Monday, October 11, 2004

Women Hackers

Caution: I risk being called "MCP" (Male Chauvinist Pig) in the following article.

I always wondered what explains the lack of female hackers(or why there are so few of them). The last one I read of, and probably the most well known one is Susan Thunders, and she is described in the book "Cyberpunk" by Katie Hafner and John Markoff. I havent met any in my personal life. Are woman put off by hacking or what?

Ironically the first ever programmer was a woman called Lady Ada Lovelace. (The daughter of the poet Lord Byron). Even the word "Computer" during the WW2 times was exclusively referred to all the women who used do the clerical duty of carrying out the computations on those gigantic valve based numerical calculators like ENIAC,EDVAC,UNIVAC,etc. They were instrumental in the cracking of the "Enigma" code.How come they got lost in their way then..

Of course LinuxChix is a good start in the traditional sense of linux hacking but whenever a cyber crime happens its almost always a young male who is behind it.Is it something the way the brains or wired or something thats the effect of the Y-chromosome?

Back in India we have this prestigious engineering/technology geekdom which can be entered upon slaying the dragon called IIT-JEE where in the last few years the top 10 ranks were almost always dominated by male and the female numbers (if any) were insignificant in the time scale of decades.Hmmm.. What Gives?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like females decided to help the humanity by serving the needful. Look at the top 10 ranks of AIIMS and other medical entrance exams.

Paddy said...

Ohh! Anonymous Feller.Please carefully read the focus of the article.It is NOT about where women do well but rather WHY they are not visible in the intensely focussed activity like Hacking,Programming and other relevant technology disciplines which require you to hold "n" cards in your mind and deducing the n+1 th card's place.

Well.AIIMS exam could be taken by Deep Blue and beat the crap out of everbody.So you are telling me that Women are good at memorizing stuff and reproducing it when demanded...

Let me tell you a secret of Women..Its their intuition and NOT logic that saves them and makes them special.

Any more ideas??