Hi,
Here is a very painful-to-read blog post, about "Technical women and
women-in-tech", by Iris Meredith.
Date published: 2024-10-07
https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/women_in_tech
It starts with:
> The tech industry is and will likely remain misogynistic: women are
> comprehensively excluded from senior or technical roles, relentlessly
> abused and have serious trouble making headway in tech careers.
> However, there's also a massive amount of writing and literature that
> gets put out about how the same companies are doing wonderful things
> with women in tech, and we regularly see profiles of women tech
> leaders be given pride of place in industry literature and suchlike.
> I've been trying to resolve this contradiction in my head for a while,
> and I think I've finally reached a conclusion: the way that much
> misogyny in tech operates is by creating a category of women-in-tech
> that's distinct from technical women or women who have technical
> skills in the wider sense, and in fact has very little overlap with it.
... points out a lot of intersectional-marginalisation... and issues
with emotional labor...
... goes into the core of a problem:
> women-in-tech as a construct seem to exist primarily in order to
> suffer abuse. Actually being technical or making a technical
> contribution is, by-and-large, irrelevant, and women in the wide sense
> are not accepted or allowed into tech: we have to force ourselves into
> the women-in-tech mould and take all of this abuse on.
... and ends on a very sad note:
> We try and make our own way in the world: pushed out of the
> prestigious spaces where the abuse is the strongest, we make a meagre
> living on the margins of technology, some of us in the public sector,
> some of us trying to scrape together freelance and contract work, some
> of us trying to build more involved businesses, knowing that it's an
> uphill fight every step of the way. We're exhausted, burned-out and
> broken down.
If you, too, recognise yourself in these descriptions -- please know
that you are not alone, that we are here to to support each other, and
that you are seen!
Alternatively, I wish that we can gather some counter-exmaples on this
list. Please share that too.
Because:
> It shouldn't have to be this way.
>
Regards,
Vesna
