Gender and Technology

One of the laments you often hear at tech conferences is that there is a dirth of women speakers out there, and how do you find the ones that do exist.

Here’s what you can do to help.  Check out SpeakerRate.com.

Make sure the women speakers you have seen or know have a profile and rate the talk.  The presentations can and should include user group presentations etc.

If the woman in question doesn’t have a profile please email her and suggest she get one.

We can’t thank everyone enough who contributed and attended the Ruby on Rails Workshop for Women.  From the feedback, it appears to have been a tremendous success.

So cool that folks travelled to Boston from as far away as PA to attend Ruby on Rails Workshop for Women!!

…it makes a huge difference to be able to ask someone stupid ?s.

I like being able to say that I deployed my first Rails application today before lunchtime like running a half marathon.

Totally impressed with the amount of Ruby and Rails info the students absorbed.

I want to thank the teaching assistants at #rorw4w. You were never judgmental and always patient.

You know what’s a lot of fun? TAing at #rorw4w.

It was indeed entirely attitude-free, as promised – unique in my experience! I appreciated that so much, and I had a lot of fun, as well.

Read about what our teachers thought about the workshop.  Sarah Allen wrote about Stone Soup and Andy Gregorowicz wrote about the workshop from his perspective.   Or just check out the tweet stream.

Moving forward, we encourage our newly empowered programmers to meet monthly at the Open Source Code Crunch.  If you want to stay in the loop, please join the OSCC mailing list.

Open Source Code Crunch

Women are a minority in most technical communities, but in open source communities the numbers are even smaller — by a factor of about ten or more.

The Open Source Code Crunch seeks to promote mixed gender collaboration. Programmers will meet monthly and use their skills towards open source projects in a welcoming, collaborative, attitude-free, newbie-safe environment.

First meeting will be on October 21st at 6pm
The Berkman Center
23 Everett Street, Second Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone (617) 495-7547

Please join our mailing list for future events and news.

The Gender and Technology committee would like to thank all of our generous sponsors who are making this weekend’s Ruby on Rails Workshop for Women possible.  Thanks to them, attendees needn’t leave the workshop in search of coffee and food.  But more importantly, we will be webcasting the event live!  More details here.

While all our sponsors were enthusiastic about contributing towards childcare costs, Julia Ashmun was our sole individual contributor earmarking her donation to waive referral fees for attendees in need of sitter services.

Our first sponsor Hashrocket has got to be one of the coolest dev shops on the planet.  If only because Desi Mcadam works there, founder of DevChix.  Thanks for all your support, Desi!

Congratulations to EngineYard who just raised 19 Million with new investors. Nice to hear good karma coming back to good people.

We also send thanks to GitHub, the most popular Git hosting site.  Brought to you by Logical Awesome.  Don’t you just love that name?

And lastly we are grateful to RailsBridge for inspiring these workshops and reaching out to individuals and groups who are underrepresented in the community.

Thanks so much!!  Can’t wait to meet everyone tomorrow!

We’re excited for the upcoming Ruby on Rails Workshop for Women event.  The enthusiasm of the ruby on rails community has exceeded expectations.

We’re proud that we’ve been able to offer childcare to our attendees who might not have otherwise been able to attend and due to a generous donation made by Julia Ashmun, the referral fee has been waived!

The focus of the event is to encourage women to participate in open source development.  So workshop coordinators made the request that men who wish to attend find a woman to sign up who might not otherwise have considered checking out a tech event.  There was never any intention to exclude men from the event, but rather enlist their help in broadening the community.

So in response to community feedback and to be as inclusive as possible, we’re opening the event up to anyone who would like to attend — girl geeks, boy geeks, and all geeks in between.  Just sign up here. Looking forward to the day!

The Berkman Center at Harvard University in coordination with the Center for Research on Computation and Society is putting together a Ruby on Rails workshop for women on October 16th and 17th.

We are seeking to create an attitude-free, newbie-safe and mama- friendly tech event to encourage women to join the Ruby on Rails community. Men are warmly welcomed when they find a woman who wants to learn Ruby on Rails who will register and bring a guest.

Women are a minority in most technical communities, but in open source communities the numbers are even smaller — by a factor of about ten or more. Moving forward, we would like to encourage our newly empowered programmers to meet monthly and use their skills towards open source projects in a welcoming, collaborative, mixed gendered environment.

