Are you Against Women inTech?

Have been in touch with so many folks speaking hateful and negative comments regarding the hashtags, the celebrations, the events, and the opportunities that revolve around “Women in Tech”.

I hear ya. I listened to you all. Now listen to my perspective.

What is diversity and inclusion and why are we concentrating on it so much?

It goes like this. You had a shop in your village. You and your sons were taking care of it. One day one of your not-so-educated daughters came and suggested things like:

• be more lenient to workers (coz she is not used to harsh atmosphere) or,
• add less of some artificial ingredient in your product (coz her friends admire the simplicity and authenticity in some of her paintings) or,
• Take a certain route instead of a profitable one (coz she is sensitive to the damages that will be done in the profitable path)

This diversity of mindset fosters the creativity that goes around your business. Now you will argue: why I am using she/her, as it’s a general thing to bring more people to the table to have the diversity of mindsets. Gotcha. Read that again, you and your sons were taking care of it. Women were not there at all, to begin with!

That’s what hasn’t been done yet. That’s what is missing. Bringing women to the table. If already there would have been no gender gap with less proportion of women in tech, there would have been no activism for that. That’s the point. I can give you a long list of references including Forbes’ articles, and Mckinsey’s studies that have researched and found out that indeed there is a direct link in revenue growth and employee turnover with the involvement of more and more women. There is also an added advantage of having a broader talent pool to choose from.

Now yes, I have been in some women-in-tech events where I found some of the women were always complaining about the state of the industry without being actually discriminated, and enjoying the free food. No, I didn’t like that. But you can’t only concentrate on that low percentage of women and ignore a vast majority of women who could feel empowered and motivated by these events. The message of these events is to encourage women and make them feel empowered: that they can choose for themselves. That they can decide what they want to become.

Now I know what you will say -

So EDUCATE them! Instead of giving them the privileges

This is again one of the heated topics of argument among so many people. Go back to my example. In that type of era, that type of setting, you think you will send your daughter to school? Or you will involve her right away in the business and then, later on, inspired by her, your sons will send your grand-daughters to school to receive a proper education. Think properly.

Right now, the wage difference is real. The discrimination is real. So companies and groups of people have started to come together to initialise a layer of sufficient women in tech. Sufficient enough to have no wage difference, sufficient enough to trigger fear or guilt if anyone even thinks of passing lewd comments in the workplace, sufficient enough to have a smooth system of grievance addressal. It’s not even in big tech companies properly, so you can’t say it’s sufficient yet. And to reach THERE, all of us are constantly trying to keep the message floating.

Of course, it’s not just the events and celebrations that will bring change. There needs to be an investment in creating awareness programmes, educating people (males and females) about good work culture, strengthening the grievance redressal system etc. And all of that requires much more effort and time. Many of the companies find it easier to just create a quota for women, post some women-empowerment articles on LinkedIn, organise some women-in-tech events, and assume that root problems will be solved. No. There are plenty of opportunities for so many women, it is better to shift focus towards actually having an open and inclusive culture.

Once that’s done, a more beautiful world will be there and then you would no longer need a hashtag of #womenInTech. And I really appreciate what the events like Grace Hopper Celebration are doing to achieve that. There are seminars on professional development, technical talks, and motivating sessions to remind women of this era, that you are free to choose, to pursue, to dream, to dare.

For those who still didn’t understand: Live and Let Live.

Peace.