http://www.lisjobs.com/blog/?p=36 Fri, 02 Sep 2011 20:31:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.lisjobs.com/blog/?p=36&cpage=1#comment-145 Deborah Mon, 24 Jul 2006 19:37:00 +0000 http://www.lisjobs.com/blog/?p=36#comment-145 I can tell you why I only respond to posts like this in private forums or via e-mail. It's because 10 years of non-library related systems administration taught me one thing about being a woman in IT: unless the behavior is so egregious that it is a lawsuit waiting to happen, don't complain. The only way to be taken seriously as a smart technology-minded person is to be one of the guys. Women in technology can be respected in non-hardcore-technology aspects of the field (e.g. user support, management, etc.), but the only way to be taken seriously as a hardcore technology person, in my experience, is to obfuscate gender. And complaining about sexist or exclusive behavior, whether in person or on a public blog, is admitting to being a woman, and therefore, probably not very good at technology. (I am making some incredibly bold statements here which will be understandably very upsetting to the vast majority of very nice, very convinced that they were not sexist technology guys I have worked with in my career. Nevertheless, in my experience, the statements are true.) I can tell you why I only respond to posts like this in private forums or via e-mail. It’s because 10 years of non-library related systems administration taught me one thing about being a woman in IT: unless the behavior is so egregious that it is a lawsuit waiting to happen, don’t complain. The only way to be taken seriously as a smart technology-minded person is to be one of the guys. Women in technology can be respected in non-hardcore-technology aspects of the field (e.g. user support, management, etc.), but the only way to be taken seriously as a hardcore technology person, in my experience, is to obfuscate gender. And complaining about sexist or exclusive behavior, whether in person or on a public blog, is admitting to being a woman, and therefore, probably not very good at technology. (I am making some incredibly bold statements here which will be understandably very upsetting to the vast majority of very nice, very convinced that they were not sexist technology guys I have worked with in my career. Nevertheless, in my experience, the statements are true.)

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