This week in our WiC roundup: Federal IT jobs for women; Super Bowl ads get less sexist; bye bye brogrammers; and more.

Eryn Leavens, Special Features & Copy Editor

February 3, 2017

5 Min Read
WiCipedia: Gaming the System, Bros Not Wanted & Be the Next Jane Bond

This week in our WiCipedia roundup: Federal IT jobs for women; Super Bowl ads get less sexist; bye bye brogrammers; and more.

Women in Comms will be hosting its first networking breakfast and panel discussion on Wednesday, March 22, in Denver, Colo., ahead of day two of the Cable Next-Gen Technologies & Strategies conference. Register here and join us!

  • Does the current presidential administration have you down and fighting harder than ever to be treated equally as a woman? You aren't alone, and there's a group of female government technology leaders who say it's more important than ever to be a woman in tech. MeriTalk reports that Joyce Hunter, former deputy chief information officer for policy and planning at the Department of Agriculture, said that despite derogatory comments made about women by President Trump, now is the time for women to assert themselves and not get discouraged: "Failure to confront is permission to continue. You have to confront it head-on. There are always people who will try to bully their way through life. It's important for us to continue to support young women. Given the tenor of the administration, we have to be even more vocal." (See WiCipedia: Election Aftermath, Telecom Advances & Wunderkinds and WiCipedia: Icelandic Inequality, Diminishing WiT & Presidential Impact.)

    • Super Bowl Sunday isn't generally a pro-woman event, unless you consider commercials of girls in bikinis empowering. GoDaddy is taking a new approach this year, and though it may be subtle (there's only one brief female sighting in the actual ad) it's a baby step in the right direction. Fortune describes the ad as an inside joke about personifying the Internet as a disheveled young man, who -- blink and you'll definitely miss it -- has a Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing button attached to his backpack. GoDaddy has a reputation for sexist and insulting Super Bowl ads, and this relatively ungendered commercial is certainly a shift in image. "GoDaddy says the button and other internet culture shoutouts are intended to zoom by. They're designed as 'easter eggs' -- or semi-hidden references that will encourage viewers to watch the spot again and again to spot as many as possible." GoDaddy CMO Barb Rechterman says, "Having that variety of iconic imagery and Internet memes is important. We want viewers of all ages, whether they're male or female, to have something they can relate to." You can watch the full commercial below. (See GoDaddy Looks to Cloud to Shake Sleazy Image.)

About the Author(s)

Eryn Leavens

Special Features & Copy Editor

Eryn Leavens, who joined Light Reading in January 2015, attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before earning her BA in creative writing and studio arts from Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. She also completed UC Berkeley Extension's Professional Sequence in Editing.

She stumbled into tech copy editing after red-penning her way through several Bay Area book publishers, including Chronicle Books, Counterpoint Press/Soft Skull Press and Seal Press. She spends her free time lifting heavy things, growing her own food, animal wrangling and throwing bowls on the pottery wheel. She lives in Alameda, Calif., with two cats and two greyhounds.

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