Taking a Seat on a Panel Does Not Mean You're Right

Back in the mists of time, I attended a networking event for women in IT & Engineering* in DFW.

The event was about findings jobs (I was quietly looking at the time) and they had a panel.  The panel was accepting anonymous questions.

So, I asked the panel if any of them had ever disguised their gender on their resume.

One of the panel members became rabid at the concept of doing that.  She went as far as to say if she ever knew another woman did that, she would do her best to block that woman from ever getting hired (boy, I was glad the questions were anonymous.)

She seemed to take it as a personal affront that anyone might think that discrimination still exists.

There's a study that was recently published in Discover.  The study seems to point out that maybe using your initials on your resume isn't such a horrible thing, despite what Rabid Panel Lady said.

Fake CVs reveal discrimination against Muslims in French job market

Yes, this was a study of race and religion in France, but I think follow up studies in the US based on gender, race, and disability would be similarly revealing.


*Well, it was supposed to be IT & Engineering as our Web group had merged with an Engineering group.  Until I went to an event, and was sneered at for not being an Engineer and couldn't find any of the other Web women... never went again.

Ugh! Thanks UPI

I was looking at a feature of this site, and was treated to the following side gallery.  I think the top image is very fitting, considering what falls under it.

B/c, you know, underwear-clad shots of women from hip to navel are the only way to represent each of those stories.

Long Time No Post: Facebook Doesn't Understand Customer Service

When you run a business like Facebook there are four basic areas you would staff (beyond all the backbone that keeps a business running):

1. Coding and Design - making everything functional
2. Sales and Money - ads and stuff
3. Servers, Networks and Security - keeping the site up and connected
4. Customer Complaints

One way to really fall down on your face is to staff #4 with people who don't understand customer service.

I made a complaint on Facebook. I made a complaint because after taking a quiz I was suggested I take another quiz. The quiz I took was undoubtedly silly and likely to be something along the lines of "What Muppet Are You?" or "Who Are These 80's Stars?".

The quiz I was recommended by Facebook was, "What Kind of Girl Would You Like to Fuck?".

The picture of said quiz was an upskirt shot of a girl with no underwear, her legs akimbo, and her head cropped out.

I complained to Facebook that I found THAT offensive (to the generic complaint email).

To which Facebook replied that I didn't complain in the right channel and thus my complaint was being ignored.

That irritated me -- I had gone through the entire help site and there was no channel for reporting offensive applications.

I replied to the same address with a complaint about the process.

Today, 91 days after my original complaint, I received a reply -- explaining to me that I must, in order to complain, find the offensive application (how?), TAKE the quiz in question, and on the final about screen, complain to its developer.

Seriously, Facebook, seriously?

This is the best you can do?

I know we inhabit a world of forced self-service where no one talks to humans for customer service, but it takes a special kind of lameness to have not one but two humans refer a customer to self-service and never take action on the root problem reported.

Wow, just... wow.

If I was the Facebook sales rep selling ads to Pepsi^® and Ticketmaster^® and Pepto-Bismal^® I would be very concerned that these ads didn't pop up next to porn. I promise you the brand managers for the companies do care.

This one application is a drop, I am sure, in the bucket... but the staff's inability and/or lack of will to actually deal with these problems would mean a lot of full buckets.

Project Update

Looks like all the milestones to date have been made, and the GANTT chart is looking good.

Seen Online: Men and women see beauty differently

If this stands up over time, it could explain why sometimes you can tell male designers' work from female without knowing who did it...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29355425/

Excerpt: "For both sexes the most active region was the parietal lobe that deals with visual perception, spatial orientation and information processing, but it was focused on the right side of the brain in men while both sides participated in women."

Are there no editors anymore?

Not to nitpick, MSNBC, but "I have two husbands" is polyandry. The only way for a woman to be a polygamist herself is to be in two gay marriages.

Thank you, drive through.

Careful With Those Ad Buys

Seen online: Fashion week slideshow from MSNBC... with ad banners from WeightWatchers.


I think the implications are a little too much. "Sorry, don't look like a 6 foot tall model? Try WeightWatchers so you can!"

The second screengrab shows the saddest part... Lindsay Lohan has been getting thinner and thinner lately, and some of the gossip sites are starting to use the word anorexia in conjunction with her....

So what's below the image? WeightWatchers. "Don't look like a celebrity with fake breasts slowly starving herself? We can help!"

Eating disorders are a real problem world-wide, and WeightWatchers is blatantly playing into the concept that if you don't look like this... well, there's something wrong with you.

