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What is keeping women out of tech? Do you really want to know?

Updated 3 months, 3 weeks ago

As someone who’s been working in the male-dominated tech industry for nearly a decade, I have experienced my share of frustration at the fact that the gender balance is so poor. I hate the fact that so many Australian girls drop out of maths and sciences at high school, and that enrolments in tech related courses at uni are so low.

I teach web publishing, and I’ve tried hard to instill a ’startup’ culture in my students. It is an uphill battle – university courses ...

are geared towards getting students to complete coursework, not incubating startups. But I’ve tried, nonetheless. Last semester, I invited Australian web entrepreneurs Duncan Riley and Stephen Mayne to a one night ’startup camp’ in which students had to pitch their website prototype as though they were pitching to a VC. (No, I couldn’t find a female web entrepreneur in Melbourne to join the panel. That sucked too.)

I’m disappointed that despite so many of my promising students developing awesome web prototypes, so far they don’t seem inclined to take the next step into launching them as commercial ventures. I feel this is a touchy thing to say where my female students will read it, but to be honest, I’ve come to expect that my best female students, who are often the driving creative forces behind the web projects build in my class, are even less likely than their male counterparts, to take the leap into startup land. But I’m going to keep trying, because that’s why I do what I do. I want to help young people make awesome stuff on the web.

In short, I’m not unaware that there is a gender imbalance in tech, and I’ve put in a fair amount of time to organising events aimed at helping even up the gender balance. I have walked the talk.

So I feel qualified to point out two reasons why The Next Web article asking “What is keeping women out of tech” is just, well, unhelpful. It annoys me that so often discussion of the low representation of women in tech is blamed on women. It kind of makes me think of a guy with terrible body odour and bad breath sitting at a party, wondering why people are avoiding him, and then saying they must all be terrible snobs, it couldn’t be HIS fault. My other pet peeve is when people make huge generalisations about ALL WOMEN.

So I was a bit disheartened when @zee posted a link on Twitter to this article on The Next Web blog, which demonstrates both of those annoying traits.

Don’t get me wrong. I love women and think they are smarter, faster and more organized than men. Unfortunately I don’t see too many women taking advantage of their skills and the opportunities presented to them.

Which might also be written as “Some of my best friends are women, but my goodness you’re all lazy good for nothings aren’t you?” Thanks for making my amazing, accomplished female friends in tech INVISIBLE.

The author also seems to agree with the comedian he quotes who told a bunch of women at a networking event that since they hadn’t brought business cards: ““I guess you all thought that if you show your breasts he will remember you.” How is this appropriate language for a business event? The gender of the speaker is irrelevant. I wouldn’t go to a business event and make a joke to a guy about if he wants me to remember him he should take out his penis. It beggars belief that I should even have to explain this.

I left a comment on the blog, in the hope that the post was a genuine attempt to start a conversation about getting more women in tech. Here’s the comment I left:

How funny. You criticise women for never DOING anything, except showing up to complain about “getting sexualized in a business context.” But your post basically boils down to complaining that no women come to your conference, without exploring why that might be, and how you might change things to get more women involved. It must be OUR FAULT.

If the purpose of this post was really to try to talk to women about their under representation, and maybe to encourage more women to attend The Next Web, I have to say it’s made me feel discouraged, rather than encouraged. Shame, because I loved @zee’s presentation at Webstock this year, and I had been thinking that the Next Web might be worth making the trip.

Cheers, Sarah

PS – as I said on Twitter, the Geek Feminism blog is full of tech women (many of whom are successful geek women and entrepreneurs, which seems to be what you care about) who take time out of their work and personal lives to try to encourage other women to succeed in tech. That approach is what impresses me, more than hollow complaints.

43 comments on this story

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Showing 25 relevant reactions out of 43.

Melinda 3 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

Hey, Bree, that’s what we were saying in 1985. The situation actually seems to have deteriorated somewhat since then. Not really buying it anymore.

sarah 3 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

Thanks for your comment, Mary. I don’t want to pollute the post by referring to that unpleasant footnote. I think I’ll edit the comment itself.

Cheers,

Sarah

Mary 3 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

A suggestion re comments like that: if you’re going to publish hateful speech (and to be clear I wouldn’t myself but I see the argument for doing so), please consider also editing trigger warnings into the post/the head of the comment/somewhere as makes sense to you.

It’s not so much people being offended that worries me as people being deeply scared, although that one is ... See all content Hide content

Mike 3 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

‘Man’ sounds like an incipient serial killer to me. It’s a bit like reading a Jeffrey Dahmer diary entry…

Bree 3 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

I’m a young woman in IT. I have three computer degrees with varying multimedia, business and management streams also attached to hard core IT.

My last job was as sole IT specialist at a national company with numerous branches up the east coast where my roles ranged from installing printers, doing remote help desk, through to network planning and outsourcing IT resources and project ... See all content Hide content

Skud 3 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

Sarah, the commenter going by “Man” there is most probably MikeeUSA, who we’ve blogged about over on geekfeminism.org. His hate speech and harassment of women in tech dates back to at least 2005.

