Generalisations, why?

I got up this morning, probably too early, with plenty of time on my hands. One of the first things I read was a title on how according to one study women code better.

Compared to whom? Women who code badly?

In our house women do not code better. By far. Women are not interested to code better or even to code at all. Women in this household fixed their first TV at the age of 7, built first amperometer at 12 (and burnt it the very same afternoon), helped grandpa with brickwork when 10…and are interested in new sensors and quantified self. Women in this household write poetry (poorly, but still write). Women in this household = I. What I am interested is to stop generalising.

To be fair, the article and the study raises more important issue, and that is an obvious gender bias when assessing someone’s work. Something that is possibly way more present and covered up than it is publicly acknowledged. The title could have been “Women code better as long as peers don’t know they are women” (still, far from correct; but would have personally liked it more).

Generalisations turned my Saturday morning upset. It is the reason I don’t buy books about “One year in scheisse/merde/crap…”, funny as they can be. Today, it seems to me there is this non-ceasing need to box everything one encounters, attribute each nation/sex/gender/age/BMI/profession a couple of the same labels, so one can put them in a certain drawer. “Compartmentalisation is supposed to make one’s life easier”, I heard more than once. Yeah, when I need to find my underwear and socks, I would wholeheartedly agree.

Talented, curious on the subject and smart working individuals probably have a better chance of doing stuff better than individuals not interested in the subject. “With a grain of good luck!”, my past experiences shout at me.

Generalisations might be a great tool for creating prejudices. I’m not prolific on the subject, so I better keep quiet…Unless I hear again some individual authoritatively claiming “All the women know their bodies”, which could be a privileged persons way of thinking.

When there is shame, fear, complex conditions, taboos, lack of literature or any other source of reliable information, the likelihood that individual will know it’s body will probably decline steeply.

While we can learn tremendously from similar biology (it notably has its limits), I have a strong feeling that our outer us needn’t be boxed for comfort of the easier “understanding”.

Just an opinion.