Breaking the “brogrammer” Stereotype
This is what an engineer looks like.
Last summer, we were lamenting the lack of women engineers in the media. There are tons of articles and data about how women are a minority in engineering, which is a sad reality. The few articles that showcase specific women in tech create an unattainable archetype of a woman that somehow manages to run marathons, raise a family, always looks impeccable in Prada, and marginalizes the amazing technology that she built.
Have you ever seen an article pointing out what kind of clothes a male engineer was wearing? Would anyone mention a male CEO’s family or hobbies in an article about his company? Do professional men get asked about work-life balance on a regular basis?
As software engineers, we get asked a lot about what it’s like to be a woman in tech. Are there any horror stories? Have we experienced sexism in school or at work?
We would much rather be asked about our technical accomplishments and the technology we’ve built. What was the first Android app that Erin built? What was Zainab’s winning Hackathon project? What were the results of Erin’s PhD thesis? How have we both made an impact on small businesses with our work on ads at Facebook?
We decided to take control and do something about it — project wogrammer was born. We highlight our fellow women engineers and their achievements, instead of focusing on the unfortunate biases encountered by women in tech. From the high school student teaching herself to code to the CEO running her business, we’ve interviewed over 50 engineers from Cape Town to Silicon Valley in all types industries.
Follow us on Facebook, Medium, Instagram & Twitter to learn and help us highlight amazing women engineers and break stereotypes one story at a time. Share your own wogrammer stories or nominate women to be featured with us at wogrammer@gmail.com. We want to hear your stories! The more voices of real, authentic woman programmers we can share, the greater hopes we have of minimizing the bias of a stereotype that — let’s face it — just isn’t accurate.
We are women. We are programmers. We are wogrammers. And we’re amazing!
Erin Summers & Zainab Ghadiyali,
Co-Founders of wogrammer
