What does one’s gender have to do with their code?
#YesAllWomen in tech, too.
I am a successful web developer. I am very good at my job and I’m pretty smart to boot. I am also a woman.
One of the best parts of working where I do is the gender balance in the office. Out of 12 employees, 7 are women. I’m the Lead Developer and I oversee 2 other developers, both of whom are men.
In my office, I never feel marginalized. My co-workers respect me for my skills, expertise, and brains.
But as soon as I take a step outside of my company’s door, I am thrown back into reality.
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of speaking at a conference for other developers, designers, marketers, and bloggers. It was my second time speaking at that particular conference series and I was honored to be asked back.
The keynote speaker was an inspiring woman who spoke about her journey into the tech industry in her 50s. There were many women in attendance and about 30% of the speakers were women too.
I felt honored to be the only woman speaking on the developer track. I also knew that I beat out several other speaker submissions for the exact same topic. Perhaps because of this, I felt the need to make sure I really knew my topic so I didn’t get the “oh, how cute” reaction to a woman teaching a bunch of guys about code. And I didn’t want anyone to think they could have done it better. I wanted to prove that I could do a great job to myself, the attendees, and the organizers.
I carefully crafted my presentation knowing that I wanted to do a live coding demonstration. Those sessions are always my favorite to attend and I wanted the people in my session to get real value from my talk. Nothing is better than feeling like you have just learned exactly what you need to know to try a new technique on your own.
So I researched my topic to death, came up with a real-world example, and practiced writing the code over and over.
When the time came for me to present, I was fully prepared. I watched in shock as the room quickly filled up in the minutes before my talk. It was right after lunch and in the furthest corner of the building away from the main room, so I wasn’t expecting a large crowd. But I recognized a lot of faces in the room. A bunch of people that I had met over the weekend, including several other presenters, and some of the organizers were even there.
In the back of the room was a camera to record the session and broadcasting a live stream.
I rocked it. The feedback I got in person and on Twitter was overwhelmingly positive.
While I was talking, I was totally in the zone. It felt great to be teaching again. I got some really good questions from the audience and I could tell that I had inspired quite a few people to go off and try out what I had just taught them. So I walked away feeling really good about contributing to the community and feeling one with the other developers there.
I had a 3.5 hour drive to get home. So I was offline for about that long. When I got home, I checked Twitter again, excited to thank everyone for coming and touch base with my new network of developers.
That’s when I saw this:
Can we all agree the sexiest thing to happen at #wcavl was @isabisa live-coding Transient API script in front of a room of people/on camera?
First, I guffawed. Then, my heart started racing and I thought, “Really? He went there?” It made me upset for 2 reasons:
- It’s totally sexist. Would he have used the same terminology if he was complimenting a male speaker? Probably not.
- Of all the female speakers, why me? Like I said, about 1/3 of the speakers were women. The keynote was given by a woman. I heard so many good things about other sessions led by women all weekend. This leads me to believe that he thought it was extra impressive that as a woman I can write code. (P.S. There were plenty of developers who happen to be female in attendance and even speaking on other tracks as well)
Rather than start a flame war on Twitter and draw attention to myself in a way I don’t particularly want on a platform that I use to promote myself in a professional manner, I let it go. For the moment.
But throughout the day today, I spoke with other women and men about the tweet. It really got to me and I knew I needed to chew it over a bit. In the spirit of #yesallwomen, I decided that I needed to speak out about it.
The guy probably had no idea how offensive he was being by choosing the word he did. He probably thought it would come off as a witty compliment. As a matter of fact, if he had just replaced “sexiest” with “most impressive,” it would have been.
Oh and also, I had no idea who the guy even was. He had not introduced himself to me. And as far as I know, he didn’t say one word to me all weekend. So this isn’t about him.
This isn’t even about that tweet, really.
It is about the fact that even though I am a lead web developer, that I have been coding since the days when CSS was a baby, and that I am respected by many of my colleagues, it still impresses people that I am a woman.
I am leaning in, climbing the ladder, and making a place for myself just where I want it. I have career goals, family goals, and personal goals. I don’t think that any of that is special or that much different from a bunch of other people, no matter their gender.
In fact, focusing on gender makes me feel uncomfortable, period. What does it matter what body parts someone has or whether they identify with “she” or “he?” It certainly doesn’t when it comes to writing code.
Can we all just move on and be impressed by people’s abilities instead of their body parts?
ETA (8/17/2023): I have learned a lot more about gender since originally writing this in 2014. I recognize and affirm that one’s gender and body parts do not always match.
Rather than editing the post itself to erase history, I am adding this statement to acknowledge the harmful way I originally conflated gender and body parts and apologize to any trans, nonbinary, and intersex people I harmed in the process.
