I’m sorry to the people who sympathize with this mentality, but it’s just the last place to squeeze in the mad men narrative. Any real programmer regardless of gender is WELL AWARE how much time, dedication, keeping up and sacrifice is required to be a contemporary web developer. There is absolutely no way me or any of the hundred of developers I’ve spoken with or know personally even think of their work as “male dominated” regardless of the large majority they hold because programming has NEVER been seen a macho field and many guys in it were the farthest thing from the butt slapping, cheerleader dating, muscle flexing guys who were a wall st cliche of the 80's and a board roam cliche still today.
The nerd community and specifically the coding community is so concerned with learning and knowledge that their is absolutely no way a woman would be judged on anything BUT her skill and experience. If she is physically a goddess oozing sex appeal all over keyboard, but doesn’t know how to properly carry some text from a JavaScript function into a PHP variable for later use, well then no one is going to give her a pass because of her curves. She’s going to be told how to do it properly by most developers who would maybe find it strange she didn’t know and that’s that. There is little room for assumption in such a complex field. Her looks won’t help her in the way they probably have in other aspects of life and her gender won’t hurt her in the way the recent demagogues have sounded the alarm regarding women in tech.
You want to fix the separateness that may “feel” like it’s there as a second gender? DONT KEEP HAVING ‘WOMEN IN TECH DAY’ and other things like that. Some of of my favorite front end advocates are female and they have been rockstars of code for a long time now with next to no one publicly saying a word about their gender being either good or bad!
If you are female and love programming and technology and are willing to sacrifice time and sleep and fun to really dig yourself into the rapid world of code and stay current, then hell yea! Please give it a real shot and ignore all these political scare tactics. If you have what it takes, you will be respected and anyone who denies this is either lying or a really crappy coder who happens to be female and thinks it was her genitals, and not her business logic.
Coders have such respect for what they do considering the dedication they’ve put into this stuff that there isn’t a 5 year old Javanese girl who wouldn’t win a seat at their table if they had the passion and ability and no one would care as much about her age or homeland as they would about how she managed to get her new interface element to respond to a user with such a complex response. Not a simple one based on the 1960's 2nd wave feminist response to gender gaps…
“close the gaps! Patriarchy did it. End of discussion. Unless it’s a crappy job like mining or construction, because then it’s perfect with 99.9% men and you’ll never hear a peep from us. Prison is probably correct too with the high rate of males because equality looks much better with six figures. But beyond six figures, we will take those CEO spots, thank you!”
It’s also hard to believe many females who are true coders disagree with meritocracy in this workplace especially! If she put in the blood, sweat and coffee, she would rather work with guys who are the same way instead of women who have politicized the real source of their pride. Which I assure you will almost always be their abilities.
KEEP IDENTITY POLITICS OUT OF TECH. Everyone is welcome and everyone is nervous because the work is complex and competition intimidating. But developers are good and helpful people more than not. But we don’t need your reproductive system for diversity. We need your powerful mind for intellectual diversity which is the only kind the means anything to the team.
