Accidentally in Code

Tag: women

  • Magic Solutions to Materialize Women at 3 Days Notice

    Magic Solutions to Materialize Women at 3 Days Notice

    Odd One Out
    Credit: Flickr / rawdonfox

    I was annoyed recently, because a conglomerate organising a conference pinged us (and every other group that might yield “diverse” speakers) to promote their CfP… three days before closing. I sent them a series of comments on how leaving it to the last minute like that wasn’t helpful. As Chiu-Ki put it “we’re not a magic solution that materialize women in 3 days armed with topics to submit”. They didn’t respond, of course.

    Anyway, I was thinking about this again, because this week I’ve been at 360iDev. I’ve had a great time – I learned a lot, I met some great people, and my talk went pretty well. Also a lot of friends were here too, which is always great.

    And like… compare and contrast. Because at this event there were women speaking, there were women attending, there were women volunteering. I don’t know what the percentages were, but what I noticed was that at every point there were women. I was never the only woman watching a talk, for example. There were people of color.

    We were still in the minority, for sure, but I felt like we were better than welcome – we were expected. Which was pretty cool. I know the organizers have been working for a long time to make this the case (and have had a code of conduct since 2012, for example), and continue to (part of the reason they hosted our workshop was they thought it might yield more speakers for next year). And I guess all I can say is: it’s clearly working.

    Earlier this year Chiu-Ki plotted to improve the number of women speaking at DroidConNYC, it’s been really great too see women tweeting about how much her encouragement made a difference. All that grassroots work, and it’s 22%. Which doesn’t seem that high – it’s certainly lower than I want to see – but it’s a great start, and one that I hope the organizers will build on.

    Achieving this was a lot of work, and started months in advance. Not three days.

  • The Story Behind The Newsletter

    The Story Behind The Newsletter

    We can do it!
    Credit: Wikipedia

    When I decided to leave my corporate tech job, public speaking was part of The Plan. However I didn’t really know where to begin. I built a talk from some of my more popular blogposts and started submitting it to CfPs I happened across. Luckily, I met up with Chiu-Ki on a trip to the valley, and mentioned it. She talked about her journey into public speaking, encouraged me, and on a practical level – started sending me CfPs.

    As a result, we met in Copenhagen en route to Øredev, where we were both speaking (a CfP she had sent me, and encouraged me to apply to). And we talked about building your identity after leaving an insular environment, about how we had approached it, mistakes we had made, wins, and how we could potentially help other people – especially other women – do the same.

    We opted for a mailing list, because we weren’t keen on the idea of maintaining a static site and questioned the efficacy of a static site – people expect push notifications now, they rarely check, and because we liked the idea of a regular prompt in the inbox, reminding people that they have expertise to share, along with resources to make it seem more doable. Also I had finally noticed that newsletters were A Thing, everyone seemed to have one – except me.

    For collaborative projects, I think there are two things that are important: a process, and your values.

    We discussed and agreed on our values up front.

    Whilst we had both done a lot of work to raise the profile of women, we didn’t see any need to brand what we were doing as a thing “for women”. We would brand it for everyone, and have a Secret Feminist Agenda.

    Firstly, we would only share CfPs with a Code of Conduct. We believe that a Code of Conduct is necessary, but not sufficient. Not having one is a clear sign that the conference organisers are behind the times, don’t value the safety of marginalised people – or worse, don’t believe that is relevant.

    Secondly, we would curate CfPs based on how they treat the speakers – we agreed that conferences should, at a minimum, cover travel.

    Thirdly, at least half the content would be from women. This, to me, has been one of the most interesting aspects. Typically Chiu-Ki curates the CfPs and the inspiration, and I curate the link round up, so this falls more on me to check and balance. At first it was hard, but over time it has got much easier, to the point where sometimes I have to go looking for content from men to balance things out.

    Note: whilst we actively look for content from other underrepresented groups we don’t measure or have targets for this – maybe we should.

