In Defence of Women's Events & Girly Shit

Since I spoke at Codess Stockholm last September I've wanted to write something about the much lauded, much demeaned "women in tech" events. And I've struggled with how I should feel about them for MUCH longer. My hero and friend Kim Voll beat me to the punch a while back with this post about her own troubled feelings on the subject. 

It's certainly a difficult one to speak out about, not least out of fear of the backlash I might get for addressing it online. Disclaimer: I wrote this post almost 3 months ago and have been debating whether or not to post it ever since. (Don't even try to talk to me about how misogyny on the internet is not a thing - let me google that for you.)

While the Codess event last year was a hugely positive experience for the attendees, it did prompt some backlash from painfully close to home - my own colleagues. One male developer on my team warned the organizers to "be careful about what (they were) trying to achieve with these sessions" lest they be charged "quite rightly" with discrimination, while another literally cornered me to suggest that I was developing a reputation for "banging the drum for female developers" a little too loudly.

Here is where I mention that several key organizers of Codess Stockholm were male and a handful of men were there on the night to take part in a fantastic, supportive and not at all exclusionary event - see the beards?

I tend to stand on the side that "women's events" ought to be inclusive. When I was organizing the gal-friendly White-Day Hackathon in Vancouver, we made a point of ensuring it welcomed all genders, and were pleasantly surprised by a majority of female attendees (how many hackathons have you been to that had over 50% female participation?) and a lovely, diverse crowd.

In my mind, there's no point in women siloing ourselves when what we are trying to achieve is equality. We need to work together, shoulder to shoulder with male colleagues - not toiling away in girl ghettos that don't reflect the reality of our industry.

I am all for the organic diversity you often find in the indie game dev community, for example - and the non-artificial solidarity this can engender.

But here's where my point of view may diverge from Kim's - and may make me very unpopular - I still think there's real value in events aimed at women. I'll even go so far as to say there's value in "girly" swag.

We are really good at devaluing the feminine - the "pink" and the pretty. The mummy blogs. That marketing chick. Pinterest recipe and wedding boards. Online shopping/fashion start-ups. Social and casual games (and casual gamers). While these are by no means the totality of female experience, it makes me really fucking angry that we have to snigger and pretend things like motherhood and nail varnish are worth way less than gendered male activities (like sports or heavy metal or skateboarding - all of which I'm huge into incidentally.) 

Part of why I write about household, cosmetic and so-called "girly" shit on this blog is to assert its value, even for a tomboy, even in a male-dominated industry. I want to make it clear that caring about my eyelashes and my work-life balance does not in any way make me less serious or technical.

And this is easier said than done, because as a woman I am always already assumed to be less serious and less technical. Read Philip Guo's fantastic piece on his silent technical privilege as an Asian male in Computer Science if you don't quite understand why this is true.

Of course I hate calling this out. HATE it. And I shouldn't even have to say that in doing so I'm neither blaming nor bashing men. In fact, almost every woman engineer I know will tell you most men we work with are open-minded, wonderful and talented people who would love to see more diverse faces among their colleagues. 

I also hate calling it out for fear that I will be seen to be whinging or complaining. Everybody has to work hard. We all like to think technical competence is proven by objective measures like code quality. But it's crucial not to confuse objective measures for a pure meritocracy. Women don't complain about this shit because we "want to be treated differently" from our male colleagues - by and large we are always already treated differently. And again, let me underline the fact - this difference in treatment is not the fault of individual men being assholes. 

Male or female - anybody can be an asshole. Although I've had a few sour notes ("I'll only believe you're an engineer once I see your code" and "Not to be sexist but I've never met a decent female dev" were a couple of highlights) it is not "bad sexist men" causing this problem. But a problem persists, and it is much more insidious and internalized than the occasional shitty sexist comment. 

Because technical women are a minority, women do not get the benefit of the doubt in a technical field. What does this mean in practice? This means automatically being put on the defensive, having to back up everything that comes out of your mouth with proof, with authority, with how long you've been doing this, because you do not have the implicit authority of looking like somebody who knows what they are talking about.

(Related: All scientists are white dudes in lab coats and all surgeons are male, right?)

It means anxiety over saying the wrong thing, for fear that it will be used as proof that you in fact do not know what you're talking about. That you only got the job because of "positive discrimination" - nevermind the fact that everyone assuming things are easier for you because you are different in reality makes things harder. 

Anxiety over speaking and proving authority in a room full of men makes a lot of women silent. Research (see James/Drakich's review of 63 studies on the topic) has proven that women speak less than men when men are also present.

Where male colleagues blurt out ideas and opinions without fear of being wrong, women tread lightly. While silence in someone who looks like Philip Guo might signal quiet confidence, for a visible minority silence is more likely to be perceived as weakness or uncertainty, compounding the bias when we do speak up. She's not very confident. She must not know what she is talking about. Well, she is a girl so it was probably easier for her to get this job/she got more help on her university projects. (The Atlantic's May 2014 feature on the gendered "confidence gap" provides a neat summary of research in this area)

However, here's the thing about events for women. Remove the minority status, and you remove a lot of the anxiety. If everyone else around me is the same gender (which is the status quo for most men in engineering, remember) then I cannot be judged differently from the rest of the group. I can speak up and say something stupid or something brilliant. 

Perversely, it is only in an all-female setting that being female doesn't matter.

These safe spaces can be great for building up individual confidence. But ultimately I agree that ghettoization is not helpful in the long term - we need to be working together and making connections with colleagues of all stripes and all genders as that is the world we live in.

I want to think this is a problem that goes away with numbers. The more women there are on a team, the less special we are and the more normal things become. Of course this could be wishful thinking. Change is hard. But anecdotally at least, I've seen women on mixed teams become louder and more confident knowing they will be judged the same as everyone else. And so the need for women's events goes away in time. 

Maybe then it will be okay to give out girly swag (and macho and gender neutral swag) at ALL events.