Geeks and sexism

Posted on 18th April, 2006 by

Guardian CIF has a blog piece by AlterNet contributor Deanna Zandt about how geek culture is still very male-centred - notably how a woman who made it onto the tech discussion website Slashdot found that some of the denizens found it more useful to discuss her looks than what she was doing. As a regular reader of the tech press, it has to be said that the community is rather male dominated, but it’s also true that women and girls are just much less interested in becoming geeks than men and boys. You might see my comment on the below article, which is the second one down at present:

Comment is free: Girls can be geeks too

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  • http://www.firaushah.com/ JDsg

    Geeks just gotta get out more. In college I had a friend who was an engineering major. One day he had to go over to the building on campus that housed the English department, but didn’t know the way over. When we got there, he whispered to me, “Look at all the girls!” He was lucky if there were up to two women in any of his classes.

  • http://www.neurocentric.blogspot.com The Neurocentric

    When I was doing a lot of graphics work I would buy a magazine called “Computer Arts” - a major reason I stopped reading it was their use of the female form. It wasn’t just the tutorials but also the adverts. Why does the packaging for a graphics card always have to feature a scantily-clad computer-generated pseudo-woman? Well, obviously I know the reason. All I am trying to say is that there certainly is a lot of sexism in the techie industries.