| I keep returning to the time Etsy decided that they wanted female engineers (http://www.themarysue.com/etsy-female-engineers) and tried to figure out how to find them (http://firstround.com/article/How-Etsy-Grew-their-Number-of-... - good summary of their presentation points). Interesting results; it worked. They did find that women had less industry experience, which made them riskier hires; a self-perpetuating problem, as we all know with the cliched need-experience-to-get-jobs-to-get-experience cycle. The company was rewarded by taking the risk. The key take-aways are that they not only created an event that targetted women, but they also overcame several other barriers like women not wanting to leave already-safe workplaces (because it's more of a risk if you don't fit in as a woman than as a man) and women not asking for help as much (because if you ask for help, you're more likely to be seen as a failure/fraud) by creating a mentoring, learning environment that catered to women. This sort of effort appears to be what's needed, even at the post-graduate level, to achieve gender parity in programming work. I suspect that OP is one of a lucky set of gifted natural engineers who would have found her place in tech (and did) anyway. But, most people aren't natural engineers, and the deck is simply societally stacked against exploring the field as a woman if you don't have a burning innate interest already. NB: I'm female, and I ended up in programming for mostly mercenary reasons (jerbs! My arts degree wasn't panning out); I never had any "Women in CS" events to point the way, but I did have work experience as an adult with female scientists and engineers, so it felt totally plausible that I could go into engineering myself. That exposure was key. The subfield I'm in now - web - is one of the few with a lot of female devs, and a community that actively supports us. I've heard a few coworkers express similar misgivings to OP and yet the evidence seems to be that the more we are encouraged to participate, the more we do. |
Many had faced discrimination in classrooms or at events and felt like they didn't belong. They were much more excited and eager to participate in something where they knew they wouldn't be judged by something as petty as their gender, and many were encouraged by male peers to be there. I went because I knew it would be friendlier, both socially and in approach, than other events I'd been to. I don't know what the total was, but not everyone that applied was even able to attend. From what I've read, this is the case across all of their events, so if the interest is continually there, how can we possibly say it doesn't work or that it's wrong?
The blog title itself is unhelpful to the debate; each woman has their own individual experiences as a girl in this industry. Using one's singular experience to downplay a movement that could become much bigger than itself is irresponsible. Unfortunately, those who believe these types of events are active segregation/unfair encouragement are feeling even more validated by this post because it was written by a woman, despite the fact that she cannot speak on behalf of an entire gender and the personal experiences therein.