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If you just casually glance around tech departments in companies and tech-oriented conferences, it's easy to get the impression that there aren't many women in technology these days. Yet it's undeniable that women are making a big impact on the technology world. (If you think it is deniable, then please keep reading.) Exploring this subject is a special series this month on O'Reilly: Women in Technology. Every day this month, an accomplished woman in technology shares her thoughts.*
If you've seen O'Reilly books, you know that each topic area gets its own animal. Tatiana Apandi perhaps hints at a theme of the series by explaining why the O'Reilly animal chosen for this series is the lioness:
Although the lion is often called the King of the Jungle, lion society is actually ruled by its females. Lionesses are the ones primarily responsible for providing sustenance for their entire pride. She is a natural leader. When hunting, each lioness plays to her strengths. She even adjusts her individual role in the hunt depending on the prey to ensure capture for the pride. She can adapt to suit the task at hand. A lioness also will nurse any cub, indiscriminate of whether that cub is her own. She will give with the greater good in mind.
So who are these lionesses in technology? Open technology evangelist (and Jive Software's Director of Developer Relations) Dawn Foster informs us that:
I will be appearing somewhere in this series along with Anna Martelli, Audrey Eschright, CJ Rayhill, Dru Lavigne, Gabrielle Roth, Jeni Tennison, Jill Dyche, Juliet Kemp, Julia Lerman, Kaliya Hamlin, Kirsten Jones, Lauren Wood, Leslie Hawthorn, Selena Deckelmann, and Shelley Powers.
If you don't recognize all of these names ... and I certainly don't ... the first installment hints that maybe we all should.
Leslie Hawthorne, formerly of Google and currently with the Open Source Programs Office, leads off the series with some thoughts on what leadership is -- and can be -- whether it's "female" or not.
I've never thought of my role in the technical community as being the result of or in any way inextricably tied to my femininity. If anything, in an effort to be the change I wish to see in the world, I've distanced myself from questions of gender roles in my work. If we are all (to be) equal, it seems counter-intuitive to look at my work as informed by my being a woman. I do and I make, I listen and I advise, I lead and I follow, and none of these things are the exclusive purview of women. While others might, I would not argue that either sex has a particular aptitude for any of these things. Still, when I look at what I do and what I make, I far more often than not find women playing a similar role and doing similar tasks: building communities, creating space for creativity and connection to manifest, taking care of mundane and arcane details so that others can focus on executing to a grander vision.
Like everyone else, I've been called many things in my day, and often the word used is mother – “a mother of open source” or “geek mama.” I usually hear these words after organizing a particularly effective conference, reviewing a Summer of Code student's slide deck before the big presentation, or posting a particularly insightful piece of advice to a mailing list. It's not a compliment I accept without reservation. It brands me as feminine in a masculine world, it implies difference where the optimal outcome is equality and, by extension, sameness.
Certainly, this designation means that people see me as someone who will solve problems effectively on the fly, provide reassurance and support, and impart accumulated wisdom and help when needed. Given that these are all things I strive to do, it's satisfying that I'm perceived this way. On the other hand, at its core the reality of that compliment can be wholly unrewarding; a woman is a mother by virtue of her having children, a powerful role, to be certain, but one by nature subservient to the desires and needs of others. While the role I play has a service-oriented capacity to it – and I personally feel a great responsibility to be of service to the various individuals and communities with whom I interact – it can, at times, feel as though my accomplishments are regarded as having no intrinsic value, that my actions have merit only insofar as they are
