Just as arts groups used to post manifestos in the early part of the 20th Century and political groups have done so for longer, a group of women tech workers have posted a manifesto, saying they are “tired of pretending this stuff doesn’t happen.”
This stuff?
We’ve been harassed on mailing lists and called ‘whore’/‘cunt’ without any action being taken against aggressors.
We get asked about our relationships at interviews, and we each have tales of being groped at public events. We’ve been put in the uncomfortable situation of having men attempt to turn business meetings into dates.
We’ve found casual assumptions that point at more significant issues. We’ve witnessed the few female co-workers and male allies we’ve had get fired or bullied into leaving — at companies that had so few of them to begin with.
We’re constantly asked ‘if you write any code” when speaking about technical topics and giving technical presentations, despite just having given a talk on writing code. We’ve been harassed at these same conferences in person and online about our gender, looks, and technical expertise.
We get asked if we’re the event planner or executive assistant on a regular basis.
We regularly receive creepy, rapey e-mails where men describe what a perfect wife we would be and exactly how we should expect to be subjugated. Sometimes there are angry e-mails that threaten us to leave the industry, because ‘it doesn’t need anymore c**ts ruining it’.
And the list goes on.
We are tired of our male peers pretending that because they do not participate in bad behavior, that it is not their problem to solve. READ THE FULL POST HERE. It’s worth it.
Just throwing this out there as it’s just a hunch, but since tech is more international in terms of the employees, it would follow that they are also more sexist against women. Most countries in the world are not as far along as the U.S. in terms of treating women equally. While we still have room to get better, we are miles ahead of other countries where many of the tech workers are coming from.