Addendums

Today marks the second annual Ada Lovelace Day, which celebrates women in technology through a mass pledge to write blog posts about tech heroines. I participated last year as well. I don’t have a lot of time on my hands, but I wanted to give some lip service to the tech women who have helped lift me up over the past year, because it’s been quite a year.

Once again, I won’t be writing about a specific woman who has had an impact on me. For better or for worse, I’ve never developed a close rapport with another technically-oriented woman, although I have a handful of close friendships with male programmers. What I lack in one-on-one connections has been made up for by the incredible communities that I’ve been able to be part of recently. Today I’d like to celebrate three of those communities for the positive impact they’ve had on me in the past year.

The first is Code N Splode, Portland’s user group for technical women. I talked about Code N Splode last year as well, but the group has continued to great things and deserves another nod. Though the group is small, its members are some of the most passionate and active of the local tech community, from the organizers of Open Source Bridge and Portland’s BarCamp to board members in the Legion of Tech. They also represent many different specialties and levels of experience, making for a perfect environment in which one can learn and grow from the knowledge of others.

This has been especially evident to me in the last few months, as our group has directed its focus to the tricky issue of women and negotiation and the correlation between women’s socialization to not negotiate and the still-persistent gendered wage gap (Newsweek had a piece addressing this just last week; when they mentioned deeply entrenched cultural factors preventing the leveling of the playing field, the negotiation issue immediately came to mind.) Some of us have been moving jobs; others have been eager to have their contributions recognized within their present workplaces. Either way, I’ve been struck by how relevant this issue has been so much of the group, and how beneficial the sharing of our respective stories has been for developing a better picture of women’s experience in Portland’s technical workplace. I’ve learned so much from what we’ve shared in our discussions over the past few months; it’s bolstered my confidence and given me a better picture of what I’m dealing with and where I’m heading professionally.

Despite seeing the women at Code N Splode as vastly more technically accomplished than me (they are absolute role models), I’ve taken the leap and spoken twice at meetings over last year. The most recent experience was last night - talking about my own experiences with negotiation. It was such a beneficial experience, even if the nature of the presentation was a bit nerve-wracking for me.

The second community of note is DevChix, a women’s technical group with an emphasis on open source and agile methodologies (although there is no strict focus). DevChix benefits so far from having a smaller reach than similar groups like Systers, where the sheer size of the mailing list means stricter rules about the content and nature of posts. Beyond the rule that only technically-oriented women can be part of the list (much like Systers), there hasn’t really been a limit on what can be discussed in the DevChix mailing lists - and as a result the conversation has been lively and varied. Over the past year, I’ve read threads that run the gamut from professional advice, to reactions to the latest sexist act in the tech community, to fine-grained technical discussion, to the outright germination and planning of new open source / group projects. Occasionally things veer from our shared profession altogether, and that’s OK too in this list - which has made it seem a lot more human to me than often-detached communities I’ve tried to engage with in the past.

I’ve entrusted DevChix with a few professional dilemmas of my own, and have been surprised and delighted by most of the feedback. Inevitably, someone may reply with the typical detached professional boilerplate, but more often than not people will respond with compassion and the wisdom of experience. The last time I started a thread, I was inspired to actually go ahead and start pushing to get recognition for the increased responsibility I’ve taken on in the workplace over the last year - despite the fact that the original impetus of the thread had little to do with taking on said increased responsibility. So I am immensely grateful to the group for providing me with consistent opportunities to learn and grow.

The final community is Geek Feminism, which I heaped with all sorts of praise in a prior entry. That praise still stands, as Geek Feminism continues to address incidents of sexism with articulate confidence, and celebrates all that is geeky with women (even beyond tech, which has allowed me to pass on several posts to my friend Mindy, a non-technical fellow comic book lover). Although I haven’t commented on a single post, I’ve found that more often than not, the writers of Geek Feminism speak for me, and it’s likely that they also speak for the countless other “lurkers” who have found the community to be solace in the often cruel hybrid world of technology and internet culture. I am also buoyed by the knowledge that, in light of any future sexism in the industry (and you know there will be plenty), this group exists to present a unified front, an increasingly relevant force which can say, “this is not acceptable, and here are the reasons why.” How cool is that?

