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.