Gender
After reading Ted's Post about Robert's Post - which was about Marcie's post (gotta love following the links/trackbacks/comments/pingbacks stuff) - I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring on the subject of women (or dare I say girls) in IT.
I agree somewhat with Ted in saying that I think Robert missed the point of Marcie's post. I think Robert lacks (as all men, including myself do) the women's perspective on the issue. I think the better question to ask ourselves though, is “why are there are so few women in tech jobs?“, rather than “who cares what gender the MVPs are?“
It's not because they can't do the jobs as well. I still remember many years ago when I was a fresh young n00b and attending my first MOC course at a CTEC and the woman that instructed the class did an excellent job. She even had a pretty good sense of humor if I remember correctly. I've had a couple female bosses before too. So what's the deal? To quote Julie in Ted's comments, "So why is it that I can count the number of bright female programmers ...that I am aware of ... on one hand?”.
I'm interested to hear what either Marcie, Julie, or maybe someone like Michele has to say on the subject. What's sad (I think) is that that last sentence linked to every female techie I'm aware of. Ok, maybe minus Lissa.
I think I'm going to do some thinking and research on this and post my results / thoughts.
UPDATE: Something I found interesting; I asked my wife (who's far from computer illiterate but not exactly a techie) why she thought there weren't more women in tech jobs. Her response? The lack of emotion. She said she thinks women thrive on jobs that involve emotion (Teachers, Nurses, etc.) whereas she thinks men enjoy the lack of emotion found in tech positions. I think she might have a good point.