Kudos to the deserving
I’ll happily add to the general kudos heaped upon Roy Tennant’s article about women in systems librarianship. It’s good stuff, it’s necessary stuff, and it took considerable cojones to publish.
I’d also be willing to put money on his really wanting to spike it. And that’s my fault, you see. I kicked up a big fat ruckus, bailed on a commitment, and generally treated good people badly over this whole feminism thing not long ago. I’m still comfortable with that, it being the best of a lot of lousy alternatives, but if Roy wants my head on a pike, I completely understand why.
And yet he didn’t spike the story. Go him.
I do think there are ways to attract young girls and the women they grow into to systems librarianship that have nothing to do with games. (Informing people who teach computers to children and ex-children of that basic fact will take work, however.) The indispensable Margolis and Fisher suggest that the lone-hacker-with-pizza image and the total absorption of some programmers with computers as machines is offputting to women, but adding a social dimension, especially a socially useful dimension, to the mix is highly attractive to them.
And what’s librarianship if not socially useful? This is why I keep saying that librarianship needs to connect its intake pipe to the exhaust(ed) pipe of women leaving comp sci programs. There’s talent there that we need, and we have a lot to offer.
That aside, though, I want to use Roy’s example to quiet the apprehension of a lot of guys who think it must be really hard to make those damfool women happy. It isn’t. I swear it isn’t, on an individual level. (On a societal level, it’s quite a bit harder.) The cardinal rule is, if you wouldn’t say it in front of a group of women consisting of your grandmother, your female boss (okay, imagine such a being if she doesn’t exist), your sister (ditto), and your significant other (if any)—maybe don’t say it at all, okay? Heck, if it helps, imagine irascible old me in that group.
And do like Roy. Swallow your anger and defensiveness when someone gores your ox on this; acknowledging frustration is the best way to defuse it. (I had “a woman” for “someone” in the previous sentence at first, but that traduces a number of men—not just Roy—that I’ve witnessed speak out courageously on this point.) Examine your assumptions, and don’t just handwave about how great it’d be if there were more women around—do something to make that happen.
Write an article. Cast a critical eye over the gender balance of the next tech conference you go to, and say something about it if it’s out of whack. Build a personal file of female speakers and writers, and make a point of recommending them. Link to female bloggers. There’s lots you can do, and none of it is hard.
Or, hey, you could just do like Roy does. That’s cool by me.