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"I realised that those six young women in my university class, who had managed to make their way into a lecture theatre filled with other hopeful engineers, were probably the most remarkable of all of us. The guys had it easy: we were actively encouraged by society into these pursuits, and nobody blinked an eye when we walked into that lecture theatre." This sort of generalization is totally fallacious and completely ignores the fact that various groups of men too, (for example, those belonging to certain minority groups) are also seen as outsiders in technology. This pervasive attitude of "oh yeah, you're a guy, you probably have it very easy" can be extremely damaging towards their development and self-esteem. [Anecdotally, during college in the US, the women I knew in engineering were there because they liked it, and so were the men. I don't recall anyone expressing surprise that there were women in the class, it was more surprise that there were so few of them. So I would actually argue that the reform needs to happen mainly outside the classroom -- in society as a whole.] If you want to be inclusive in tech, (which is a good thing), be completely inclusive -- men, women, and transgender people of all communities are welcome. Some of them have had it easy, others have had it hard. This can be due to a variety of socio-economic factors. Telling one group "you are special and remarkable" and saying that "the others had it easy" are over-simplifying the situation and trivialising the problems faced by other groups. |