Benjamin Kuo’s Blog

Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOm has an interesting commentary on the New York Times recent news item on the loss of women in science and technology.

Having worked with many excellent female engineers and software developers — as an employee, manager, coworker, and colleague — in my time working in the technology industry, I believe the New York Times is correct in pointing out a problem with a “pervasive macho culture” in many — but not all - technology companies. Unfortunately, you often see this repeated in the online blog world, where there has been a dramatic degradation of standards in terms of treatment of women. There’s been (at least to me) a noticeable shift in many technology blogs (which tend to be dominated by single males in Silicon Valley) which sometimes feels more like the boy’s locker room than the professional environment you’d expect in the technology workplace.

I’ve found — both through engineering school (the top Electrical Engineers in my graduating class were all female), in the workplace (I have hired as many top notch female software engineers as male, perhaps more–and worked for many brilliant women), and in industry groups (there are many very good technologists in the standards groups) — female engineers and scientists are as good as, and often have to be better than their male peers. The issue here isn’t competence or ability, it’s one of culture.

In some part, it feels like the more hostile environment is partially linked to the merging of professional and personal life, and a less professional work culture. The inherent mixing of personal pursuits and professional pursuits tends to encourage a much more relaxed atmosphere in male/female relations; which in many cases is more negative than positive. It also feel to me like there’s more issues with this in the online world than in the hard core technology rank and file–which has tended to be more of a meritocracy.

So what to do? In the blogging and online publishing world, at least, here’s what I think ought to be happening:

• Readers of blogs — that is, you and I — should complain, in comments and personally to people who insist on covering women in a degrading way.
• People should reward their attention, time, links, and referrals to bloggers who encourage, not discourage, women in technology.
• There needs to be a refocusing of priorities on substance, rather than style. In particular, I’m personally tired of “you should watch this video blog because the hostess is hot.” Really folks…
• Finally, we (men and women) should make an effort to point out the successful women in engineering and technology.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 11:38 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.