Women in tech — Changing the panorama
Why and how TNDS supports gender equality
It’s been a long time now since equality in tech jobs have been more than mere water cooler talk. With the rise of status of the tech professional and what it means to be entrepreneur, tech and the web are no longer niche industries. We design and develop products for the masses and in order to create the best experiences possible we need to have balanced views.
Female guest educators
Not so long ago we were highly criticised for having an unbalanced faculty. It is true. We’re aware of that.
Jen Simmons wrote a very cutthroat tweet about this which at the time I didn’t feel to be fair. But as we dwelled into the topic we understood why there were so many red flags around us. And despite the tweet not being fair it pushed us into action.
We do want to promote equality, but also meritocracy. For that we’re trying hard to reach out to more successful female designers and developers to the max extents of our contact network. But for the moment we would like to highlight the amazing contribute that Trine Falbe, Lauren Currie, Lindsay Dukes (plus two more unannounced mentors) will give to our school. Not because they’re women but because they’re awesome at what they do! In fact Lauren herself is a great advocate for gender equality and her advice has been precious.
Partnering with Women Who Code to offer 50% Scholarships
That’s one of the reasons why we’ve partnered with Women Who Code to offer two 50% scholarships to their community. WWC have done an amazing work in raising the right questions, promoting gender equality and women rights in tech companies.
While the ratio of men VS women is highly disproportionate they’re working hard to balance it out one woman at a time. By empowering great creative minds from a young age and making people think about it for a bit.
Numbers + Documentary
The numbers speak for themselves. This is a reality in many companies no matter what the scale is. And in order for us to take full social responsibility of our day-to-day actions and for the products that we help launch, we need to acknowledge that something has to change.
The documentary “CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap” focuses precisely on that. If you haven’t watched you’ll be blown away by the mere simplicity of facts and the testimonials of women with many/few years in tech and how diverse opinions can be. Make sure to watch it if you can! Here’s the trailer for now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VVb6M8pTvE
I do believe there’s a lot to be done. But IMHO we need to be careful and not to turn this around on it’s head. The same way race equality or similar topics are highly sensitive, I don’t think we should force artificial actions or meaningless words. We need to avoid common pitfalls, learn from the mistakes of the past and most of all be sensitive to the topic. And that concerns everyone in the industry, regardless of gender, race or creed.
Do you have any question about wether you’re a good candidate? Drop me a line on twitter (@tiagopedras) or an email at tiago@thenewdigitalschool.com.
Always glad to help you find your path even if not with us. Thanks for reading.
