Professor Sharon Meraz

Professor Sharon Meraz’s lecture focused on the decreasing number of women in the computer science field and women’s struggles on being taken seriously in the technology world. She says there are less and less women in the computer science field, which she calls the incredible shrinking pipeline. Also, she talks about how there are male bloggers and female bloggers. The female bloggers are not given the same value as the male bloggers.  According to Sharon Meraz, men are taken seriously when talking about politics, etc. on their blogs, but women are expected to write about cooking and cleaning. She talks about the struggles that women have to go through, and how some have to use sexual appeal to be taken seriously and to get people to view their blogs. I found her lecture very interesting and I can relate to her lecture through some of my personal experiences.

The most interesting aspect of her lecture was when she talked about how women who are in the technology business are not expected to do the coding, or the “hard stuff”, but the design aspect of the websites. In our class lectures and Chapter 2 of our book, we discussed person perception, schemas, and stereotyping. This chapter and our class lectures corresponded to what Sharon Meraz was lecturing about. When the professor talked about how girls are expected to do the design, immediately I thought it was a stereotype. We grow up in a culture and society where it teaches us how to be feminine and masculine. For example, in class we talked about the nurture approach which states the way we communicate verbally is learned, and we had the example of girls being told to cross their legs when they sit. We, as humans learn these behaviors from society, and this contributes to our personal perception. We have our personal perception and we organize and perceive our messages according to our schemas. Girls are taught to play with barbies, and boys are thought to play videogames. When Sharon Meraz was talking about how men are more expected to work in the field of technology, it made me realize that this was a type of schema. We expect that men are more likely to work in that field, just because they are men and it is seen widely as a male occupation.

I can relate to the shrinking pipeline approach, because one of my best friends was an example of this pipeline. My friend was going to college for computer science. I recall her telling me almost all the people in her class were males. She felt uncomfortable and like she did not belong. She barely had any female teachers. Unfortunately, she switched her major because she felt she could not make it in the industry. Also, she said she felt that she would be treated less than males, and would have a harder time finding a job then a male graduating with a computer science degree.

Another aspect of Sharon Meraz’s lecture that got my attention was when she talked about the game Diner Dash, which I have played a couple of times. I thought it was interesting that she states that it is a girl cooking, cleaning, multi-tasking, etc. Games intended for males are more violent, there is a lot of shooting and blowing things up. She says that women are expected to always be working and not have that leisure time. But males do have that leisure time. This made me relate to my own culture, because in Bosnia (where I’m from), this virtual diner dash game is in some form a reality. In Bosnian culture, the girl is supposed to work, do laundry, do the cooking, and do the cleaning, while the male only has to work a job, and enjoy his time when he gets off work.

Sharon Meraz also talked about how op-ed blogs are viewed differently when written by females and males. When females write an op-ed, they are seen generally as bitches she says. That stuck out to me, because I was watching MTV, and there was a segment on Nicki Minaj’s life. Both, Nicki Minaj and the professor said a very similar thing. Nicki Minaj’s statement was when a man acts like a boss and tries to get things done, he is seen just as that- a boss, but when a woman tries to act like a boss and get things done, she’s seen as a bitch. This is a perfect example of how both sexes can do the same thing, but people perceive what they do and say in different aspects because of their gender, and because of the way they were brought up in their culture and society.