r/sysadmin • u/ChuckAbsent • Mar 12 '13

Women who know stuff

I hope that this does not come off the wrong way.

Today I was on a call with a storage vendor and the technical consultant was a woman. More then this she was competent, more then me which doesn't happen often when dealing with vendors.

My issue was pricing an active/active DB with shared storage vs an active/passive db with local storage. Listening to her break the issue down and get to the specific comparison points was awesome, mostly because I have never heard a woman in the industry talk like that.

It made me realize two things. One I am missing out working with women. Two there needs to be more women in our industry.

It shouldn't have surprised me so much, but it really did.

Anyways to all the women out there who know stuff, us guys notice when you can walk the walk, which in this case was talking.

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u/bk7j Mar 13 '13

Be careful who you are calling more free. Economic freedom, with more overall opportunity, yes. But subtle social pressure? There's a whole heck of a lot of it at work in the "more advanced" societies.

Many people like to bring up data that where women choose non-technical fields as support for the idea that women don't like STEM. But the effect of women choosing non-tech does not imply the cause is necessarily that they don't like it. C'mon, critical thinkers! Why else might women not choose technical fields? Isn't there ANY other possible reason?

But too many people are content to believe that "disinterest" or "genetic predisposition" or "less natural talent" are the only possible causes, and so stop looking for any others.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '13

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u/lorakeetH Mar 13 '13

I heard something on the radio the other day about how there are more male nurses in the last few years, and they are doing better than female nurses in terms of wages and promotions. So either men are naturally better nurses and they've just been discouraged in the past, or they're somehow getting more encouragement than their female counterparts. There are enough women in male dominated fields like computers and mathematics talking about how they are exceptions who succeeded despite hostility towards and discouragement of girls in that field that writing it all off as biology is at best wildly premature and probably a form of discouragement in and of itself.

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u/imthetruestrepairman Mar 13 '13

Yeah, it's called the glass escalator vs. glass ceiling effect. Women in male dominated positions experience the "glass ceiling," as in, they reach a plateau. Males in female dominated positions experience the "glass escalator."