A Request to Women Working in Tech

[noahgibbs]

A friend recently said something about which, as Shanna's father, I feel conflicted.

She said that as a woman working in technology, she wouldn't recommend that other women enter the field. She's a system administrator. So, while she's not a computer programmer like myself, she's in a very similar field with mostly similar interpersonal dynamics. That is to say, what she says almost certainly applies to my field if it applies to hers. And as an actual woman working in technology, her experience is going to be significantly more accurate than my from-the-outside impressions.

I'm not going to repeat her reasons here. Rather, I'd be very curious whether other women working in technical fields, especially system administration and/or programming, felt the same way. Anybody care to comment? When you comment, please let me know what you do/did in technology. For some of you, I'll know offhand. For many of you, I'll have forgotten. For anybody who comments, there may be other readers who don't know/remember.

Anonymous comments are turned on here. Technically I *do* log IPs and I don't see a quick way to turn it off just for this post, but you have my word that I won't attempt to match up anybody anonymous here with any specific person. If you're really worried for some reason, there are many fine technical measures to make that tracking ineffective at finding you.

Comments

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

I'm a developer, ten year's experience, VBA, Access, loads of SQL and enough .NET to fire up a website.

I have had nothing but respect and professionalism from the male programmers I have worked with. Some career concern but nothing particularly concrete.

I left my last job because of sexism - but not from any man. From a woman. It has always, invariably, been the women who have caused problems because they are unwilling to accept me over my male predecessor.

In the case of my leaving the job, the female moo of a secretary was rude, duplicitous, lying, condescending, backstabbing and disrespectful. She had no respect for my knowledge or authority, she refused all requests for assistance and behaved as if her requests took priority over the rest of my busy and stressful working day. She also took copious amounts of time off because of motherhood and I was expected to make up for it in the task which was of shared concern to us.

Towards the end of my job I made it clear to my manager that I would no longer have any dealings with her. I would not meet her, I would not speak to her on the phone, I wanted nothing to do with her. I thoroughly bad-mouthed her to everyone in the company before I left. She deserved it. And it really was the last straw with women and their attitude.

NOTE: I am NOT up for discussion about how there might be something wrong with my attitude towards mothers/secretaries/etc. I am not open to being "re-educated" by any other woman reading this thread who might presume to know my life better than I do and pronounce I'm wrong or sexist or not a proper feminist.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

That said, I see no reason for women to be deterred from this field. I'm kinda surprised there aren't more. Thankfully all my male managers were on my side against the moo.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm kinda surprised there aren't more.

Yeah, shocking. When other women on the job are so supportive they refer to women as "moos" you'd think the power of the sisterhood would have conquered sexism by now.