BOOKS
After listenig to a talk called "Developing Your Voice" by a young woman who,
after two years at Google and a "Quarter Life Crisis", had read "every available book"
on the subject of men and women communicating, and has concluded that developing
one's "voice" and learning to project it, is the most important.
She did not mention any titles but one of her briefly displayed slides was of a slew of book covers.
Some on this topic that I've read in the past, as well as some newly found
(and continue to find and add here), are
- Carol Gilligan's
In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Develeopment
(first published 1982). Her most recent, out in 2011, Joining the Resistance.
She "reflects on the evolution of her thinking and shows how her key ideas were interwoven with her own life experiences.
Her work began with the question of voice: who is speaking to whom, in what body, telling what stories about which relationships?
By listening carefully she heard a voice that had been held in silence, and in the process realized the extent to which we - both women and men -
had been telling false stories about ourselves.
In her subsequent work Gilligan found that adolescent girls resisted pressures to disengage themselves from their honest voices, and by joining their resistance she opened the way for the development of a more humane way of thinking about personal and political relationships.
For the central conviction of her work today - and the central thesis of this book - is that the requisites for love and the requisites for citizenship in a democratic society are one and the same. Both voice and the desire to live in relationships inherent in our human nature, together with the capacity to resist false authority."
..and in 2008, she published what looks to be the most interesting:
The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance and Democracy's Future
-
Deborah Tannen's
Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work, 1995
Gender and Discourse - Essays, 1996
You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, 2001
- Hardball for Women, 2005, by Pat Helm Ph.d.
-
Pushback: How Smart Women Ask--and Stand Up--for What They Want,
by Selena Rezvani, 2012
-
Unlocking Your Brilliance: Smart Strategies for Women to Thrive in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math
by Karen Purcell, 2012
-
Genderspeak: Personal Effectiveness in Gender Communication,
by Diana K. Ivy, 2011
-
How to Say It For Women: Communicating with Confidence and Power
by Phyllis Mindell, 2011
-
Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation--and Positive Strategies for Change,
by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, 2003/2007
-
Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering,
and Mathematics Faculty, 2010, by the Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty Committee
on Gender Differences in the Careers of Science (Author), and the
Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Women in Science (Author), Nat'l Research Council (Author)
-
Gender Codes: Why Women Are Leaving Computing, Thomas J. Misa, Editor, 2010
The computing profession faces a serious gender crisis.
Today, fewer women enter computing than anytime in the past 25 years.
This book provides an unprecedented look at the history of women and men in computing, detailing how the computing profession emerged and matured, and how the field became male coded.
Women's experiences working in offices, education, libraries, programming, and government are examined for clues on how and where women succeeded, and where they struggled. It also provides a unique international dimension with studies examining the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, Norway, and Greece.
Scholars in history, gender/women's studies, and science and technology studies, as well as department chairs and hiring directors will find this volume illuminating.
-
Why so Few Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (AAUW),
by Dr. Catherine Hill, 2010
The AAUW was selected by the National Science Foundation to study the reason women make up such a small percentage of the workforce in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. This book is the conclusion of the research. A truly fascinating perspective.
-
No One Path: Perspectives on Leadership from a Decade of Women in Technology Award
Winners, by the Washington-DC-based 'Women in Technology Group', 2009 -
personal stories from nearly 50 women in the technology industry
-
Women in Information Technology - Research on Underrepresentation,
Joanne Cohoon and William Aspray (Editors), 2008
-
Athena Unbound: The Advancement of Women in Science and Technology,
by Henry Etzkowitz, Carol Kemelgor, Brian Uzzi, 2000
Why are there still so few female scientists? Despite the scientific ethos of universalism and inclusion, women continue to experience real social inequities as they struggle to gain recognition in the scientific community. Based on extensive interviews and backed by quantitative analysis, this compelling work exposes the hidden barriers, subtle exclusions, and unwritten rules that confront women at every juncture along the scientific career path--from childhood to retirement.
Through vivid personal accounts the authors offer an illuminating and sobering view of the effects these obstacles have on the personal and professional lives of women. They argue that women can succeed in the scientific workplace by successfully managing "social capital," those networks and relationships scientists rely on for professional support and new ideas. This benchmark volume is vital reading for all scientists and social scientists--both male and female--and for women considering a scientific career.
- A three-volume history of Women Scientists in America, by Margaret W. Rossiter (Cornell) (yow, $117)
... 29 years before Larry Summers resigned as Harvard's president in the wake of a no-confidence vote by Harvard faculty that resulted .. in part from ... a 2005 speech at an Economics conference, in which he suggested that the under-representation of women in science and engineering could be due to a "different availability of aptitude at the high end," and less to patterns of discrimination and socialization" and later "stood by his comments and .. regretted if they were misunderstood".... and that " that his speech was a "purely academic exploration of hypotheses." ....
