“Where are the lady geeks?” asks Fast Company blogger Jeffrey To. Over the course of six months, he attended dozens of hackathons and found that women were sorely under-represented.
To has divided geeks into 10 types: The Religious Geek, The Hardware Geek, The Geek Who Sold Out, The Rebel Geek, The Design Snob Geek, The “Offspring of the Tiger Mother” Geek, The Movie/Literary Geek, The Euro Geek, The Hardcore Geek and the Rocker Geek. In other words, there’s something for everyone.
To jokingly/seriously mentions possibly creating PimpDatGeek.com – a site which would “match lady-geeks and dude-geeks”. But above and beyond dating, it’s important to question why women – who, it could be argued, use computers, video games, mobile phones and iPods just as much as men do – are such a minority at these tech events. Is it tied to the way maths and science is taught to girls at an early age? Is it because women interested in hacking aren’t encouraged to participate? Or is it because – as with any other field -breaking into a boys’ club is always a tough undertaking?
Sutter
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 10:04 AMJust want to add – it seems that in anything that has more males than females, it’s always suggested that men are keeping women out of it. But if there’s something that has more females than males it’s because men aren’t good enough in some way to do it (be it general smarts, emotional I.Q, whatever)
Nothing more to add, just wanted to note that.
olearymo
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 12:07 PM^ this.
olearymo
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 12:10 PMLet’s use Occam’s razor here. The most likely explanation is that not as many women are interested in it as men.
Is that so hard to accept?
There are plenty of things that have more women involved than men. Does that mean the men were ‘taught maths and science differently when they were boys’? Or that they’re not encouraged? Or that they can’t break into a ‘girls club’?
There are anomolies of this sort amongs all demographics. It doesn’t mean we have to look for some ‘bad side’.
Steve
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 6:43 PMThat, or simply the girls who are into this sort of thing would rather not attend these conventions where they’ll likely be slobbered over by lonely neckbeards as fetish material. I joined a university gaming society recently and even though I have female geeky friends, they’d never think of joining precisely for this reason.
This isn’t just a geek thing. Anyone ever been to clubs? Or social events? Males will usually outnumber females precisely because they come out in droves to hopefully get lucky.