maybe", and always sound like she is unsure of
herself.  I dismissed her as an inexperienced junior engineer that
really didn't have much clue about what was going on, and regularly
ignored her suggestions.  Why?  because she was so unbusiness-like :-(  
One day I found out she had a PhD in my field, and had many more years
of experience in China; that was the day I realized that my
self-centered cultural biases made me believe that since she didn't act
like I did, she wasn't as "good" as I was (substitute smart, capable,
technical, whatever for "good").  The softening at the end of the
sentence was polite speech in China - it is rude to make strong
assertions until you know that the other person agrees with your ideas. 
That was a good wake up call for me to stop judging people on outwards
appearance.  You'd think as an engineer, I would have learned that one a
long time ago :-)  I thank God that He is infinitely more patient with
me than I am with others.

Wow, looking back I realize I got very wordy here, sorry.  I have lots
more I could say, but I've probably completely bored most of you.  These
interesting questions/comments have obviously sparked some memories in
me that have lain dormant for many years.

I pray that in my wordiness, I have said nothing that could be
considered an offense to anyone - I meant no offense to anyone (unless,
perhaps you were a teacher of one of those business classes :-)

Sandra Capri