21 is only half the truth

Women in Technology / I in Technology

I came across this post by Miss Rogue a few days ago. She writes about women in technology, or the (felt) lack thereof. Even though she says she can't speak for "the women" in technology, I definitely found myself nodding all the time, agreeing, and I bet I wasn't the only one.

This issue really has been nagging at me for quite a while. Even back in high school, I was the only girl in computer science class and felt as if the boys in class pretty much considered me neither male nor really female, but more an alien of some sorts (The invasion of the strange female geek). At university, we were pretty much 50% women in our class, but hey, that was business information technology, and most of the girls definitely were in for the business part.

Now I work as one of the few women in our company who do software development, part of which entails crouching in front of the screen in a windowless cellar. Kind of. I think we're 5 (young) women among ~50 developers, and not all of us are really the "girly girl" type.

So here's the deal: How do you gain respect among your fellow developers when you
a. are a young woman fresh from university, the youngest developer in the office
b. majored in business information technology instead of "real" computer science, lacking major software development experience
c. somehow still want to feel like an attractive young woman and behave like one

Chris and I attend a lot of events where, even though I'm perfectly capable of conducting myself in a conversation about Open Source, I'm rarely invited into those conversations. Chris, on the other hand, is greeted warmly and enthusiastically. You may say it's because I'm not a developer...but guess what? Neither is Chris . [...]
The biggest issue here is that people assume Chris is a developer, but never make that assumption of me. I have to contribute quite a bit (sans mistakes) before being accepted.

That is exactly what I experienced. It seems to me that usually new male colleagues are regarded with a kind of "let's see whether he's good" attitude, while women are seen with a "ooooh. a woman! is she his secretary?"-type of attitude. Obviously, that doesn't happen all the time, but usually I have to make a number of really smart and knowledgeable comments before people actually think of me as a developer.

Thaty seems to go along with a loss of "female qualities" as well though. I think I've done quite well in terms of earning respect by my colleagues. Loving to make jokes, being communicative and owning a USB-cup warmer definitely helps. I rarely were skirts, dresses or high heels, though, mostly because it's just not as comfortable as sneakers and jeans - which can still look nice and feminine. What really really bugs me though is that whenever I actually do wear high heels, a skirt or whatever, that seems to be an event for my male colleagues worthy of a calendar entry. When I wore high heels two days before CeBIT, people actually asked me whether I would wear these shoes for the whole day of the fair. Hello, I am a woman, not stupid! The sheer amazement at the clothes in my dresser that most defiinitely declare me as a woman who sometimes likes to dress pretty and sexy shows me that even though they accept me as a female developer, they still don't really see me as woman who happens to be a developer instead of a hair stylist, school teacher or flight attendant.

You know what the really bad thing is? This is not something only man do towards women, but also women among each other. When I see other women at the cafeteria at work, I usually assume they work in business or administration, especially when they don't look obviously geeky. I only noticed this a few weeks ago, and I am very much trying to get myself to be more open-minded.

Honestly, I think this is something we ladies should work on ourselves. Instead of mentally scratching each other's eyes out and assuming she only knows how to switch on the hair dryer instead of writing some nice code, feel a little pride that this woman over there might just rock in her job just as much as you do.