women and girls in science, technology, engineering + math :: stemming (.org)

In addition to blogs and other public online resources, one of the great ways the internet can support women in technology is through mailing lists. Lists have the advantage that your message asking for advice or suggesting a meetup goes directly into people’s inboxes — but even more importantly, lists and the messages on them can be private, so you can complain about a co-worker or ask about a delicate situation on a private mailing list and feel safe saying things you wouldn’t want to share on a public blog. Women-only or women-primarily lists are also great places to ask (read more...)

My original discussion was about differences with men in the workplace.

Early in my career I spent my vacation deciding whether or not to quit my sexist workplace. As I walked to my computer to write my letter of resignation, I found a copy of the book “Games Your Mother Never Taught You” on my chair. A senior (female) manager had left it for me. I figured, ’I’m quitting anyway’, and spent the day reading the book. It changed my perspective entirely on what work represents to men, and how I could work within that structure. I worked for another (read more...)

I have dell laptop-inspiron, of recent, DVD-CD ROM drive does nt read CD/DVDs and the webcam does not connect too, i am perplexed, i tried updating the driver software for the dvd ROM still it was not correct. the status of the driver shows the message below: Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39) I need your help STEM !!!! Many thanx,

• I just discovered Riot Nrrd — an awesome webcomic about geeky teens where most of the main characters are female (and the cast also features characters who are trans, queer, people of color, etc…). Plus their links page includes the sections “Feminist/Womanist Nerd Stuff”, “Nerds of Color Stuff”, “Disabled Nerd Stuff”, and “Queer Nerd Stuff”.

• Another comic, this time a one-off by Lucy Knisely, about the experience of women in nerd culture.

• Joe Clark posts a misguided response to Stubornella’s post (linked earlier this week) about women in technology —

• Stubbornella writes about discrimination and affirmative action based on gender in the world of computing. Money quote: in response to an affirmative action critic’s comment, “as long as there are no barriers for [women], and I can’t think of one, I don’t see a problem”, she says: “Um, dude, if your site was loading in 18 seconds but you couldn’t think of any reason for it, would you decide you didn’t have a performance problem?”
• Restructure! at Geek Feminism starts a controversial discussion by asserting that if you were hacking by age 8, you were privileged (touching

• Congrats to the winners of the Spring 2010 Systers Pass It On Awards, who win small amounts of funding to help them pursue their technical projects/careers!
• New blog My Fault, I’m Female collects stories of everyday sexism — with results both depressing and comforting.
• Eric Ries writes about diversity in startups, and how his perspective changed when he started doing “blind hiring” (having identifying information on resumes blocked out before he reviewed them)
• Attendees of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing are sharing their favorite memories of the event — did you go?

• On Twitter, check out the Anita Borg Institute’s list of programs supporting technical women
• BlogHer posts a list of 10 great technical blogs by women; Geek Feminism readers share more in the comments. Know another great blog not mentioned? (Maybe your own blog?) Share it in the comments here!
• UK blog Women in Technology posts about the growing number of female science teachers
• Microsoft’s Imagine Cup featured several all-female teams, and one of those teams, Mirror Vita from Thailand, took first place in the Digital Media category. Congratulations Mirror Vita!
• Facebook is
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I’m not a STEM woman. I’m a creative writer. When I see numbers with a bunch of symbols as in any mathematical field from statistics to calculus, I freeze up. In high school chemistry I had far more interest in my amazingly good looking Hindi lab partner than in balancing equations. You get the idea.

Fortunately, I have brought into the world a well-balanced, 14 year old with equally stellar achievement in science, math and creative writing — a true hybrid of my husband and me.

She seeks a future in astrophysics or aeronautics, and to that end she is (read more...)

Posting links from the air conditioned library, as we’re having a heat wave this week…

• I just discovered ScienceWoman at ScienceBlogs; she shares a great blogroll of blogs by/for women in science, and I also found some interesting posts in her archive (Who is your favorite woman scientist? [answer in comments here!], and a discussion of what name to publish under for a woman starting her academic career but also about to change her name upon marriage).

• A post about the expectations of chemistry grad students at CalTech. A bit outdated, but

I signed up a while back, but have been to busy to explore stemming, so have avoided posting. Today I start.

I was just following the thread (6/29/2010) on Pharyngula about the lack of women attending skeptic conferences. I discovered, much to my chagrin and deep sadness, that women are still dealing with the same sexist drek that I had to deal with 45 years ago. So, I thought I’d focus here on providing support and practical advice on how to deal with the noise.

I’m very interested in passing on my hard-won knowledge about dealing with sexism in the (read more...)