Women in Development

I work at a Ruby on Rails consulting company, Integrum Technologies. While I'm not a RoR coder, I love technology. I love being around software everyday. Naturally, I'm fascinated by the community around technology as well.

Today I listened to a couple episodes of the Ruby on Rails Podcast, specifically the Women in Technology round table discussion from RailsConf (Part 1 and Part 2). The women involved in this discussion were very enjoyable to listen to. I appreciate how few women there are in technical positions and can certainly understand how they feel. They want to be more included, more comfortable, more equal. And they want to pave the way for other women to be too. (See DevChix, which is a group specifically for women who are developers. Which is also hard to find since I had no idea it wasn't spelled Dev Chicks...Google, why aren't you more helpful when I can't spell something correctly?)

1. Why are women still fighting the equality fight? Isn't it time for this fight to be over? What these women were saying is exactly what feminists have been saying for years. Equality and inclusion for women is still an elusive thing. This country has made leaps and bounds, but we're still not there.

When the women in the podcast estimated that only 20% of the attendees at RailsConf were women, it made me think of grad school. In my MBA program, like most around the country, there were only 20% women attending. Where are all the women? Are there note enough of us participating? Or not wanting to participate because of the work it takes?

2. About four years ago, I was faced with a choice about my career. At the time I was far more technical than I am today and considered pursuing programming. I was getting proficient with pseudo-code and Visual Basic so I believe I had the potential. All of my friends and family advised that I would be far happier going into management than going into programming. Programming jobs were lonely and isolating, which was exactly the opposite of what motivates me. So I chose management and got my MBA. However, if I had known that Agile practices make software development humane and even social, my decision could have been a lot different.

The podcasts were good as they made me think. I appreciate that these discussions are still happening to bring us all a little closer to equality.

Though, I would recommend that women pick their "battles" carefully. Or in the case of the podcast, choose your examples carefully (especially when they're recorded.) It seemed awfully silly to me that when asked about inclusion at the conference the example of women-sized t-shirts was given. Shouldn't you first and foremost be talking about the number of women presenting?! I could care less about whether or not the free swag fits me, but I'm darn concerned about whether or not women have a voice in my industry. Choose your examples carefully. (To these ladies' credit, it did come up. It just wasn't the first example.)

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Posted by Dixy-ul on February 4, 2008 - 8:13pm

Autumn, you're right. It is unfair of me to just offer an anecdote suggesting that public education discourages girls from taking math seriously. I think it is wonderful that you teach math! Just to set the record straight I love public education and would love to see it given a higher priority in our budget process. I was just going off personal experience. My 8th grade Algebra II class had 0 girls in it. The 8th grade Geometry class (the smarter folks) had 0 girls in it. My 11th grade Precalculus class was a better mix (although most of them were seniors). The AP Calculus (AB and BC if they still do that) was majority male. (As I think about it the girls it had were mostly Asian-American. Maybe they're treated differently?) Other science classes like AP Biology and AP Chemistry had a much better mix. AP Physics was skewed male but it had a Calculus requirement. My AP Computer class had zero girls as well but its kinda mathy so maybe it suffers from the same problems. Clearly there were smart girls taking hard science classes but they didn't show up in math classes for the most part. I could understand if some parents chose to shunt their daughters away from math classes but that would still leave some. When its zero girls it starts to feel systemic. This was in the late 80s early 90s in Huntsville, Alabama. I'm extrapolating from that personal historical experience and comparing it to current data showing declining numbers for girls in math. My own daughter hasn't reached a grade where choices are available for harder math classes.

Posted by Matt M. on August 10, 2007 - 8:00pm

Slashdot had an interesting article on this same phenomenon the day before yesterday. Meant to email it to you and Lindsay for good reading.... http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/06/1613244&from=rss

Posted by Chris Conrey on August 8, 2007 - 6:02pm

To Matt M., as a female math teacher, I would like to say that "public education" is not to blame for girls believing they are not good at math. I get more of that from the parents who say, "well I wasn't good at math either", so don't expect it from my child. Not to mention a society full of wrong messages for both young men and women. Lay off public education everyone, unless you plan on doing something about it yourself.