    The consequences of The Secret Feminist Agenda have been fascinating, heartening, and also sad.

    Men have not seemed to notice. They say, “I love your newsletter”, comment on the need for such a thing.

    Women notice. Some think it is a newsletter for women – it’s not. Is it because it’s written by two women? Because they are not used to something for everyone being relevant to them? Because they notice how much content by women is included? Because we talk about diversity?

    I don’t know. But what I think that we have shown – 6 months on – is that content in tech that considers women as important consumers, can still be branded as for, and be relevant to everyone.

     

     

  • Flawed Humans

    Flawed Humans

    IMG_4312As I walked through Barcelona, I came across a tiny hidden museum dedicated to Dalí. As I admired the work, I pulled up his Wikipedia page to learn more about the artist. And discovered that he refused to decry the Nazis, and had been kicked out of the Surrealist movement in part because of it (there is far more information about this on the German Wikipedia page).

    There’s a quote from George Orwell, that I often think about in this context,

    “[o]ne ought to be able to hold in one’s head simultaneously the two facts that Dalí is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being”

    And yet. It has tainted Dalí’s work for me. It is brilliant and yet somehow I am wary of it. The dripping clocks are beautiful but I cannot quite give into it in the same way, with the knowledge that he was so… inhumane.

    Genius is entwined with madness, with selfishness. But we look back and admire the work of artists and mostly don’t discover who they were aside from a genius.

    This extends past art, I think, to the single minded determination to achieve anything.

    Terrible parent. Numerous affairs. Alcoholic. Abusive boss. Serial womanizer. Narcissist.

    A while ago, I realised that in the activist community there are people whose work that we benefit from, but that we might personally not want to be friends with.

    It can be hard to reconcile this with a hero narrative. Personally, I’ve chosen to not criticise other women, to be publicly supportive or say nothing, and privately keep my distance.

    In the years since I discovered this, I have watched what happens to women online and wished we would talk about what it does to you to receive constant threats. It’s amazing what you get used to. I realised when I was leaving the tech industry that someone had called me a bitch and I hadn’t even noticed. I just put it in a box and mentally noted to be wary of that guy. Would death threats also become normal, given enough of them? It terrifies me, what that might do to me. I can’t be sure what that would be. I don’t know that I would like the person who resulted all that much.

    One of the most unfair things we ask of women is that they be perfect victims. I’m not sure how much of an improvement the narrative of a perfect hero is.

    I dream of a day when women can be whole, entire, flawed, human beings. And we can admire what they do, or not, where we can temper our admiration with knowledge of their flaws, if we know of them, and where we can acknowledge that some things come at a cost that most of us are not prepared to pay.

    IMG_4346

  • Finding More Women on Social Media

    Finding More Women on Social Media

    DATABASE at Postmasters, March 2009 DATA BASE is an Oxford English Dictionary with the word "DATA BASE" cut into it with the laser cutter.
    Credit: Flickr / Michael Mandiberg

    Every so often I find my twitter handle in a list that forms a response to some guy saying “who are some women I should follow on social media?”. Do these things work? I don’t know. I’ve compared notes with other women on how long it lasted when a prominent VC asked that question (for me, <24 hours), which tells me at least sometimes they are ineffectual.

    Besides that, there are different types of engagement, you can follow someone, but do you listen to them? And you can listen to them, but do you engage with them or their content? Typically we all go back and forth through these different modes, but if you just ignore, or perhaps worse, think “oh she’s moaning again” then this strategy clearly isn’t working.

    I think the best way to increase the number of women you encounter on social media is to seek out women whose opinions or work you are interested in.

    • Women developers of your favourite products.
    • Women contributors to open source projects you use.
    • Women who have written articles you liked.
    • Women who have given conference talks you enjoyed.
    • Women who have been retweeted into your timeline.

