So I read a few things today and it got my mind going in a million different directions. Here are three mini observations with a point of sorts at the end.
“Women in Tech” organizations
The other day I watched “Adriana Gascoigne @ Big Omaha 2009.” While I agree with much of what she said, I had a vague sense of unease with the whole idea of “women in tech” organizations. Today, while reading Hillary Mason’s post Stop talking, start coding I started to get an idea of why I have a problem with them:
Many groups have popped up that support women in technology, like Girls in Tech, She’s Geeky, and many others (enumerated in Digiphile’s thoughtful post Why Including women matters for the future of technology and society). More often than not, these groups are the canned food drives of the women in technology movement. They make you feel better, they might do a little good, but they offer no fundamental change to the system that created the problem in the first place.
The NY Times article Mason was responding to, Out of the Loop in Silicon Valley, contained this choice quote:
“Women tend to network with women, and men tend to network with men,” says Sharon Vosmek, C.E.O. of Astia. “It plays out on the golf course, in the boardroom and it’s certainly playing out in high-growth entrepreneurship.”
I then looked at the organizations mentioned in the previously mentioned blog post Why including women matters for the future of technology and society by Alexander B Howard. Some seemed to do serious good – providing grants for startups led by women. Some were a roundup of links and news about women in tech. But I noticed a prevailing theme in many of the about pages. See if you can pick it out:
… As young women with the capacity to inspire, we made it our personal desire and passion to create and sustain an organization that focuses on the collaboration, promotion, growth and success of women in the technology sector. … (Girls in Tech)
… As young women with world-changing aspirations, we recognize entrepreneurship as the means to fulfill our life goals. After attending numerous local networking events for entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley, we asked “Where are all the women in the Silicon Valley?” … (Women 2.0)
… We’re young women with the power and passion to make a difference. We believe in the potential of computing to build a better world. (dot diva)
OK, I realize tech, as a field, belongs to the young. But maybe that is part of the problem. Maybe if we stopped focusing on age and more on experience and desire to learn, we can reach more people. Maybe women, especially – who may have a late start after having a family – could use help no matter what their age. And maybe we can get rid of that damn “so simple your mom can use it” stereotype while we’re at it.
Maybe if we stopped focusing on age and more on experience and desire to learn, we can reach more people. Maybe women, especially – who may have a late start after having a family – could use help no matter what their age.
On genderized assumptions:
We are socialized our entire lives to live up to predetermined roles. These have to do with gender, but also race, age, how we dress, what color our hair is, who we are with. This isn’t surprising – humans interact with tons of people, and to simplify things, we start to group them. Fair enough. Trouble is that we don’t realize we’re doing it, and that many of the stereotypes we base our assumptions on are misleading (movies, TV, other popular entertainment), or are outdated. Example:
Today I got an estimate for an addition we’d like to make on our house. I contacted the contractor, yet he spent most of the time talking to my husband, asking him things like “can you lay tile” (n.b., I’m the one that bought or registered for every power tool we own) and, after I told him our budget, said “tell your husband to make more.” None of this is that bad, but it’s also not unique. It’s pervasive, the sort of thing that women hear every single day our entire lives. I don’t think it’s stretching to guess that many women have experienced this in tech careers, math and science classes, etc.
Things like these couldn’t possibly be the reason that women don’t put themselves out there and take chances, right? Subtle indications that women are less capable than men at some things are lifelong and pervasive.
To go back to the New York Times article mentioned above:
But when she was raising money for Crimson Hexagon, a start-up company she co-founded in 2007, she recalls one venture capitalist telling her that it didn’t matter that she didn’t have business cards, because all they would say was “Mom.”
Another potential backer invited her for a weekend yachting excursion by showing her a picture of himself on the boat — without clothes. When a third financier discovered that her husband was also a biking enthusiast, she says, he spent more time asking if riding affected her husband’s reproductive capabilities than he did focusing on her business plan.
So despite many comments about how there is no problem, there IS overt sexism and subtle signals throughout our lives telling us what we are and are not good at.
On Self Confidence:
Finally, I read this bit on self confidence on the Geek Feminism Blog and I TOTALLY related to it:
It seems like a certain amount of “irrational” self-confidence is necessary for success in geeky fields. STEM work usually involves a lot of failure before you figure something out. While you’re failing repeatedly, you have to keep believing you can do it and you’re smart enough to figure it out. But the repeated failures, to me, always seem like evidence that I’m not smart enough. From a scientific perspective, I demand proof: what evidence is there I can do this? And there seems like a lot of evidence that I can’t.
Thing is, when I shared it, I got many men saying they could identify too. So it isn’t a uniquly woman trait after all.
The point
OK, remember that story I told above about the contractor and the estimate? Let’s pretend a different scenario – say, one where a couple is planning a wedding and consult a wedding planner. Obviously a good wedding planner would involve both parties equally, but in practice, he or she might address the woman more even if the man is the one that’s most interested in the details. Or imagine a guy dragging his girlfriend to a cooking class. Or a couple choosing a day care. In all of these situations, there is a good chance that the woman would be addressed more than the man. And that gets to the heart of the problem. We can’t assume that women are into family and men their careers, that women need confidence boosting and men don’t.
Maybe the problem is more like this: some people aren’t very good at promoting themselves. Maybe more of those people tend to be women, but the problem exists for those that aren’t women as well. Maybe some of us humans tend to downplay our accomplishments and let others take the spotlight. Maybe some of us humans don’t want to let work dominate our lives, want to spend time on other pursuits (like, *gasp* our families, or our communities).
Maybe we can figure out how to make the workplace work for lots of differnt types of people. In the process, we’ll probably draw in more women and minorities – because who wouldn’t want to work in a field where their accomplishments are valued and their opinions respected, and employers realize that yes, there is life outside work?
This is not to say we can’t recognize the disparity of women in tech. But we might want to take it in context of a larger problem – our inability to see each other as humans fist, and gender, race, whatever else – second.
(title is a nod to Clay Shirky’s “A Rant About Women“)
