On Mon, 1 Oct 2018 at 21:45, Melinda Shore <melinda.shore@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 10/1/18 12:30 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
> In some respects, that
> may be another problem -- I've heard the argument that, to
> succeed in engineering fields, women need to behave more like
> men. Having not had the experience, I don't know whether that
> is true. I've fairly sure that, as requirements go, it is
> undesirable to interpret "try to be sure there are women" into
> "it is ok to satisfy that criterion exclusively with women who
> have behaved "like men" (whatever that means) all of their
> careers.
As enlightening as it nearly always is to overhear men discuss
women in computing, it seems to me that there are times an
intervention is called for, as in this case. With all due
respect, John, these comments reflect some fairly widespread
yet still peculiar notions around gender. For starters, while
heaven knows that the very last thing that I want to see on an IETF
mailing list is people trying to define what it is to behave
like a man, the above comment is meaningless without a shared
understanding of what "behave more like a man" means (AND NO, THIS
IS NOT AN INVITATION TO HAVE THAT DISCUSSION). But more to the
point, a woman who behaves "like men" is still a woman, has still
been treated like a woman, and has the experience of being a
woman.
I'm not defending the way John put that, nor disagreeing with what you say. However I took what John wrote to be a clumsy way of saying - in more general terms - that we should ensure that it's the community that adapts to diversity, and not for anyone to conform to the existing community norms, nor for the community to attract only those individuals who willingly so conform.
Dave.
