Warning: rant forthcoming.
I don’t get the women in technology problem. Oh, I understand and see the problem. I also understand and see the problem is primarily with men. I just don’t get why there is a problem.
Maybe the reason I don’t get the problem with women being our peers goes all the way back to first grade. In my first grade class, there were four of us always competing for top marks: Barbara, Olivia, Sasha, and me. It didn’t matter what the subject was, we fought hard for the best grades. Based on that small sample size one could wonder why men were qualified to be in technology. Thankfully, no one thinks this way.
Fast forward to high school. My junior and senior years were spent at the SC Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics (SCGSSM). At that school, roughly half of the students are male. The other half are female. And let me tell you that intellectually, male or female, they are flat out awesome. I have two bachelor’s degrees: physics and mathematics. Some people treat degrees, especially technical degrees as a sign of intelligence. If that were the case, then I’m among the dumbest kids to graduate from my high school. So many of my classmates have doctorates. Note I didn’t specify “male” classmates. It’s not the proper adjective.
After high school I went off to what was then an all-male military college, The Citadel. It wasn’t because I wanted to get away from women or thought they were less capable. I wanted a military college because I was seriously considering a 20-year career as an officer. I wanted a multi-service military college because I knew that was the direction the military was going. And I wanted to be close to home because my mom was having some serious health issues. At The Citadel I interacted with some outstanding female professors like Dr. Jane Bishop (history) and Dr. Mei Chen (mathematics). With regards to IT specifically, I was blown away by Dr. Margaret Francel (computer science). I’ve met very few males who can keep up with her intellect.
I also spent a lot of my college time havening. On the havens I met very knowledgeable peers who were female. Folks like Eliste, pooh, and Tenelia, to name a few among many, knew their way around *nix and NeXT systems. After college, Eliste went into IT and she was good at it but she has moved on to other challenges. Tenelia knows her geology and tracks earthquakes. And the one that I still talk to nearly everyday (when she isn’t trying to trounce me in Words With Friends), pooh, is still one of my go to people if I have a development question. That’s why my experience at The Citadel reinforced my view from SCGSSM: it isn’t about gender.
Therefore, I don’t get why some males have an issue with females being their peers. If a woman can code, she’s an asset to my team. If she can troubleshoot a routing issue, she’s one more competent coworker to share the load. If she can figure out why the database server suddenly starts choking on some bad queries, that means I can focus on something else. A slow day in IT is like that mythical unicorn – it doesn’t exist. There’s more work than there are workers. If you don’t see more work than you can possibly accomplish, then I don’t question her skills, I question yours.
