I’ve been thinking a lot about software engineering for women lately.  In that earlier blog post, I referenced Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, a long research report that hits home for me since I am a software engineer with a degree in mathematics.

I’ve also been reading Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein.  I’m not finished yet, but so far, it’s a walk through a lot of research about our culture and how we raise our little girls, as seen through the lens of Orenstein raising her own little girl.  In one passage, she references Packaging Girlhood by Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown¹, and says this about female identity for girls:

She can be “for the boys” — dress for them, perform sexually for them, play the supportive friend or girlfriend.  Or she can be “one of the boys,” an outspoken, feisty girl who hangs with the guys and doesn’t take shit.  The latter starts out as the kindergarten girl who is “independent and can think for herself.” … The trouble is, Brown and Lamb say, being “one of the boys” is as constricting as the other option, in part because it discourages friendship with other girls: a girl who is “one of the boys” separates herself from her female peers, puts them down, is ashamed or scornful of anything associated with femininity.

Reading that, I recognise my own childhood.  I was one of the boys, and I’ve never been particularly good at forming friendships with women.  Today, most of my friends are male.  I’ve always written that off to being an engineer.  Most of my professional relationships are with men, and professional relationships occasionally become friendships.  But it’s not as though there aren’t other women around.  Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to assume that it’s simply that I’m an engineer.