The internal struggles of women in technology

Speaking as a woman with a degree in computer science, having belonged to Women-in-CS groups and attended Women-in-Technology conferences, I believe there are a lot of contradictions in our psyche, and it's hard to know what to do about them. I offer this analysis for men trying to understand women involved with the tech industry and/or gaming industry, and for women who might experience these same self-contradictions without realizing it.

Affirmative Action

First, there is the inherent contradiction behind affirmative action and policies aimed at diversity. We want our society to be equal, gender-blind (and color-blind and other kinds of positive blindness); we want to not even have to think about these kinds of differences when we choose an employee or someone to collaborate with. The focus should be entirely on competence and on whether the new person will fit productively into our group. That's the only fair way to do it. But, embracing "blindness" at this point in time is counterproductive to that eventual goal. We have to at least acknowledge that there are traces of inequality built into our culture, and thus into our socialized brains, very often without our realizing it. Look into scientific studies of attitudes about men and women, if you don't believe in sexism amongst non-sexist persons. We have to remember it, in order to reach a place where we might someday forget it -- if that's even the answer.

Right now, there are two purposes I see behind pursuing diversity.

1. By including a diverse set of creators, your product will more likely reach a diverse audience.
2. By including a diverse set of employees, you make new potential employees feel more welcome when they match up to a category of diversity already represented.

Number 2 is kind of counterintuitive from the equality angle. It means, I like to be around people who are similar to me, because it makes me feel more comfortable. If you don't have anyone like me, I feel like an outsider. From this perspective, you could argue that there is some potential good behind having an incompetent female employee, because maybe she will allow you to acquire and retain an additional ultra-competent female employee. But, you might give them both some kind of complex from trying to figure out why they're both there, and with a huge difference in competence, the similarity level might be too low, too. Still, two-of-a-kind is probably a good minimum to shoot for, when you reasonably can.

The hidden downside to Number 1 is that the "diverse" person you get may be the exception to the rule. I am a woman, but I never really got into all the stereotypical woman-pursuits: sociable shopping, talking on the phone for hours to girl friends, pillow fights...(ok, as far as I know, pillow fights aren't really a big thing for women in general.) I got into gaming at a young age, and always perceived myself as much more of a gamer than any other girls I knew in person, up until I started meeting people in person that I'd first met through gaming (after high school). I had female friends through school, but the only time I remember playing a video game with a girl I knew from school was in kindergarten. I had one other friend in junior high who expressed a liking for Chrono Trigger, but I don't know if she ever beat the game, while I played through New Game+ to see all the endings.

Maybe that experience of friends who are not gamers would give me enough insight into their world to be able to make games they would enjoy. But I don't have much common ground with them for gaming, so I don't know as it's a surefire thing. I think it will help to include a diverse selection of team members, according to the common categories of diversity, but it won't cause massive change all at once.

Activism versus Action

Some people complain that there are women in technology who complain a lot about inequality, and then there are women who simply do work equal to any man. Why all this protesting and attention-seeking when they could just change the system from within by proving themselves through their competent actions?

Like affirmative action, activism about gender equality runs counter to the ultimate purpose -- that it not be necessary. We hope that increased awareness now may someday lead to a decreased need for awareness. Statistics about how few women are in computer science and other technical fields surely give us a clue about how things stand now.

The problem with demanding competent action instead of activism is that it creates unreasonable pressure. You are also saying, "If a woman is as valuable as a man, let her prove it." And the implication, given the already low supply of women in the field, is, "If a woman can do as good a job as a man, let her outshine all the men with whom she is competing." There aren't enough other women to take up the slack when she has a bad week. Leaving aside how women are generally trained by society to prefer cooperation to competition, you are now comparing her, or at least she is comparing herself, to the very most skilled, talented, intelligent, and competent man she knows in her field. If she can't match or surpass him, she fails the test, and "proves" that her gender isn't suited for the work.

As if that test isn't enough, studies have shown that a woman is more likely to undervalue her own performance while a man will overestimate his own, even when the two are objectively performing at an equal level. So when this holds true, a woman must perform significantly better than a man before she will judge her own performance to be equal to his.

So for a woman who cares about gender equality, to try to encourage equality through only action and no activism is to try to be better than everyone else. Is this the kind of woman you want to bring to your organization? Is this the kind of pressure you want to put on an employee or coworker?

