IT: A Man's World?

I ran into an article today about reactions to a presentation at a Ruby conference titled "CouchDB + Ruby: Perform Like a Pr0n Star."  Despite being unfamiliar with Ruby and its "rock star persona," it's interesting to see the reactions to this.  A few call this offensive and misogynist.  Others repeat that sentiment that because that's what they feel they should say.  And yet others are offended that these "feminists" are offended, saying there was nothing wrong with the presentation and who cares about women in IT anyway?

I watched the presentation.  It's unprofessional and gave me a low opinion on the conference, the presenter, and the technology/company in question.  (My opinion of Ruby/Rails itself is still largely nonexistant due to my unfamiliarity of it.)  If I were one of the six women at the conference this was presented at, I would have been highly uncomfortable, but if the technology was worth it, not enough to leave.

But some interesting comments about women's role in IT have come up in this.  One of the comments (from the presenter of the presentation in question, in fact) was this:

Ask women why they are not interested in joining the IT world. I seriously doubt the main answer would be because people talk about sex from a male perspective or make macho jokes.

Things I've heard from female friends not in IT:

• "I can't work without other girls."
• "Isn't it weird working with all men?" (One of the most frequently asked questions when I moved from gift shop [mostly girls] to IT [all guys].)
  
• "All the computer nerds I know are creepy guys."

So, some of the girls are leaving or not even getting into IT because of some of the men they know in these departments.  But if asked directly, they'll say because it's boring (nevermind that they likely use computers all the time anyway).

Another comment:

This is exactly the reason why women are treated in another way than men are in the workplace. Women have this ‘woohoo, look at me, i”m a woman” attitude which is generally just a way of drawing attention to itself.

I try not to bring up the fact that I'm a girl at work.  Usually it's other people who work here, who laugh at them "making the girl do all the work."  I don't complain about doing heavy lifting or getting dirty.  Sometimes the guys in the department (especially when I first started) are very polite, catching themselves when they curse, apologizing for any small impoliteness, making sure they carry the heavy stuff and do the heavy work.  Othertimes they're all sitting around, talking about relationships or crude jokes.  I'm fairly insensitive to this, though I do know that I probably should be offended at some of it (really, I just see it as an interesting look at the male mind).  Sometimes they'll realize what they're talking about and apologize.

Honestly, I'm glad I'm "one of the guys" in this case; I don't want to be treated differently because of my gender, either for better or for worse.  I'd rather be seen as a competent IT worker instead of a competent female IT worker.