Women & Technology: E-Mentoring
Women & Technology: The Gritty Past
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Melinda Sherwood were published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on July 21,
1999. All rights reserved.
Women & Technology: A Holistic Approach
High tech companies need to adopt a more “holistic”
approach to Information Technology if they want to grow in the 21st
century, says C. Dianne Martin, a program director with the
National Science Foundation. “All the political, economic, and
cultural issues are becoming as important as broadband, the techie
stuff,” she says. “In the IT workforce, they’re saying they
don’t need computer science majors necessarily, but a person who has
a liberal arts degree, who has broader experience solving problems.”
As a result of its rather narrow scope, the computer science industry
has alienated the large pool of talented women in science, Martin
says. “Men have got caught up in the techiness of it,” she
says. “It’s not that women aren’t likely to do that, but women
tend to have a more holistic view: `I’m inventing this new device,
who’s it going to help, who’s it going to harm?'”
A 30-year veteran of the computer industry, Martin presents her observations
on “Paradigms, Pitfalls, and the Pipeline: Gender Issues in the
IT Workforce,” at the International Symposium on Technology and
Society on Friday, July 30, at 3:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency, New
Brunswick. The three-day symposium, entitled “Women and Technology:
Historical, Societal and Professional Perspectives” and hosted
by Rutgers University and the Institute for Electrical and Electronics
Engineering (IEEE), begins Thursday, July 29. Cost: $375. Call 732-932-1066.
Martin received a BA in mathematics from Western Maryland College,
Class of 1965, and later taught computer science at both the University
of Maryland and George Washington University, where she eventually
earned a PhD in education. When Martin was hired and trained as a
programmer by IBM in the 1960s, women made up roughly 40 percent of
her training class. By the time the ’80s rolled around, however, women
were rapidly disappearing from the computer industry.
“The numbers tell us there’s some kind of issue here,” she
says. “It isn’t like it’s an entrenched field that has been dominated
by men for hundreds of years. Modern computing started in 1940s, during
the war years, when men were out fighting wars so women had to wear
hats that they wouldn’t normally wear. It’s a field that should have
been open to women. We need hundreds of thousands more people who
need technical computer training, so why are we not attracting women?”
Take a look at the poster “boy” for computer science —
the engineer who spends 80 to a 100 hours a week obsessively hacking
at the computer — and you can see why, says Martin. “About
every 10 years computer science departments revise the curriculum,
and in the ’90s, they decided that they would define it in terms of
engineering, math and science,” she says. “By putting those
paradigms on it, you immediately thrust it into a male-dominated world.”
What other paradigms might universities have chosen? “If you consider
the computer to be a cultural artifact,” says Martin, “you
could have put it under anthropology and or sociology. If computing
could have been cast in a broader way, in not only dealing with the
engineering of devices, but also the interaction of those devices
within work environments, it would have appealed to more women,”
she says.
Those are the very issues that Martin emphasizes in the computer industry
at large. As chair of the Computers and Society interest group within
the Association for Computer Machinery (https://www.acm.org),
she helped establish a code of ethics that dictates how and why engineers
develop new products and programs. “I’ve always been interested
in the softer side of technology,” she says. “In some ways
it’s made it harder to get tenure and things like that because I wasn’t
perceived as a hardcore computer person. The fact that I was able
to express my interest in computer science in broader ways — the
educational impact — that’s why I stayed.”
One of the ACM’s mission is to promote computer programs that don’t
simply replace workers or dumb-down the labor force. “The trend
has been towards de-skilling, rather than enhancing,” she says,
citing the McDonald’s picture cash register as a perfect example.
“There was a different way we could have introduced technology
and allowed people to keep their jobs,” she says. “If we consider
the human capital to be the most valuable, then that’s what we should
focus on.”
