Barbie has her 125th career – computer engineer! There’s been a few comments around about how Mattel are pandering to further stereotypes – sticking her in a pair of pink glasses is enough to insinuate that she’s now “intellectual”. I don’t think that’s all that bad. The glasses thing, sure, I’m a bit biased, but I don’t see anything wrong with putting Barbie in a pair of specs for her computer engineering job. It’s not an entirely false correlation. Many people who work on computers need glasses because they stare into the pixel void for 12 hours a day. So what? I think it’s kind of cute – and why not portray a computer engineer as cutesy? The fact is, that’s the only wearable “accessory” they felt she needed to portray her new job. That’s right, isn’t it? What more do you want? Computer engineers should look however they like – there’s no uniform. The bluetooth headset is a bit daft, but small details.

Rachel Andrew blogged today about a very sad incident yesterday, where herself and her fellow female speakers were mocked by audience members of Boag World’s live podcast event. Essentially, viewers in the backchannel decided to concentrate on their physical attributes rather than their well educated views, with suggestions that they were far too good-looking and well presented to be there for their abilities alone.

Rachel has rightfully pointed out that such behaviour shouldn’t be tolerated, but she also writes about how women in technology shouldn’t be encouraged to dress down or become more tom-boyish just to feel accepted or to avoid attention.

Barbie has a whole host of more fundamental reasons why she’s probably a poor role-model for little girls (her figure is the obvious one), but I don’t think having her careers be varied and non-traditional is one of them. I’m actually into the idea of a Barbie that helps to say that it’s okay to be as girly-a-girl as you want to be and work in traditionally male dominated industries. And hey, I think glasses look cool.

I recently opted to replace my first generation Asus EEE 701. It’s very convenient and mostly functional, but I decided I wasn’t finding it the best thing in the world for really Getting Stuff Done™ outside of sending a few emails.

I chose to get one of the new Samsung NC20s. I highly recommend it – it’s really on the netbook/laptop border, but the larger screen size and resolution is worth that little bit extra weight (and at just under £400, it’s a bargain too).

When I was selecting my new ultra-portable, the kind of things I had in mind were battery life, weight and form-factor (for carting it around to events), the specification (can I code and run photoshop?) and reviews of it’s performance. The one thing I wasn’t particularly interested in was whether it went with my handbag or shoes.

So why exactly have Dell opted to create their new “Della” site, which appears to be about specifically that one aspect?

The site is clearly aimed at women since it features lots of glossy photos of groups of ladies chatting over coffee and standing in fields staring thoughtfully off into the distance (or on the beach – because sand and cooling fans go so well), but it appears to assume that they’re not interested in the specifications or technical features of the laptop – merely how pretty they look and how they’ll help you lose weight or some other inane Heat magazine-esque topic. I’d call this patronising at best.

Perhaps they could be making a bigger deal of their “nipple” cursor controller and getting a few more blokes buying their mini range, just to be fair?

Oh, and my NC20 is an always classic little black number.

Update: Sounds like Dell have had a turn-around on the marketing campaign, pulling the name “Della” just days after it’s launch (although a sneaky look at the website’s mark-up still shows the della references throughout).

Yet again the subject of women in our industry has reared its head and yet again I find myself basically fuming. Why exactly do we keep rehashing this discussion? Can’t we just get over it, already?

Okay, first things first – I realise there’s a wider discussion about women in any industry, and specifically in stereotypically male orientated ones, such as science, engineering and technology. I happen to work within a specific sector of all these – web development – and therefore I realise I’m only qualified to really comment on this one area, and that’s fine. I only want to comment on that one, this time.

The Guardian published “Geek Goddesses” today suggesting that there aren’t more women in the field because of a lack of female role-models:

Young women show huge interest and aptitude in these fields, out-performing the boys in chemistry, maths, biology, physics and technology at A-level. But while 90% of 11-16-year-old girls think technology is cool, 73% would not choose it as a career because of its lack of female role models.

Is this suggesting that 73% of women need a role model in order to pursue a career? What the hell? I’m sorry – I thought that people chose careers based on aptitude and interest rather than a lack of people to follow or look up to. And let’s just pretend for a minute that that factoid is correct – do people need to have role models of the same gender (which this article also suggests)?

I find that some articles paint web development as an inherently sexist industry. I must have missed a memo detailing how and when this occurs, because that’s such complete and utter nonsense as far as I’m concerned. I find it hard to think of an industry that in my experience has been nothing but completely open, inviting, easy to join and easy to work within.

I have spent the best part of the last 3 years attending, or being involved with organising, all kinds of geek events – Geek Dinners (not the “Girl” variety), Pub Standards, @media, d.construct, SxSW, WSG… the list goes on – not once have I ever seen a women being ignored or belittled because the men in the room think she’s “not in the know”. I don’t know what events Sarah Blow is hanging out at, but, quite frankly, they’re not the right ones if she’s being treated as she claims to have been in the article.

Articles like this can only do damage to our industry by describing it incorrectly in a bad light – why on earth would anyone want to be involved in an industry that is made out to be bigoted, let alone the women this is aimed at?

If you think you’re being subjugated, creating a little club just for you not only drives home the idea that yes, you do indeed need to be treated with kid gloves, it lets any discriminatory behaviour off the hook by walking away from it.

