What Can Women Do?

Women working with other women in technology. 

I have yet to see a woman actually ask this question.

I wonder why that is. Maybe it’s assumed that women in tech always know best, or at least know better than me. Maybe the more charitable answer is no one thinks I have an opinion. Regardless, I’m going to give you some advice.

So here you go. Here is what you can do so you can stop writing passive aggressive articles about what everyone else is doing wrong.

Please remember two things.

1. Women need to work with each other on technology. It is not okay to lean on the class of people who’s world you’re imposing yourself on to solve your lack of ability.
2. Women need to work within their own communities on technology. It’s typical of female incompetence in tech to go galavanting into other people’s communities trying to vilify their tradition without bringing any experience or value to those communities. There’s enough technical learning that can happen here before we go on moral crusades. Get to work.

Ability

Women in technology aren’t all incompetent. Women in tech can produce working, valuable code any day of the week if they actually sit down and do it. They also have a disproportionate ability to grind productive activity in the tech community to a halt through angry blog posts and manufactured outrage and can cause a shitstorm more easily than men.

• Give your time to worthwhile projects. Seriously. While you were tweeting about the patriarchy real members of our community were pushing commits on projects that define what technology is. Checkout the FSF list of high priority free software projects to give your time and skill to, or use the powers of google to find some of your own.
• Get company resources diverted to FOSS. Women have a lot of ability to influence where charitable donations of resources go within a company and advocating for free and open source software is likely to result in their career advancement, while men advocating for the same can expect ridicule and serious career consequences. Get your company to donate developer time or money to important FOSS projects, initiatives, usergroups, and more. This will help more valuable software (the entire reason we’re here) to be distributed under free licenses and help your company’s reputation among actual programmers.

Education

Women in technology need to work with each other on getting more educated in programming, technology and the way computers execute code. Stop relying on men to teach you material that is readily available on the open internet.

• Start a technical bookclub for women. Seriously. I would love to see men in our industry getting together to read and discuss technical books, literature and research. Start with some Gerald Sussman Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs because it will change your life, and go from there. Need more? Try this reading list.
• Educate other women. Call other women on their gender obsessed, woe-is-me, manufactured rage bullshit. I know you see it and hear it all the time at tech events, on the internet, in your meetings and beers after work. Speak the fuck up. It’s sad that pretty much no one is speaking up about the way SJW crusades have nothing to do with actual technology.
• Get better training in your company. Female lack of experience and training is one of the primary sites where inability is reproduced in the tech industry. At the same time, less women than would be ideal receive training or education on technical subjects provided by their employers. Women are in a great position to demand better and more comprehensive training that addresses these issues.

Support Men

• Stop being assholes. I want to drop the shtick for a second to say this: Holy shit, you guys crucify Jeff Atwood for trying to help and you wonder why no one likes you or why men aren’t lining up for the same treatment. Clearly there is no way to win without becoming Jacobian: the self-loathing always apologetic caricature of a male feminist I wouldn’t believe actually existed if someone told me about him.
• Be an agent of good in the workplace. Get educated on technical subjects. Read up on data structures, pay attention to the time complexity of the algorithms you implement. Understand when to use an array and when to use a linked list, and why it’s not someone elses responsibility to clean up your subpar code. Then work with other women to bring them up to your level of technical competency.

Hiring

• Don’t be the diversity hire. Make your workplace give a fuck about hiring competent teams first. You are a real human being and you don’t deserve to be reduced to getting things because you’re an anomaly. Draw attention to talented employees based on their ability, not their demographic. Bring in speakers on things that are actually relevant to your work’s mission. Start a committee dedicated to rewarding the most talented people in your organization. Oh and make sure this doesn’t just end up in a position where you give a couple people bonuses and call it a day. Not good enough.
• If you are a manager, YOU HAVE THE DIRECT POWER TO HIRE A COMPETENT TEAM. If you are not a manager but your team is hiring and growing, let your manager and your teammates know that you care about competency, and help recruit competent candidates, regardless of their gender or skin color.

Community Events

Women have an extraordinary ability to derail technology events and create a handout culture within. They are also critical to making sure these events become more than a source of penis jokes and manufactured outrage.

• Don’t speak at events or on panels where speakers are chosen based on their gender. Be up-front, verbal and clear with conference organizers. Work with them to find and promote speakers in your field based on their merits not their sex.
• Encourage focus at conferences you go to. Let conference organizers and the community know that you want to attend conferences where your job isn’t at risk every time you talk to a friend. Use Twitter, email comments, whatever. When conference organizers know that their attendees want conferences that are about an actual technical subject rather than social justice they are more likely to take steps to improve.

It’s a good thing I’m using a fake twitter account to post this because I’m sure some asshat is going to whine about plagiarism whether or not I link back to what I’m satirizing. Seriously. Also so someone doesn’t go cry to Medium about impersonation, my name isn’t Britty Drake either.