I Have A Problem With Your ‘Secretary Problem’
By: Stacy Stonich
Last night I picked up the latest issue of Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) magazine. Before I knew it, I was staring at a spread promoting a conference. The first picture, taken from the front of a classroom, showed a room filled with men presumably at a conference session. The second, taken from the back of a larger room, featured another space full of men. And the last picture spotlighted a man dancing with a hula dancer. My takeaway as a woman in tech? I was not persuaded that I should spend my hard earned money to attend this conference. Which is sad, because I will miss out on networking, great conversations, and potential opportunities to connect with likeminded people in tech.
One of the reasons I read tech magazines is because it calms my anxieties to know there are a lot of smart people working to solve the world’s problems. Plus, I like to stay up to date on the latest technology across all stacks. I frequently read James McCaffrey’s Test Run articles because I was a QA Engineer in one of my past lives, and I respect McCaffrey — I took his stats class years ago as part of my undergrad.
However, it took me several hours to get through this particular article (not because I lacked caffeine or brain cells), but because the article is titled “The Secretary Problem,” and he continuously refers to job candidates as “her” or “she.” McCaffrey never uses “he,” and on occasion, he inserts the neutral/plural pronoun “they.” For example:
You interview applicant 0 and find she has a rating of 5.0, so she becomes the Candidate because she has the best rating seen (so far, the only rating seen). Next, you interview applicant 1 and find they have a rating of 2.0 so they don’t become the Candidate because their rating isn’t better than 5.0.
McCaffrey even states: “There are dozens of interesting variations of the problem.” Well, is there one that’s less biased? Seriously, when are we going to get smarter about the diversity issues in tech?
Now the use of the pronoun “she” as an identity for the candidates within the article may not seem like a big deal to most, but it is precisely this type of language and microaggression that can begin chipping away at a woman’s IT career — a death by a thousand cuts. A Harvard University professor Chester M. Pierce, MD, coined the term “microaggression” to describe the dismissals and insults he saw non-Black Americans inflict on Black Americans.
Today, the term is more widely used to describe insults inflicted on any minority group. These statements are not usually meant to be purposefully harmful, but to the recipient they are. They are harmful because each microaggression adds up and takes its toll on the recipient’s confidence. So as I looked through the MSDN magazine, each picture of conference rooms packed full of men sent the message that women aren’t equals in the world of technology, making McCaffrey’s article that much more damaging.
Given that computer science is one of the few fields women with advanced degrees leave after years of experience, shouldn’t we as an industry try to become more aware of how to stop that trend? As a first step, tech publications should be aware of how their audience will perceive what they see and what they read.
I have nothing but respect for McCaffrey, but please for the future of technology and women in technology everywhere, take into consideration the way your article will be read by your entire readership. Together, we can make a difference.
Stacy Stonich is Director of Enterprise Technical Account Management at PowerToFly.
