I find it hard to understand that sexism still exists in 2020. I have multiple women in development lead and management roles all around me, and I honestly don't know any women in software development that aren't good at what they do whereas I can easily think of several men who get by without being strong developers. It seems quite foreign that there remain people that are not accepting of women in the workforce or that women consistently face income inequality.
Equality in tech must involve women being valued and empowered in the the tech community as well as the industry. This should include equality in respect, pay, and position.
This tweet is crazy to me. As a hetero white man, I've never felt this, but it is enough of an issue that many people have also felt the need to utilize this tactic.
I will advocate for equality by offering any assistance that I can to the women around me. These may be small things, but I'll make sure that I endorse them on LinkedIn and write personal recommendations so that they can more easily be found as the strong developers that they are. My coworker was looking for a new job. She and I spent time working together to make ourselves more employable. This included training courses on various sites, sharing books back and forth for learning, and tell one another about jobs that we had found. I made it a focus of mine to think of her anytime that I was researching things about interviewing or bettering my hirability.
My advice for fellow allies to support women and any minority group member in your life is to first acknowledge that their career is set at a steep incline. Know that there are factors at play that you will not have used against you. You can help to insure that everyone around you gets their due recognition. Simply allowing light to shine on the good things being done by women (or any minority group member). The women around you are likely to be some of the best workers due to the difficulties that they face. Make sure that any recognition programs that you have or any mentions that occur in review rituals include the women. If we aren't intentional about equality then it is easy to even accidentally list someone last that may have been the hardest worker. Also, make sure that at no point are you alienating women in conversation. This really goes for anyone that is a part of a given group. The moment that you begin talking about something that isn't the focus or interest of the entire group then you begin to alienate people, and inadvertently you are building stronger bonds between the people in that conversation while the others are left out made to feel less than whole members of the group. This isn't to say that you can't have friends in your work group and that you can't talk to them about the things that you enjoy, but while you are with the whole group then you should work to include everyone together so that all of the group members are bonded stronger.
Top comments (4)
Thank you for your post Corey! Smaller or large, just role modeling advocate behavior is so important. Thank you!
If everyone does smaller things then large things happen.
Thanks for sharing this, Corey!
Great post 🙌