The Culture of Women in IT

In doing research for Cross Cultural Communication, I’ve sat on the outside looking in at what I thought of as Cultural Communication.  I thought about the stories I listened to in marketing class for my MBA and thought about how that was cultural communication.  I thought about how I watch the people around me communicate with each other and how I have (over the years) been called upon to read over emails and presentations to make sure that the grammar was correct.

I never, then, considered that gender is its own version of culture and that there are differences in the way that women communicate versus the way that men communicate.

To make matters worse, I grew up with a bunch of brothers so I never learned a lot of the niceties of makeup, wardrobe or feminine communication.  Add to that I have been told frequently that I should not play poker because my face ALWAYS gives me away and, to add insult to injury, I have a very small filter on what not to say and it frequently only kicks in 90 seconds after I’ve said what I should not have said.

Short answer, I’m not exactly a “typical” girl and I’m definitely not in a typical “girl” field.

So now I’m looking at my presentation and realizing that it is going in a whole new direction!

It will be an interesting journey and I’m looking forward to the adventure

Cross Cultural Communication… Thoughts on presentation

I put in several ideas to present on for Collaborate 2107.  I honestly didn’t expect to get picked because I have put in to present several times before and my abstracts have always been found, apparently, lacking.

Ironically, this year, one was picked.  It wasn’t, as I would have thought, a technology presentation.  It was one of those “other” presentations and one that has played at the back of my mind for a number of years (okay, the number is three, but technically that is a number).

I have often been asked to proof read the email of someone who wants to make a particularly strong point and doesn’t want to come off as less than articulate.  It makes me smile when this happens because once upon a time all I ever really wanted to be was an English teacher.  But teaching doesn’t pay the bills nearly as well as geekdom does.  So I went forth and geeked.

And yet, I still dabble wonderfully in the fine art (and sometimes grammar police) of correcting people’s phrasing.

So now, here I am, doing my due diligence on Cross Cultural Communication and I find that, while there are many differences in how disparate cultures communicate within their own culture and with external cultures, there is just as big of a disparity within US culture (since that is my frame of reference, I notice it more readily) when it comes to 1. how the different genders communicate differently and 2. how many freaking stereotypes there are surrounding genders and more broadly cultures in the world.

This  election year elaborated the amazingly inaccurate way that people categorize other people and prodded me even more that this topic was one that was talking to me.

So here I am

Poised on the edge of the precipice thinking about the next steps I take in the concept.

I think that my coworker is very correct in his assessment.  I need to approach this from my own experience, my own perspective.

Wish me luck.

Collaborate 16

So, it seems like forever since I got home from Las Vegas and Collaborate 16.  The event was incredible.  The last time I was a IOUG it was in Florida at the Swan and Dolphin at Disney’s Epcot.  That in itself was awesome.  I have been a die hard Disney fan for decades and no amount of snarky comments will change that.

Collaborate, soon after my IOUG experience, launched into existence.  Then it was IOUG and OAUG that were “collaborating”.  Eventually, Quest joined the fray.  Now, there are 3000 people who attend (give or take… according to the hotel) the five day event.

It was very good to be there and to partake of the sessions, to get to ‘do’ yoga every morning, and to log between 5 and 7 miles every day without ever having to leave the confines of Mandalay Bay construct.

I learned much through the sessions.  I learned even more from just listening to the on-goings around the venue.  I reconnected with people that I hadn’t seen in forever, and realized that, through my adventures in IT, I had somehow lost a part of myself along the way.

I had lost my focus on being myself, at least as it pertains to work.  Heli Helskyaho (HeliFromFinland) presented a Women in Technology luncheon meeting that I attended and it reminded me where my passion started, way back when, when I started in technology.  Back in the day… back in 1995 when I started at Pitt in Information Science… I wanted desperately to do my Master’s Thesis on the glass ceiling that (don’t let anyone kid you) still exists.  I was so young (at 30) and full of passion and feminism.  Since then I have gotten so caught up in just getting by the day to day grind, I’ve lost a lot of the passion.

