Link: Primer on sexism in the tech-industry

"The topic of sexism and its role in the technology industry has seen a huge resurgence over the past 12 to18 months. Yet despite being discussed and examined with increasing frequency, a lot of the subject remains unclear and under-explained, making it difficult for those who care deeply about our industry to partake in these discussions. This is, in part, because the problems are incredibly complex, nuanced and difficult to explain, making it impossible for any one article to address them sufficiently (lest that article becomes a book). Nevertheless, today we're going to try and see how much of the basics we can clear up."

Faruk Ateş has written a most-excellent primer on sexism in the tech industry

You should read this (especially if you are male) before even considering posting an article or comment about women in the tech industry.

Link: Women at work in Silicon Valley

Balancing work with family is one of the Hard Problems of Social Engineering a career... especially if you're female, and already suffer from several disadvantages in a high-tech workplace.

This article on The Guardian gives a great overview about how women in Silicon valley are making "Women at work" work.

I'm not a militant feminist

I assume non-gender bias at the start; I don't care what pronouns you use, and most of those "war of the sexes" ads are just plain funny.

Which is why I was totally surprised by an ad I saw today which suddenly made my "feminism" detector spike off the charts.

I can't find a pic of it online, so I'll have to describe it.

It's for some kind of smartphone.

A smug-looking geek-boy is standing there, with a gorgeous-looking girl with her arm wrapped around him.

The caption: "It's about how smart you are".

...

In case I need to state the obvious - clearly, being totally smart means that if you're a smart guy you get the hot-looking bird... but what makes him look smug is just as clearly *not* about how smart she is.

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Disclaimer...

I like geek-boys, and for me it *is* more about how smart they are... but I'd hope that for the geek-boys it'd be about how smart *I* am too!

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On further reflection, I think I'd be almost as scandalised if the ad showed a smug geek-girl with an Adonis draped over her.

What mostly annoys me is that it implies that the main benefit of being smart is to be able to entice the beautiful people to hang with you despite how plain-looking you are. In other words - even though it says it's about how smart you are... it's still about how pretty you are... :P