Tag Archives: gender

Comic Creators, Cosplayers, and Gender Roles

Looking at the site for San Francisco Comic Con, and I see their guest list. First, there’s “Celebrity Guests”, which are a mixed bag. Then come “Comic Creator Guests”: folks named Steve, Allen, Gerhard, Arvell, Casey, Joe, Jack, Erik, Bob, Steve, Mike, Paolo, and so on. There is a Trina. And then, right under that, there’s […]

Let’s Unpack “Professional Victims”

The only thing more annoying than a phrase that’s overused to the point of cliché is when that overused phrase isn’t even remotely accurate — and in fact, borders on completely nonsensical. The one I’ve heard far too many times in the past year is the all-purpose favorite of Red Pillers, MRAs, GamerGaters, and other defenders […]

Stop Designing For Men

If you’re designing or creating content on the Internet today, you need to remember one simple fact: Your audience has two genders, not just one. It isn’t just men, it’s women, too — and the women outnumber the men. Take a look at this report from last year, on “10 Key Trends From the Banking Trenches“. On […]

The Problem With “Objectify A Man In Tech Day”

Update: While putting the finishing touches on this post, I found out that its creator is cancelling Objectify Day, for a host of very good reasons. I think much of what I wrote here can still be useful, so I’m posting this piece anyway. I’m glad to see that the purpose I had in mind […]

Let’s Hear it for Ms. Mayer

One of the biggest names in science, tech, engineering and mathematics (STEM). One of the biggest names in modern American business. One of the biggest newsmakers of the year — Forbes magazine said: “Her move to the top spot at Yahoo was one of the most hyped appointments of 2012.” Marissa Mayer is breaking all kinds of […]

Is It Getting Better? Or Do You Feel the Same?

I don’t normally want to “harp on” gender issues in tech by doing two posts about them in a row, but I’ve gotta write about this while the news is still kind of current. In my last post, I wrote about the Geeklist fail and the Sqoot/Boston API Jam fail. At the end of my […]

What to Do When the Tech Failboat Sails

The tech world is no stranger to occasional outbreaks of Sexism!Fail, but the past two weeks have seen a rare double instance of it. Naturally, I’ve got to speak up. By the way, for anyone who missed the events, here are a pair of quick recaps: Boston API Jam’s Marketing Problem Oh Hai Sexism And now, […]

A Failed Goal

Near the beginning of this year, I published a piece called “Ada Lovelace Day Is Not Enough“. In it, I noted that only 8.69% of my 2010 posts had been marked with the “gender” tag, and it would be nice to increase that percentage. (But it was still an improvement over 2009’s 4.76%.) I said: So […]

Her Name is Skud

Skud has been involved in Open Source, and in activism and advocacy, for years and years. She does a little of everything, having coded, written docs, managed developers, and spoken out on important topics. She has been, or is currently, a contributor to projects ranging from Eureka to Perl to Xen to HTML::Mason. Way back in […]

Ada Lovelace Day Is Not Enough

In two months, the third international Ada Lovelace Day will take place, on March 24th. Bloggers around the world will devote posts to writing about the achievements of women in technology and science. This is wonderful, and I highly support it, but… What about the other 364 days of the year? Setting aside one day […]