If WW didn't mean to do this, they need to seriously look at how they buy ads (all "women's" stories?). If they did do this on purpose, they should be ashamed.

If you could see my face...

Well, this blog got backlinked.

By someone who thinks I'm obviously a nutjob feminist for criticizing a children's movie. (That's the whole critic, kids movies are evidently not to ever be thought about.)

To which I would point out that if adults watch a movie, they can determine things like, "Hey, that guy, he's a real jerk. I don't agree with his world view at all."

But when kids watch a movie, even if we don't want them to, they are learning. And in this case, they would be learning what the sex roles for men and women are.

Kids are also much more likely to watch the same movie over and over again (with the possible exception of my husband, college, and The Empire Strikes Back). I distinctly remember a three year phase where my littlest sister watched Mannequin something like four times a week. I wouldn't want it bashed into my daughter's head over and over again that if she's good at sports, that's bad, instead she should walk around in hoop skirts and lipstick, and then she will be, "Perfect."

And, no, I do NOT think the sex roles for women in Chicken Little are sex roles I would want my son or my daughter learning.

For one thing, I want my men to know how to talk to people. For another, I want my women to take responsibility for their actions.

Thank you, drive through.

Feel free to link me, though. You drive me up in Google and Technorati every time you do, which I want.

(My facial expression, FWIW, is my eyes rolling. Back in the day, I used to hang on IRC... that was a command in my scripts, "/eyes".)

Feminist Rant

Today, not feeling entirely well, I sat down to Tivo.

Tivo didn't have much on, so I watched Chicken Little.

Gahhhhhhhhhhhh.

Now, keep in mind, on Friday I ran through some training on gender roles at work, so I sort of had this on the mind...

As a thinking woman who uses more than shame and fluttering eyelashes to get things done, I will never, ever watch that movie again.

Here's what I remember:

1. Chicken Little is oddly, a boy. I guess girls cannot save the world according to Disney, but in my books as a kid Chicken Little, also known as Henny Penny, is a girl. According to IMDB, originally the lead was supposed to have been a girl.

2. Mom is dead. No reason given, but mom is dead. Disney does that a lot, so I'm not terribly surprised.

3. Dad has no idea how to be a parent until a girl tells him how to; said knowledge being gained from dozens of Cosmo/17 style magazines. He says repeatedly that the dead mother was the one who knew how to do that stuff.

4. Until the last 10 minutes there are no living adult women.

5. The ugly duckling: She's pushy and she knows what's right, and she saves the day at least once. She's with the boys in every scene... until she's told she's pretty and gets a kiss. She then disappears from the plot except for a few shots of her looking moon-eyed and spacey.

6. Foxy Loxy: Foxy Loxy is the town bully. She's a tomboy. She's also the best baseball player the town has seen in decades (until Chicken Little upstages her). She's basically a plot device. In the next to last scene the aliens admit, "her brain waves got scrambled," as she is now covered in makeup, wearing a petticoat dress (instead of her usual overalls), and singing "Lollipop." The aliens indicate they will fix her, until sidekick #2 (a pig, literally) says "No, don't" and kisses her. So the aliens leave her brain scrambled, as a boy told them to and he must know best.... In the next scene we now see that she is the Pig's girlfriend.

7. At the end the aliens are introduced. A female adult and a male adult. They could have come out of an episode of Leave it to Beaver. The female uses no logic or intelligence, claims no responsibility for the havoc she has helped wreck, nothing. Instead she shames the male adult about how he's been overdoing it. She does this in the "ohhh, can mommy kiss your booboo" voice. Then the male takes over and she's pretty much done. (Oh, we know she's female before she speaks only b/c she has humogo eyelashes.)

8. And of course, when the whole thing is made into a movie within a movie, the male heroes are turned into muscular alpha males... and the female hero is turned into a Jessica Rabbit knockoff.

9. This was cut from the cable run, but according to Wikipedia Foxy Loxy's bully pal (a goose) decides she will be Chicken Little's friend after he wins the baseball game.

So the take home lessons are:

1. Girls are flaky, moody, and have no loyalty.
2. Girls are impressed by great physical deeds, not personal worth.
3. Girls are better as ditzy crazy stupid playthings than actual competition
4. Girls only legitimate motivations are about reading Cosmo and getting kissed
5. Women aren't necessary
6. When women do exist, it's only so someone can navigate emotional waters, b/c men surely can't
7. Men only say they are sorry when a woman makes them feel guilty
8. Women aren't responsible for anything, only men
9. Women can't be heroes
10. Girls who do better than boys need to be fixed, until they put on makeup and skirts
11. Men are better deciders of what's right for women than they themselves are
12. and on and on and on and on and on

What kills me is that most of the stuff that I found (and my husband volunteered was not good) horrific was added as humor.