I’ve been so blessed enjoy a year of immense personal and professional growth, but I really couldn’t have done it without the presence of these communities. Through Code N Splode and DevChix, I had a forum in which to vent, to seek advice, and to throw ideas at the wall and see if they stuck. Through Geek Feminism, I have an advocate. As humans, we may cherish our individuality and uniqueness, but we also seek belonging and acceptance, a feeling that is often not a part of women’s experience in technical fields. It has certainly been lacking from large chunks of my own personal experience. What a joy, then, to have these communities around to lessen the feeling of being an alien in a strange land. Through the collective efforts of the amazing individuals in these groups, I have the power to say “I belong here. We belong here,” and in my journey towards a more confident technical presence that has made such the difference.

So, there’s a great initiative afoot this year to make a bit of a public splash in the interwebs via the Ada Lovelace Day Pledge, which is:

I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same.

Cool thing: the pledge is 600+ people over the limit as of the time of this post.  I haven’t even formally made the pledge yet (I suppose I’ll do it simultaneously while writing this, since I’m going ahead with the deal) because I didn’t know how much of my tech blog would be up and running by the day - and although this blog is barely crawling, this is good fodder for getting started.

I really can’t speak personally about one woman in technology specifically.  Much of my experience as a female programmer is probably symptomatic of the experience at large, which is to say that all of my best programmer pals are men and although I have deeply craved a mentor / friend who is female to help me through the constant struggles, the pickings are slim.  Just because you are the only women in X group doesn’t mean that you are instantly best friends for being women.

Although I do want to acknowledge that impulse on my part.  Suw’s blog post about this initiative mentions:

But what to do? Well, let’s pull back from the anger a little, and start to look instead at why it might be that women feel less secure in their abilities than most men, and what might help change that. Undoubtedly it’s a complex issue, but recent research may shed some light: Psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones.

Throughout my history as a female programmer I have ached for female role models, and it’s required quite a bit of restraint to mask my desparation for such things.  I have the feeling many of those I have wanted to serve as my role models had no idea that I looked up to them.  Of course, that’s the whole point of this movement.  Acknowledging the importance of role models and our own potential to be those role models, even if we don’t see ourselves as “good enough” or in the proper position to fulfill that role.

Identity has been a major struggle for me as a programmer.  It strikes me that the bulk of most varied, interesting, fascinating people I have met are programmers, and yet in the same stroke I feel like the space for my own person within the technology personality-space is extremely restricted.  How does this culture draw in such a varied array of absorbing, brilliant people, but still as a whole firmly reinforce its most negative stereotypes as a socially-bumbling, misogynist, difficult population?  This is a discussion for another time, but I think it ties in importantly: my greatest grief and greatest joy as a programmer have related to group identification.

The positive in group identification: In late college, when I met some of my best friends in the world (yes, programmers) through interning at the Southern California Earthquake Center, I delighted in the ways my geekitude matched up with that of my friends.  I wore my identification as a programmer like a badge of honor, and delighted in talking shop with tech friends and seeing the look of pure bafflement on the faces of non-tech friends in the room.  There is an immense amount of my personality that is satisfied by being a programmer.

Unfortunately that group identification has existed during the minority of my time as a programmer.  Sometimes it was a stubborn, nearly prideful “I’m not like these people,” like when I took programming classes in high school (and inevitably I had to eat my words a bit when some initially offputting programmer turned out to be a delight).  Mostly it was mournful, unnerving “I don’t belong here,” due to not seeing any aspect of myself in classmates, co-workers, and peers.  This feeling of being a square peg in a round hole lasted for the majority of my college career and only intensified when I entered the industry, completely overwhelming me several times in the last two years.  It’s only recently that I’ve begun to start feeling my way around and acknowledged my legitimacy as a member of the tech community, whether or not I can identify with those I see around me at all times.  As I mentioned in my introductory posts, I’ve finally come to terms with my legitimacy even though I don’t have the raw numbers of “people exactly like me” to help me be more comfortable with it.  “It all starts with you”, and other such pithy sayings.

