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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: Inform Designer's Manual, 4th Edition
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Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 23:25:57 GMT
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David A. Cornelson <dcornelson@placet.com> wrote:
>I've been programming for 16 years and still the
>percentages of women in my industry are abismal.

If you think this is a bad thing, you might want to take
steps to improve it.

One way to increase the percentage is to encourage women
to enter the industry.

One way to decrease the percentage is to discourage women
who are already in the industry.

Raising the profile of existing women programmers might
increase the interest of other women, but expressing
admiration for a female programmer to that programmer
does not achieve that goal.

Expressing admiration for a female programmer as a female
is itself counterpoductive to that goal (e.g. it's too
easily perceived as "pretty good... for a woman").  Thus
people are best advised to be cautious in this regards.

A better solution to increasing the number of female IF authors
is to vote all entries by female authors in the comp a 10, and
all those by male authors a 1; sadly, the frequent use of
cross-gender pseudonyms plays havoc with this strategy, so
I have been forced to refrain.  [This parapgraph is, as they
say, writ ironic.]

SeanB
