Journalist Tish Wells has written a glowing review of “She’s Such a Geek” for McClatchy newspapers, which means it will run in a bunch of papers all over the place (it’s already been picked up in a Kansas City paper). She says:

“She’s Such a Geek!” is a collection of essays by gifted tech women who don’t fit the narrow sugar-and-spice stereotype. Some prefer math to lipstick and light-sabers and dragon fighting to swooning over the latest teen idol. And some do both.

Yay!

I feel like I’ve probably blogged too much here lately about attempts to explain, or redress, the low proportion of women in the sciences. But here are a couple more links for you anyway. First of all, there’s more reaction to the recent Donna Shalala-led study on barriers to women’s careers in the academic sciences. Boston University’s group Women In Science and Engineering held a symposium to discuss “strategies for change.” From the Daily Free Press:

“Women have the drive and capability to succeed in science and engineering, and the problem is not simply the pipeline [to getting into the field],” Massachusetts Institute of Technology management professor Lotte Bailyn said. “The academic organizational structure and rules contribute significantly to under-representation of women in science and engineering.”

The symposium was part of WISE’s effort “to provide a united voice concerning climate concerns and hiring and retention issues,” according to the WISE website. Founded in 2004, the group aims to provide opportunities for female faculty and graduate students.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the infamous Lawrence Summers speech, “Harvard psychology prof Elizabeth Spelke published a study in which she found there were NO differences between male and female babies, children, and adults in terms of cognitive capabilities and aptitude in mathematical and scientific reasoning,” writes Thinking Girl at [insert witty title]. But linguist Steven Pinker rushed to rebut her findings, and the two held an online debate. “It’s long, but the gist of it is that Pinker takes a ‘nature’ line of argument and Spelke takes a “nurture” line of argument,” says Thinking Girl. She adds:

I’m with Spelke. I don’t think there are significant statistical differences in the cognitive abilities of women and men. I do think there are significant differences in the ways men and women are encouraged and socialized to think. (This is backed up by a study at U of Michigan, which suggests that women tend to choose careers based on their values more than on their skills.) All of Pinker’s points about “biological” differences between men and women have, in my mind (and Spelke’s), a sociological explanation. For example, Pinker says that men have different motivations than do women: men are more motivated by status than by family. My response to that point is that this has nothing to do with biology. Women are taught from childhood to care for other people, and men are taught that they must be providers and achievers. Is this difference in priorities really surprising?

She blames “crappy societal images” for steering women away from techy careers and fields. The whole post is very much worth reading.

This is interesting. Science professor runs the numbers on the female and male science/engineering/math faculty in her department, and finds that most of the women are married, but roughly half of them are married to male professors in the same university. Of those, most are married to a male professor of science/engineering/math. By contrast, most male faculty aren’t married to another professor at all. Her conclusions:

It is a myth that women have to stay single (and childless) to succeed as professors at a research university.

Women professors are commonly married to men who are professors, but the reverse is not nearly as common. This is not news, but I think these data highlight the well known fact that it is important for universities to deal with the infamous 2-Body Problem if they want to hire and retain women faculty. Dealing with the problem requires committing resources and being prepared to create positions within the same department or within different departments. This has to be handled at a high administrative level and not left up to departments.

Ever since Phil Torrone showed me how to use a bluetooth dongle to take control of my Roomba – a little round vacuum cleaner robot — I’ve been following the growth of Roomba hacking. Roomba manufacturer iRobot released its specs earlier this year, thus making it clear that people weren’t breaking some obscure copyright law by taking their vacuum cleaners apart and turning them into fighting machines (or whatever). In fact, the relatively simple controls on the Roomba make it an excellent device for beginners to get into robot hacking.

Now there’s a book devoted to Roomba hacking, which is great for those of us who still enjoy the form factor of this venerable but vanishing print medium.

What’s interesting to is the way Roomba hacking has turned what was once a “woman’s thing” — the vacuum cleaner — into something that has very little gendered subtext. Sure, hacking is associated with boy’s play. But hacking a vacuum cleaner? Not so much.

Robotics is also a less male-dominated area than computer science, and one of our era’s most famous roboticists is Cynthia Breazeal. Now if only we could create the perfect artificial womb, we could all get together and hack childbirth too.

So we now know that women have fewer job prospects in the academic sciences, thanks to Donna Shalala. But when women do get jobs in science or technology, do they earn as much as men? The answer is no, according to the Harvard Crimson:

Significant salary discrepancies still exist between males and females with equal degrees in the same science and engineering fields, according to a report released by the National Science Foundation (NSF) this week.

The largest discrepancy existed between men and women with master’s degrees in computer and information sciences, where men earned an average of $10,000 more than women.

Overall, men in science fields outearned women by 17 percent, according to the report.

I love the part where they insist that these trends don’t hold true for Harvard women, because they’re just so elite.

This blog is the perfect place for me to share this with you. I am probably the only person in the world who has a bra made from a voltmeter-ammeter panel.

Last year I was walking through the Castro neighborhood near where I live in San Francisco when I came upon an estate sale. Many of the belongings I found inside the house leaned toward the campy animal print ilk, but on the mantelpiece were three metallic brassiere sculptures. The mechanical one with propellers on the nipples was already spoken for, but to my delight I was able to take away this electrically-themed beauty for a hundred bucks.

