Tonight: "Revenge of the Female Nerds"

We found out about Annalee Newitz's upcoming talk (tonight, 8pm, Pound 100), "Revenge of the Female Nerds -- Busting Media and Industry Myths About Why Women Can't Be Technical," from Berkman students.  Newitz is a contributing editor to Wired Magazine and was formerly the policy analyst as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Her syndicated column, Techsploitation, can be found online at www.alternet.org. Students have been hanging posters up all over campus, and emailed a copy to us so that we could hang up more around the Berkman Center.

Their excitement was contagious -- yesterday we called Newitz to ask her a few questions about her talk today:

Berkman: What prompted you to put together a presentation about this?
Newitz: I write a lot about science and technology.  There is a tendency to use women's previous achievements in the field -- which have been limited by social constraints -- to claim that women could never do better.

Berkman: So, why a presentation now?
Newitz: Now is the time to challenge this stuff. We are in a time of growing conservatism, when women are being encouraged to steer away from what are deemed "male" pursuits. At the same time, the most important jobs have to do with science and engineering, computer science in particular.  Maintaining a myth of female technical inferiority is a way of keeping women out of these positions. That absolutely has to stop. Part of what I want to do in this talk is to get over that moment when people ask the question, "Why aren't there more women in the sciences?"  We know the answer to that.  It has to do with the history of women being excluded from certain kinds of professions.  I don't think we need to attribute that to biology or something inherent in women's makeup. I think we need to look at what women are doing to get into the sciences, particularly computer science.

Berkman: How do more women get more involved in computer science?
Newitz: Organizing, mentorship programs, influencing popular culture. Simply making sure there are more images of women scientists out there for other women to see.

Berkman: Why "dispel" myths? Are the myths the obstacle?
Newitz: I want to talk about media myths and industry myths because they tie into the more ancient myths about the things women are capable of doing. For example, the idea that women aren't technical fits into the stereotype that women are not rational, that women don't have a good head for figures, that women aren't tough enough to work in a lab for five days straight. Those myths are ancient and pervasive.

Berkman: Why not focus on the positive? The success stories that are out there?
Newitz: A lot of success stories are anecdotal. There haven't been really good statistics to say that there are more women involved in computer science in 2005.  What I can say is that I see more and more women at technical conferences.  I see more women in positions of authority in high tech companies, also bio tech companies.

There were a couple of studies done in the early 90s by the National Science Foundation that was an assessment of women's involvement in technical fields.  There was a bump of media interest at the time.  In the last 10 years you've seen a huge expansion of the bio tech industries and computer science industries, and the media has shied away from asking questions about gender balance in the workplace.

Unfortunately, a lot of press coverage has focused on the question of what science would say about disparities in the workplace. Creating gender parity in the fields of technology and science is going to require people to organize around this issue. We're going to need what amounts to counter-propaganda to combat myths that hold women back from working in the lab -- myths like good mothers don't work all night, or that women who are good with machines can't also have social lives.