    This is harder than someone giving you a ready made list. For each one of these, there is a reason why:

    • There are few women developers, and some hide their affiliations for fear of threats.
    • There are even fewer women contributing to OSS, and many of them do so under gender neutral pseudonyms for safety.
    • Women’s content is shared less, and more likely to be (or be thought) women-focused.
    • Women are not fairly represented at conferences.
    • Women get retweeted less.

    But these aren’t insurmountable. And moreover, for me at least, it’s vastly more flattering to be noticed because of something cool I’ve built or written than because I’m female.

    As a cis-white-women I’m trying these strategies, and slowly improving the diversity of my feed, too.

     

  • Three Tactics that Block Women from Getting Ahead

    Three Tactics that Block Women from Getting Ahead

    Three Little Boys, Ashdale Gill
    Credit: Geograph

    1. Undermine and Critique

    Step 1: Make it really hard for her to achieve something.

    Step 2: Make completely reasonable comments about her progress.

    E.g. Nitpick every detail, force her to prove that your suggestions can’t be done. Then complain she is not faster.

    E.g. Avoid telling her key information up front. When it is discovered later, say it should have been considered earlier.

    Pro-tip: The key to a “successful” execution us for step 1 to be a subtle as possible. Capitalise on Stereotype Threat to maximise effectiveness.

    How to Avoid: Focus on surrounding yourself with people who want to see you succeed, and won’t push you over to mitigate their own insecurities. Be aware of step 1, because by step 2 it’s too late.

    2. Marginalise and Attack

    Step 1: Isolate.

    Step 2: Whatever you want.

    E.g. Ensure she is working on a low priority thing no-one else cares about. Then, however you treat her (gaslight! harass!) she will not have anyone else to look out for her or help her find an escape route.

    Pro-tip: Pick your target here. The more gregarious may refuse to be isolated. New grads are the best target, as they have the smallest network.

    How to Avoid: Steer clear of situations where your success or failure depends on one person. Always look for opportunities to broaden your network, Having lunch with someone you don’t immediately work with weekly is a good start.

    3. The Unreasonable

    Step 1: React disproportionately to something she says or does.

    Step 2: Watch. Wait. Repeat.

    E.g. Take something matter of fact, such as “does this class have unit tests that should be updated” or “hey, did you update the X?” and get really mad about it. “I can’t believe she asked me about the X, why doesn’t she respect what I’m doing?”

    Pro-tip: Key here is capitalising on the fact that men are presumed to be reasonable and women presumed to be more emotional, and found to be less likeable. Successful execution encourages other men to follow in your wake.

    Avoid: Hardest one to avoid, as typically this is said about rather than to you. Best to avoid possible triggers (which is hard, because anything that can be perceived as criticism can be used this way). Once you realise this is happening, be extra vigilant about all communication. Don’t ignore, as this can exacerbate.

    Paranoia?

    These patterns come from my own experiences and those of other women I speak to. All stories are different, and yet given enough of them, themes emerge. So many times at GHC someone asks the question about who in the room has been described as “aggressive”… and almost every woman in the room raises their hand.

    There are different kinds of gendered experiences. The outright sexual harassment, versions of “get back in the kitchen” is one, but another is patterns of behaviour that happen over, and over again to women, but much more rarely to men. It’s behaviour that men feel more OK with exhibiting towards women, because subconsciously they know they are much more likely to get away with it.

    My experiences and the stories I have heard suggests that the reoccurring patterns of behaviour are so much more prevalent and horrifying than the outright sexual harassment. Whilst that is horrifying and unpleasant, it is in some ways more easily dealt with because everyone agrees that it is wrong. The patterns go unnoticed, are internalised. And so… we quietly go mad.

  • Conferences, Code of Conducts, and Being #ThatWoman

    Conferences, Code of Conducts, and Being #ThatWoman

    Kissing tiger cubs
    Credit: Flickr / Tambako The Jaguar

    Like a lot of people, I took the Code of Conduct pledge (so I was really pleased to see GHC add one this year), firstly because I see it as a sign that the event is committed to making it a welcoming space for women, and I do really only want to attend events where that is the case. Secondly, because I want to support the general idea that events should have Code of Conducts.

