O'Reilly

I blogged the following on BlogHer , about the new O'Reilly series on Women in Technology....

If you just casually glance around tech departments in companies and tech-oriented conferences, it's easy to get the impression that there aren't many women in technology these days. Yet it's undeniable that women are making a big impact on the technology world. (If you think it is deniable, then please keep reading.) Exploring this subject is a special series this month on O'Reilly: Women in Technology. Every day this month, an accomplished woman in technology shares her thoughts.*

If you've seen O'Reilly books, you know that each topic area gets its own animal. Tatiana Apandi perhaps hints at a theme of the series by explaining why the O'Reilly animal chosen for this series is the lioness:

Although the lion is often called the King of the Jungle, lion society is actually ruled by its females. Lionesses are the ones primarily responsible for providing sustenance for their entire pride. She is a natural leader. When hunting, each lioness plays to her strengths. She even adjusts her individual role in the hunt depending on the prey to ensure capture for the pride. She can adapt to suit the task at hand. A lioness also will nurse any cub, indiscriminate of whether that cub is her own. She will give with the greater good in mind.

So who are these lionesses in technology? Open technology evangelist (and Jive Software's Director of Developer Relations) Dawn Foster informs us that:

I will be appearing somewhere in this series along with Anna Martelli, Audrey Eschright, CJ Rayhill, Dru Lavigne, Gabrielle Roth, Jeni Tennison, Jill Dyche, Juliet Kemp, Julia Lerman, Kaliya Hamlin, Kirsten Jones, Lauren Wood, Leslie Hawthorn, Selena Deckelmann, and Shelley Powers.

If you don't recognize all of these names ... and I certainly don't ... the first installment hints that maybe we all should.

Leslie Hawthorne, formerly of Google and currently with the Open Source Programs Office, leads off the series with some thoughts on what leadership is -- and can be -- whether it's "female" or not.

I've never thought of my role in the technical community as being the result of or in any way inextricably tied to my femininity. If anything, in an effort to be the change I wish to see in the world, I've distanced myself from questions of gender roles in my work. If we are all (to be) equal, it seems counter-intuitive to look at my work as informed by my being a woman. I do and I make, I listen and I advise, I lead and I follow, and none of these things are the exclusive purview of women. While others might, I would not argue that either sex has a particular aptitude for any of these things. Still, when I look at what I do and what I make, I far more often than not find women playing a similar role and doing similar tasks: building communities, creating space for creativity and connection to manifest, taking care of mundane and arcane details so that others can focus on executing to a grander vision.

Like everyone else, I've been called many things in my day, and often the word used is mother – “a mother of open source” or “geek mama.” I usually hear these words after organizing a particularly effective conference, reviewing a Summer of Code student's slide deck before the big presentation, or posting a particularly insightful piece of advice to a mailing list. It's not a compliment I accept without reservation. It brands me as feminine in a masculine world, it implies difference where the optimal outcome is equality and, by extension, sameness.

Certainly, this designation means that people see me as someone who will solve problems effectively on the fly, provide reassurance and support, and impart accumulated wisdom and help when needed. Given that these are all things I strive to do, it's satisfying that I'm perceived this way. On the other hand, at its core the reality of that compliment can be wholly unrewarding; a woman is a mother by virtue of her having children, a powerful role, to be certain, but one by nature subservient to the desires and needs of others. While the role I play has a service-oriented capacity to it – and I personally feel a great responsibility to be of service to the various individuals and communities with whom I interact – it can, at times, feel as though my accomplishments are regarded as having no intrinsic value, that my actions have merit only insofar as they are a vehicle for helping others accomplish their goals.

This series looks like something to watch (and maybe to add to your feed reader).

Someone who won't be in that feed, but perhaps should be, is Addison Berry, one of the few female developers in the active Drupal community. I had the pleasure of meeting "Addi" in March at the OSCMS, where in a roomful of Drupal developers she was walking the walk that Leslie Hawthorne describes -- helping others do better. It's a small wonder she's so admired and respected in that do-ocracy.

Last week Addi posted some thoughts after on the developers' IRC channel "a conversation erupted about sexism":

The classic way that sexism rears its head in the community channels is when someone says something that is offensive or could be taken as a sexist statement. Now, if it is really just blatantly sexist and offensive, odds are that the community (or at least some individual(s)) will call the person out and reprimand them in some way. The other scenario is that a guy will say something that he may not "intend" to be offensive or was "just joking." This is where things can go very, very wrong depending on the reaction.

