trendpreneur

Sometimes I wish people would just shut up about the whole women in technology thing.

Don’t get me wrong. I admire that people notice a gender imbalance, and spot that it causes women to feel uncomfortable because they’re so much a minority, and try to address it either with hot air and bias or with sensible, practical ideas.

But I fundamentally disagree with the concept that talking a lot about women in tech is going to change things. I’ve watched the Women in Games movement unfold ever since I attended the WiG conference, sponsored by Microsoft, in 2006. I’ve been something of an activist myself, organising WiG events at university, taking part in Women in Computer Science outreach events, being a leader in the all-girl PMS Clan, and you know what? Nothing’s really changed.

At PMS our mission was to create a safe place online where girls could get their game on without the 12-year-olds on Xbox Live telling us to get back in the kitchen. Yes, female players got treated badly if they owned up to it, but to be honest, most of us didn’t use particularly giveaway names – nor did we speak, and even if we did, people thought we were boys. The real advantage of PMS was a group of girls to gossip with, to talk games without any preconceptions or uphill struggles. The only thing that disappoints me is the way PMS gamers were often hired out as ‘booth babes who actually like games’, making female gamers more visible on some levels and more of a rarity on others.

You see, and this applies to technology, startups and gaming all, I’m just fed up of being told I’m special.

Whether it’s women-in-X panels, conferences, articles or movements, the very existence of something that says “Women in technology are rare and precious beasts!” seems to make it harder for me to get on with actually being one of them. Everyone(TM) knows that women programmers are rare, therefore nobody assumes I’m a programmer. Everyone(TM) thinks women don’t play games, so they’re happy to believe I just dabble in MMOs and won’t concede that I could beat them at Halo or CS any day.

I am fed up, fed up fed up fed up of having to explain myself, having to beat it into people’s heads that I happen to be just as intelligent, qualified and able (if not more so) than the guy standing next to me, and –  in my experience — all the movements telling these people that women in tech are rare only makes it harder for me to convince people I’m one of them.

Don’t treat me like a three-headed monkey, and maybe other people will cotton on and stop doing so as well.

On a more practical note – yes, ‘we’ need role models, mentoring, better awareness in schools and to make technological subjects at university more accessible. But we need to do things, not talk about them. I’m going to be discussing an idea for SIcamp to encourage women in tech, but not overtly, in line with my three-headed-monkey philosophy: watch this space.