following Rebecca and Ruth…

Cool idea, Rebecca 🙂

 One of my questions was…

Also, how much does a woman have to know in terms of technology in order to strike this “fear” or “resentment” or for it to seem just plain unusual? Is it easier to handle that a women knows how to change the oil in her car as opposed to being able to write software?

I think after representing administrative assistants during the second set of panels, I am able to at least half-way answer my question. When it comes to administrative assistants, the majority of whom are women, they handle technology (such as word possessing applications) on a day to day basis and are expected to be rather skilled at these technologies in order to maintain their jobs. However, the job is still looked down on as “women’s work” and as I researched about this group, I got the feeling that many people felt that it was definitely a “do-able” job, regardless of the technologies one had to be familiar with in order to be well-rounded. Thus, I believe that even if women are highly skilled with, say computers, as many administrative assistants are, just being women seems to “water-down” that credibility, in order for it to not seem so “unusual,” especially if men are not dominant in the filed.

This leads me to believe that for a women to be considered technologically savvy, she must illustrate her abilities in a male dominated environment in order for it to mean something….which is such a frustrating (partial) conclusion! I may need to rethink it…

I also agree with Rebecca– a lot of my questions did not get answered either, however, I that was one of the things that I too learned from this class: the conversation really is never-ending and unanswered questions only contribute to the on-going conversation even more. The questions and ideas that stem from this intersection of gender and technology are ones that can stay with us for a long, long while, and I know I’ll take these questions on with me (seeing as how this blog isn‘t going away)…even if they never fully get answered, as long as the conversation I have with them keeps going, I don’t think I’ll mind.