FeministHacker

It's not worse. It's not better. It's a different aspect of the same issue.

We only really develop a proper understanding of gender around the age of 7, but influences before then set up the mindstates to come, and help to drill everyone (including parents and teachers) in appropriate gender roles.

Kids see male doctors and female nurses. They have female teachers at school. When shopping for toys, the girls get pink kitchen sets and dolls, and the boys are offered machines and cars.

From a young age, our society teaches us that women are not engineers, and men are not teachers. We need to solve them both.

The list is a generalisation across all fields, so discounting it based on how something might not be true in your field is a bit short-sighted. #1 is true still for many fields.

Of course, the link you provided wasn't for the general tech sector - it was specific to universities, which have other aspects in play. Even within the general tech sector, there are plenty of reports of questionable hiring practices. I've found to be not uncommon for my gender (female) to be an issue during interviews, and we've seen posts here in the past about this subject. Further, women are often moved rapidly into management roles, and their technical abilities treated as suspect.

And yes, I'm speaking as something big corporate IT, and it's no better. Just looking across at our large (40+) server support teams, you can count the number of women on one hand. The application support teams here are slightly better, but only just. We're a typical shared services company in the UK, and our competitors are all very similar.

As for 14, you've found a truth about privilege lists - they might not always be things you like.

As a sign of good faith in the community here, I've removed the link for now :)

And this is precisely why we need still more posts.

You know why we don't need a "benefits of being a male software engineer" post? Because every day is a "benefits of being a male software engineer" day for male software engineers.

You should probably have a read of http://amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/ . As a rule when it comes to this sort of material, if it makes you feel uncomfortable and defensive, please think about why this is before commenting.

I'd love to see a post about "benefits of being a male social worker", or any other female-dominated field! As a feminist (3rd wave), I don't think equality is possible without addressing the problems faced by men, as well as women. Men in such jobs are routinely mocked by other men and subjected to ridicule by our masculine culture society. And that sucks.