Women in technology

From Community Leadership Summit Wiki

Goals

  • Listen to the experiences of people.
  • Take real actions.

Notes

  • Important not to assume you know all the issues.
    • Be careful of jumping in with your usual two-big-feet.
  • Wide range of opinions and experience amongst women and men around sexism and offensive actions.
  • Word offence moves the discussion to the person and away from the action.
  • Sometimes people (seem to be) looking for the next offence/to be offended.
    • It's dangerous to put a value level on if someone should/shouldn't be offended by something.
    • Concern that progress of community is affected if spending too much time healing offenses.
      • "Certain amount of live & let live to exist in a community."
    • By contrast, there are always those looking to be offensive.
    • Worried about creating a culture of not willing to openly discuss for fear of offending and distraction.
  • Important not to take the offensive with disruptors.
    • Don't make assumptions about the person or offense.
  • Focus on specific situations rather than always at a community-wide viewpoint.
  • People are often marginilized/made invisible by a pattern of things.
    • Not isolated experiences, they add up over time.
    • Part of an ongoing system of sexism.
  • Being asked if sexist language is 'gender neutral'.
    • People may say one thing and feel/react in another way.
  • Older, white men identified in public and systemically as 'the boss'.
    • All classes of people, all ways.
  • Similar to technical experience, assumptions of skill based.

Fixes

  • Spend time supporting each other actively (helping).
  • Avoid public humiliation, approach people privately.
    • It puts people in an aggressive-reaction situation.
  • Participate in "Girl Geek Dinners" - invite other women, who each get to invite one male if they like - like no tech event you've experienced due to ratio, invitation process.
  • Girl scouts/ACM conference in bay area in January 2010?.
  • Looking glass project - makes programming easy for kids.
  • As a fix for not self-prompting - get out there and talk about it, help each other with encourangement and link/event connecting.
    • "Ada Loveless Day".
  • Call it out and say "Stop" for other people.
  • Encourage your women friends - identify opportunities where she can be encouraged to step forward, step out of comfort zone.
  • Be aware of different languages spoken
    • When people use humor to bond, men more likely to say off-comments, and women feel it more
    • Other differences that are tendencies of how women and men are wired
      • "Just the facts" & "Focus on the relationship."
  • All issues are important, people automatically order/prioritize.
    • Let's people know how and when to work on the small stuff, too.
    • "How to tell someone they are racist" - make it about the thing done, not the person.
      • People are often not aware of the existence or level of offense.
  • Share stories, don't forget your history.
  • Men should raise issues with other men.
    • That's an important job.
  • Great book to understand differences in how men and women communicate is Deborah Tannen's Talking from 9 to 5: Men and Women at Work http://adjix.com/j9u5
  • Great book to understand differences in the male and female brain (no, one is not better than the other)- Leadership and the Sexes: Using Gender Science to Create Success in Business http://adjix.com/hy5r
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