"Hey, we can't tell a joke, or create real emotional growth, let's use some disturbing gender stereotypes as pratfalls!"

They don't have 1962 as an excuse, this was a major release in 2005.

Well, Obviously I Don't Post Enough Fluffy Words....

General, I Salute You

On Tomorrow....

I am not a person who identifies strongly with the word "patriotic." However, I get very passionate and patriotic about voting.

So, my word for my American readers is this:

Vote!

I have two reasons that the apathy of my early twenties has been replaced by intense participation.

---

In 2005 I voted in a local election. That specific local election ended up being decided by ten votes. TEN! If six people had changed their minds, it would have gone the other way.

Unfortunately, that election ended up shutting down the local library.

To the embarrassment of those of us involved in Bedford, this was the first time in the history of Texas that a local library was shut down permanently. (It opened back up after an anonymous donation of $300,000 was given to the city.)

When I consider that there were thousands of residents who didn't vote, who didn't pay attention, and who yelled when the library closed and the City stopped mowing, I never, ever take my vote for granted.

No, every election won't be (hopefully, if the Usability people have been doing their jobs) a Florida 2000, but especially on local elections, every vote always matters.

---

My grandfather passed away two years ago. In his lifetime women in in America were not allowed to vote. The women who fought for my right to vote were beaten and imprisoned.

As I have become more aware of the world we live in, I cannot take this right that was fought for with such difficulty for granted. If I want equality for women, if I want the rights I feel are important, if I want my opinions expressed, I must vote.

And I cannot look at the pictures like this one of women voting for the first time, not vote, and feel like I am not letting my great-grandmothers down.

At some other date I will post about how much it irritates me that google now actively ANTI-searches newspaper archives that are publicly shared so that I couldn't find the stories I wanted to link to.

I was going to post something...

Involving medical tape, skin allergies, small ball bearings, nipples, and a meeting.

But Blogger crashed twice.

I think it's a sign.

You can fill in the blanks, right?

"Shoesability"

So, the side of me that likes looking at photography, and reads far too many blogs on design, and is always, always drawn to anything mixing amethyst and turquoise, really likes a certain brand of shoes.

And the thing is, if I wanted to, I could not buy other stuff and buy those shoes.

I think, by the way, the bright red sole was a freaking genius branding move.

However, I can't see wearing those shoes.

They lack in usability.

They are spikey, and tottery, but I could deal with that.

Most of all, though, they seem ill-suited for walking through puddles, avoiding ice, and occasionally stepping in the mud.

So since I live in a place that has lots of mud and occasionally ice, and I'm often balancing a laptop on my hip, those red-soled shoes just won't do.

Additionally, I have funny little feet. Not wide all the way, not narrow either.

I finally stumbled upon these shoes, and bought 3.

The top, what I and others see? Looks like a designed dressy shoes.

The underside? 100% grip.


It's usable AND pretty, so I buy lots. It's not quite as pretty as the utterly impractical product, but the advanced usability skill on the design team make up for it.

*Sigh*

Dear MSNBC & Penny Arcade,

Instead of focusing on, "how to get your girlfriend to game" lets try the following:

• Don't make fun of girls for being good at math
• Don't harass girls for being good at physics
• Don't mock girls for texting
• Don't patronize girls for being confused by crappy systems
• Don't ignore girls in computer class

Once you've mastered that:

• Don't hire men because you understand them better
• Don't pretend women aren't there at conferences and seminars (no, we won't think you're hitting on us)
• Don't act like pigs in the IT work place just because you think it's ok since most of your coworkers are men
• Don't conduct business at strip clubs and in locker rooms

Then maybe you won't have to "get your girlfriend" into computers, and computer games, because she will be right along side you.

I've been playing games since I was 12 (Oregon Trail, anyone?), and I don't do the SIMS and I don't do Harry Potter. I don't do head-shot games, either, but mostly b/c I tend to fall off things in the game and die... I'm not good at them. Stop playing into the stereotypes, treat women like equal creatures and this won't be a "problem" any more. (Lately I've been playing w/ the Spore Creature Creator, waiting for Wrath of the Lich King, and totally kicked the ass of Civ on the DS)

Just a thought,

-Me

Dell, How Could You?

