An additional category exists of behavior that is not directly based on sex but which nevertheless discourages women. While attempts at changing sexist behavior are partially effective, there seems little that can be done about this category.
Through no real fault on any side, a woman sometimes feels out of place being one of the few women in a semi-social gathering with a group of men, even in the absence of any behavior directly related to the sex of the participants. One reason is that, in our culture, men are often interested in activities or topics that women tend not to relate to.
A female graduate student complained about her experiences as a teaching assistant (TA) for a course in a particularly male-dominated area of computer science. She wrote:
Perhaps because the percentage of males is often high, men tend to dominate non-academic discussions with topics of interest to them, such as sports and cars, topics which women are often uninformed about or uninterested in. The resulting inability to participate in discussions can make it difficult for women to bond socially, and often leads women to feel outright alienated... This is exactly what happened to me at each T.A.--faculty meeting.Another female computer science graduate student described a similar experience:
My first summer at [a certain computer company], I worked in a group that was otherwise all male. While I got along okay with them and never had any behavior to complain about, I didn't socialize with the group. For example, every day after lunch, they would go outside to `shoot some hoops' [play basketball], an activity that I just did not relate to. For my next summer, I joined a group that had other female programmers and a female manager. I was much happier in that group. We would have barbecues, celebrate people's birthdays, and socialize in other ways that I related to better than `shooting hoops'. My third summer, I chose to return to this group and not to the first one or to find a new group.However, when she casually discussed her social dissatisfaction in an exit interview with the department head, he pointed out that, coming from a different country, he did not relate to American sports either. This raises the important point, which holds for all examples in this section, that dissatisfaction with certain activities is not strictly divided by sex. There are individual women who enjoy sports and are better at them than some men. Sex-based differences are a tendency, not a fixed rule. Sex-correlated preferences in our society, however, are strong enough that these phenomena tend to work against women (or whoever is underrepresented in a group).
Additionally, female group members do not always feel comfortable joining male group members who go out drinking together. Not only might they not enjoy drinking, but some men are inclined to making lewd remarks after a few drinks. Thus, there are often times when women feel unable to take part in activities to which, as group members, they are invited.
Another problem is that some men do not feel comfortable socializing in a professional manner with a woman, as this anecdote illustrates:
I was ... the first full-time woman faculty member in my department. There really was difficulty among my male colleagues in associating with a woman as a colleague. I think they literally did not know how to talk to me, and as a consequence often just did not talk to me. They would ignore me. They would not invite me to have lunch with them, which was a very ordinary experience there ... they would walk past my office and ask the next person and never ask me. [Years later] I asked one of my colleagues why this was so. And he said, `You know what would happen if I asked you to lunch ... People would talk' ([Clark et al 1986, pages 36--37,] in [Sandler 1986, pages 7--8,]).
The language that women use often differs from that of men in subtle ways. As discussed in [Hall 1982, page 9,], specific constructions appear more frequently in women's speech than in men's:
If, for example, a woman student begins her comments hesitantly and uses many qualifiers, she may be immediately perceived by her teacher and by her classmates as unfocused and unsure of what she wants to say. Her `overly polite' style may seem to `invite' interruptions by, or inattention from, both teacher and other students. Indeed, even the most insightful points made in this manner --- especially by a woman --- may be taken less seriously than the identical points made by a man or delivered in a more `masculine' assertive style [Hall 1982, pages 9--10,].See also [Lakoff 1975].
A large part of Jenifer Tidwell's report on the Garden [Tidwell 1990] describes how men and women react differently to the same treatment, due to their expectations of communication styles:
The persons I interviewed did not believe that women were treated worse than the men were, nor vice versa, when I asked them directly. (`Everyone is treated equally badly,' said one male informant.) Yet some informants, both male and female, commented that women may not be able to deal with the Garden's harshness as well as the men do --- not because of any inherent weakness, but simply because they have not been brought up with the same expectations of `toughness' (in one man's terms) that men have. Furthermore, it seems more acceptable for anyone there --- male or female --- to try to solve all one's problems by oneself than to habitually ask for help. All of the women that I interviewed commented on this expectation of independence (whereas almost none of the men did); they did not like it [Tidwell 1990, page 9,].Tidwell writes that the attitude is that ``[what could be construed as] harassment may just be social incompetence'' [Tidwell 1990, page 15, brackets in original,].
Anecdotal evidence suggests that women tend to be more sensitive than men to general obnoxiousness [Widnall 1988, page 1744,]. When a female computer science student told me that a male TA had been inexcusably rude to her in front of the class, I looked up the student evaluations of the TA and found this comment, by another student:
[He] knows his stuff cold, but he's too rude. Honestly, once you humble yourself and tolerate this, he is an excellent source of help. I owe a lot to him.A student unused or unwilling to being treated rudely would not be able to interact with such individuals.
When I sent electronic mail to a group of women asking for criticism on the first version of this report, one woman replied that my request was unlikely to draw many responses. Instead of asking for ``criticism'', she told me, I should have asked for ``feedback to help me improve the report'', something women would feel more comfortable supplying.
Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution extensively describes the hacker culture, including the hackers' apathy and even antipathy toward women.
Maybe it would have been different if there had been more women around TMRC [Tech Model Railroad Club] and the ninth floor --- the few that did hang around paired off with hackers.... There were not too many of these women, since outsiders, male or female, were often put off by the group: the hackers talked strangely, they had bizarre hours, they ate weird food, and they spent all their time thinking about computers [Levy 1984, page 72,].Levy goes on to describe the poor hygiene of one of the most admired hackers, a young man who did not bathe [Levy 1984, page 73,].
Male computer environments that exclude women have occurred as early as in preschool:
Even in preschool, males dominate the school computers. In one preschool, the boys literally took over the computer, creating a computer club and refusing to let the girls either join the computer club or have access to the computer. When the teachers intervened and set up a time schedule for sharing computer access, the girls spent as much time on the computer as the boys [Kiesler et al 1985, page 454,].
While it is not clear that one can justify the stereotype of the
engineer and computer hacker as socially backwards, women are deterred
by the environment.
(See [Markoff 1989], for example.)
Additionally, whether the stereotype is accurate is to some extent
irrelevant: If females believe that to study or work with computers
requires hanging around socially incompetent nerds, the stereotype,
true or false, may influence their decision.