Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!xanth!mcnc!ecsvax!tittle%glacier.ics.uci.edu@PARIS.ICS.UCI.EDU
From: tittle%glacier.ics.uci.edu@PARIS.ICS.UCI.EDU (Cindy Tittle)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: Women and Usenet
Message-ID: <6220@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 12 Jan 89 04:41:05 GMT
Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu
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Approved: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts)
Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu
Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu


I don't really know *why* more women don't post to the net.  But
I can tell you where I am coming from and the impressions I have
gotten on being a female poster on Usenet.

I am a graduate student in the Computer Science department here;
as such I have an account on our networked unix system.  And about
a year ago, one of the graduate students in my class arranged a
feed site and installed the usenet software.

There are about 100 graduate students here, and about 15-20 of us are
women.  As far as I know, I am the only woman who posts regularly from
this site.   (This will probably change once I get into the thesis
phase, <grin>.)  There are assorted CS undergraduates (~500 or so?) and
"easy access" accounts available to anyone on this campus who also
have usenet access.

On the "neutral" groups -- like rec.arts.startrek, rec.food.cooking,
comp.ibm.pc.binaries (where there is a very specific topical content)
I have never experienced any problems...

Only in the "polarized" groups -- like soc.men, soc.women, etc, have 
I *seen* (but not personally experienced) a lot of overt discrimination
on the female posters.  I don't have much trouble, but then I'm the 
one who posted the "No Flames Experiment" in lieu of the "No Male Postings"
proposal, which I thought unneccessary.  But a lot of women who speak out
get stomped on, and I mean stomped on.  There is very little critical
discussion of views, which would be one thing, and a lot of name-calling,
which doesn't get much of anywhere.  In other words, a man will post
something, some point of view perhaps, and others will take it up and
discuss it, point other things out, ask questions to further clarify
the original posting, etc.  When women post views, quite often they
are then "bashed" in which people call them "man-haters" or completely
illogical, etc, without any *discussion* to their views.  This isn't
universal, of course, but it *is* a general thing.

My opinion as to why there are so many female posters?  I don't think
that there are that many with access, and then those with access arent'
necessarily interested in using it.  I see very few females in my field,
and I imagine that it is mostly from the CS departments in the universities,
and computer related jobs that the usenet population is drawn.  I know
that there are public access sites, such as Portal, but you have to
be aware of these services to use them.   Perhaps in future years with
more females in the computer fields and more females *using* computers,
we will see a corresponding rise in the number of female posters.

--Cindy