I haven’t even started looking through this properly yet, but Patrick just brought to my attention the results of the A List Apart Web Design Survey 2007 and it’s a great read so far.

Being the unwilling complainer and non-supporter of discrimination (either the negative or the positive types), I’m always especially interested in those bits of data referring to us ladies, and these are some items that have caught my eye so far:

• Women perceive a high level of gender bias in the industry than men do (but only 22.3%).
• The number of people (male & female) who think there is definitely not a gender bias in total is a huge 63.8% (only 1.7% think there definitely is one). It’s important to note the tone of this was to “ask specifically if the respondent feels that his or her career has been impacted by bias, not whether the respondent perceives there to be discrimination in the field”.
• Women have around the same or higher salaries than men in the industry (highest in the $20,000 – $79,999 salary range).
• “In general, female respondents who work full time do not seem to make less than male respondents who also work full time, and in fact may earn a bit more. This pattern can be seen in Fig. 3.5., “Salary range by gender,” in Section Three.”.
• “A greater percentage of women than men believe they lack a needed back-end development skill (Fig. 10.3).” (28.8%).

Of course, as with all polls – is this data representative? What percentage of people working in the web industry read things like ALA? It’s a shame census aren’t more detailed like this.

I’m not sure exactly what to say yet, but it certainly supports some thoughts I have on the matter of women in web development. I think there’s always been a lot of talk about discrimination specifically within our industry (dare I even mention the matter of female speakers at conferences, or the lack thereof?) but with very little data and evidence to back up various arguments. I’d like to see some well formed discussions come from research like this and I hope to do just that as soon as I’ve digested the information and done a little more background work.

“I would feel like I had something to prove, and that I’d have to know something really well and expect a grilling on it” was the response I got from Fiona, my housemate and fellow “girl geek” who works in software compliancy for Betfair, when I asked her “Why don’t you go to events like I go to?”. And this is a girl who lives with me and has to listen to me blathering on about how much of a good time I have at events like Web Standards Group meetings, BarCampLondon and d.Construct.

The reason I asked this spawned from the “girly geek” slot at BarCampLondon when the 5 or so girls at the event (out of what, 60?) got together (with a few selected guys) and mostly chatted about why there aren’t more girls at events like this, and how more could be encouraged.

The main reasons discussed were just as Fiona confirmed – girls probably feel intimidated by the male dominated events. Having said that, Fiona also made a good point that most girls in the computing industry, since they’ve got that far, are used to working mostly with men and are usually pretty “bulshy” and confident. I know this is somewhat the case for me, having been “the only girl” in classes, lectures and departments since I was 16.

However, going that one step further as to actually stand up with a new group of men and try to show that you have some knowledge and be taken seriously is where the problem seems to lie. The fear of not being taken seriously or “don’t listen to her, she’s just a little girl” – to quote Fiona – is a real mental barrier for most.

I think a way to perhaps improve this might be to really show people that everyone at these events, regardless of whether they’re male or female will be treated with respect and listened to on a level playing field. How this should be done isn’t so obvious (blog your experiences more everyone!), but it’s worth doing.

On a slight tangent that reminded me I had started this entry, the “classy” London newspaper “Metro” had a very small feature showing a page from the new “IT Screen Goddesses Calender ‘07“. Featured was a rather stunning woman scantily dressed as Princess Leia. The caption beneath explained the calender had been produced, featuring 12 women who work in the IT industry, to promote IT to women and encourage them into the sector.

Right.

Given my above statements, the last thing that is going to encourage women into the sector is a 12 page spread of women in various costumes of well known film sex-icons (I do exaggerate a little here). The problem is already the fear that they will be objectified and rated solely on their gender, rather than taken seriously as intellectual equals. I believe the angle on the calender was that it was to show that “IT isn’t just for geeks” (what’s wrong with being a geek?), but I feel it was misguided and targeted incorrectly.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not offended – they’re very pretty ladies and I’d love to be a hot geek girl like that, and the photos were tasteful (although not the most accomplished). I just don’t think they got it right for the people they were intending to aim it at. Who’s actually going to hang that on their wall at the end of the day? (I would like to add that the purpose of the calender, apart from some pretty eye-candy, is to raise money to be put into educational and careers services for women… but I hope they target that a little more suitably.)

And this ultimately brings me back to my point. Equality is what should be promoted. I have a sneaking suspicion I have a different view of equality than some though. For me, it’s not equal numbers of every kind of person doing something. I think that kind of equality damages overall quality. So yeah, you’ve got a 50/50 gender split and each of every minority in your company – well done – but did you actually employ the people who are most skilled at their jobs? It’s all a bit “politically correct” gone mad to do that.

My bottom line is – don’t encourage people into something just because they fulfil a made-up quota of the kind or types of people you think you need (this goes for jobs, events, etc.). Encourage them because they’re interested and want to get involved, but may be finding a hurdle in following through (for women, it’s probably the reasons I’ve discussed above…).

Regarding my entry point to this post – that means that if you know a girl who’s really into her craft and she seems a bit keen on attending the next BarCamp, for example, drag her along and tell her to get over it (same goes for you shy boys too)! I’m pretty sure he or she will thank you.