I'm with Kapkao on this one.  I spent the better part of my college career in a lab where I was the only male undergraduate.  My colleagues were constantly complaining that they were oppressed and discriminated against, although the worst thing that any of them could come up with is that people they knew were supposedly less enthusiastic when they said they were majoring in computer science than they would have been if it was a male student.  I've lived through being in an actual hostile environment.  For most of my pre-college life, I was subjected to ongoing bullying, including being the victim of multiple counts of assault, none of which got more than a one-day suspension from school, and most of which went completely unpunished.  A substantial amount of the bullying was over the fact that my interests did not conform to what was socially acceptable.  Nonetheless, I wanted to be what I wanted to be and persisted despite the hostility that I faced.  If a lack of enthusiasm is the worst thing that someone experienced, they're lucky as far as I'm concerned.

Furthermore, while my performance in school was comparable to theirs, my female colleagues all got into top doctoral programs, while I was rejected from all the doctoral programs that I applied to.  One of them even got a $10,000 scholarship as an undergraduate in the absence of any financial need.  I wasn't allowed to even apply for it because of my gender.  When we in class together, I would hear her constantly complaining that the problem sets were too hard, while I was getting perfect scores on them.  Yet, she gets $10,000 and I don't get a penny.  How is this equal pay for equal work?

With regard to networking, maybe there is some truth to that part, but that doesn't mean that every male technology worker is at an advantage.  There are other factors that affect a person's networking success, too.  I'm prosopagnosic (face-blind), so I generally can't recognize someone who I've only met once or twice.  For the first 21 years of my life, I was undiagnosed, so my deficit was seen as a character flaw, not a neurological disability.  Studies have shown that the majority of prosopagnosics remain undiagnosed.  Did it ever occur to anyone that that might be a disadvantage, too?  Yet, I'm still expected to be on the losing end of affirmative action.  How is this supposed to be fair?

I'm  a crappy one, I write only about technical solutions. I see professionally successful women writing personal blogs, is it connected? It's like you need to repeatedly say "I, I, I" and comment on any "spicy" news to promote yourself.

I'm so sorry. You're not given credit not because your work is bad, but because nobody has any interest to give it. If you're not a [wife, gf, best friend, beer buddy, somebody to chat about sex, boss giving promotions...], there is no personal benefit recognizing your work.

I myself walked out of a physics program, and transferred credits to comp sci. Guys around were predominantly interested in sex. But actually I was badly bullied away from science by a couple of older females. Like the whole thing that you survive in the department not because you're good, but if your husband is a prominent figure, so you can put your name on his papers, and be a queen. I thought comp sci would be more fair. It was ok while I was a Jr, but it doesn't help to gain skills but not to gain social connections and marketing, what guys provide to guys. The whole field looks for me like a high school clique.

There is plenty out there, you just haven't read them. There are research papers and such. 56% females  vs 17% males leave tech carriers mid carrier for good. They don't leave to raise families but to other fields.

Read the rest of my posts here, plz.

See, this is not a problem being a certain gender, or even being a minority, but being singled out as a minority. You please the majority (like always submitting to female teachers/bosses), they favor you and you're good.

Just to clarify, I was referring to what was socially acceptable to my peers, not to teachers.  Most of my teachers liked me.  It was the other kids who had a problem with me.

This gender bias has been a problem in many areas of life, including the bias in medical trials, as shown in the excerpt below, from the Journal of Clinical Investigation (see link to whole article here):  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC198535/

"(a) the Physicians’ Health Study of the effects of aspirin on cardiovascular disease, in which 22,071 men and 0 women physicians were enrolled;
(b) the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT), a randomized trial conducted from 1973 to 1982 to evaluate correlations among blood pressure, smoking, cholesterol, and coronary heart disease in 12,866 men and 0 women
( c) the National Institute on Aging’s Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, extending from 1958 to 1975, which excluded female subjects, despite the fact that women constitute two-thirds of the population over age 65. Perhaps most surprising is that the first study of the role of estrogen in preventing heart disease was conducted solely on men, as it was considered a possible treatment."

This post was last modified: 09-07-2011 01:29 AM by Alison.

Jealousy is a VERY destructive force. People don't like to recognize the ability of others. I get this a lot. Because I'm autistic, any intelligence and skill that I have is regarded merely as a cute little trick.

So, we should judge the presence of gender bias in today's world based on a study that began close to half a century ago?  After all, nothing has changed since then (sarcasm).

Wtfux... how did this turn into half a discussion about being bullied about autism, with the other half being about gender bias?!

I have worked in both Physics and CompSci departments, but only CompSci when I was too old to be considered 'sexy', and hence worthwhile noticing (and Oxford CompSci is probably not your average department, anyway). In my limited experience, yes, I think CompSci is worse for the sexual harrassment kind of sexism, but maybe only because successful physicists are more popular with the obedient hotchicks, since on average they have better personalities for picking up women. And some areas of physics now have plenty of women, eg. astrophysics. Only real Theoretical Physics and CompSci (and Engineering) still have way below the critical threshhold (of women) for acceptance. For other kinds of discrimination, I think Physics is much worse than CompSci, because NT groupthink permeates the culture.

Good luck with the CompSci route, anyway. I just wanted to say that you have a long, long way to go before you give up. As Churchill said, NEVER give up. They will drive me to an early death, without any doubt whatsoever, but I won't give up either the research or pointing out the entrenched discrimination (which as you know, has so much evidence backing it up). Not ever.

Probably not, but they woudn't tell as they are officials. Otherwise, why wouldn't they allow you to apply for a scholarship?

I already feel that I hit a wall, with just 10 years of total experience. I've read a research where they discover that many women leave IT mid-career, because of the environment. When I just graduated, I thought it was hard because I didn't have much work experience. Now I find it harder because I developed good experience and skills.

I think it's some kind of a "social role" thing, if they cannot place me, I'm invisible, or they imply a role they don't like. When I was in a "smart Junior" role and a "somebody to take care of", everybody was happy. Then I had an employer who played a "promoter" role, putting a "Sr" before my title, but the team still didn't treat me with respect. Now, what? If they don't take me as a "buddy", would they want to take me as an "equally Sr" or even a "lead"? I also have an impression that even the most needy employers disregard me because they "cannot see <this name> in their organization". Funny enough, I had one manager contacting me because he found it cool I had a degree in physics. The same manager rejected me because I reminded him of his ex.

This post was last modified: 09-15-2011 08:31 PM by whiterabbit.

Yup, pretty much.  Culturally it's uncomfortable to be an intelligent female at all, and professionally it's close to a disaster.  It's well-documented that even when women work harder and are better educated than men they are paid less and not taken seriously, right off the bat, and it only gets worse as years go on and they get older.  It's annoying that anyone has the nerve to deny this because repeated studies keep showing the same thing, no matter which way you look at it and no matter what confounding factors are taken into account - women are quite flatly discriminated against in pay, hiring, raises, no matter what they do.  In certain industries it's worse than others.  Although the good news is that women who buck the trends and break into "male" fields make more than women do in general, although not as much as the other men in their fields do.

This post was last modified: 09-15-2011 09:07 PM by Lady_babalon.