Mary,
I have to agree. As is common, gender imbalance can be treated as a
joke only by those who
aren't affected.
For those of us without "male privilege" (or other types of course)
who have experienced the effects of subtle or blatant discrimination,
it is no joke.
Nor is it caused by a lack of interest or ability in technology - but
it is always easier to claim that
the issues are caused by women instead of the prevailing tech culture.
Luckily, tech culture can vary significantly by organization.
This thread is the worst example I personally have seen in the IETF.
Alia
On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 9:25 PM, Mary Barnes
<mary(_dot_)ietf(_dot_)barnes(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
One response below [MB].
On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 1:53 PM, SM <sm(_at_)resistor(_dot_)net> wrote:
Mary Barnes is the only participant who mentions the gender problem. As
such, I gather that the IETF does not have a gender problem. :-)
[MB] Yet again my point is being proven. The reason others don't mention
it is because they don't want to become the target of this sort of attitude
AND they likely feel they have worked too hard to risk not being taken
seriously. You might also consider this isn't the first time this issue has
been raised. I raised it in my Nomcom report in March 2010 and it was in
the slides at the plenary. But, again, we are a very small minority here, so
it really is hard to get recognition of this issue. [/MB]