Techie Women

Thank you, Roy!

Roy Tennant's August 15th Library Journal column titled "The Gender Gap" has some nice words -and suggestions - for equalizing the gender inequalities in technical library situations. As a techie gal myself, I agree with what he's seeing; the first IL conference I went to in 1999, I felt like a rarity (I'm happy to see the balances evening out a bit), and for a very long time, I was the only gal in the gaming room or programming user's groups. Even in library school, I was the only techie in my class - let's hope that more women move into technology in libraries!

Currently 93° and only 30%Rh. No rain today, I think!

Updated later the same day: Holy cow. I sat down to try and catch up on blogs and this topic - gender issues in technical/systems librarianship - is quite the hot one. Many posts, many comments, in many places, with many things to think about. (On the up side, I found out about a new group/listserv/thing, Code4Lib, which I plan on joining.) Upon pondering, I don't know if I've been lucky, or just adapted so much I don't notice anymore (which is not necessarily a good thing) - I haven't faced any kind of "You can't do that, you're a girl!" situations in the workplace in a very long time. (And when I did, I stepped up and proudly wore the title "Bitch" for confronting the engineer in question.) Then again, if situations like that have arisen and I didn't notice them, is that good or bad? Much to chew over....