Businesses can start by developing a more humanistic approach to IT
and engineering, and by fostering the kind of work environment that
appeals to the talented pool of women out there. She suggests businesses
take these steps:
Offer mentoring programs that pair women in the industrywith those at the university level. MentorNet (see story below) isone way to foster these relationships.Emphasize a well-rounded view of technology, that showsthe social impact of technology, not just product development. Universitiesneed to build stronger liberal arts programs in computer science,and businesses need to consider hiring more liberal arts majors.Encourage networking groups.Cultivate a family-friendly image of scientists and engineers.”Don’t glorify obsessive hackers,” says Martin. “If womenare going to be interested, they need to have accommodations for thefact that they want to have a family.”Business as usual, she adds, has had a male way of doing things.”The way things are done has to be expanded, to be more open andmore collaborative.”Top Of PageWomen & Technology: E-MentoringMentoring can be one of the best ways to recruit newtalent in engineering and science, but until recently, it’s becomesomething of a lost art. Peg Boyle Single saw an opportunityto revive the age-old tradition using electronic networking. She createdMentorNet (https://www.mentornet.net), a non-profit organizationthat pairs women studying science and engineering with leading womenin similar professions. So far, Single has recruited mentors from200 companies, including IBM, Texaco, and Microsoft. “They havevery demanding jobs, and most can’t hop into cars and meet a studentfor lunch, so this gives them an opportunity to connect with the nextgeneration.”Single presents “Lessons learned from Electronic Communities forWomen Engineers,” on Thursday, July 29, at 10:30 a.m. at the TechnologySymposium (see above story). At 1:30 p.m. she the joins executivedirector of MentorNet, Carol Muller, to discuss “Leveraging Technologyto Increase the Numbers of Women in Engineering and Science.”MentorNet has been a full-time experiment for Single, who holds aBA in accounting from George Washington University, Class of 1985.Unlike most of her clients, Single is not an engineer; she studiedmentoring while preparing for her PhD in social psychology at StonyBrook. “The mentoring background pulled me into electronic mentoring,”she says, “and the boom in technology allows us to tap into awhole new pool.”Last year Single paired 500 students with mentors, and expects tomatch twice as many next year. From MentorNet’s four-person officein San Jose, California, Single weeds through resumes, pairing studentwith professionals, and provides training for new mentors. Only university-enrolledstudents are eligible for a mentor. The mentors have to show referencesbefore they are paired. Princeton University and Stevens Instituteare members of MentorNet.Since women are so under-represented in the fields of science andengineering, it’s an obvious advantage for the developing student.But Single says mentors learn a lot from the teaching relationship,as well. “It’s a nice opportunity for them to reflect on theircareers,” she says, “and rejuvenate why they decided to gointo engineering science.”– Melinda SherwoodTop Of PageWomen & Technology: The Gritty PastIt’s not a treatment HMOs are willing to pay for today,but until the 1920s, massaging women to orgasm was considered a viablemedical treatment for female “hysteria.” When they could,doctors pushed such drudgery off on midwives, but the therapeuticstimulation of the female genitalia was such a lucrative business(patients were sure to return) that new technologies were born toenhance customer service.It is thus that women developed an “intimate” relationshipwith electronics, a relationship that Rachel Maines chroniclesin her book “The Technology of Orgasm: `Hysteria,’ the Vibrator,and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction,” by Johns Hopkins UniversityPress (1999, $21). Maines first submitted the contents of her bookto the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE)in 1988. They thought it was a hoax. A decade later the IEEE is hostingthe controversial scholar and author on Friday, July 30, at 10:30a.m. at the Technology Symposium at the New Brunswick Hyatt (see storiesabove).An angry but educated feminist coming of intellectual age during the1970s, Maines stumbled on the buried history of the vibrator whiletrying to write a “serious needlework history come hell or highwater.” Flipping through the turn-of-the-century Women’s HomeCompanion, Maines’ eyes wandered to large ads selling household applianceslike blenders, fans, and yes…the electronic vibrator. “WhenI saw advertisements as early as 1906 for equipment strongly resemblingthe devices now sold to women as masturbation aids, my first thought,”she writes, “was that this could not possibly be the purpose ofthe appliances sold in the pages of the Companion.”This was the exact intent of the device, but long-held medical beliefsand a stubborn perception of sex obscured its “sexual” nature.Doctors started diagnosing women with “female hysteria” asearly as 1653. It was probably symptomatic of a social, rather thanphysical disease, Maines writes. “When marital sex was unsatisfying,”she writes “and masturbation discouraged or forbidden, femalesexuality, I suggest, asserted itself through one of the few acceptableoutlets: the symptoms of hyster-neurasthenic disorders.” Sexualfrustration, to put it simply.Since it didn’t fit the paradigm of sex at the time, stimulation offemale genitalia was considered nothing more than a medical chorenecessary to bring the hysteric behavior to a climax and rid it fromthe body. “Since no penetration was involved,” she writes,”believers in the hypothesis that only penetration was sexuallygratifying to women could argue that nothing sexual could be occurringwhen their patients experienced the hysterical paroxysm during thetreatment.” Genital stimulation, doctors argued, was the nextbest thing to a horseback ride or journey in a bumpy train.Female therapy received an injection of steampower at the beginningof the 20th century. The devices, illustrated in Maines’ book, appearin varied shapes and sizes, but the Cadillac of vibrators (it cost$200 in 1904) was a footpowered model with various tendrils and oscillatorsthat look nothing short of alien. The vibrator entered its halcyondays with the advent of electricity, which enabled up to 7,000 pulsesper minute.As Maines’ research and lecturing progressed, it became clear thather days teaching were numbered. She was forced out of a part-timeposition teaching at Clarkson University in northern New York by anervous administration. Even the technical advisory board of the IEEE,to which she submitted her study in 1988, thought she was out to “titillaterather than enlighten.”Maines has since run her own business, Maines and Associates, thatprovides cataloging, inventory and research services to museum andarchives. Ten years ago, uptight critics misinterpreted her historicalwork. Today, however, Maines’ ego has been massaged on more than oneoccasion by writers at the New York Observer, and the New York Times.She has offered proof that technology is sexy after all.– Melinda SherwoodNext StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
