Women’s day celebration and a few thoughts about women in tech
Our world today is constructed by different digital devices, apps and tools. The whole way the modern society works, is through these systems. But who is building these systems?
There’s no way around it — mostly men.
During the past years, however, there has been a lot of debate about how to get more women into IT and web development. Still, depending a bit from where you look, most of the tech departments are 90%-100% male. From the very start, Integrify has been a strong advocate for female coders. Today, three out of fifteen of our participants are women. In the future, we want to encourage many more to apply and to join Integrify. But let’s hear what Niloo, Sandhya and Pragya has to say on the topic. Happy women’s day for all the women in our lives!
Software development world is indeed blessed with so many talented, successful, strong women, still one cannot deny the fact that this industry is (just like most of the other fields) mainly male-defined and male-dominant.
Previously when I heard the word programmer I would unconsciously associate it with a (white) man, scarcely ( or these days heavily) bearded, drinking beer or coke, coding 24/7 and not having a life beside that, and when finally I entered the field and attended classes and tech meetups this image wasn’t really betrayed. Well of course it was a bit modified, since there are different kinds of male programmers, some are even seriously against coke and only drink herbal drinks and do yoga.
I should add here, that knowing some of these male programmers I noticed that they are really for gender equality and they rightfully believe diversity can lead to more creativity and efficiency. It is not a battle between men and women, it’s a journey that if we take together hand in hand we will have much more fun all through the way and at the end we will reach an enormous success.
Women do not need special treatment to feel welcome, in fact they need to feel there is no difference between them and their male colleagues, they should be able to define their roles and not just filling men’s shoes. Please notice that manufacturing pink pens and laptops does not mean you are addressing women problems in tech industry.
Here in Integrify we as a community have been successful to go beyond all the ethnic and gender stereotypes. As a woman who is struggling to find her place in tech world I feel confident and comfortable to be myself and to build the foundation of my career here with my male and female mates. I firmly believe this is one of the admirable aspects of Integrify, to change that predefined image associated with programmers, to give voice to minorities and above all to women and to empower them.
Niloo
Growing up in Nepal, I realized that girls were always a minority group in the field of technology. There, I never had a female role model to motivate me into the technical field. I thought that things would be different abroad.
So, I moved to Finland to study Bachelors of IT Engineering. To my shock, the situation wasn’t any different here. When we started, we were only 7 girls in a batch of 30 students. Within two years, three of them had quit and one switched to nursing. Only 3 of us made it till the end. This made me realize that it is not only the developing countries that lack female presence in the technical field. It is a global issue.
After joining Integrify, during several meet-ups that we attended, I’ve finally had the opportunity to meet a lot of successful women coders and get inspired by them. I came to know about several organizations such as ngGirls and Helsinki Girls in Tech that aimed to increase diversity in Tech. With such measures taken to encourage female participation in technology, hopefully, in the future, there is no girl who has to confess that she lacked a female role model to look up to as a coder.
On this occasion of Women’s Day, I would like to advise young girls not to just follow the crowd, but instead, follow their dreams, no matter how big and out of place they seem.
Sandhya
Lucky to be born in an Indian Family where I am the only girl child among two of my elder brothers, my parents never considered me less than any of their kids and the upbringing really helped me to land up a challenging career in the field of IT.
Back in Bangalore my career blossomed, work was not only demanding in terms of competency level but also to stretch one’s working hours and readily available anytime and every time. As the time passed both my personal and professional life gained more and more responsibilities. Work and family life balance would have never been so seamless without my husband and his parent’s support.
While working in Tata Elxsi’s Research and development center, got an opportunity to interact with brainies all-round the globe, where I realized that, such a Digital Age but alas IT still lacks a huge number of female contributors which also needs that Creativity and Care through which Woman nurtures the rest of the world.
Today in this special occasion of Women’s day celebrated by Integrify, I would like to encourage all my fellow colleagues to support Women to continue sharing their imagination in the sector which bags a power to bring revolution in the betterment of upcoming generations.
Pragya
