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Two Major feminine influences in modern computing are; Grace Hopper, and Aria Giovanni.


Grace Hopper is perhaps a better place to start looking......

Great, this is exactly what I need... all the names that don't come to my mind right away.

Anyone know of any particularly large specifically female mac following?  I found macintoshsisters.org; is there anything else similar, perhaps larger, with a mac focus?

Smalldog.com has a women / mac mailing.  You might ask for a guest posting.

Unfortunately, technology and graphics and what not, aren't geared towards women, even in this day and age. It's still a very male geared field.

But I'm a second year graphic design student, and I'm glad to see I'm not the only chick in our group! There's an even split - half guys, half girls. It's rather refreshing.

Things are changing for women in these fields - slowly, but surely.

It's about damn time too

- a chick who loves her mac

Very cool, a chick who loves her mac!

We're trying to get all the female geeks out of their dorms and into our cluster... we figure we can lure them with shiny new hardware... any ideas?  What would bring you into a lab?

Very cool, a chick who loves her mac!

We're trying to get all the female geeks out of their dorms and into our cluster... we figure we can lure them with shiny new hardware... any ideas?  What would bring you into a lab?

Hey zig (btw, I love Radiohead too)

A lab that has top-of-the-line everything would be nice! Although that's extremely expensive. powermacs with LCD screens, high quality printers, a few scanners, and I know a lot of people will argue that the Zip is dead, but a lot of students still use them, so a few Zip drives would be nice too As well as graphics programs, (PS, Illustrator, InDesign, the Macromedia suite, etc)...maybe a few digicams too? I could go on!

Oh, and the powermacs better be running OS X! Unlike our school, we're still stuck in OS 9

Very cool, a chick who loves her mac!

We're trying to get all the female geeks out of their dorms and into our cluster... we figure we can lure them with shiny new hardware... any ideas?  What would bring you into a lab?

Hey zig (btw, I love Radiohead too)

A lab that has top-of-the-line everything would be nice! Although that's extremely expensive. powermacs with LCD screens, high quality printers, a few scanners, and I know a lot of people will argue that the Zip is dead, but a lot of students still use them, so a few Zip drives would be nice too As well as graphics programs, (PS, Illustrator, InDesign, the Macromedia suite, etc)...maybe a few digicams too? I could go on!

Oh, and the powermacs better be running OS X! Unlike our school, we're still stuck in OS 9

Radiohead and Frank Sinatra; my favorites without qualification!

We're actually looking at a pretty high end lab.  The existing facility was really high end, in 1997... so you can see why we need an upgrade dearly.  Alas, the university will not grant us the money necessary so we're looking elsewhere for a grant.  So far, the plan is 6 iMacs (15", configured for your average web surfer) and 3 really high end Power Macs, cinema displays and all.  Didn't think of digicams; I'll bring that up in the next meeting... maybe we could loan them out for lab users with projects or something.  As for OSX, they'll not even boot 9 as per my specification... I'LL SEE PERSONALLY TO THAT!!!  DIE 9, DIE!!!!!

9 is like the severely injured horse you once loved.  It served me well, but I only feel sorry for it as it continues to exist.  Were it to die, we would all be better off.

Anyway, thanks again!

If you intend to be fair, and not sexist, then you must include a "Androgynist Collaborative Workspace".

Men have contributed to computing in a manner far exceeding the efforts of women. If that sounds sexist, then well, it just represents the efforts of men. While women have been fighting for abortion rights and the right to avoid the draft, men have been making the vast majority of the contributions to computing. To give undeserved credit to women in this field would be unfair.

Maybe the University is paying you to give credit where little is due, but if you give mention to women who do not deserve it, you will not be doing justice to scientific progress.

We're not trying to misrepresent anything, and I don't think we are misrepresenting anything by placing information that would most likely be of interest to our primary audience at hand.  Just as Bloomberg TV would not air Ren & Stimpy, we would not present literature irrelevant to the mission of the Center for RESEARCH ON WOMEN.  It's not that we wish to bias the situation, we merely exist to present the feminist perspective.  I realize that many (most) of the contributions to computer science thus far have been at the hands of men, but so does everybody else.  If you want to know about men in computer science, go to another library.  We keep records and information on WOMEN and that's why we want to maintain information on women in computer science.

The goal of the lab itself it to bring more women into the field of computing in the first place.  We assume the female geeks are out there; they just haven't emerged yet.  My goal is to be out of a job by this time next year, at least at the NCCROW.  Success for me would be to build a large enough base of competent and interested women to support the lab without a male admin; I don't belong there, I'm just what they hired because there was no other option.

e-mail the lifetime channel for Women, I'll bet they'll help.

