Females in the community.

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 24 March 2016 at 04:05:53 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Wednesday, 23 March 2016 at 10:46:22 UTC, QAston wrote:
>> I could point to the building you're sitting in. Most likely 
>> made almost exclusively by males.
>
> LOL. I happened to spend most the day today with a group of 
> women... building something. (I was there too, of course, but 
> I'm practically one of the sisters myself and they all did more 
> work than me anyway. The other five are all non-controversially 
> women.)
>
> I read this message out loud to them. We all got a good laugh.

Yes, it was funny to me as my mother worked as an industrial 
designer in the 1960s and designed a top-of-the-line radio 
(within a group of men) called Tandberg Huldra 9. She spent a lot 
of time on the backlight, and came up with acrylic backlight as a 
novel solution (at that point in time). She wanted the front to 
be all black, but the head of the company didn't want that, so it 
was all aluminium coloured like the top image:

http://nrhf.no/Tandberg/TR%20Radio/Tandberg%20Huldra/T'Huldra-9.html

After she quit Tandberg released the version with only the bottom 
half in black...  Which looks a bit silly. But guess what, some 
decades later audiophile equipment was black aluminium and 
acrylic backlights was standard... I am pretty sure that there 
are many "invisible" women involved with the products we use, but 
maybe men are spending more effort at getting their name 
published. Incidentally, she had to correct a newspaper earlier 
this year that wrongly attributed her design to a male designer 
(he was hired after she quit)...

Later when she was teaching furniture design/interior architects, 
most students were female, so they tried to get some men in as 
well in order to get a more mixed group. Most educators know that 
having some diversity in a group is good for the social dynamics. 
The interaction in mixed groups are usually more interesting than 
all-male or all-female groups.


> Y'all should stick to arguing about the color of the bikeshed.

Maybe or maybe not, but meta discussions are important for 
changing norms within a forum. If a given tone means that some 
women hesitate to join in, it probably also means that a group of 
men also hestitate to join in. Adjusting the tone might mean that 
more people will participate which would be better for all.