Female programmers wear a sweater and thick glasses

Original author: Katarzyna Kamińska
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Female programmers wear a sweater and thick glasses. What, besides algorithms, do IT professionals struggle with?



From a translator: most of all I would like to put this text (written, by the way, by a girl) into humor. But as a person who regularly sees the overwhelming number of smart and beautiful programmers around him, I forced myself to not do this by force. This article is a look at the well-known stereotype from the female side. Although the author does not distinguish between the concepts of "programmer" and "IT specialist," reading makes sense and is quite funny.

Information technology cannot be left to men. They are too important. For this, it is not necessary to change the thoughts of women, it is enough to change the attitude towards programmers of those who have nothing to do with IT at all. Bab to computers!

In our attitude to programmers, we’ll go back almost two centuries ago, when no one was surprised that in 1837 a woman, an English mathematician and computer scientist, Ada Lovelace, wrote the program for the first analytical instrument - a computer prototype. Back in the 60s, articles in the American press about the latest machines that served young ladies appeared everywhere. And they were not neglected, divorced from life women. Just look at an article from Cosmopolitan:


An article in Cosmopolitan from the 60s telling about Ann Richardson, a programmer

Stereotypes, however, turned out to be stronger than the thirst for women to conquer the world of the exact sciences. A similar thesis is put forward by Anna Piekarska, a second-year student at the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Warsaw, the first winner in 16 years of individual programming competitions organized by the University of Wroclaw.
- I think that the general belief that women are not too good in the exact sciences dominates. Parents tell girls that mathematics and computer science are not for them, says Anna. “I didn’t have such a problem, my mother studied exact sciences,” she adds.


A bit of rap about a girl programmer.

What luck! After all, Anna Pekarskaya is the hope not only of female programmers, but of all information technologies. In addition to winning competitions at the University of Wroclaw, it boasts the finals of the international Top Coder Open competition in the USA. At the Lyceum, she was a laureate of three Olympiads in Informatics, immediately after graduation she received a gold medal at the Central European Olympiad in Informatics, and a silver medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics. Maybe that's why Anna’s friends from the university were not surprised at her victory. Although the winner herself thinks differently:
- We simply know each other well. We know who has what level, ”she says.

But the case of Anna is an exception. When boys do the task incorrectly in computer science lessons at school, they simply correct it. The girl, in addition to a poor grade, also receives a free sermon.
- Even at the Lyceum, I happened to hear from teachers that I should go to nurses if such banal tasks cause me problems. It's nothing that I went to rewrite the test with most of my “male” class, ”says Mazhena, a student at the IT department of the Mining and Metallurgical Academy in Krakow.

The TV is to blame. “Clever girls will never find a boyfriend”, “Guys are interested in beautiful, not smart girls” - such messages are constantly bombarded by the media, films and sweet pop songs. This is already a myth. Just as women now prefer retrosex men (pl)so men don’t want already smoothed dolls.

Employers also come across stereotypes. Large corporations still have the conviction that only a man is able to donate his free time to programming, but they forget that women are better organized and their intuition works better when communicating with clients.

There are those who have noticed this. Every fourth IT director in the European Union is a woman. 40 percent of Polish schoolgirls call computer science the most favorite subject at school. In the world, women programmers make a splash. In April, CNN ranked the most influential women in the IT industry. The list did not have to be long to torment. Sandy Carter, IBM's vice president of social initiatives, social media business, and good customer collaboration, won the first place. High positions of women are also held in Intel, Xerox, Facebook and Google.

The most influential women in the IT world, according to CNN
  1. Sandy Carter, IBM Vice President
  2. Jane Moran, CIO at Thompson Reuters
  3. Susie Wee, Cisco Systems Vice President
  4. Cher Wong, co-founder of HTC
  5. Judy Estrin, President of JLabs
  6. Deborah Estrin, UCLA Professor
  7. Maxine Fassberg, Overseer of Intel Israel Factories
  8. Ursula Burns, Managing Director of Xerox
  9. Cheryl Sandberg, COO on Facebook
  10. Marissa Mayer, associated with Google Locals and Google Maps, now works at Walmart


At times, a university diploma and skills for the boss and colleagues are not enough:
- I received easier tasks, as if the authorities did not believe that I could do it. In the end, I won back - now they perceive me on a par with my colleagues, ”says 30-year-old Ada, who writes software for small businesses.

This is another stereotype refuted by research. According to the CISCO report in 2009, the level of IT knowledge and skills for both sexes is approximately the same.

There are very specific myths about IT that add up to the whole story. Asocial fat men with long hair, fat to the ends, who lock themselves in their claustrophobic room to program day and night. After a few days of entertainment with the algorithms, there are only empty cola cans left. Are programmers crammed in sweaters? Where from ?!

Of course, there are fans of blouses without a neckline, such as Adele Goldberg, in whom Steve Jobs copied most of the ideas of an ideal computer. But at the same time, the Hollywood movie star Hadie Lamarr, dressed in pearls and lace, created a frequency switching system. Pamela Fox, working with Google and EatDifferent, is surprised by the change of hairstyles. Jerry Ellsworth, the creator of games for Commodore 64, is faithful to the red color. And none of these women wore glasses!


“Women can also program”
There are no shortages of jokes about programmers that are not too funny.

Despite this, programmers are an ongoing topic for jokes (- What is the difference between an IT lady in trousers and an IT lady in a skirt? - Access time!), Ridicule songs, unpleasant memes. The jokes are really more and more exhausted:
- I heard a couple. These are all old jokes, says Anna Pekarskaya, and they have never been directed in my direction.

Although still not as good as it should be. According to the studies of the Main Statistical Office of Poland, only 10% of students in IT-related departments are girls (as far as I know, there were already 25% of them at VMU Moscow State University 8 years ago - approx. Transl.). But there is a spark of hope. Over the course of 5 years, the number of girls in technical universities has increased by as much as 14 thousand. Investors already know that a girl in an IT-related position is a good choice. More and more companies notice that it is better to have a specialist in their team, rather than an IT specialist.
- A female IT specialist already surprises only those who are not sitting in this industry. There are more and more of us, both in firms and at universities, ”says Anna Pekarskaya.

So that it will continue!

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