We're not trying to misrepresent anything, and I don't think we are misrepresenting anything by placing information that would most likely be of interest to our primary audience at hand.  Just as Bloomberg TV would not air Ren & Stimpy, we would not present literature irrelevant to the mission of the Center for RESEARCH ON WOMEN.  It's not that we wish to bias the situation, we merely exist to present the feminist perspective.  I realize that many (most) of the contributions to computer science thus far have been at the hands of men, but so does everybody else.  If you want to know about men in computer science, go to another library.  We keep records and information on WOMEN and that's why we want to maintain information on women in computer science.
 
The goal of the lab itself it to bring more women into the field of computing in the first place.  We assume the female geeks are out there; they just haven't emerged yet.  My goal is to be out of a job by this time next year, at least at the NCCROW.  Success for me would be to build a large enough base of competent and interested women to support the lab without a male admin; I don't belong there, I'm just what they hired because there was no other option.

It still sounds sexist to me. It's just like "reverse" discrimination. Racism is racism. Sexism is sexism.

You should be keeping records on PEOPLE in computer science, not just women. Why should men be under-represented? Can't young women be brought into the field of computer science by admiring the endeavors of PEOPLE, regardless of their gender? If men made the greatest contributions to computer science, why can't you represent them?

I'm writing grants for a lab at the Tulane University NCCROW WS Mac Cluster... termed a 'Feminist Collaborative Workspace', part of the job involves the design and launch of a website for the cluster.  This site will ideally feature links to sites dealing with women in technology/computing, but, being a guy, I don't really know where I should start.

So I'm asking the women here, and perhaps the guys that are into womens' studies, where would you look for information on women in computing?

Better yet, if you're a woman, what kind of lab would you like to see put in a university?  Would you like to edit digital video?  Bring in music on your iPod and play it?  What appeals most to you?

You need to give us a little more information. I'm thrown off by your last paragraph: "Would you like to edit digital video? Bring in music on your iPod and play it?" That seems very degrading to make assumptions that women only want to do lightweight stuff.

Granted, I'm a Computer Science graduate student and there are more men than women studying computer science but the women that do study it are just as capable of any aspect of the field as men are. Which department are you setting this lab up for? That is what would make my decision as to what you need.

There was a class offered at my school last year called "Women in Computing."

Later, Frank

By no means did I intend to imply that lightweight stuff was expected (I just put down two things that came to mind).  We're looking for precisely the opposite, so if you have ideas, please share; the geekier the better.

The department is the Newcomb College Center For Research on Women; the lab is titled a 'Feminist Collaborative Workspace', though the name may be a bit misleading as we're not in any way discriminating against men.  In essence, the center itself is a repository for historical data on women in the US, especially the deep south.

I think the part you're not understanding, Egress, is that we simply don't keep information on men at the Center for Research on Women.  As I said before, that would be like Bloomberg TV showing a cartoon or Cartoon Network showing Blomberg TV-- there's a place one can go to research jazz in New Orleans (a Jazz Library) and a place one can go to research business (a Business Library) and a place one can go to research women, which is where I'm building the lab, nothing more.  We're not giving young women role models in the field of computing, we're giving PEOPLE, women and men alike, access to a research library compiled for the study of women in history.  Is this unclear to anyone else?

Men are welcome in the cluster, many use it now... but you tell me what you think the dominant gender is in the Womens' Studies department!

Thanks for everything again, guys, I never expected so much input and I'm thrilled.

From the Mac perspective at least, you'll want to include some info on Susan Kare, who designed all the icons and fonts (probably more) on the original Mac (and later, Windows 3, blech). That was landmark work.

You could also check out this page, on the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference; seems to be a regular event. There's an e-mail link at the bottom of that page; maybe they could steer you in the right direction?

Or here, the resources/links page from the conference site. Check that out; has a number of what might be really good leads.

zig,

I thought of this earlier, but didn't have time to post, as I was at school.

Why not install the Apple Developer's tools on the Powermacs, and build a mini library of developers books? I'd be really happy with something like that

Yeah, we're trying on the library already; getting together as many comp studies books as we can for reference etc... the bookstore gives us a huge discount so we can afford pretty much any book we want.

As for the developer tools, is there any reason to think something like CodeWarrior would be better?  If you think the Apple Dev. Tools are really better than CodeWarrior, that could save us a lot of money in licensing... I've never used the Apple Dev. Tools (project builder) except in passing.

Thanks, dinerfan, for the great sites!