Today women in the technology industry have brought about enormous social change. They are making a difference in the world; for example, women tend to have more empathy, which is great for building products that people will want to use.
Tech is a vast industry. Professional connections are very important, that's why women in tech need to have their groups in male-dominated fields like IT or STEM for a few reasons:
🙌 Support each other
Women in tech help each other navigate their tech careers. Show your support to the women in your company and girls and women in the industry:
Encourage them to submit speaking proposals and participate, speak, and even recruit more girls on their team.
Help develop female tech leaders. You can start working with organizations like WomenInTech, WomenWhoCode, GirlsWhoCode, CodeLikeAGirl, etc.
Ask a colleague to share out more about a product or project she's working on and suggest your help. Maybe, you can give her valuable advice to improve her side hustle.
Speak up about what matters and create the same environment for others to do the same. This good behavior can be copied and repeated to call out, so people can repeat it to improve the culture at the company, or at least on the team around.
Besides, amazing conversations are happening on Twitter. When you
simply tweet a question and ask for suggestions/answers, you can get back many recommendations after just 30 minutes.
👩🏫 Find a female mentor
Of course, the most famous places to find a female techie mentor are networking events, hackathons, but the best place is to find someone from your company.
Not only does this have the advantage of it being easy to reach out, but you are more likely to find a project you can work on together. It's truly the key to finding a great woman mentor. Moreover, if you will be eager to help, especially if it's a project they care about.
Find out which project your potential techie mentor is working on: whether it's something work-related, or non-profit or their side-project or anything in between, and make a friendly offer to help them with it.
As a result, you can learn or improve skills from the expert, grow personally and professionally, and build a foundation for your long-term friendship.
👩💻 Socializing with like-minded women
I know that some women think they cannot socialize the same natural way how men do, for example, by connecting and sending a "follow-up" message in LinkedIn after meetings at networking events.
Probably, it could be an issue in certain cultures and environments too.
That's why women should be able to find a community of their own to lean on, learn from, and grow with.
Luckily for us, women in tech, there are professional organizations with programs, workshops, conferences, online/offline events to get involved.
Take time to find your community, which has and promote the same values as you have. Participate in their organized events, volunteer, find your peer group within you feel comfortable, and open to the network.
👩💼 Find Co-Founder
An idea without a plan is just a dream. If there is no connection between your plan and your actions, there is a problem.
Though networking should be part of your overall strategy, ensure you can get the most out of it, for example, by finding a female co-founder for your tech start-up!
Tech entrepreneurship doesn't have to be a lonely road. It's always good to have like-minded women co-founders on the team to balance things out and get the advantages of the female ways of thinking and working.
Depending on the area your tech start-up is about, being not only a woman co-founder can also be crucial. It can be a huge benefit to have you both on board. Together you might understand the topic and product and do the business development better if you are both passionate about your tech start-up!
🌟 Empower leadership
I firmly believe that leadership does not depend on gender. It's impossible to be a great leader to a specific gender.
A great leader is a leader for everyone.
However, often colleagues, especially male colleagues, may not take it seriously that a woman in tech deserves to take a position in management, that she will fail to confirm the stereotype that techie women cannot be good leaders.
The opposite situation seems at companies, where up to 50% of management are women. They try to bring other women and women in tech along with them on the journey.
They will teach, mentor, coach you and lastly, show compassion. It will not only create more happiness and productivity on the team, but create collaboration, inspiration, and allows other women-leaders to be more proactive and make things happen.
Another advantage, having more women in tech, is more female tech leaders and role models in the industry. So the girls will be encouraged to follow the STEM career path and doubtless thinking, "this is for me".
🤝 Find connections for future jobs
Women generally place a higher value on personal and professional networks than men and spend more time cultivating good professional partnerships.
There are people you need to get to know that never crossed your path yet. This is where forged friendships come in; because someone can introduce you or include you in the event that makes it possible to speak to an influential person in your industry and create a professional contact that can influence your career in the future.
💬 Conclusion
Networking in the digital age is rapidly changing. Always expand your network and try to stay in touch with your existing one.
Don't neglect other networking opportunities for all genders, either; it's important to socialize with different people. It's all about inclusion.
Being a woman in technology means being surrounded by incredible technology and crazy smart and ambitious people all the time!
Being a techie woman means being able to join in on the fun and building things for people as a path toward making their lives better.
How awesome is that?
Expectations imply that it is going to come true. It's better to have goals and objectives, plan accordingly, and do everything to fulfill them ✅
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
Top comments (3)
Yeeesssssss to all of this 🙌
Hm, perhaps homosocial reproduction is, after all, best?
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