Happy International Women’s Day, everyone! Heck YES, a day to celebrate being a woman in tech!
In honor of the holiday's spirit, there’s bound to be countless articles, videos, and Instagram captions about the #shecoded movement, on the topic of female empowerment, and what it in general means to be a #girlboss in tech in 2020.
And while I’m obviously all for that content, I thought I’d author something for those who may be feeling a little left out today: the men! (I kid, I kid, every other day is your day when you’re a man in tech!)
Having existed in both a female-dominated industry as a high school English teacher for nearly a decade and now having spent the past few years in the exact opposite space as a software engineer and a woman in tech, I figured it’s about time to hold my very own retrospective on gender in tech.
Allow me to briefly woman-splain a retrospective for you, dear reader: retros are meetings held by software development teams at the end of either a sprint or project. They’re an opportunity for the team to evaluate its past working cycle and make actionable plans for improvements to be made in the future.
Thus I thought it’d be fun to reflect on the lessons and opportunities for improvement addressed to the majority of my fellow coders, colleagues, and peers in tech. Yes, that means you, gentlemen!
Retrospective for Men in Tech:
Caveat: In this piece, I’m speaking for myself and not for women in general. These are my personal observations & it’s important to recognize my privilege as a cis white woman living in the US.
Start
Note: I know some of you are already doing some of these things. Thank you, and please, keep it up! Just shift these points to your own Continue column.
- Believing women.
- Calling out other men’s bullshit, even when it makes you uncomfortable. Actually, especially if it does.
- If a woman is in a tech space, assume that they’re technical, don’t assume they’re someone’s +1
- Believing that I belong here even if my interests don’t include video games.
- Looking for women at your company. In your org. On your team. If you don’t see them represented in one of those spaces, speak up, and ask why.
- Developing an awareness of intersectionality. And understanding that intersectional feminism is a thing. If you don’t yet, learn about it. We are more than just our identity as a woman.
- Perceiving this sort of work as self-development and critical work.
- Identifying and finding other men that are doing this crucial work well and learn from them.
- When hunting for a new role, ask for stats on the team/company’s diversity and inclusion during your interviews.
Stop
- Thinking it's a compliment when you say, “You don't look like a software developer!”
- Asking the one woman on your team to be the voice of all women. I do not speak on behalf of us all.
- Assuming tech is a system of meritocracy and that if there aren’t women on your team that it’s because they didn’t earn a spot on the team.
- Putting the responsibility on us to fix your sexism.
- Assuming I’ll do the front end when collaborating on a project (and associating front end with femininity).
- Expecting me to educate you on how to make the other woman on our team feel welcome.
- Making a joke in the lunchroom that I am the diversity hire on the engineering team.
- Assuming women in the office will organize birthday cards and presents.
- Taking up the talk space in meetings. And repeating what I said and framing it as your own idea.
- Using the word “female” or infantilizing terms for your coworkers like “girls”.
Continue
- Being an ally.
- Calling your coworker out when they use gendered language.
- Speaking up for me when I don’t have a seat at the table.
Alright, I'll acknowledge that this list may feel like a LOT of information to process! But, I hate to break this to you, but this is quite literally JUST the beginning. There's so much more that could be said and complex nuances to be acknowledged. But I think for the sake of setting tangible goals and chunking learning opportunities into consumable action items, that’s all I’ll say today. I hope that there are at least a few pieces of actionable changes that you can put into place after reading this retro.
Again, it is not a woman’s responsibility to educate men. So I don’t feel the need to hold your hand through this journey with you. It’s on you. But genuinely, thank you for taking the time to read this and embark on an important path to equality.
And if you're up for it and not too ridiculously triggered after reading this piece, please feel free to reach out at @lolocoding. Be sure to share actions you take to be a #shecodedally and let's engage in some healthy dialogue and highlight the folks who are doing this sort of work every. single. damn. day.
Latest comments (54)
“ it is not a woman’s responsibility to educate men”
Totally agree. For many things in life, it can be hard to be aware of a bad situation when you’re not the one being screwed. It took a female coworker pointing out examples like the ones you outlined to see and understand the imbalance in how women are treated in tech. It’s not your job to educate our gender, but if it weren’t for this post and others like it, we would remain willfully ignorant. Thanks for educating anyway!
This is an incredible post! Reading and re-reading... there's a lot to learn from this one.
In fact — bookmarked to have on hand.
Thank you for sharing this!
Thanks for saying that Michael! Glad to hear you found it helpful :)
The Confidence Gap In Men And Women: Why It Matters And How To Overcome It - Jack Zenger
Really great post. Mods are watching the thread for more toxic posts and will be taking action as needed, with more follow-up on Monday.
Thank you for making this post.
I explained that in my last comment, did you miss it? I know there was a lot of sarcasm too. Let me break it down for you.