    A common thing to hear when organisers are thinking about a Code of Conduct is that it can be taken as a sign that things do happen there and make people more worried about stuff happen.

    This blows my mind, because as a woman in a male dominated industry I’ve found the default to be that something happens. I expect something to happen. That doesn’t mean that it’s something appalling, or dangerous, or that I am constantly braced for it (although in certain situations or after a bad run of events I have totally been in this place – and it is not healthy). It usually mean that whenever something does happen, I’m unsurprised.

    Honestly, the surprise is usually when the organisers deal with it really well.

    I have called out things to organisers at three conferences. Two as a speaker, one as an attendee. Every time, I’ve been really happy with how things were dealt with and found the experience reassuring.

    The Code of Conduct may have little effect on what happens. The process and rationale for calling things out is the valuable part. And for me at least, a well handled minor incident actually makes me feel safer than nothing at all.

  • Female Entrepreneurship: Observations and Opportunities

    Female Entrepreneurship: Observations and Opportunities

    Credit: Wikipedia
    Credit: Wikipedia

    I’ve been generally skeptical of whether we would see a rise in Female Entrepreneurship, much of which was because looking at the data (female-led companies are more likely to succeed, male-led companies are more likely to fail) it wasn’t clear to me whether more women should be starting companies… or just fewer men.

    However there are some trends that make me think that this may change, and a couple of opportunities that I think women are more likely to capitalise on.

    Trends

    Some of the current coolest companies have non-technical founders (including: Pinterest, Kickstarter, Etsy). I see this as a willingness to accept less technical credibility even when founding a tech-based company. This is great for women, as even women who are deeply technical are viewed as less technical.

    Lots of startups come from ex-employees of a small number of “Pedigree” companies, which seem to skew towards new grad hires (see the average ages on the released demographic data sets). Many of these companies are new enough that we’ve yet to see the exodus of women, but because women drop out within 10 years, unless they are very different (and again, the data suggests they are not – if they were, the numbers would be better) it will come, and these women will be looking for their next thing to do.

    There’s been a massive increase of female focused programs. I know people have mixed feelings about this, but the thing about programs focused on encouraging minorities is that they (when done well) make it clear that there is a space for them. I think a big part of this is making women apply. Women tend to judge their abilities more harshly, I remember hearing that university scholarships for women were beneficial because women just weren’t applying to scholarship funds for “everyone” (although I can’t find data to back this up), and I’ve heard recurring stories from companies trying to hire women, and universities recruiting that convincing women to apply to them if the first step.

    Services like Kickstarter provide an alternative to women (women led campaigns are more likely to succeed, especially in tech which is 2/3:1/3 female:male success), make bootstrapping more viable (since it’s advance sales for a product you are making, and also tests your market – if people will buy it before it exists, it’s a good sign that people will buy it once it does).

    Increasing commoditisation of platforms – cloud is on the trend to zero, so this massively reduces start up costs (no need for data centres). Mobile app development has reached sufficient maturity that there are lots of great Open Source libraries, which can massively reduce development time. I think this is good sign, as women are much more likely to bootstrap.

    Women are the dominant users of social media (long been the case, infographic from 2012), and the drivers of consumer spending. I’m convinced that the current small pockets of successes that capitalise on that trend (notably, the non-tech founder companies listed above) is only the beginning.

    The tech bubble has caused living costs in tech hubs to spiral and makes the economics of living somewhere cheaper (and making less money) much more compelling.

    Opportunities

    I think there are major opportunities created by greed and arrogance, which is great for women because we are socially conditioned to be less greedy, and less arrogant. There are countless examples of techies building things that exploit the less technical (this about on-demand workers, is just one example), but what if we built things to empower the less technical instead?

