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- Newsgroups: bionet.women-in-bio
- Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!bruce.cs.monash.edu.au!monu6!darrenp
- From: darrenp@cs.monash.edu.au (Daz)
- Subject: Re: % women computer users
- Message-ID: <darrenp.724990743@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au>
- Sender: news@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (Usenet system)
- Organization: Monash University, Melb., Australia.
- References: <1992Dec10.045604.28740@ncsu.edu> <Dec.10.10.48.40.1992.2491@net.bio.net> <1g84pdINN237@agate.berkeley.edu> <1gnmr5INNj6g@skeena.ucs.ubc.ca>
- Distribution: bionet
- Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 02:19:03 GMT
- Lines: 40
-
- >Actually, there has been some academic discussion about why women don't
- >appear very often on the net. I just recently sat on our University's
- >Task Force on Appropriate Use of Information Technology (an ad hoc
- >set up to determine whether the UBC President's banning of the alt.sex.*
- >hierarchy was justified or not), and we spent some time discussing the
- >idea that if the net were more representational of society as a whole
- >(more women, more Arts and Humanities people, etc.) many of the
- >problems with sexist language etc. would vanish.
- > :=:=> Derek K. Miller dkmiller@unixg.ubc.ca
- > Researcher, Alma Mater Society thegrodd@tz.ucs.sfu.ca
- > University of British Columbia, Canada
-
- Interesting point - we have had our usenet feed emasculated (pardon the
- gender specific language - but there is something much more graphic about
- ... any way) - with a negative amount of discussion (we were virtually told
- what we should think).
-
- We also have a student run machine here - which is very male dominated in
- terms of its gender distribution of users - and simply having a female
- user code is enough to leave you with 3-4 unsolicited talk requests per
- hour - not to mention unwanted email (we actually did an experiment with
- a ficticious user to verify the stories we were hearing).
-
- I like to think that the net is populated with people of above average
- education - and hence would be above the sexist behaviour we have around
- us. Your final paragraph seems to imply that the problems on the net are
- due to a lack of the civilising influence of other parts of society - which
- I don't really agree with. Having more women on the net would probably mean
- that the mean incidence rate per woman would drop. On yoyo (the student run
- machine) - the low number of women means that they are harassed regularly.
-
- Neither can you (IMVHO) 'fix' things by banning/stopping/making illegal,
- legislating ... - until we make people desire equality you won't get it
- properly.
-
- Daz.
- --
- Darren Platt, Department of Computer Science
- darrenp@dibbler.cs.monash.edu.au
- Monash University, Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
-