This probably depends on where we live and work, but personally, I have not experienced anything negative for being a female programmer in my few years of career.
Like everyone else, I had interview opportunities. As long as I passed the technical challenges and non-technical interviews, I was presented a contract. And on the job, I have been acknowledged by my team.
Tech people are actually simple and practical as long as you are keen to collaborate and work with them together.
Even women in the dev team are still rare, despite that there are many women in other tech job positions (most of my PMs have been women), UX specialists, designers, QAs, business analysts and so on. So there are more women in the team.
The only thing I feel a bit left out is not being in the boys club. You know, all those guys talks, which is fine, as I don't feel interested in such topics. And besides, something similar might happen if most of the team are women and there are only a few men. Otherwise, we get along fine, we can hold group conversations with people with a wide range of topics, and they are kind and respectful towards me.
However, lots of women I spoke with mentioned that there still some roadblocks for women in software engineering career that come up every day that are very hard to recognize like:
Interviewing a woman with an all-male interview team and then judging them as being "less-confident." Women have been trained to be wary and cautious when they are alone with groups of unknown men. Put a woman in the room for an interview, even if you have to bring your girlfriend for that.
Having flexibility. These days, startups and other companies are all about the perks. Endless snacks, free drinks, a large ping pong table in the middle of the office - the list goes on as employers raise the bar to entice more promising candidates. And highly attractive perk that most companies often don't think to offer is flexibility. Women often times, and for various reasons, need to have special accommodations and more flexible work schedules than men. By providing work-from-home days or part-time work, companies can achieve the impossible: they can retain talented rockstar workers (many of them are women). The businesses benefit from retention, and the women find a solution to the βhaving it allβ conundrum.
The Glass Cliff: when management wants to promote a woman to a leadership role, even though she might not be ready for it. If she fails, management might use it as an excuse not to diversify these roles for women again. Even if she succeeds, her teammates could resent her "stealing" an opportunity that she wasn't qualified for because she was a woman.
Salary's rate. Women consistently make less than men because they tend to participate in less negotiation. Having a set budget in mind and only go outside of it for extreme circumstances, that anyone else would understand or agree with. If you consistently hear from candidates that they need more money, increase the salary for that position. But you have to do it for the existing employees too.
All in all, in good companies, men are indeed trying to help women, but sometimes they don't understand, and the best way to understand women in tech is to talk to the women on your team and see if they have any problems. Telling them you want to support them, and let them know you are on their side.
Do you want to build your career in IT-industry without extra stress and with work-life balance? Then I can help you with my weekly newsletter for women in tech (+bonus professional networking cheat sheet).
Thank you for reading! π
Cheers, ilonacodes
Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels
Latest comments (47)
I am very new in the field but so far experiences (both interviewing and working) are good. I feel my male colleagues are nice and helpful, but I do feel serious imposer syndrome because most of them either have computer science degree or long years of programming experience, many of them started since they're teens. I started to code after 35 and switched from a non-STEM background !
I don't think free beer, game nights or ping pong tables are anything attractive to me, I care more about possibility of mentorship, flexibility of time, educational opportunities (especially learning new skills) etc. Ordinary hackathons that require you to eat trashy fast food, code all night and sleep in sleeping bag or mattress on the floor also turned me off lol.
I think in the future remote work will open new opportunities for women, as it will provide more flexibility for them to arrange their work and life as they want, and it can focus more on work itself than maintaining interpersonal relationship. It has pros and cons, just like everything else, but I do see some good points for it.
If I had two candidates (male and female) with similar experience and background, I would hire female for sure. Not because of the bias (maybe, but no...), but because working in mostly men team, it's really hard to find an empty toilet sit during peak hours (8am-10am). Period. I demand more women in IT!!!
I have experienced it in person and online.
I run a JavaScript group on Facebook, the group has over 104k members, less than 10% of these members are women.
I interact with a lot of men in tech, so my experience is not limited to the companies that I work with.
I have experienced sexual harassment, belittling, mansplaining, etc.
I am truly happy for you all and really do hope that none of you experience this in the future. It is not pleasant.
I think we try to do our part, our team is 45% female and growing, we are actively building that balance, i don't know if its the best way, but we are trying..
To me,
staying in Tech environment, has been the hardest,
and most beautiful thing
I choose to my life.
So far, my experience was good. Though, I have never faced gender dis equality.
I am from Bangladesh. It's a small country. In my country, Girls in BackEnd development are seem to be too less.
Sometime, I got to heard some stuff like: Girls can not be good at logical development, Girls can not teach tech stuff properly, Girls can not be good in the development of an architecture of any project.
Though, I don't feel bothered in those things. I would love to show them, yes, a women can do much better than a men!
And, it's really going on!
When you talk about equality! Female right, feminism! Why men's cant have menism!
If you yourself are counting your self as an external, how do you expect others to treat you one?
As male programmers, we don't get any additional superpowers, but as a female, God has gifted you multi-tasking brains, I would say men are at a disadvantage
Disclaimer: sorry for using the words male and female here. These sound very rude in my native language, but I don't know how to better describe sex-bound genders in English.
I'm a Brazilian male developer and I've never worked with a female developer, sadly. Though, I've been working with female testers, PMs and POs all my career (~10 years).
I really wish more women get into development. Some female testers I've worked with confess they would feel their job more rewarding if they were coding features instead of scripts, but never get the opportunity because their experience got limited or that the volume of male workers in this area makes it even more difficult to show she is worthy. Also, there is of course the prejudice factor. When a male manager have been working for too long only with men, they feel afraid of hiring a woman. Fear of she not keeping up, fear of one of his male employees being caught up harassing her, fear of the unknown, imaginations created by his prejudice.