Women and Biology at Yale: Winifred Doane's "Sexisms Satirized" (1976)
I knew a Biology professor at Yale,
Dr. Winifred Doane, who was one of the very few, if not the only,
woman on the Yale Biology faculty at the time (women were first admittted as
undergraduates in
1969*).
She wrote a little cartoon book called
"Sexisms Satirized: Quotes from the Biological Literature".
We cringed and laughed at the absurdity of the quotes but they had a strong impact on me.
One that I clearly remember stated that women who want study science and go to schools
with a high male:female student ratio, are motivated by wanting "to avoid being compared
with the prettier members of their sex".
When I find my copy,which I'm sure I still have,
I'll scan it.
I can find only a few references to it on the web:
Abe Books had a copy that is no longer available.
Google Books shows it in
End Note 59 of ...
Feminism in Twentieth-Century Science, Technology, and Medicine
by Angela N. H. Creager, Elizabeth Lunbeck, Londa Schiebinger, 2001
This book is by historians at Princeton, and it is about the impact of femininst theory on the research subjects
themselves (anthropology, for example), not, it appears, about the experience of women researchers.
What useful changes has feminism brought to science? Feminists have enjoyed success in their
efforts to open many fields to women as participants.
But the effects of feminism have not been restricted to altering employment and professional
opportunities for women.
The essays in this volume explore how feminist theory has had a
direct impact on research in the biological and social sciences, in medicine, and in technology,
often providing the impetus for fundamentally changing the theoretical underpinnings and practices
of such research. In archaeology, evidence of women's hunting activities suggested by spears found
in women's graves is no longer dismissed; computer scientists have used feminist epistemologies
for rethinking the human-interface problems of our growing reliance on computers. Attention to
women's movements often tends to reinforce a presumption that feminism changes institutions
through critique-from-without.
This volume reveals the potent but not always visible transformations
feminism has brought to science, technology, and medicine from within.
* Note:
A decade into co-education, rampant student assault and harassment by faculty became the impetus for
the trailblazing lawsuit Alexander v. Yale. While unsuccessful in the courts, the legal reasoning
behind the case changed the landscape of sex discrimination law and resulted in the establishment of
Yale's Grievance Board and the Yale Women's Center. In March 2011 a Title IX complaint was filed
against Yale. (Wikepedia: Yale#Women)
-
The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers,
and the Politics of Technical Expertise (History of Computing)
by Nathan L. Ensmenger, 2010
"This is a book about the computer revolution of the mid-20th century and the people who made it possible. Unlike most histories of computing, it is not a book about machines, inventors, or entrepreneurs. Instead, it tells the story of the vast but largely anonymous legions of computer specialists - programmers, systems analysts, and other software developers - who transformed the electronic computer from a scientific curiosity into the defining technology of the modern era.
Known alternatively as "whiz kids," "hackers," and "gurus," this new breed of technical specialists were alternately admired for their technical prowess and despised for their eccentric mannerisms and the disruptive potential of the technologies they developed. As the systems that they built became evermore powerful and ubiquitous, these specialists became the focus of a series of critiques of the social and organizational impact of electronic computing. To many of their contemporaries, it seemed the "computer boys" were taking over, not just in the corporate setting, but also in government, politics, and society in general. Nathan Ensmenger traces the rise to power of the computer expert in modern American society.
He follows the history of computer programming
from its origins as low-status, largely feminized labor in the secret wartime computing projects
through its reinvention as a glamorous "black art" practiced by "computer cowboys" in the 1950s
through its rationalization in the 1960s as the academic discipline of computer science and the software engineering profession.
His rich and nuanced portrayal of the men and women (a surprising number of the "computer boys" were, in fact, female) who built their careers around the novel technology of electronic computing explores issues of power, identity, and expertise that have only become more significant to our increasingly computerized society.
His detailed analysis of the pervasive "software crisis" rhetoric of the late 1960s shows how seemingly technical debates about how to manage large-scale software development projects reflected deeper concerns about the growing power and influence of technical specialists in corporate, academic, and governmental organizations.
In his recasting of the drama of the computer revolution through the eyes of its principle revolutionaries, Ensmenger reminds us that the computerization of modern society was not an inevitable process driven by impersonal technological or economic imperatives, but was rather a creative, contentious, and above all, fundamentally human development."