Re: [-empyre-] Women in Art, and Technology

[isabel saij <info@saij-netart.net>]

There are several elements in your question Regina :
-my personal story 
-the relation mother/daughter as described by Barrie
-the current situation for girls wanting to study in a technical field
 
In my story, no question of permission : my mother decided for me (I was
14/15) that I would be afraid of the boys (!!??) during the technical and
mechanical workshops (10 hours of practice weekly) + 30 hours general
studies (a lot of maths = 40 hours weekly).
With this strange argument I was sent to scientifical studies and then to
literature and philosophy. Note : I was never afraid of my father and
brother.
Other remarks :
technical studies didn't come as an option for my brother, because he
didn't have the ability.
Was my education so typical ? I never played with dolls (had bakelite
dolls any sensuality ? not at all compared with teddy bears) but
my young sister did play with dolls.
Sometimes I cut their hairs and gave them a bath, just to see...
how they swam or not !
To play with toy cars (with suspension) was much more attractive !
Even my grandmother -very strict and conservative- understood that
dolls were definitively nothing for me, and she bought me toy cars
every thursday...
 
I read with interest what Barrie wrote. It's obviously a family
where children are loved and encouraged in their development
without regard of gender. That's great !
A key point is the relation parent/children. A child is loved
or not. In my case my best enemy is my mother.
And my father never understood the situation, he was weak
and unconcerned.

What is the situation for girls nowadays ? I don't know.
My impression is that the situation is better.
I would appreciate to get reactions/information/studies
on that point.
The last question is to know if a book/discussion about
women and technology is useful.
I think it is. Some women showed the way : Marie Curie as
a scientist (don't forget she was a foreigner in France)
Simone de Beauvoir as a writer,... Recently on "Arte"
(french/german TV broadcaster with a cultural content)
Alice Schwarzer (german feminist) said that what girls and young women
now can do, is related to actions of some women in the past.
If I can make a parallel : to speak about racism, fascism,
shoah,... is always necessary. The danger of forgetting
is huge and the repetition of history possible.
 
Isabel
 
> Barrie wrote:
> 
> I know that maybe this month's discussion is not about differences between
> gender but about examining Women in Art, and Technology...
> 
> Well Barrie, for me, if it had not differences between the two genders,
> there was not a book called "Women, Art, and Technology". So, your
> contribution to the discussion is completely valid. It was just what Isabel
> Saij done, when she wrote about the education of the girls.
> 
> Isabel, do you think that nowadays, if a girl want to follow technollogy
> studies, she will not receive the permission from her mother? ... I really
> do not know. On the other hand, I worked during sometime as a coordenator of
> an info room of a high school . What I discovered there is that boys are
> much more interested in computers than girls. They received always the same
> stimulus to do a work, but the boys are always much more interested and
> always got the best works and sometimes keep on studying and searching
> information about the proposal even when the work was finished. What I
> really do not know is if this difference occurs because girls and boys are
> really differents or because the education of girls and boys valorizes
> different things. I bet that the differences of education are changing but
> there are centuries where the standards of education only allow the domain
> of the machine to men.
 
> Perhaps is because of this that Jim asked: "Anything in the book about
> different levels of fear, or different attitudes
> about/toward fear of technology associated with gender?"
 
> About links to the book, Last month I searched for them, but I only got this
> one (amazon), below, the link and the text we find there.
> 
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262134241//qid=1071361434/sr=
> 1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-4888030-1867239?v=glance&s=books&vi=reviews
> 
> 
> Book Info
> Text is a compendium of the work of women artists who have played a central
> role in the development of new media practice. Includes overviews of the
> history and foundations of the field, classic papers by women working in art
> and technology, and a series of critical essays looking to the future.
> Illustrated. DLC: Art and technology--History--20th century.
> 
> About the Author
> Judy Malloy is an electronic fiction and Internet pioneer and editor of the
> electronic publication Arts Wire Current.
> 
> Book Description
> 
> Although women have been at the forefront of art and technology creation, no
> source has adequately documented their core contributions to the field.  ,
> which originated in a Leonardo journal project of the same name, is a
> compendium of the work of women artists who have played a central role in
> the development of new media practice. The book includes overviews of the
> history and foundations of the field by, among others, artists Sheila Pinkel
> and Kathy Brew; classic papers by women working in art and technology;
> papers written expressly for this book by women whose work is currently
> shaping and reshaping the field; and a series of critical essays that look
> to the future. Artist contributors include computer graphics artists Rebecca
> Allen and Donna Cox; video artists Dara Birnbaum, Joan Jonas, Valerie Soe,
> and Steina Vasulka; composers Cecile Le Prado, Pauline Oliveros, and Pamela
> Z; interactive artists Jennifer Hall and Blyth Hazen, Agnes Heged?nn
> Hershman, and Sonya Rapoport; virtual reality artists Char Davies and Brenda
> Laurel; net artists Anna Couey, Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss,
> Nancy Paterson, and Sandy Stone; and choreographer Dawn Stoppiello. Critics
> include Margaret Morse, Jaishree Odin, Patric Prince, and Zoe Sofia.
> 
> You will find this text (november news) also at http://arteonline.arq.br/,
> click first floor, books, letter M. You will realize that diferently from
> other books there, this book has not a catalog record, but only the text
> above. It occurs, because to buy a book from Amazon, here in Rio de Janeiro
> means a long time of waiting or lots of money to get the fast delivery.  To
> make things worse, when the book arrives, as it is writing in English, I
> will need the triple of the time you need to read the book...
> 
> My today question is:
> 
> "Will not be a kind of discrimination against women to write books or texts
> where the focus is only this gender?"
> 
> I have thought a lot about this lately, perhaps we that wrote recently or
> write now about women are doing just the opposite that we intended or intend
> to do. I hope you can understand me. Why have we the necessity to show that
> woman can work in this or that field? What are we intending to prove? The
> masculine gender do not have this necessity at all.
> I think that in the past Beauvoir and others's texts were very important to
> woman , but  nowadays I really do not know ...
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Regina
> 
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