*gets up on soap box*
Are women under represented in tech.. lets play a little game in google to see
*apologizes feels shes an imposter, feels she has no right to speak mumbles incoherently*
I’m trying to connect the dots but they are all to far and wide, seemingly random I can’t see how the nodes interrelate and therefore can not make a coherent or logical argument .
I started to write about open source sexism, sexism in tech /it industry – And realized I cant speak for the masses I can only vent my own frustrations. I am currently what we call in the industry a “freelancer” that is I have no permanent job, to some degree this suits me down to a tee. I’m to much of a psychopathic bitch to ” work in a team”. I like working my own hours but I’ve been applying for “real jobs” lately and there are a few things that really bother me.
The look
So for guys its perfectly appropriate to wear a suit to a job interview easy expected for women not so much we fall here into some black hole of what is fashion and the expectations of “power” females : high heels tight skirt. Neither of which are necessary to do a decent job of coding . The expectation is that one will be above all corporate looking.
for the employer there expectation of “hot shot programmer” and my physical reality don’t mesh.
*inevitable failure is imminent*
- If I don a pin strip suit I may come across like a cross dressing mafia pimp
- if I look to slutty then I wont be taken seriously
- if I look to unsexy my femininity will be questioned then I face the clear discrimination of is she a dyke ? of course she is… this reduces the likly hood of any given job offer by about 25 % (min)
- No matter what I wear I will not fit the cultural expectation
Reasons : cultural expectation lets have a closer look at that shall we
lets do a visual sampling of the imagery we use to represent programmers
Method : go to google type programmer look at images..
OK , here’s my result :
so some basic math ?
out of 47 or so images there are :
3 or 4 which are “gender nuetral” sorta.. (I’ll count stick figures as that to be fair)
7 which have pictures of actual females..
3 of which (*) I’m going to not count cause a the female is not programming shes playing an x box , the female is not programming shes in bed with a guy with a bunch of computers and worse number 1 which is all about how programmers see a girl…
a) assuming all programmers are male.. that is and the girl is like the sleek code of google unobtainable but beautiful.. (fell free to wretch..)
that leaves us with 4 ! so 4 out of 47 ? I ‘m 11.75% represented!
We should probably do better than this don’t you think ?