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I am looking for input - especially from the USA on this subject. I am a self-confessed UK computer nerd and have been for 20+ years. My wife (from the southern states of the USA) has been helping me with QA of websites and even been dropping sites with pop-up and slow loaders or just crap sites.
I told her how much I appreciated her help and wondered how she got such a passion for perl/mysql databases running on dedicated servers. She says she likes helping me with my websites. I just wonder how many other American females out there embrace web technology so readily?
Answers on a postcard please - or even better WebmasterWorld
Thanks, Chris.
I have a partner who can barely turn on a computer and doesn't even have an email address.
I don't care about that, I like it in fact, its a break from geek speak.
LisaB
Everyone appears to have missed the point.
(except for lisaB)
I understand that women work in the business. I have worked (as a subordinate) for some of the sharpest female systems programmers in the business. The question was how many wives (who have no affiliation with the business) take an interest in the internet.
Maybe you should refocus it from "wife" to "spouse" or "significant other".
My ex-wife took absolutely no interest in it, as far as she was concerned it was like playing Atari all day - until she got a 35,000 dollar architectural job based on her web portfolio that I made for her.
She kind of went "Oh". And then didn't complain about my working 12 hours a day for a while.
Maybe you should refocus it from "wife" to "spouse" or "significant other".
Exactly what I was thinking :P
My boyfriend is a professional computer programmer who has no interest in the internet. I'm a self confessed web geek who knows nothing about programming. We both support each other in our various tech obsessions, just the same as I support his playing socccer (I loath sports) while he is interested in (or at least pretends to be) my job as a biology researcher. Despite that I'm not sporty I know the offside rule, and despite that he hates science he understands transcription and translation. Same goes for the we stuff, his passion for elegent propgramming spills over into my wanting to design elegent webpages. It's the passion that makes it interesting for the other I think. And who wouldn't want to spend an evening discussing CSS box model problems over dinner :D
I do know people who like the fact that their partner knows nothing about their daily job and doesn't want to share at all. It gives them a break from the type of thinking they do all day and gives them outside interests. I just couldn't imagine doing that myself.
OTOH, my last two menfolk liked playing video games and using the internet for their personal entertainment/interest, and never really took to any professional-level interest in any aspect of computers while we were together (even though both of them expressed an interest in studying computers at university when we met).
Maybe I'd have better luck if I got a wife instead?
DUH!
Everyone appears to have missed the point....The question was how many wives (who have no affiliation with the business) take an interest in the internet.
The percentage of women here who have no affiliation at all (either via work or personal use) is small and gets smaller every day. The majority who get into the net in a deep way usually do it as a business or eventually turn it into a business and not do it merely as a hobby to be with their man. Although you may think your wife's interest is great, she may be doing this because she feels neglected and this is a way to get some time with you. All the women I know here who have gone into technology did so out of their own personal interest.
She worries a bit for my health and well being, and ofcourse she is right, only a web geek is working 16 hours on a Sunday.
But I would appreciate some tips on getting my resident technophobe interested in computers. He's a (unemployed) draughtsman who refused to learn CAD.