    Other opportunities are created by the lack of empathy that is a feature of the tech industry. For example the problem of online harassment is outsourced to a (very profitable!) start up in the Philippines. Or, Education start ups are a big thing, but many of them just provide a more structured way for people to teach themselves to code. This is understandable, because this is how most techies themselves learned to code, but I remain unconvinced that it will work for everyone.

    Of Course…

    I could be totally wrong! But I really hope I’m not wrong about the outcome, even if I’m off on the reasons why.

  • Your Guide To Undermining Women Whilst Being “Nice”

    Your Guide To Undermining Women Whilst Being “Nice”

    Quicksand
    Credit: Flickr Pete Bellis

    With the rise of political correctness, it’s become so much harder to undermine women. One can no longer tell her to get back in the kitchen, or express appreciation for her physical attributions through unsolicited touching. These things have – bizarrely – become frowned upon. Why does no-one have a sense of humour any more?

    This list of 14 strategies (try one every day for two weeks should you be so inclined!) will take the most reasonable, well balanced woman and have her questioning her own abilities. And, if she ever complains, just point out the pure intentions and the very niceness of the act.

    1. It’s important that people hear her ideas in meetings, so if she says something make sure to repeat it.
    2. If she doesn’t agree with you, she probably doesn’t understand. Make sure to explain. As many times as is necessary.
    3. When she asks a question, be sure to really understand what the question is. For example, if she wants X’s email, make sure to understand exactly why, and what, she needs to email X.
    4. If you can write code for her, do that. Ideally do this whilst she is sleeping. There is probably a biological reason for her needing more sleep, and you would hate for her to feel bad about that.
    5. If she hasn’t done something the way you would have done it, encourage her to do it again. It’s a learning opportunity!
    6. Make time to be extra thorough with her code reviews. Be sure that she fixes style issues in that file, and even the most tangentially related existing issues. This is how we learn!
    7. When you are impressed with something she has accomplished, also express surprise. This will make her feel extra good about herself.
    8. Remember, all effort is a team effort. Especially her effort. Everyone wants to be a team player!
    9. Make sure you tell her how hard you are trying to help her. It is especially important to talk about this after you have done something that negatively impacts her.
    10. It’s important to be transparent, but be considerate by telling her after everything is decided. Otherwise she will just worry!
    11. Take care to point out if she seems at all emotional. After all, feedback is a gift.
    12. Be sure to let her know what other people think of her, or might think of her. This will help her manage how other people perceive her. This can only help her career.
    13. Constructive criticism of tone is so helpful! No-one wants to seem like a bitch.
    14. Don’t let her push herself too much, or take on projects that might be a stretch. You’d hate to see her fail.

    Thanks to Nat, Kelly and Dennie for their suggestions.

    Obviously, this is satire. These strategies should not actually be used.

  • Book: The Richer Sex

    Book: The Richer Sex

    The Richer Sex For women who have complained about modern dating and men being intimidated by the success of women… The Richer Sex is the book to read.

    Personally I’d kind of thought the problem was dating engineers (common complaint amongst my female peers – how many of them have stay at home wives and the effect that can have on their attitudes to women at work), but turns out it’s much more widespread than I thought! Well, at least I feel less alone.

    Interesting (depressing) insight, this trend started with women of color in the US being more educated, and more successful in the workforce than men. This was seen as being some kind of aberration, when in fact it was the start of a trend.

    Other interesting insight, on the diminishing remarks that men make to women to try and bring them down a bit (I knew it!), they can do this whilst actually also being proud of them (did not know that!)

    The most unexpected thing I got from this book, is some sympathy for the men in these situations. Trying to navigate a new path, sometimes ostracised from school communities. Caught in a situation where they are supportive of their wives doing what they want, whether it is staying home or “leaning in”, whereas women have sometimes found it harder to let go the idea that men should be doing some kind of external work, even if they don’t make as much money.

    The book is optimistic, which I was surprised about – my own experiences and those of my friends have not always supported a positive outlook on this. But, it did make me look at it differently, and assess my own feelings about how I would feel about a partner who did not work.