So let’s blow up the silly notion that persists in some corners of the blogosphere that women can’t or won’t do technology. Let’s instead start looking to experiences such as this to help communications educators ensure that the next generation of online publishers and designers reflects the diversity of the offline world as well.

Seeing it posted today, I was concerned that my intent would be lost. My argument is that by offering advanced technology skills in programs in which women were already highly represented, the result, due to demographics, would be more tech-savvy women, some of which may ultimately be interested in Web design or other areas of Information Technology as a career. My experience with female students would indicate a strong interest and aptitude in this area.

And if I remember correctly, our points were more along the lines of “male-dominated geek culture can be isolating and intimidating for women” and “women need to network and self-promote.”

I agree, however, that online journalism programs would do well to include programming elements. I think having journalists with those skills would lead to better online journalism.

Doing so, however, still doesn’t change the basic issue of women’s *visibility* in web design.

In many male-dominated fields, projects, and forums, ideas and opinions often get explored primarily through adversarial debate. However, many women are uncomfortable with the adversarial style, and prefer a more collaborative approach to developing and exploring ideas.

Unfortunately, this difference generally isn’t viewed as a style preference. In fact, this generally isn’t discussed openly at all — it’s just assumed that adversarial debate is the only or best way to explore technical topics.

The result, according to women I’ve talked to, is that despite their interest in the topic, many women get bored or drained by the adversarial interaction commonplace in technical fields or forums. They then either drop out or stop actively participating. One sentence I’ve heard over and over is, “Every time I spoke up, I got attacked.” They realized that usually no attack was intended, yet that was still their experience.

This does not mean that people who don’t prefer automatically adversarial debate are somehow weak. They just have a different style.

Fortunately, there are other ways to approach communication, even about technology. It just takes awareness and some effort from everyone involved.

I’ve just started to explore this angle directly in my weblog, CONTENTIOUS. See: Smashing heads does not open minds: http://blog.contentious.com/archives/2005/04/14/smashing-heads-does-not-open-minds

Thanks,

- Amy Gahran
Editor, CONTENTIOUS