Too bad the artist didn’t sign her (or his) work. Most guests to our house notice and comment on it, though, so it clearly makes a statement!

Does anyone else have girl-geek-themed artwork or artifacts? Or imagery that confounds received notions in our culture about how girls and women are supposed to relate to science, technology, and other geeky fields? Please share!

From Feministe:

You can check out HBO’s special Hacking Democracy in its entirety on Google Video. (The total run time is about an hour and twenty minutes, just so you know.)

The documentary covers a lot of the known problems with electronic voting and focuses on how much of what’s going on is hidden from public view. You can read HBO’s synopsis here.

Also, check out Salon’s coverage and a good round-up of links from Bruce Schneier.

My own extremely brief two cents: How long do we think Diebold would stay in business if their ATMs had the same kinds of gaping security flaws that their voting machines do?

UC San Francisco psychiatrist Louann Brizendine has been getting a lot of attention for her book The Female Brain, which argues that women’s behavior is hardwired into their brains and hormones. I applaud Brizendine’s effort to explore how female brains are different from male ones, and she makes an impassioned argument for getting away from the idea that male brains are “the norm.” Unfortunately, however, the book is a hopeless mashup of decent research and naturalized cultural stereotypes. A smart chapter on how women’s monthly hormone fluctuations can influence perception is followed by chapters that claim “women’s intuition” is caused by women’s hyperactive hippocampuses and that it’s natural for women to honor their “mommy brain,” which wants them to cut back on work.

At one point, Brizendine argues that women and men are so different that heterosexuality leads to lifelong disappointment (though she consigns lesbianism to a short appendix):

Girls who expect their boyfriends to chat with them the way their girlfriends do are in for a big surprise. Phone conversations can have painful lulls while she waits for him to say something. The best she can often hope for is that he is an attentive listener. She may not realize he’s just bored and wants to get back to his videogame. This difference may also be at the core of the major disappointment women feel all their lives with their marriage partners.

Later, she claims that another fundamental mismatch between men and women is the way the two sexes have orgasms. After a reasonable discussion about how female orgasm works — it involves more brain activity than male and takes longer — she makes several outrageous and unfounded claims about female sexuality in general. One is that women who have multiple sexual partners are “out of control” or will make bad mating choices because sex releases so much oxytocin that judgement is impaired (despite the fact that oxytocin can be released without sexual contact). She also goes so far as to claim that sexually-active women are doomed to loveless futures because men are wired to assess women based on “social reputation.” She writes approvingly of one of her therapy clients:

If Melissa had immediately gone to bed with Rob . . . his Stone Age brain might have judged that she would be unfaithful or had a bad reputation. That she was affectionate on the dance floor and went home at a proper hour in a taxi showed him she was a high-quality lady with whom to mate long-term.

I’m not sure a “Stone Age brain” would be impressed with sexually-withholding behavior, let alone getting into a taxi “at a proper hour.”

The worst part, though, is when Brizendine tries to argue that vibrators interfere with bonding between sexual partners. After she’s made the case that female orgasms require a delicate balance of hormones and brain chemistry, Brizendine follows up by claiming that “women like vibrators” because they “provide a faster, easier orgasms.” She describes how one of her clients had trouble coming with her partner, so she “buried her vibrator in the backyard in order to force herself to get used to a real penis.” So women should force themselves to have difficulty coming with partners instead of bringing vibrators into bed, or teaching their partners to be more skillful?

It’s really quite astonishing how Brizendine can plead with us to understand the uniqueness of the female brain one minute, and endorse the idea that women should “get used to a real penis” the next. Maybe men should get used to female sexuality, which includes enjoying vibrators. Just a thought.

Given the conservative tenor of the book, it’s not surprising that Brizendine’s been endorsed by right-wing wanker David Brooks. It makes me sad to think that Brizendine is using her professional position as a highly-respected psychiatrist to advise other women to worry about their “reputations” and neglect their sexual desires. It’s also sad to see her telling women that men are such non-emotional beings that we should expect to be disapointed by them for our whole lives. Shouldn’t we be trying to change our relationships, rather than just learning to live with disappointment?

A new study by Oxygen Media shows that men and women have similar habits when it comes to shopping for technology. But the study ascribes some fairly stereotypical reasons for why women spend so much money on technology. Women are using tech to — you guessed it — stay “connected” to their friends and loved ones. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The study, aptly titled Girls Gone Wired, presents some insights into the way women react with technology — including their buying habits. According to Karen Ramspacher, vice president of research at Oxygen, men and women are more alike than different when it comes to technology. But they have different motivations that spur the use of various technology devices. While men are often attracted to technology for technology’s sake, women see technology as a means to an end. It’s the function of the devices they crave, not necessarily the fun. While a greater percentage of men use technology for fun pursuits — such as listening to music and watching videos, women are more likely to shop online, edit digital pictures and access health services online.

It seems pretty obvious that Ramspacher is imposing her own reading on the study’s findings, especially when she says at one point that women use Digital Video Recorders — but they only use them to watch shows that they will discuss with their friends. Women aren’t allowed to like technology because it’s cool, everything has to be communal. Extra dumbosity points for categorizing women tech consumers using terms like “Techs in the City,” “Techcessorizers” and “Mrs. Doubtwires.”