Curious ?

[offgridguy]

Hello Ladies, or Lad {ies} if you are male and Scottish. Just an observation but in our part of the world the most proficient computer users seem to be women. I attribute this to
the fact that a lot of women use computers as part of their workday world. When i need
help speaking windows here, I nearly always ask one of the neighbor ladies.

Although for lack of a better term, the geekier, geeks seem to be men, I can understand this as men are more nuts and bolts, technical oriented, the what makes this thing tick
attitude. Women more of a , if it aint broke, don't fix it, kinda philosophy.
A computer doesn't know the gender of the person using it, and when I need help in
these forums, unless it's a real obvious username, I don't either and don't care, help is
help whoever it comes from,
Thank you to all the ladies who have helped me in my ongoing efforts to achieve
computer proficiency. :)

[RabbitWho]

I can't think of a sub culture where men don't out number women off the top of my head... Apart from obvious things like feminist groups, women's book clubs etc...


But if I think of any of the groups from secondary school, geek, nerd, jock, goth, etc.

etc. etc. There were always girls in the groups but they were always minorities. While we all need friends boys seem to be more into this type of recognizable and clearly defined groups... Girls are usually just.. girls.

I might be completely wrong. I am thinking something along the lines of, a boy finds out he loves computers and programming, and that a lot of other boys who love computers and programming love the Lord of the Rings, so he intentionally reads the Lord of the Rings and does 100 other things he has heard are typical for this group right down to changing the way he dresses and the kinds of words he uses when he talks. A girl realizes she loves programming and computers and she.. loves programing and computers.

Just in my experience, or at least those experiences which come to my mind right now, maybe after posting this I'll think of 100 examples that contradict it.

[elizabeth]

Just to be clear, I wouldn't use this forum to paint any gender with a broad brush. We're about encouraging more women to use and participate in Ubuntu and not here to explain to guys why there aren't more women doing what they characterize as "geeky" things. Plus many of us here are the very wrong people to ask ;) In addition to my obvious affection for Star Wars, my father was a huge LotR fan and so am I. I tend to "out geek" most guys I date on most standard geek scales, both when it comes to topic and intensity. For me I think it helped that my father was a pretty big geek and didn't have any sons, so geekiness was heaped upon his daughters (my sister runs a WoW guild). Even when gender stereotyping did come home, my My Little Ponies went on time travel adventures with Doctor Who (my father was a Whovian too). I think this speaks highly to nature vs nurture thing, in our cases since we were the recipients of the geek stuff in our family, we as girls became the geeks, our gender was pretty irrelevant. It did change some as we got older, since the stereotypes in the US pushing girls and boys to different interests most of my friends even today are men rather than women, simply because we sync up more often hobby and interest-wise, and it's always fun to meet other women with similar interests and I have many as friends now :)