Posted by Autumn on August 8, 2007 - 7:30pm

Hey Erica, thanks for the shout-back. I do know lots of trophy wives. They work out at my overpriced health club, they married the cute guys from my high school who became surgeons and lawyers, and when I have to talk with them I always TRY so hard to find the not-superficial layers to them, and it's nearly impossible. They are definitely a stereotype, which is sad. Because even when they're being NICE, what they do is say, "Would you like the name of my plastic surgeon? He's the best in Dallas." Seriously. I would not have the guts to make something like that up.

Posted by cat on August 10, 2007 - 7:05pm

Good for you for promoting women in web development. I too listened to those podcasts. The stridency of a couple of the most vocal was off-putting. I don't think its a zero sum game where men have to lose for women to win. I think computer fields are more meritocratic than most, but that cultural biases outside the computer industry still create problems for women. When I worked at UAH I helped a quadriplegic woman with a couple of small Unix things. She was contributing chapters to a Unix book that Wrox was publishing. She never complained about a lack of equal opportunity. Perhaps the PHP camp is more of a meritocracy. Joyce Park and Sara Golemon definitely command great respect for their developer skills. Kathy Sierra may not be a developer but she's one of the most highly respected tech writers out there. (Kathy Sierra is the one who initially made the women sized t-shirts a public issue) To be honest I'd put the focus on public education. Stop telling girls they aren't as good at math as boys. I'm hoping that Danica McKellar's campaign to open up math and include girls really takes off. If she writes another math book aimed at higher level math topics I'm totally getting it for Emily. I think a bigger problem in CS isn't gender related, it's freeloader related. I see more people who don't care at all about CS doing it because the degree should lead to a good job. They learn how to game the system to get a degree and then game their job.

Posted by Matt M. on August 8, 2007 - 4:12pm

Matt, thanks for your thoughts. I'm glad you're looking for ways to positively influence your daughter. It's awesome that she's got a father like you! My father has always made me feel like I could do anything and it's been a great help throughout my life. Chris, great article. Thanks for the link. Autumn, I agree. Teachers and schools are doing what they can. It seems like the outside sources are the ones with the huge influence. Cat, good for you for getting advanced degrees! I don't personally know any women who went the route of boobs and booze. I wonder if it's a reality of just a stereotype. All of the women I know with pools in their backyard were once full-time workers and chose to stay at home. Desi, thanks for the explanation of the t-shirt conversation. Thank you for gracefully accepting my point and not being offended by it. (Certainly not my intention.) I appreciate the invitation to use DevChix as a resource should I choose to get back into programming. I certainly will!

Posted by EricaLucci on August 9, 2007 - 10:02pm

Hi, I am Desi the founder of DevChix thanks for letting me know that the name is confusing. Additionally, it is unfortunate that t-shirts were the first topic but it wasn't really a planned thing. T-Shirts just happen to be what we were talking about just before Geoffrey came in to record so we just sort of picked up where we left off. Point taken though. Additionally, I just wanted to let you know that the advice you received from friends and family is very common. I too experienced that as well and even though I went against it with my degree once I was out of college I swayed away from actual development work because of the idea I had about what it was. Thank god for me that I found out about Agile and got back into programming. I love what I do and I am very thankful that I was able to get back into it. Thanks for listening to the podcast and if you want to get back into writing code and you need a place to ask questions or just have general support please come join us. Ruby is a great language to get back into development with and Rails is an easy framework to work with so if you do love it or think you might you should give it a shot....

Posted by Desi on August 9, 2007 - 7:00pm

A lot of women believe in an "aggressive investment policy" of plastic surgery and martini drinking. And it works. They have pools in their back yards, and I do not even have a back yard (though I do have advanced degrees).

Posted by cat on August 8, 2007 - 9:26pm