I’ve tried to find times and places when I could network with women… where I could accidentally find young women to mentor.  But I managed to lose the passion and I have not actively sought out places to make a difference, to make it easier for other females to make their way through the still predominantly testosterone pathway.

I think it is time to resurrect my passion.

So here we go…

April Wells
4/27/2016

 

What were your biggest hurdles being a woman in tech?

I heard this question asked in different ways in sessions I attended at my recent adventure to Collaborate 16. I heard it, also, answered in different ways, depending on who was answering it. Some of the answers made me smile, some made me face palm, frankly. It’s kind of amazing what we view as our biggest challenges/hurdles.

For me, there are two things that I view as hurdles.

1. The perception that other people have that I am FIRST a woman and SECOND a technologist. They hold the door for me and are taken aback when I hold the door for them. They use the phrase Ladies First. They apologize for “crude” remarks and for addressing a group as gentlemen and often in what almost seems like a somewhat condescending tone “and ladies”. I am your coworker. I could give a rat’s ass what “gender” word you use to address a group I’m in. I am gender neutral when I am at work. I do admit that there are many women who don’t take this stand and who do take offence at being called a gentleman. For a while I was taken aback a bit when I would listen to conversations discussing the mainframe as a him or a database as a he but the conversations aren’t in a research paper where every other time a gender word is used it is supposed to be he one time and she the next, him then her then him then her. We are sitting and having a conversation and I’m honestly not that thin skinned that I feel slighted or demeaned by the fact that a computer is always a him.

2. Two, and perhaps far larger than 1, is the fact that we, as women, tend to either have or exude far less confidence in ourselves than we should. Men don’t seem to have this problem. They will often over commit and under deliver and never make excuses for it later. We, on the other hand will far under promise and typically far over deliver and never accept or acknowledge the fact that we have. Now, I’m not saying we should run around bragging about what we have done, that would just make us obnoxious. But I think we need to understand that it really doesn’t matter if you KNOW you can do something or not. It doesn’t matter if you know you know something or not. We are just as capable as anyone to learn things on the fly and figure them out as we go. Don’t ever be afraid to take the chance. The worst thing that can happen is that you fall short of the mark, and that is human. In the process you will learn the things that did not work (like allowing someone else to set far too aggressive timelines when you know there is no way it is possible for anyone to deliver on them) and what did work. We will learn from what failed and we will know more the next time. Take the chance, step up, trust our gut and be confident in our decisions. We don’t have to be men to take a page from the man journal.

So, the next time you are faced with a challenge and you question your ability to actively deliver, take the chance.

April Wells
April 17, 2016

We Are In This Together

It has been an ah-ha week. I’ve been able to escape most of work and I’ve been attending Collaborate 2016.  I’ve been learning immense amounts about Oracle.  I’ve been networking.  I’ve been looking around myself and discovering and observing.

I’ve been to two Women In Technology sessions.  I’ve listened to what women are talking about… what questions we ask..  what our concerns and issues are.

I work every day with men from all over the world.  I don’t see most of them seeming to struggle  with many of the things we struggle with.  They do struggle with many of them but we seem to struggle differently.

Listening, I was taken back to freshman semester at Pitt and thinking about being a feminist (not in a bad way) and hating knowing how many glass ceilings there still were… are…  I was taken back to conversations with my son on feminists… and now I’m sitting here thinking about being a woman in technology.

So, here I am.  I’m sitting watching airplanes taking off and landing.  I’m thinking that maybe I’ve come full circle after 20 years and I need to start talking about my first love… Okay my second love, writing was my first… and maybe bring a “l’m not in it to make money” place where woman in IT can talk, read, ask questions and make connections.

I’m not sure where this will go, but… I think it might be an awesome adventure…