One of the most frustrating things about reactions is when someone says something to call it out and men in the channel come to the defense of the original person (or the behavior in general) by pointing out that they didn't mean it that way or that "that's what guys do." It is all the more annoying when these guys (and nice, well-meaning guys sometimes) distance themselves from their statements by saying "I'm not like that, but some guys are" and yet, they still end up either outright defending or playing Devil's advocate rather than trying to help the situation. The reasons this is infuriating is because 1) people are missing the crux of the problem and 2) it belittles the original objection. It adds insult to injury.

I don't want to devolve into the way men are or what social norms they have been exposed to. I also understand that men may not "realize" what they say or how they say it may be taken as offensive. But if someone points out that it is offensive, then that needs to be looked at and acknowledged, not only by the person who said it by but others in the community as well. Intention or reason is not the focus. Sexism is harmful whether someone meant it to be or not and that is what needs to be addressed. Excusing sexist behavior will not help it go away but acknowledging it and being more aware of it in our interactions with others will minimize it and that is a good thing for everyone involved.

The Drupal community has all kinds of social norms and ways of interacting. I mean for goodness' sake the crux of the Open Source community is this little thing called karma. I'm not saying that everyone will suddenly decide this is important and the sexism will just stop. We won't stop sexism. But we can be more aware and better attuned to its impact. We can react in a much more constructive and positive way. Honestly, in particular, we need men to not leave women hanging out on a limb by themselves.

Leslie sounds similar notes, in the broader context.

If anything, men tend to be passionate advocates for helping women have a broader involvement in the technical conversation and the shaping of our respective futures. I find myself spending time with individuals from many open source projects with wildly divergent aims and methodologies, but without exception the healthiest ones are those who place a high value on contribution of any kind, not just in the creation of code. Among these folks, I find my efforts are accorded the highest of respect and I am treated as an equal, if not as a goddess, for the simple things I do each day: bringing people together, providing structure and organization, understanding pragmatic but often overlooked details, communicating effectively with people from diverse backgrounds and helping them to work most effectively with one another. Some may call that mothering. I'd call it social engineering.

In other words, be the change.

In the second post in the series, the president of Harvey Mudd College, Maria Klawe, notes that the change is already happening in the schools.

As a child of the 1950s, I have spent my life being part of the wave of change for women in math, science, and engineering. While I was in high school, my teachers routinely said that girls couldn't do math or physics. While I was in college, some professors would ask me why I wanted to be a mathematician since "there are no good women mathematicians." Despite such comments, most of my teachers and professors were delighted to have a female student who loved mathematics, and they encouraged and supported me. They also got me started in K–12 outreach activities to convince girls, teachers, and parents that girls can excel in math and science and that doing well in high school math is essential for success in any professional career.

Today, about 45 percent of undergrad math majors and about 30 percent of the Ph.D. recipients are female. And it's much rarer to hear someone say, "Girls can't do math." Similar changes have been happening to differing degrees in almost every area of science and engineering. It's exciting to see dramatic increases in the number of women in this year's entering classes at the top science and engineering schools. Caltech's class of 2011 is 37 percent female, a huge increase over previous years. At Harvey Mudd College, the class of 2011 is almost 43 percent female, again a huge increase for Mudd, but still less than at MIT with 46 percent of its entering class female. Princeton's engineering class of 2011 is almost 40 percent female. Such large numbers of female students dramatically change the culture inside and outside the classroom, and both male and female students appreciate the difference.

In many ways, this is the best time ever to be a female student in a technical area.

It's not all rosy, though, especially in computer science ... which happens to be closely related to my own field. As an employer, let me tell you, it can be extremely difficult to find and retain talented women in programming. In our own experience, very few women even apply for such positions. It's not like talented female programmers and developers are not out there, but as a percentage there aren't many.

Maria reports that "the percentage of CS bachelor's degrees granted in research universities to women is at 14 percent, its lowest ever (see http://www.cra.org/info/taulbee/women.html)" and that barriers still exist for women in the male-dominated world of technology.

But this is all changing. We are the change.

What are the ways you see to be the change? Post a comment here. Join the Deeply Geeky email list. Blog it. Talk it. Be it. Let's hear you roar.

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* Disclosure: After writing this, I was informed that BlogHer.org has been approached to contribute to the O'Reilly series. I am a Contributing Editor for BlogHer.org, for which I get paid a modest stipend.