To wrap this up, I do want to acknowledge the women who have had a positive role in my time as a programmer.  Women are so rare in tech that nearly every one I’ve encountered has served as a role model.  I think a lot of my lack of confidence in embracing them in that role - or asking them to actively serve in that role - is because I’ve seen a tremendous number of women who are hesitant to emphasize their gender in a professional context.  I’ve seen enough of these successful women expressing their hesitance to reach out in a gender-specific way that it’s made me scared to ask them for help.  But even when I have not been able to ask people for help they often still have influence on me as an observer.

@ School:

The Computer & Information Science program at the University of Oregon had four female faculty when I attended, which is an incredibly high number (especially since the gender ratio among undergrads was something like one female student to every twenty males.  Yes, I was often the sole woman in my classes).  This meant that I took higher-level courses from three different women, which was an incredible blessing.  My computer architecture professor, Dr. Jan Cuny, left for a position at the NSF, helping with diversity efforts, not long after I took her class.  I’ve seen her give a few rockin’ speeches at conferences like Tapia and Grace Hopper.  Meanwhile, my thesis advisor, Dr. Sarah Douglas led her classes and my thesis process with a disciplined, incredibly knowledgeable hand.  I received some of the greatest bang for the buck from the three classes I took from her,  and she helped me immensely with my senior thesis, instructing me in both the areas where I didn’t need to stress out so much, and the areas where I needed to shape up and do better-quality work.

@ Work:

Female co-workers doing the same job as me can be counted on two hands for all three companies I’ve worked for in the two and a half years I’ve been in industry, but they’ve all had a positive impact (and I’m especially happy that I’ve stayed in touch with those I worked with in my first Portland job). Nori, from my time at the big G, was the only woman on my 30-person team when I joined, so just by circumstance I looked up to her.  Beyond just that mere circumstance, though, she established herself as and remains one of my biggest girl geek crushes, and I continue to admire the incredible presence she creates, even if from afar.  Since returning to Portland, I met the best mentor-coworker I’ve had to date, Amy, who continues to impress pretty much everyone with her ability to go above and beyond in the work she does, and always took the time to give a thorough and considerate response to every question I had.

In the Community:

And finally, the group that I found out about Ada Lovelace Day through, Code N Splode. They conveniently have a meeting tonight!  Not only have Code N Splode meetings been a great way to keep in touch with former coworkers (aforementioned), but they’ve exposed me to some of the local developer community’s strongest voices, including some incredibly active and passionate women.  It has been so encouraging to see local female tech types who are passionate about technology and helping women’s representation in the community / increasing the confidence of the women who are already there.  And I can say that just watching them in action giving news updates at meetings, presenting a technical speech, or just chewing the fat at the “cd /usr/local/gin” which follows has had a tremendous amount to do with my own sense of daring-do increasing in recent months.  Most blatantly this blog.  I’m looking forward to continuing to cultivate my new girl geek crushes with this group - they’re a living example of the positive things you can do as a female programmer when you care about the problem and then make a point of doing something about it - even if it’s as simple as acknowledging that you may be a positive influence or unintentional role model for another female programmer.

I could go on and on (orgs like Anita Borg, DevChix, Systers, etc. - my SCEC internship - diversity-themed conferences) - but it’s late.  The only reason I’m up at 3 am on a Monday night is because I took an extended nap with my freshly-returned-from-the-hospital cat earlier (she got into some lily pollen, which can cause renal failure).  And, time aside, I find myself feeling increasingly nervous as my blog posts start to (inevitably) grow.  Because, although I have a lot to say on these topics, I’m not yet fully confident expressing it to an undefined crowd.  But in the spirit of this day and the other people following suit in fulfilling their pledges, I’m hoping that this entry is of some value to another female tech type at some other point in her journey.

Inevitably, lots more on women in technology later.  When you’re the only female in the crowd (or one of just a few) for as long as I have been, and your brain goes off all sorts of analytical directions while observing such trends, you end up developing a bit of an obsession.  Some women want to de-emphasize their gender in professional terms, but I can’t help but focus on it.  It is not the only symbol of my feeling different from the rest of the tech community, but it is the most blatant symbol - the others are obviously a lot more subjective and fuzzy.  And the time has come to work towards celebrating being different in this community - my unique voice - because isn’t that the point of all these diversity efforts in the first place?