Crowdfunding per-se does not affect the content of the documentary. However, when the campaign is being advertised and promoted heavily within MRA communities then it is likely that the people supporting the campaign are MRAs.
And now you've joined our friend with the fallacies, congratulations! That is an argumentum ad populum. Do me a favour and try to include a non sequitur next time and I can complete my intentional fallacy bingo card.
Never seen someone so afraid of hearing a different opinion.
Imagine these are the well-educated highly paid smart people in society, rational problem solvers, let alone the others.. all this thread and all the outrage, zero data, zero proof, zero statistics, all emotional and opinion based arguments.
Hey! I thought you said you were done? Oh, that's right you deleted that comment.
Maybe you should have just stuck with it though, yeah? You know, rather than coming back and embarrassing yourself more, maybe by doing something silly like arguing that an opinion piece, an article about a person's own lived experience is flawed because it is "all emotional and opinion"
(emphasis mine)
Speaking of embarrassing yourself.. This is bias / privilege / discrimination.
dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/...
Its also sexist, it implies that women are not competent enough that you have to lower the bar of qualifications for them and give them special fast lane programs that are not afforded to others.
Offering encouragement and support to particular people is not the same as discrimination. Lifting one group up != prejudicing another group.
Discrimination: "the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex."
That tweet also doesn't say anything about lowering the bar. Yet you assumed it did — which shows your bias more than anything else.
Could you explain this more?
Fantastic read. Men--myself included--fail to frequently see the innate, systemic advantages we have in the workplace, and frequently fail to realize the blind spots we have in professional interactions. Tech industry or not, we all need to be better advocates.
I just wish we would react with self-reflection as a go-to response after reading pieces such as this rather than outrage, admonishment, or a whole-sale rejection of your experiences and advice.
And where was the Kickstarter campaign promoted? On A Voice for Men and Reddit’s most misogynistic MRA subs.
Hrm, I wonder if the people who donated to the Kickstarter—the people who found out about the campaign from an MRA publication, or on MRA subreddits—is it possible that those people, the people frequenting MRA communities online, do you think that possibly, just maybe, that those very people, could they themselves by MRAs!? Wouldn't that be crazy!!
A video funded by MRAs, backed by Breitbart, and endorsed by Milo Yiannopoulos.
You know I don't need to actually look inside a septic tank to know what it's full of right?
"If a woman is in a tech space, assume that they’re technical, don’t assume they’re someone’s +1"
Scream it from the rooftops!
Karl Popper has this covered
totally agree, is that why feminists are tolerant to Islam, celebrate the hijab and ignore women living under sharia laws? You fail to see the paradox here by assuming you're the tolerant one when you're not and assuming I'm intolerant, typical confirmation bias.
just watch the movie, its a documentary with statistics/facts around these issues, if you're so close-minded you dont want to hear/see anything that doesn't confirm your opinion then there's no point arguing with you.
So now we have an ignoratio elenchi, a petitio principii, and an ad hominem. That's a lot of fallacies to squeeze into one comment, bravo! Let's take them in order shall we?
I'd say the modern version of the "woke" resembles more Marcuse than Popper, although both of them seem to advocate for superficially similar ideas.
Do you ask everyone for receipts any time they tell you something? If I was to tell you my favourite food was tacos would you be all "Show me your Ubereats history or GTFO"? No of course not, because that's not how normal human interaction works. We don't walk around assuming everyone is lying all the time, so why make this assumption here?
Did you read the article? This is a safe space, you can be honest. Did you really? It's right there in the 2nd paragraph
You're right, but I'm not talking about my experience am I? I'm talking about women's experience, about the things they've told me. Because unlike you, I'm willing to accept and believe that when someone tells me something about their life and their experiences, they're going to know more about it than me.
It wouldn't offend you because you don't have to deal with hundreds of other microaggressions and ingrained patriarchy every. single. day. It's easy to shrug off a single small demeaning comment, but when you are bombarded with them constantly… ever heard of death by a thousand cuts?
Also, I'd like to draw your attention to the very first point, start believing women. If a woman tells you that this is a problem for women, believe them. You do not have the same lived experience. Saying "I would never be offended" isn't helpful, it's not even insightful, your experience is so totally and utterly different that it has zero bearing.
"Saying "I would never be offended" isn't helpful, it's not even insightful, your experience is so totally and utterly different that it has zero bearing."
Aaron Bassett, please be respectful to differing viewpoints and experiences as described in the code of conduct.
In other words believe women just because they're born women and they can't lie or do evil, who needs evidence anyway when there's a separate standard of justice for women? But on the other hand don't believe men, men are bad and their experiences dont matter.. we call this equality.
This is what's called a strawman.
I never said men are bad, or their experiences don't matter. So why don't you ditch that strawman and try again?
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