I found this fair-condition softcover at a local thrift shop and thought it sounded interesting: personal essays from a variety of women who've confronted bias in spheres often assumed to be male-dominated, including video games, software companies, and science labs. While many of the accounts include examples of bias or outright hostility, most of them include more upbeat notes, and some triumphant examples of claiming one's own place.

One of the more infuriating-to-me entries was "Dial-up desire", in which the writer described how her mother explicitly told her to deal with the "mean girls" by trying out for cheerleading and acting like a "normal" girl so they'd be her friends. (I mean, WTF???) But the writer points out that this is when she realized how clueless - or at least off-base - her mother was, a liberating concept.

Another entry is by a trans-woman, who was able to experience gender bias on both sides of her transition.

There's the writer who always wanted to be a princess - but not the pretty-dresses-and-being-rescued kind, the actual ruler-of-a-nation kind; she managed an amazing coup in a MMORPG and achieved her dream. Warrior princess indeed!

Another gamer-girl entry that amused me: in "Dreaming in Unison" the writer describes her first stint in a D&D game with five male physics undergrads; her chaotic neutral character, having been treated rudely by the other characters, opted to take advantage of being left on watch to kill and loot all the other PCs! I wouldn't have liked to be on the receiving end of that, and the line between chaotic neutral and chaotic evil was a bit hazy there, but the anecdote was entertaining.

I'm adding this to the Anthology Assortment bookbox, which will be on its way to its next stop soon. Hope someone enjoys it!

Chosen from the Anthology Assortment Bookbox.

An interesting read. But I did start skimming and only reading select stories after the first section of the book. It’s not that the writing was bad or uninteresting, it was more that I get too emotionally charged and that many stories are very similar (which goes to show what a wide-spread problem it was and still is for women in the tech field (and beyond)).

I saw some reviews on other sites where people gave this book negative reviews because many of the stories tell where the authors ultimately gave up on their chosen paths. I can understand that a bit as they wanted something more uplifting. But these are real stories. Several are uplifting but some show the women choosing other paths because they were unhappy in the work cultures. But I think some may have changed paths in an alternate reality where sexism in tech didn’t exist because that is what people do—they grow and evolve. I’m not saying that is what happened here at all just that you shouldn’t judge and be disappointed in their choices. These are real people in real situations making real choices. It’s easy to say ‘I’d do it differently’ or ‘they made weak choices’ but you don’t actually know what you’d do in those situations until you were actually in them. I’ve been witness to strong women saying how they’d react to things and I’d think ‘wow! I envy her. She is so strong I wish I could be like her.’ And then I’d see them in a situation where they should have been strong and stood their ground only to see them cave and accept the situation and, in some situations, change themselves completely for someone or for the situation. Again, these are real women baring their souls to tell you their real stories.

Edit: added pictures to this entry and the last to show a park near where I live that was dedicated to computer pioneer Grace Murray Hopper. You can see a little bit of the River House Apartments in the background where she lived. The park is a nice ‘pocket’ park across from Pentagon Row.

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One of the starting books for the Science & Technology Bookbox!

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Removing from the Science and Tech BookBox.

Putting in the Bookbox of Intentional Variety #7

She's a girl with a pencil pack,

and it's pink
and far more aerodynamic.