Women: Making us welcome in Tech
From AgileOpenNorthwest
Contents |
Women: Making us welcome in Tech
--Slyris
There were about thirty people in attendance. About 5 were women.
Limiting the scope: What can we do now to make women welcome in IT, not how should things be or what should have happened before. Because this subject is enormous, I didn't think we could usefully address issues of education and culture and history, so my goal was to bring it back to the immediate, in terms of people and timeframe.
I decided to start with the opposite of our goal, that is, what could we do now to make women UN-welcome in IT groups and gatherings. I wanted specific suggestions.
Ways to Make Women Un-welcome
- talk over / talk loudly when she is trying to talk -- overwhelm and intimidate
- talk about "doing" some woman -- sexual prowess discussions with women as goals
- some version of "let the guy do it" -- as in, "Honey, let your brother take care of that for you" -- disempowering women and girls by taking care of technical issues for us, or modelling such behavior
- use sports or other metaphors that exclude female participants in some way
- pay her less for the same work
- address a group as "gentlemen and Jane", that is, highlight the female present as being the aberration
- over-apologize for gender-bias speech, that is, treat the woman as if she's fragile when it comes to language
Ways to Make Women Welcome
Women's involvement in computer science and IT is about where it was 25 years ago. We have regressed. Without going into the whys of it, what can we do about it now, here, in our time?
- seek respectful communication. Lots of discussions about what this might mean, given the range of people and groups.
- awareness of biases in how women are treated and girls are raised
- men ask for feedback, express willingness to hear when communications are uncomfortable or unwelcoming
- listen well/better
- men can tell other men when their verbiage/behavior is inappropriate
- employers offer flexible and part-time -- discussion of whether this is worthwhile, with some developers giving examples of it being a great benefit to the company because they were able to get highly experienced engineers who would otherwise not work for them at all by offering the part-time advantage.
- Women: show up! Be an example of women in IT, both to other women and men. Mentor! I talk about my experience mentoring, both to illustrate problems that women face in IT and to show up as a woman who mentors other women.
- parents/adults: expose girls to adult women who are in technical fields -- demonstration is more powerful than any lecture
- Because things have regressed, we are again pioneers, and some of us will have to make waves so the rest can follow more easily
General Issues for Women in Tech
- speaking up in mixed groups is risky; safer to remain silent (at one point in the session, after a number of very good comments by men, I asked the group to consider letting the next five comments be from women. The room fell silent for a long time.)
- women often experience being treated worse than men who make similar comments
- tendency to react to being criticized, to feel shame or inadequacy, where men might react with less emotional charge to the same comments
- the pressure to choose between addressing confrontational (male?) attitudes with similar attitudes, or to fade into the background
- model of hierarchy versus group-building ([Deborah Tannen ]) strongly suggests that business is modeled on male culture (does agile change this? is agile more female?)
- need/desire to spend more time on family
- choosing between being treated as one of the guys and therefore needing/choosing to fit into the existing (male?) culture model, and being the odd one out and asking the existing group to change
What do Women Want from their Work in IT?
- the chance to rise to their level of incompetence (power)
- equal opportunities -- money, position, and so on
- time-flexible working conditions, such as time off for family, part-time work
- the chance to make really good tools/software that others can use well
- to make a real difference in the world
- to make the same amount of money for the same work (what, not yet? Sigh.)
Dangerous Questions and Comments
I encouraged the men present especially to ask or bring up the non-pc questions or issues that they might have about this subject. I gave as examples of things I might wonder if I were male: do women really get more emotional during their menses? What do I do if a woman starts crying in the middle of some technical session?
- Do female developers really cry at work? I don't see it. (I told him that we hide it pretty well, some of us. One man said he was so frustrated with his group dynamics around coding that he locked himself in the bathroom and cried. It's not just women.)
- Do women like or hate geek (for lack of better word) culture?
- Is one of the reasons why women don't go into IT as much because the men there don't have what we might consider powerful cultural presentations? That is, are women discouraged by the quality of men in IT, at some level? I was really impressed with this question. I took the dangerous path of answering yes, I thought that entered into the equation. We were running out of time, so this didn't get talked about as much as I'd hoped it would.
- A woman followed up the first comment by noting that the teasing that followed the guy who said he'd cried put her off making the same confession; the guy pointed out that he'd invited the teasing deliberately by starting it and wanted it. Between people as well as in code, error recovery is more important than error prevention, because he latter is impossible, so I like hearing this sort of comment. I was impressed that she was courageous enough to bring this up, and equally impressed that the man was courageous enough to say that it was good with him. How can we structure/encourage our agile teams to be more agile in their personal interactions as well?
If you attended this session and you want to comment, please do so...
- Your comments here
