Glencora Borradaile » women

Warm and fuzzy and orange all over

Glencora — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:05:30 +0000

As seen at the Women’s Center on campus at Oregon State University (in the spirit of … is powered by Orange).

Feminism is still needed

Glencora — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:58:12 +0000

Many blogs have already piped up on the THE article on the deadly sins of academia (thanks to Gordon Wilfong for first directing me to it). The article isn’t entirely at fault and meant to be in good fun. The section on Lust, though, by Terence Kealey, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham contains such gems that I am sure I need not editorialize:

Normal girls – more interested in abs than in labs, more interested in pecs than specs, more interested in triceps than tripos – will abjure their lecturers for the company of their peers, but nonetheless, most male lecturers know that, most years, there will be a girl in class who flashes her admiration and who asks for advice on her essays. What to do?

Enjoy her! She’s a perk.

I would like to point out, though, the language he uses in his rant:

[T]he universities are where the male scholars and the female acolytes are. [...] The fault lies with the females. The myth is that an affair between a student and her academic lover represents an abuse of his power.

While I haven’t personally crossed paths with such overt comments as by Kealy (I have come very close though), the stereotype that men are thinkers and women are not still exists. Feminism advocates equal rights and equal opportunities for women. It is our responsibility to create an academic environment that is welcoming to all people, regardless of race, gender or economic means.

Why blog?

Glencora — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:55:54 +0000

Bill Gasarch asked me to make a statement about my blog and in responding to him, I realized I might as well post it here.

This blog will likely be YATB (yet another theory blog) – hopefully I will have something new and interesting to say. I’d been subscribing to the Theory of Computing Blog Aggregator for some time now (a tool I am very thankful for), but of the 20 or so blogs it contains, Sorelle Friedler’s is the only one by a woman. If we want to balance the gender inequity in our field, we need to get more women into the system. If we raise the profile of the women already in TCS (or CS or math or engineering), then perhaps it will seem more desirable to undecided female high school and undergraduate students.

I can’t remember the reference, but someone pointed out on a TCS blog that a particular program committee was rife with TCS bloggers, so yes, my motivation is also selfish. I am hoping that this blog will gain me exposure, particularly in TCS, and garner me advice. After all, I’m on my own out here. Already it feels less lonely.

So I’m not sure what I will blog about. It will likely be a mix of technical posts and posts about my professional life. I will feed the TCS-related posts to the ToC blog aggregator.