Blog Around

Looking for some weekend reading? Look no further! Here's a collection of very interesting pieces that are well worth your time!

Wired has a great article by Issie Lapowsky addressing the gender gap in tech: This Is What Tech’s Ugly Gender Problem Really Looks Like

For women who have experienced this bias—and there are many—the simple act of talking about it is taboo. There’s a notion that acknowledging the problem only exacerbates it. No one wants to be known as the woman who cried sexism for fear of being labeled a tattletale, a liability, or, at the very least, not worth the trouble. And yet, it’s only through these stories that we can begin to understand that the statistics aren’t the result of some fluke or mass oversight, but a very real problem that needs to be solved.

And then s.e. smith has this fantastic piece featuring Leigh Honeywell: The conversation about sexism in tech we should be having

But here’s where the project starts to get interesting. It’s not designed as a simple commentary on sexism in tech, or even as a shame campaign to make companies feel bad. It’s designed to spark a discussion about how to improve the situation, and get more women into the workplace.

“I feel like the tide is turning, however—as company after company releases their data, the ones who don't start looking like they are hiding problems with bias that are worse than the ones we already know about," Honeywell said.

And then there's Gender-Focus's Lyndsay Kirkham writing about How Talking About Sexism in the Tech Industry Led to My Giant Head on The View about her experience live-tweeting a particular IBM exec while he was out to lunch (literally and, apparently, figuratively)

I do not regret live-tweeting my experience.

That said, I did not conceive for a moment that my handful of tweets would climax in my giant head hanging monstrously over the hosts of The View. I didn’t expect to be contacted by CBC, or called by Think Progress. I didn’t think that I would have people from all around the world confirming these overheard sexist remarks as practices that they experience on a daily basis.

I am extremely happy that this conversation is happening. I am impressed that outlets like the CBC and Rabble are interested in talking about the larger implications of these sexist attitudes in the workplace (like: how their conversation assumes men don’t parent and that all women want to have children). I am pleased as punch that maybe the tech-industry is having to put their codes of conduct where their money is, and actually make like they care.

NUVO has an interview with Barbara Ann O'Leary, whose project Directed by Women is working to create a world-wide viewing party for films ... you guess it... directed by women.

Another was my desire to help raise global awareness about the existence of these films and their makers in a fun, lowkey, Do-It-Yourself way. I started to see individuals and groups having house parties and family movie nights focused on films #DirectedbyWomen. Or just watching films on their own. I think of those as Solo Celebrations. And I could imagine people approaching their local cinemas and community centers to organize what I started to think of as Film Viewing Parties.

Jamie Broadnax of Black Girl Nerds want to know: Are you an anti-nerd?

Being a nerd has evolved into being more than just the nerdy white guy wearing a pocket protector with a button down plaid shirt, khaki pants, and coke bottle glasses. A nerd can look like anyone. They look like you or me. However, for women and people of color, are we nerds or anti-nerds? I’m not suggesting we reject the term nerd because I like being called a nerd and I have no qualms about adopting all of what is considered to be a part of nerd culture. However, as a blerd, if I choose to embrace my blerdniess as opposed to generic nerdiness than what does that mean exactly?

Natalie Wilson wrote a great piece on The Society Pages about gender norms and cons: Comic-Conned: Gender Norms in a Carnivalesque Atmosphere

Reading Comic-Con as a cultural event that acts as a barometer of gender consciousness (or lack thereof), I argue that though women are now far more present as both producers and consumers at the Con, the representation of females in the media featured still overwhelmingly fits in with normative codes of femininity, particularly in relation to the sexualization of women that frames them as “to-be-looked-at.” Examining the Con in terms of how media production and consumption are both gendered and gendering, I suggest that the lack of representational parity on panels as well as the “male gaze” that dominates the atmosphere is part and parcel of a culture which is still decidedly not post-feminist.

Still looking for more reading? Check out the Self-Rescuing Princess Society Gazette on Flipboard.