[ILUG-SOCIAL] women in ilug...

[Kathryn Cassidy]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 11:25:22PM +0100, Paul Jakma wrote:
> your post is completely useless because obviously no women will ever
> have found ilug / linux.ie.

Damn, if only I could find my way down to the admin room I could get
you back for that.

Actually that whole navigation thing intrigues me, I know women who
are incredible navigators.  My sister can sniff out north, she's way
better than my brother or I.  And I know that she gets that from my
dad who can do the same, so it's not sex-linked in the genetic sense
of the term.  What I don't know is whether there were particular
environmental factors which made her into super-navigator which
somehow didn't apply by the time my brother and I were learning
to navigate, or if my brother and I missed out on the navigating
gene.  (note: we're not crap at navigating, we're just not as
good as my sister or my dad).

Apparently Inuit (I think) women perform just as well as the average
male subject in these tests, this would be because there is an obvious
advantage to being able to navigate in the 'male' fashion (not using
landmarks, but having a good grasp of direction) when you're stuck in
the snow all the time.  However, they're an isolated, potentially
genetically unique group, so we can't make any generalisations
about women as a whole based on that info.  It could be that in Inuits
the ability to navigate is not sex-linked but still genetic, or it
could be that Inuit women are encouraged to navigate from an early
age while your typical American/European female is actively discouraged
from navigating on their own (or rather from going out on their own, 'cos
they could get attacked or whatever) and therefore they grow up
unable to navigate well.  We'd need studies which looked at the female
children of Inuit parents now living in urban situations and see
whether they have the same ability to navigate.

One other point, I'm pretty sure that the average male would
lose in a navigating contest with my sister.  My point here is
that I suspect that a lot of you are not super-navigators,
you're probably fairly well practiced at having to navigate, so
you probably do ok, but I'd guess that you're more likely to
match my navigating skills rather than my sisters.  Or do you
all think that you are super-navigators?

me.