Women in IT (Aug 3). Online freedom of speech (Aug 5th)

[Colin McGregor]

--- Sacha ChChuasasacharee.net.phphwrote:
> Hello, everyone!
> 
> Colin McMcGregor colinmc151-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> writes:
> > sample. So beyond the poor social skills idea, to
> toss
> > another idea out, does it help to be born outside
> > Canada to become a woman techie?
> 
> I'd say this suggests the idea that you have to be a
> pretty good and
> pretty lucky techie to travel. There are a *lot* of
> women in
> technology who don't get that opportunity.

Not quite what I am saying. One of the women I
e-mailed about this event was born in (West) Germany,
moved to the UK when she was age 12, and then on to
Canada a few years later. She moved with her family,
but as stands, lives, works, etc., here in Canada. So,
she has fairly good social skills (better than mine
:-( ), but the moment she opens her mouth people
instantly know she isn't from around here (a mostly
German accent with traces of her time in the UK).

So, having come to Canada for what ever reason at what
ever age is that a help in becoming a techie? Is the
fact that you sound different, and/or look different
and/or have a slightly different outlook an asset in
becoming a techie? 

> If anything, it's probably harder for foreign-born
> IT professionals to
> make it here, and _particularly_ hard for women. You
> think women in
> technology have to deal with bias and stereotype? I
> get compliments on
> my English all the time. I have so far managed to
> resist the urge to
> tell people I got perfect scores on the verbal
> portions of my GRGREnd
> other standardized tests. If people are getting hung
> up on language,
> how are they going to trust my technical skills? ;)

I was at a tradeshow event, within ear shot of the
above noted woman as she was doing a sales pitch to
one guy. He was focused on attempting to figure out
her accent, and when he found out joked about how she
should date Canadian guys (her answer, she had, and it
had never helped). Needless to say the whole sales
pitch got lost in the shuffle, sigh...

People do get fixated on stuff, be it clothes worn,
cars driven, and yes, gender, accents, etc., are all
part of that nasty mess. I don't know of any easy
solutions there...

> Then there's the entire problem of networking. It's
> much harder for
> people from elsewhere to speak up or to even know
> where to find
> interesting people and opportunities.

Yes, but ... At least to a degree that doesn't happen
in some other fields, technology is a leveler. For
example, a women web designer that I crossed paths
with was deaf. She had been born hearing, had survived
a cancer in her skull (the doctors had destroyed the
cancer and in the process she had lost her hearing,
lesser of two very nasty evils). Ok, so you have a
woman who by nature would not I gather have been a
techie, but when you need to find a job where you can
do effectively everything via e-mail a lot of job
avenues are closed to you...

> That said, though, the organizing meeting for this
> Social Tech Brewing
> event was pretty interesting. Most people there
> could be considered
> part of visible minorities.

So, your like my brother Gordon, only much less
visible :-) . Semi-serious, Gordon is teaching English
in South Korea, where ALL non-Koreans (Chinese, 
Caucasian, etc.) make up under 0.1% of the population.


So, Gordon has had something of a hard time of it, and
has found the Internet a life line of sorts in that it
does allow him to keep in touch with people...

> We wanted to run a separate session aimed at helping
> foreign-born IT
> professionals integrate into Canadian society, but
> that didn't work
> out this month. Still, the need is there.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Sacha
> aforementioned Philippine-born UofT grad. student

Colin McGregor
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml