Adak

Didn't have anything to do with the bulky sizes of the equipment. There were rolling carts and such for that. The problem was "culture adaptation". Girls have been "guided" since they were quite young into being loved and more accepted (by parents and everyone else), if they paid more attention to their looks, and not messed with what the boys liked.

Used to be the same way with sports, btw. Girls were steered away from it, or faced being social outcasts. More people than would ever admit it liked girls / women to be the "Belle of the Old South", or at the very least the "Jackie Kennedy" type - smart, but mostly applying it to her fashions, re-decorating the White House, greeting the French in their own language, etc.
(The whole "Oh!, I do declare, Nellie!", kind of thing.

She could NOT have addressed the much more serious matters of discrimination, poverty, lack of health care, etc. It just wasn't DONE, Jackie would have been seen as a "bit of a bitch" like Eleanor Roosevelt was.

Contrast Jackie with a more modern counterpart, Princess Diane of the U.K., who went to all kinds of charity and worthy causes, especially for things like the clearing of landmines abandoned after a war. Quite a difference. Things with REAL SUBSTANCE, and everyone loved her the more for it.

There's no doubt that women make fine scientists and programmers (look up the history of Ada), just as today, they make fine athlete's, but they're generally guided away from math and programming careers. Also, they face the problem of being away from their careers while getting their family started.

The world is still more comfortable with it's women pondering their latest shade of eye-liner, than studying Calculus. After many years of that "guidance", all but the brightest are left behind by their male counterparts.

Adak

DaWei

"Their" family? Why doesn't that lazy a-hole that provided the sperm pitch in and take part of the licks? What happened to "our" family?

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Abstraction doesn't make it impossible to write bad code; it makes it possible to write superior code.
Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

Adak

Actually, I was referring to the late-stages of pregnancy, when a woman shouldn't be working hard at a job anyway; the period right after birth, when the woman needs to recover (especially if it was a C section; and the first few months when the mom will (hopefully) be breast feeding.

No casting of aspersions on either sex was intended.

Adak

stevengs

weren't the first programmers women?

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-Steven
"Is this a piece of your brain?" - Basil Fawlty

DaWei

You underestimate the abilities of a woman. Certainly, coding would not be inimicable to one's pregnancy. Unloading a 53' trailer of furniture would be another story, but I don't know many coders of either sex that could do that without whining a lot. Men I've had work for me took off as much time for wimpy reasons as most women take off for pregnancy leave. Women are held back from 'equality' because men have managed to convey that killing the elephant for supper is the tough part, while squatting and dropping a kid is easy, and the li'l suthen belles have helped maintain the myth. If something "just wasn't done!" it's because men and women both fell for the lies promulgated by controllers and manipulators.

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Abstraction doesn't make it impossible to write bad code; it makes it possible to write superior code.
Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

stevengs

hehe. I imagine killing it wasn't as difficult as draggin' it's arse back to the village

it is not just the southern belles that are useless today. i reckon a good portion of men and women today generally don't know how (or want) to do squat. But they all seem to be able to remember that nifty telephone number of someone who does from the millionfold rerun commercials. Long gone are the days when someone would open the hood and even have some faint notion as to what he was lookin' at, but at least he knows what the "in" thing for all the sheep to consume is.

what do you imagine Susan B. Anthony would think of "Clueless" et al?

hehe, you see my daughter is laughing now... but she will likely be pissin' and moanin' when she turns sixteen and finds herself with me in the shop reaming the cylinders and replacing the bushings and piston rings of her vehicle's engine, answering questions about the venturi effect (yes, the engine will be that old), etc. before she hits the road.

__________________
-Steven
"Is this a piece of your brain?" - Basil Fawlty