Gendered Communication

            Sharon Meraz presented the lecture that I watched, titled Gendering the Internet. What I connected to automatically is having a brother who was a computer science minor in college and my dad who has worked in IT for pretty much his whole career. That’s why I found it funny when Professor Meraz mentioned that when a woman does go into a computer science field, it is most often the result of having male family in the field. While I’m sure this is the case in many instances, this was not my experience. I didn’t find or face discrimination in the limited experiences I have had personally with computer science, but then again I have never had a particular interest in pursuing this field.

            This lecture connected to what we read about in chapter two of Human Communication about person perception. When addressing women bloggers, Meraz discussed how women often have to use their sexuality to gain any sort of real recognition. This related to the section in chapter two about the significance of physical attractiveness in communication. While the computer world doesn’t actually involve physical interaction with others, attractiveness, or perceived attractiveness, is still a central component of online interactions.  Chapter two also discussed gender-linked roles. The placement of men and women into specific roles often fuels perceptions, such as the idea that men are better suited for the computer science field.

            I also found Meraz’s lecture relatable to chapter three of the text and the discussion about male and female language use. Human Communication touches on the concepts of report and rapport talk and how men are more prone to report, and women rapport. I found this to be comparable to how Meraz mentioned that there is a notion that women write too emotionally. Emotional writing would connect more so to rapport than report talk. Rapport talk and emotional writing are also more readily associated with women and presented in a negative context. However, I don’t believe that this always has to necessarily be viewed as a bad characteristic.

            In some ways I feel ill equipped to fully address the discrimination concerns that women face in fields such as computer science. I do believe the topic is relevant and there is factual information supporting the claims. At the same time, I was brought up with the mentality that I can pursue any field I so choose, whether male dominated or not. This isn’t meant to trivialize the challenges of others or say that I never have or never will face discrimination because of my gender. I believe it is important to be aware of gendered communication so that the issues pertaining to this topic can be addressed further.