gender

Why We Shouldn’t Target Women

Panel with: Martijn Verburg; Regina ten Bruggencate; Trisha Gee; Antonio Goncalves; Claude Falguière; Kim Ross

I'm back from Devoxx, having had lots of food for thought. In particular, my panel on Why We Shouldn't Target Women generated a lot of discussion and I'm still trying to process it all.

The panel went really well, we got decent interaction from the audience, and of course my fellow panel members were awesome. I managed to restrain myself from using the opportunity as my own personal soap box and allowed other people to speak occasionally. Sadly the only male on the panel stole the show somewhat, so Antonio won't be invited in future... Actually in seriousness, it was great to have a guy on the panel to present his point of view. It was interesting that he's a father, highlighting that parenting issues are not the same as women's issues, and conflating those two concerns hurts both genders. But Antonio's hair is far too shiny and pretty and he's funnier than I am, so I'm not standing next to him again.

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On The Similarities Between Girls And Aliens

I discovered, through the power of the search words that lead to my blog, that there was an incident at JavaOne that once again opens the can of worms that is Sexism In IT.

This Makes Me Sad. I had a really positive experience at JavaOne. In fact, I would say it was the one conference I've been to in the last 12 months where I felt like my gender wasn't a problem - I even got away with wearing hotpants (tweed is business-casual, right??) without being mistaken for anything other than a developer.

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In answer to one of the search terms which led to my blog…

…"what do female programmers look like": Well, sometimes… If there are any girl programmers out there who are interested in being part of a montage showing who we are, I’d be dead (see what I did there…?) interested in putting us all on one page. And not just because I’m narcissistic. Although that helps.

On Changing The Image Of Programmers

Gah!! This is exactly what I was talking about - it's pink, it mentions shoes, and it's about as patronising as you can get.

Would the chart be different if your possible outcomes were Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Linus Torvalds? I bet for a start it wouldn't mention Jimmy Choos or choice of handbags. And it probably wouldn't be in baby blue either.

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On How Not To Target Girl Geeks

(First, let me say this post contains opinion, stereotyping and sweeping generalisations. But that's sort of the point. Also I don't pretend for one moment to speak for all girl programmers, I can only speak for myself)

When I first started this blog, I wanted to just post "proper" technical information. I wanted to prove that there are girls out there doing "real" programming.

I specifically didn't want to talk about my gender. I wanted to prove by silence that gender is incidental to what I do.

But, it doesn't really work that way, does it?

Firstly because one of the first things I get asked by guys when I meet them in this industry is "why aren't there more girl programmers?" (that's after they ask "do you work in HR?" followed by "are you a real programmer?" - I'm not joking, this happened this week).

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Comments on representations of our industry

I have not (yet) seen the presentation this post is referring to. But I think many of the comments Ted makes are very valid, and our industry as a whole should occasionally stop and think. I’ve seen Ted speak at QCon, and I’ve had a lot of time for his comments ever since. I’m aware … Read more

Sexism in IT?

Let’s celebrate our IT women "Everyone" knows that there are more men than women in IT. That it’s a "boys" job. Not a lot of people know that the first programmer was a woman. Not a lot of people realise the number of women in IT is DECREASING. And has been since the 80s. In … Read more

Gender Stereotyping

I'm very interested in the subject of gender stereotyping, which probably isn't surprising as I'm a girl in a predominantly male industry. And I like cars, and sports, and get irritated if people assume I'm not "allowed" to be interested in these things.

Far from being discriminated against, however, I find many people ask me why there aren't more women in the industry and what can be done to encourage girls into IT. If these questions were easy to answer, they wouldn't have to be asked.

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