Gayle Laakmann McDowell | Technology Woman

More than one friend has read my blog and asked, “when did you become such a feminist?” The assumption is, of course, that all feminists must be bra-burning and man-hating lesbians. Having never observed me actually burn a bra, universally hate men, or, well, “swing the other way” (much to some people’s disappointment), you can [...]

I still read my university’s newspaper. I’m not sure why, really – other than that little ‘subscribe’ in Google Reader is just too easy to hit. Each year, it’s the same set of crimes – some shootings near campus that don’t involve Penn students, a bunch of muggings, the bank being robbed, and some violent [...]

Coming to you from Big Brother in South Africa… … viewers of the incident, which took place on Saturday afternoon after an extended drinking bout which ended in copious vomiting and apparent blackout for Molokwu, remain adamant about what they saw: Bezuidenhout lay down next to the comatose young woman and penetrated her vagina with [...]

I’ve heard this argument before – that women who wear revealing clothing are “asking” to be raped or assaulted. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the women deserve it, or that they’re glad it happened to the women. Instead, they argue that dressing too sexy is like leaving your doors unlocked – you don’t deserve to [...]

IBM Camp apparently has a camp which tries to get teen girls interested in technology. That’s great – it really is. But their approach seems something like “hey, let’s get women to learn about computers by showing them how to look up recipes!” The article scares me. Here’s a few snippets: Look! Pretty pink flowers! [...]

The greater the feeling of anonymity the more likely it is that people will behave inappropriately. This holds up both online and in real life. An article on Shiny Shiny got me thinking about this. A quick quote: I raised my hand and (desperately not to scream) explained that there is actually a huge issue [...]

Last week, at lunch with two Microsoftie-friends, we got into a discussion about why there aren’t many women in Computer Science. I’ve heard so many theories, but all we really know is that there are so many factors and some of them date back to childhood. “So how’d you do it?” Jim asked, as though [...]

Being a woman in computer science, I can’t deny that I’ve seen some sexism over the years. Not the blatant “you can’t do this” sexism that was prevalent thirty years ago, but rather subtle assumptions from people within the industry. I’ve noticed, for example, that if I say that I work for Google and a [...]