I never understood the hype to be honest. Never felt discriminated. But maybe this is due to the fact that I mostly worked remotely. Who cares if you're a woman or a man, as long as you produce very good quality code, it really doesn't matter.
Maybe there is something I am missing, maybe things go different in an office, I have no idea.
Yeah, I'm a woman and I code. So? I fail to see the big deal about it :-D
This is the main reason I stayed away from "women who code" groups, I couldn't see their purpose.
So I guess for me it's exactly as it is for every other "dude" in a team.
Also, I don't think men are allied against women in tech. Nobody tied me up and locked me in a dark room preventing me from learning how to code.
I just knew I wanted to code and followed the steps like any guy would do and it turned out fine.
It's not like there's a hidden conspiracy that prevents girls to follow their STEM passions.
If women in tech are less than men in tech is because most of them chose not to be in tech. They have other passions and I fail to see what is wrong with that.
Nobody complains men in fashion are less than women in fashion, or at least I never heard of it.
My honest opinion is this trend needs to be a bit toned down, it is too dramatic at times.
Also, I negotiate to the bones. You don't pay me less than you pay Joe that does the same job, unless you have a deathwish.
It is awesome that you have never been discriminated against, but don't fall into the trap of believing that since it has not happened to you that it is not happening to other people.
Some great responses here and great discussion!
One question, why do women need more flexibility than men? All I can think of is childcare, and if I was a dad I would fight to be able to spend as much time with my child as possible. (Not trying to be obtuse, genuinely curious)
Often "women" here does indeed often mean "mothers" (though as a childfree woman with many endeavours outside of work I welcome flexibility across the board!). The fact is in many places, the majority of child-related tasks such as daycare/school pick-up and drop-off, caring for sick children, and finding/providing care during school holidays still falls to women. Where men would like to take on more of this work, many workplaces are still unsupportive, and someone has to do it, so it falls to the mother. And let's be honest, inn many cases women still want to do the majority of this work and men don't, so the cycle continues.
I think women prioritize flexibility more than men do because we are better at recognizing when we need it. We tend to be better at self care overall.
I don't think women need it more than men... Men need it too, they just have been socialized to think of self care as weakness.
I haven't had any issues as a female in tech, except perhaps that I wasn't introduced to it in my younger years (grade school) like the boys were. But once I discovered it and enrolled in a University, I was always treated well and even though I was only one of two or three women in my graduating class (of about forty) I was never singled out or made to feel inferior because I am female. I was invited to play board games and whatnot with the guys and always included if there was a study group.
Now in my career I have still been treated well, though some interviews did feel skewed. One in particular was an Indian man who was probably a fine guy, but I could tell he didn't like me from the start (which made my interviewing abilities plummet - I got nervous and bombed it because of the bad energy!) For both of the jobs I have accepted offers for I was offered more than I had originally asked, so there was no negotiation necessary, and at my current job I have been told the sky is the limit and I am open to move up and grow within the company as I please.
I found the "boys club" portion of your post interesting, as I have actually managed to work myself into that group (I've always had almost exclusively only male friends and never found myself to fit into the "girls club"). I played online games for many years and just became more comfortable with the banter of men, so once they realized I was into the same things I was part of the group. I think that's just all about your interests though, I've read elsewhere that it can be detrimental to force yourself to become "one of the guys" if that's just not you.
I'm not sure whether I've been lucky, or whether things are just getting better for women in tech, but I've had a good experience.
I have often felt like I have to work two or three times as hard as my male peers to get the same recognition for equal or better work. I have also heard several stories from women that also went to my school about things they've had happen to them in and out of school. It's very common.
Work related problems concern everyone (men and women). It really depends on what kind of organisations and what type of colleagues you are working with.
As I am over middle age, an ethnic minority woman. Working in IT, certainly I would always have younger colleagues, mostly are male.
In a healthy working environment, people are able to concentrate on their work and collaboration goes smoothly.
I've been an interviewer a few times, I think a cardinal rule is to keep the interview team as diverse as possible, people are sometimes biased in ways they don't even know. A diverse team helps with that.
Hate it, seen it happen, spoke openly against it.
Can believe this is still happening all around the world. My advice to all people out there facing this situation. This is abuse. A subtle, socially accepted kind of abuse and you need to make it stop.
I have been working as a developer now for almost 7 years. As a female (and a lot of the time the only female on my team) I have been very lucky to not really experience any sexism or boys club culture. However I have always felt an internal pressure to always be better and "keep up" because it can still be intimadating. Regarding salary I have always pushed myself to negotiate because I am so aware that women typically don't.
My experience is similar to yours. I think the internal pressure sometimes relates to the boys' club thing too.
"The only thing I feel a bit left out is not being in the boys club. You know, all those guys talks, which is fine, as I don't feel interested in such topics."
The author doesn't seem to recognise this as an issue, but it can be. If all the men are mates and you're not part of that because you're a woman, it can mean you're less likely to be chosen for valuable opportunities and promotions - unless you're so obviously better than them that they basically can't not choose you.
That's an interesting take. I don't think it's the same for me though. I am lucky to get on really well with the people I work with and we have a lot in common. I think the internal pressure is just the automatic feeling of being a woman in a place dominated by men and feeling like you have to prove yourself all the time. And feel like you always have to be on top of your game. Like if a guy doesn't know something he just doesn't know it but if a girl doesn't it's because she doesn't know anything. And I'm not saying this is the culture I work, it's actually very supportive. I think it's just a more internalized insecurity which adds the pressure. Apologies if none of that makes sense π