The dwarf gender setup in Discworld is an uncannily good mirror of a chunk of the real world in a way that I think is unintentional on Pratchett's part.
There's a strong tension around female dwarves both to prove that they are female and to prove that they're dwarves. The books implicitly argue that they can't quite do either -- that they're always going to be tin-eared on the femininity and not quite up to snuff on true dwarfness. There's a deeper implication that true dwarfness is not compatible with femininity. Exposing a dwarf to be female is a privacy breach. (There is no such thing as exposing a dwarf to be male.) And of course, if there's only one gender, it must be male.
It maps deeply and painfully well to the way gender often plays out in high-tech.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-05-27 05:06 pm (UTC)There's a strong tension around female dwarves both to prove that they are female and to prove that they're dwarves. The books implicitly argue that they can't quite do either -- that they're always going to be tin-eared on the femininity and not quite up to snuff on true dwarfness. There's a deeper implication that true dwarfness is not compatible with femininity. Exposing a dwarf to be female is a privacy breach. (There is no such thing as exposing a dwarf to be male.) And of course, if there's only one gender, it must be male.
It maps deeply and painfully well to the way gender often plays out in high-tech.