We all love Top 10 lists – they can be fun, informational and succinct – like a really good parable or story. A recent Top 10 list on CNet has, however, really missed the mark: Top ten girl geeks. I think there’s some humour in there and perhaps some basic research and genuine admiration. But I think in this case the list has done a disservice to women who are trying to topple that horrible trend of geeks and computers being so strictly gendered as masculine and feminine respectively.
If the list of the top 10 geek girls in history is so sparse that the author needed to include a fictional character, a cartoon character, and a Hollwood geek-lust icon then one of two things is wrong:
- There is a serious lack of role models and innovators to choose from
- The author simply didn’t want to present an honest list
Seeing as how there are some potential list members missing from this list, I tend to think that the first possibily – that there is a lack of people to list – is not the problem.
So that leaves us with the option that the author didn’t want to make a genuine list. Perhaps it was deemed too staid and boring if there wasn’t something pop-culture-related on the list? I’m not sure of the motivations.
However I am sure that this list gives me the impression that when discussing women and computers it is OK to put them on the same level as fictional characters and cartoons. People say that the computing industry isn’t hostile to women anymore? Really?
On a related note I was elated to see that the Gnome project created a women-only opportunity over the summer in relation to the Google Summer Of Code project. Kudos to them for standing up and addressing the elephant in the room, and then for actually doing something about it!
It is kind of funny/sad that the list can be full of information about great women who have advanced science and yet the author includes Lisa Simpson and Paris Hilton. Unfortunately I think the author or his editors thinks that we, the general public, need to see Paris Hilton in everything in order to make it interesting.
Hopefully at least one young girl reads the article and walks away with a better understanding of some of the real women in the history of science.
Another wish would be that at least one boy reads it and walks away with a better understanding of some of the real women in the history of science. The masculine side of the coin may be more neglected than the feminine today.