Sexiness and Objectification

As a woman, I want to be taken seriously for my ideas, not to have my audience distracted by my appearance. I feel like, in any professional setting, and even in social gaming events (board game nights and the like), I should dress to not emphasize my appearance at all, because both cases tend to be male-dominated populations for me. I also get irritated with the existence of makeup: why should I spend so much money and time that my male counterparts would be ridiculed for spending? But here and there I find a dress-for-success article about how important makeup and an appearance of youth is for a professional woman. And then at the same time, I want people to notice I am a woman, so I can represent my gender with excellence (i.e., A girl kicked your butt at poker! So you better not ever assume girls can't play poker!) And when not involved in a relationship, I didn't want to totally exclude the possibility of getting to know a potential romantic interest.

As a female gamer, when I play a game like WoW where I get to create an avatar, appearance is important to me. I spend a long time sorting through all the options of hairstyles and facial expressions; maybe I never quite kicked the habit of playing dress-up on my dolls. But for me, it links into an imagined personality for the character. I tend to like to play serious, no-nonsense warrior types. And I like to engage in a bit of min-maxing to play well, too. So, when I find a piece of armor that looks like a bikini top when I put it on, I am outraged. I have to wear THIS if I want this stat upgrade?! But -- I don't mind at all, really, that the option to wear a bikini top is in the game, as long as it is a reasonable choice. Helps sort out the guys who like to look at "sexy women" and the girls who want to be "sexy women". I just get irritated when I end up showing a lot of virtual skin and it's not by my first choice.

I don't mind that there exist women who choose to play up their sexiness. (Though no one should ever feel forced into it.) And once in a while I like to wear a dress and put my hair up, to prove that I can. I only resent the times when I feel like someone is trying to stuff me into the sexy bucket when I want to be in the competent human being bucket.

Femininity versus successfulness

Then, there are the feminine habits for which I have been socialized, which I am beginning to be able to spot and struggle with how to handle. In high school, I had a calculus teacher who insisted that all the boys in the class must raise their hands before giving answers, and none of the girls were allowed to raise their hands before giving answers -- girls must blurt the answers out. He explained that this was to give useful workplace training, because girls are more prone in general to wait their turn, and then never get a turn because the boys would jump forward and take it. I would otherwise assume that it is only that I am shy in comparison to other people -- not just shy compared to boys.

Then, I had a mentor teach me after my college years that there exist people in the world who expect you to interrupt them as part of normal conversation. This might be something that varies by family, but the skill surely applies in larger, male-dominated meetings. Since then, I make an effort to practice interrupting to get my two cents in, even when I don't think my two cents are necessarily worth the interruption on their own merit. The point is to be heard, and let people know you're there and you are a thinking, present individual. As a bonus, if you're the sort of person routinely told, "You're awfully quiet," this will reduce the frequency of that.

I think there are a lot of habits I struggle against, that many people, but particularly many women, share. We need practice and encouragement to get over them. If you are a successful woman or man, and you manage to notice a woman in the corner who doesn't say much, a little advice backed by experience or research might be more helpful than you realize.

Stereotypes and prophecy

I believe that we become what we are told we are. This isn't a solid rule; it can be overcome with conscious effort. But if you tell me I am quiet, I may make an effort to throw out an extra comment here and there so I'm not silent, but I probably won't ever talk to you for hours on end. I'll default into staying quiet.

So, too, when we acquire and share ideas about what women are. We know that most women aren't gamers. (Not like "us" anyway.) We know girls are sweet and kind, or catty and mean, the fairer sex, polite and helpful, emotional and sensitive, likeable or bitchy. We know men are strong and tough, competitive, leaders, logical, charismatic and respectable. I believe it is true that we are each far, far more the same than we are different from any other human being. But even if you believe that, some part of your brain still likely "knows" all the differences that are floating around in our culture's say-so. Some part of your brain may believe it to be true, without your realizing it. And some of these categories are traps that ward us away from success, as when a woman is allowed in society's subconscious to be likeable or respectable, but not both.

And maybe we are genetically predisposed to be a little different, too, but we still have to work out what we want that to mean to us, and it shouldn't disallow us from pursuing a course of action we personally really want to take.

Here's the part I want to say to game designers, writers, anyone who contributes to entertainment and popular culture: I believe that in order to achieve the future reality we'd like to see, we must first tell stories about it. Create a believable world where likeable, respectable women collaborate in problem solving and leadership and are brilliantly successful together (perhaps with a handful of tangential men, to teach us how to cross the gender lines constructively). Let us see what it would look like, so we can believe it is possible.