Girl Developer
Posted 1 year, 7 months ago at 1:04 am by Jennifer. 2 comments
I feel the need to clear the air about something. You may have noticed that I have a female name. That is because I am, in fact, female. Also, this is a programming blog so you may have surmised that I make my living programming computers. Very true. How is this possible? Well, as it turns out there are many jobs that both men and women are capable of doing. Sometimes in a particular field there are a lot more women than men, and sometimes, there are a lot more men than women. Computer programming is a case where there are typically a lot more men.
“But, Jennifer,” you are surely saying, “doesn’t this mean that you are incredibly lonely and unsure of yourself? Doesn’t this mean that you need to exercise your femininity by joining special support groups, posting compromising photos of yourself on your blog, and proudly flaunting how you are different and special to anyone who will listen?”
No. No it doesn’t.
I don’t mean to be rude or unappreciative of the efforts people have made to create female developer communities, but I don’t get it. Being a black sheep makes me work harder to NOT stand out. The thought of being treated differently, whether positively or negatively, just because I happen to be female is awful. I want to be judged on the merit of my work, and parading around in purple shirts and “raising awareness” about the plight of the lone female in the IT department just cheapens the real efforts we are making in our field. It’s annoying enough to get comments all the time like “Wow! A girl developer!” or “Wow, my girlfriend can’t even work the microwave!” Then I go to these sites and read “Wow, a group of females that actually gets excited about this stuff!” I really hate that shocked tone, and yet we use it on ourselves.
Also, I don’t understand the concept of feeling excluded and therefore creating a club to exclude others. It’s all a little too “No Boys Allowed” for me. I understand the desire to connect with other female devs, but do we actually need sororities? Also, what happens when you start a forum for programming help and then exclude 90% of the people qualified to answer your questions?
I want to be described as a solid developer, a great developer, a knowledgeable developer… not a “girl developer.”
I agree that it is important in the workplace that we stand out as excellent engineers and encourage merit-based treatment; however, wherever there is a minority, the minority will be noticed and treated differently.
I find it nice to be part of the majority once in a while. I didn’t realize how much of an impact it would make for me until I attended my first Grace Hopper conference where I heard dozens of speakers give highly technical talks and I realized I had never before heard even a single woman give a talk at a technical conference. It made me think more about public speaking and writing.
In 1995, I was named one of the top 25 women of the Web for my work on Shockwave. I was surprised at first. I thought I couldn’t possibly be one of the top 25. Then I thought about the guys who founded Netscape, and the guys who wrote Fetch, and the guys who wrote the RFCs, and for every software project that I knew of at the time creating web software, it was exclusively a group of guys. Now, I think those guys are awesome. I know many of them and I don’t think (most of) the individuals did anything intentional to exclude women, but nonetheless women are excluded from most of the software that is written today. We exclude ourselves and some of the men (an ever decreasing minority, I believe, but present nonetheless) create hostile environments.
We do need to not act shocked when we find awesome techie women, yet it is still statistically significant to have a group of women ready to dive into installing a linux-based open source PVR in their homes. However, until women make up closer to 50% of the technical folks we have to figure out how to spread the word, and I believe that these so-called high tech sororities are part of the solution.
Sarah
DevChix is not exclusive, in the sens that anyone is free to comment. Women post here often because they cannot be heard elsewhere in the din of the predominantly male Open Source environments.
The “wow” reaction you had when you found devChix proves how unaccustomed our society as a whole is regarding females in F/OSS. The day it is no longer such a shock will be the day that devChix, and places like it, will no longer be necessary.