For anyone else who may receive these comments: Mikee uses a range of email addresses (most recently masc82@gmail.com), Tor to hide his IP address (though he’s not entirely ... See all content Hide content

Mackenzie 3 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

I’m pretty sure that’s Mikee. It was posted to GeekFeminism once or twice as well.

stokely 3 months, 4 weeks ago on Twitter

My 'women in tech' post got its first hate-comment. It's good for people to know this happens, so I published it. http://ow.ly/BL5j

sarah 3 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

Apologies to anyone who is offended by the above comment, from “Man”. I decided to publish it as an example of the kind of response which women have to deal with when they enter this kind of debate online.

I am actually surprised there haven’t been more comments like that.

Man 3 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

[WARNING: This comment came from an abusive serial pest. I've decided to publish it as an example of the kind of crap which washes up on blogs which mention feminism! Please skip it if you think you'll be upset or offended by hate speech]

Complaints about poor treatment. Always complaining. You’re all fucking scumbags and should be treated that way. Men used to know how to deal with ... See all content Hide content

A linkspam too far (November 12, 2009) | Geek Feminism Blog 3 months, 4 weeks ago on Wordpress

[...] Sarah Stokely wonders if we really want to know what’s keeping women out of tech. [...]

Janet Horton 4 months ago on Wordpress

Your post reminded me of CeBIT 2009 in Sydney where at least 3 vendors were still using hired women in short skirts, tight tops to draw traffic to their booths.

The message that sends does not help the ‘women in IT’ cause one bit.

JJ Gorsky 4 months ago on Wordpress

http://fc05.deviantart.com/fs27/f/2008/153/c/7/Girl_Gamers_by_FizTheAncient.png

What is keeping women out of tech? Do you really want to know? 4 months ago on Wordpress

[...] enter the same tired blogging debate in women in tech. Fran Molloy, a commenter on my blog, put it quite nicely: No women in tech? Witness the rise and rise of ‘mumpreneurs’ who don’t have formal [...]

Dave Bath 4 months ago on Wordpress

I gave a seminar on IT governance to a range of info architects (and a CIO). The proportion of women in that audience was certainly higher than the proportion of women in the programmer level, and certainly more than female programmers and sysadmins 20-30 years ago.

That said, what few women were in the game back in the 70s/80s were as competent and geeky as the good male geeks… there ... See all content Hide content

Tennessee Leeuwenburg 4 months ago on Wordpress

There is also a “Diversity in Python” wiki page for anyone who’s interested: http://wiki.python.org/moin/DiversityInPython.

Tennessee Leeuwenburg 4 months ago on Wordpress

If you like, come along to any of the Melbourne Python user group meetings (http://bit.ly/mpug). We’re a friendly bunch and I like to think that the women who attend feel comfortable and welcome. We don’t push any agendas, and just get together regularly to keep in touch. There are usually some presentations too…

Cheers,

-Tennessee

Skud 4 months ago on Twitter

thanks for the linkage @stokely http://ow.ly/B8xT #geekfeminism

Fran Molloy 4 months ago on Wordpress

Maybe there’s a hell of a lot more women in tech than ‘Next Web’ knows about; who says that being “in tech” means being an employee?

Your battle with the ‘employee’ notions that the universities have in order to boost students’ understanding of startups is a classic example of that kind of dinosaur thinking, Sarah!

No women in tech? ... See all content Hide content

Peter Renshaw (bootload) 's status on Tuesday, 10-Nov-09 22:09:25 UTC - Identi.ca 4 months ago on Wordpress

[...] http://www.foxforcefive.com/2009/11/what-is-keeping-women-out-of-tech-do-you-really-want-to-know/ a few seconds ago from web [...]

Lisa 4 months ago on Wordpress

Great post. Are there any organizations in Melbourne that are dedicated to encouraging female students to go into tech and/or providing resources for women in tech?

uberVU - social comments 4 months ago on Wordpress

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by stokely: New blog post: @zee @boris What’s keeping women out of tech? Do you really want to know? http://ow.ly/AZ8y…

Boris 4 months ago on Wordpress

A guy I know complained to me that he had a discussion with his girlfriend. At one point she said “If you don’t even understand that I’m not even going to bother explaining it to you” and that was the end of the conversation.

Unfortunately that seems to be the reaction to mosts posts on the web that address this ‘women in technology’ issue. Instead of pitching ... See all content Hide content

Ben Werdmuller 4 months ago on Wordpress

That Next Web article is actually a little bit creepy.

There is, unfortunately, an endemic layer of sexism (and other forms of bigotry) in the technology industry. I wrote about this back in March. I wasn’t aware of the Geek Feminism blog, or would have linked it up; it seems like a great resource.

Donna Benjamin 4 months ago on Wordpress

“No, I couldn’t find a female web entrepreneur in Melbourne to join the panel. That sucked too” – u didn’t ask. Been running my own biz in Melb since 1997.

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