Men? Men might like blue or green of black laptop colors. Colors that reflect the music they listen to, the jobs they do, or their quirky personalities.

Women? Women want pink. All women want pink. Except of course, women who want red that exactly matches their lipstick (but only if they can use the laptop as a mirror.)

So, so not cool.

And dell uses funky, edgy women... and then turns them all into Barbie's. Does that pink laptop come with an Eazy-Bake Oven / DVD Burner combo? Or maybe an extra-simplified calculator, because, you know, math is hard?



Another ad in the same campaign at http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Feministing/~3/352695413/010069.html

Sex Sells? So Marketing Rules....

I played volleyball for a long time, varsity in high school. I'm a whopping five foot two and I was an outside hitter and serving specialist, so you can bet I worked hard to be there.

The summer Olympics are filling up our Tivo, and I'm watching as much indoor volleyball as I can.

And every time I hate what beach volleyball has done to my sport.

I feel the same way about the changes in volleyball and the marketing of volleyball that your average varsity football player would feel if suddenly pro-football players were all on the field in muscle shirts and bright pink codpieces.

Specifically, I grabbed a couple of pictures of the internet by doing searches for beach volleyball.

Then I grabbed some of the men.


If those little tiny suits were about anything other than selling Nike gear (note the logo placements) and beer ads, they would be wearing something closer to what the men wear, or what track and field people wear. It is not conducive to your serve to be picking your panties and sand out of your ass. It is not conducive to your sport to have sand burn on your inner thighs. It is not conducive to your sport to worry about the last time you had a bikini wax (unless you're a short speed swimmer).

Why does this bother me?

Sure, I'm bothered because it's using sex to sell a sport, because it's portrayed very differently than the same sport played by men, because the camera angles have changed, because the editing, and marketing of the sport has changed.

However, mostly it bothers me because it bleeds off into the Olympic women's volleyball. And then that bleeds off into the college. Which bleeds off into the high school. And suddenly you have girls who won't sign up for volleyball in junior high school and learn to play they game because at 13 and 14 most girls don't want to run around in underwear in front of the boys every day.


They also don't want everyone to know what panties they wore today, or that they have a pubic mound (everyone does, post puberty, but tell that to a 15 year old girl.)


I vividly remember girls threatening to drop off the team if our coaches bought us the "bloomies" that were coming out when I was playing... which were better than the stuff people are wearing now in that they were at least sort of thick and covered the whole butt up.

I think the most comfortable outfits I've seen this year are Japan's women's (the woman defending in white below). They look soft and easy to move in, without being completely stuck on like glue. They look easy to move in, and not so binding. (The US women's outfits seems... hot). They also don't seem to ride up the butt and have to be picked out as much. At the same time they seem to be cut to bot bind the arms or get in the way of quick leg movements, either.

For the record, IMHO, beach volleyball is also slower, less skilled, and less tactical than indoor volleyball. Good indoor volleyball includes strategy, quick quick thinking, awesome teamwork, and very high technical skill levels.

Women Web Designers! Take Note!

A List Apart is doing that survey again: http://alistapart.com/articles/survey2008

You know which survey. The one which people (men) used to justify keeping IT an all boys club last year.

So women, and minorities, and generically, people who don't live in New York.... click in and be counted.

You white men aged 35-45, making around 70k a year in the NY corridor? I have an alternative activity for you... Have you seen Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog? Do you have $4?

Girls Roxor on the Math

In the largest study of its kind, girls measured up to boys in math in every grade, from second through 11th. The research was released Thursday in the journal Science.

Parents and teachers persist in thinking boys are simply better at math, said Janet Hyde, the University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who led the study. And girls, who grew up believing it, wound up avoiding harder math classes.

"It keeps girls and women out of a lot of careers, particularly high-prestige, lucrative careers in science and technology," Hyde said.

That's changing, albeit slowly. Women are now earning 48 percent of undergraduate college degrees in math; they still lag far behind in physics and engineering.

Full story: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/07/24/girls.math.ap/index.html

My high school physics teacher made me and the only other girl in AP Physics partner on everything... then he would make fun of our team. He also told the PTA girls just weren't good at Physics. Yeah, thanks.

The irony being that once I knew the dreaded right-hand rule was just MATH (i/j/k vector circle, to be precise) and stopped jacking around with the thumb-points-this-way thing, I found physics to be really easy....

Another day in IT...

Another class with three women (including me) and 15 guys.

1:5 is actually a better ratio than many classes I've been in....