This week in our WiC roundup: Trans women in tech teach bros; benefits rank different importance depending on gender; girls run the (tech) world; and more.

Eryn Leavens, Special Features & Copy Editor

July 13, 2018

5 Min Read
WiCipedia: Open Office Fishbowls & Trans Women in Tech

This week in our WiCipedia roundup: Trans women in tech teach bros; benefits rank different importance depending on gender; girls run the (tech) world; and more.

Join Women in Comms for a breakfast workshop and networking at the NFV & Carrier SDN event in Denver on September 26. The workshop is open to all women and men in the telecommunications, STEM and IT fields -- communications service providers get in free!

  • While men and women want similar perks out of a work environment, how they rank the importance of those attributes differs between genders. In Dice's Diversity and Inclusion Survey, 4,000 men and women in tech in the UK and US ranked their top five must-haves for workplace happiness. While the five items are nearly the same, the order of the items clearly shows how different genders prioritize their needs. For example, women rank benefits as their number one priority, while men put it in fourth place. Whereas for men, "positive culture" was the third most-important priority, it seems women are willing to put up with a bit more workplace negativity since they rank it last. Employers should be acing all of these attributes if they want to snag the best candidates, but this little cheat sheet should help them know what to prioritize to encourage a more satisfying work experience for women as well. (See WiCipedia: Best Places to Work & Restroom Lines Tell All and Survey Says: Women in Comms Tell All.)

    Figure 1: What a Girl Wants, What a Girl Needs (Source: Dice's Diversity and Inclusion Survey) (Source: Dice’s Diversity and Inclusion Survey)

    • Children are our future, as they say, but kids these days are not exactly playing hopscotch and eating dime-store candy. Rather, the under-18 set is coding and building mini empires. The Evening Standard rounded up ten of the most "trailblazing teenagers" in the UK. In other words, these young 'uns might be cutting your paycheck someday. And the best part? They're all girls. The list is compiled from the InspiringJuniors competition, which aims to "find the tech stars of the future ... girls aged 18 and under with a passion for tech [who] have demonstrated entrepreneurial spirit and originality," the article states. Check out the full list of finalists, who range in age from ten to 18, here. (See WiCipedia: Int'l Day of the Girl & Sephora Shows the Ropes.) Figure 2: Who Run the World? Girls From L-R top row: Andrea Dalisay, Sara Conjeo Cervantes, Lydia Jones, Ayve Coulote, Yasmin Bey / L-R bottom row: Lowena Hull, Nikki Lilly, Rose Dyson, Joana Baptista, Kari Lawler (InspiringJuniors) (Source: The Evening Standard) From L-R top row: Andrea Dalisay, Sara Conjeo Cervantes, Lydia Jones, Ayve Coulote, Yasmin Bey / L-R bottom row: Lowena Hull, Nikki Lilly, Rose Dyson, Joana Baptista, Kari Lawler (InspiringJuniors)
      (Source: The Evening Standard)

    • What can trans women in tech teach white guys in hoodies? A lot, says Salon. Trans women who were born male experience quite the shock the first few times they apply to tech jobs as women, the article states; a fact that exemplifies the gender differences in the tech world better than almost anything we've heard before. "The only time in my life I was unemployed was after my transition and [it] took me six months to get a new job," Daniela Petruzalek, a trans software engineer, told Salon. "When you send resumes as a man, even if you aren't a fit for the role, the people will call you and talk to you. But when you send a resume as a woman, they expect you to have like 100 percent of the skills or they wouldn't want even to start talking with you." You can hear more about Petruzalek's and others' experiences on the Inflection Point podcast. (See WiCipedia: A Female-Only Island, Gender Quotas & Twitter's Oprah.)

    • This article from Stuff struck a particular chord with us: Open office plans suck. Rachel Morrison, a senior research lecturer at New Zealand's Auckland University of Technology, found that men and women have different experiences of open office plans. The article summarized her findings: "While the male employees of the company saw the open-plan office as a positive change, many of the women said they felt 'stressed', 'watched' and 'judged' in the new layout." Women also stated that they felt they were in a "fishbowl" in an open office and that there was more pressure to constantly be working and to stay late. (See Do Women-Only Co-Working Spaces Work for Women?)

    • The American Computers & Robotics Museum in Montana has curated a women in tech retrospective exhibit this summer. KPAX, a local Montana news station, reports that the exhibit will feature 200 years of women's contributions to tech, from the first computer programs to modern AI. One eight-year-old visitor to the museum said, "Men and women are just the same, just different genders and like if anyone wants to do anything they can and like I don't think they should be held back." [Ed. note: Cuuuuutttttee.] The exhibit's goal is to get more young girls interested in careers in STEM. (See WiCipedia: More Uber Upsets & Tennis to Tech.)

      — Eryn Leavens, Special Features & Copy Editor, Light Reading

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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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