For more details, read on…

Last week, Boston.com posted Fessing up to being a mom can backfire on job seekers. In this article, it explains that while women are protected against sex-based stereotyping under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “pregnant women and mothers are seen as less dependable, less authoritative, and less committed to their jobs”.

This is particularly true in male dominated fields such as technology where an employee is expected to devote significant off hours on the computer. Keeping up with industry blogs, maintaining website side projects and contributing to open source is becoming an expected norm among web developers. This makes it tough for parents of both genders to stay current, but its assumed that mothers can’t keep up.

So what do you think? Has the motherhood penalty affected your career? Are unrealistic expectations keeping women from pursing the geekier jobs in web/software development?

This is a bit of short notice but nonetheless:

Girls in Tech | Boston

The Boston Chapter of Girls in Tech will be hosting a lifestyle panel discussion designed to explore the following issues:

* work/life balance
* career management
* leading a purpose-driven life

Agenda:

* 6:00 – 7:00 pm » Networking
* 7:00 – 7:45 pm » Panel Discussion
* 7:45 – 9:00 pm » Open Audience Discussion

Event Details

* Date » Tuesday, June 30, 2009
* Time » 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
* Location » 38 Cameron Gallery, Cambridge, MA

This event is FREE. Hors d’oeuvres and refreshments will be served. Reservations are required.
More info here.

GAID Objectives

The Alliance will seek to contribute to:

• Mainstreaming of the global ICT agenda into the broader United Nations development agenda
• Bringing together key organizations involved in ICT for development (ICT4D) to enhance their collaboration and effectiveness for achieving the internationally agreed development goals
• Raising awareness of policy makers on ICT4D policy issues;
• Facilitating identification of technological solutions for specific development goals and pertinent partnerships
• Creating an enabling environment and innovative business models for pro-poor investment and growth and for empowering people living in poverty
• Acting as a “think-tank” on ICT4D-related issues and as an advisory group to the Secretary-General.

@ HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

From The Dress-Up Corner to the Senior Prom: Navigating Gender and Sexual Identity Development in the K-12 Setting

Do you have questions about how to address issues of gender and sexuality in the classroom? In schools? In districts? How do you respond when first graders start a debate about “boy” colors and “girl” colors? What happens when 3rd graders start using “that’s so gay” as a put-down? How do you help your gender variant 5th grader navigate the complex social world in school? Gender Identity and Sexual Identity are aspects of everyday life in K-12 schools, whether these issues are part of the formal curriculum or not. School age children develop their own personal identities- and learn about culturally sanctioned identities- all the time. By middle school and beyond, the stakes get higher. According to the 2007 GLSEN National School Climate Survey, 86% of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 44% reported being physically harassed and 22% reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation or gender expression. LGBT students are at risk; students who are perceived to be LGBT are at risk. And all students, regardless of their identity, need accurate information and appropriate guidance regarding these issues. On April 9, 2009, an 11-year-old 6th grade boy who attended a charter school in Springfield, Massachusetts hanged himself after enduring chronic bullying from classmates, including daily taunts of being gay. This kind of tragedy can be prevented.

QueerEd and the Office of Student Affairs are sponsoring a workshop dedicated to starting the dialogue about LGBT issues in K-12 classrooms, featuring clips from the the award-winning documentary, It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School. (http://groundspark.org) The workshop will be facilitated by Jennifer Bryan, Ph.D. Dr. Bryan is a psychologist and consultant who specializes in helping educators consider gender and sexuality, as these issues relate to K-12 school life. (http://www.jenniferbryanphd.com) We encourage educators with all backgrounds, identities, and experiences to bring their questions and join us for this important and interactive learning opportunity.

Light refreshments will be provided starting at 7:00 p.m.
When: Thursday, April 30, 7:15- 9:00 p.m.
Where: Larsen G08

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From NY TIMES
OPINION | April 23, 2009
And the Pursuit of Happiness: May It Please the Court
By Maira Kalman
After a visit to the Supreme Court, and the office of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Maira Kalman thinks about law, decision-making and women breaking barriers

“Gender and the Law: Unintended Consequences, Unsettled Questions”

Thursday, March 12, 2009

THE VIDEO OF THE CONFERENCE and JUSTICE GINSBURG’S TALK. http://www.radcliffe.edu/events/calendar_2009law.aspx