Re:I'm not a Woman in Tech
by unidentified103 on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @11:59PM
(#14708039)
Yeah, I can see how such an e-mail wouldn't exactly feel so welcoming if your participation was assumed and suddenly thrust upon you. But I don't necessarily think that it makes sense to believe that they wrote the e-mail that way because they thought you were helpless. Whoever wrote it could have been excited about the program and assumed everyone else would be too.
Well I'm paraphrasing and omitting details for reasons of brevity and memory (this was almost 20 years ago, after all). I do recall the email was lengthy and made the point more than once that I needed extra support because I was a woman. I was at least halfway through my internship, which had been going very well, when I got it. It wasn't my first intern-like role, either, I'd done an 8-month co-op at another company the year before, which also went very well. The word that Maria used in her post, and that I quoted above, really does match how I felt -- I felt like I was being told I was a victim when that didn't mesh at all with my experience.
As for the word ghetto, that is what came to mind when I read the part in Maria's post about special awards for women in tech.
It would have been fine if I had gotten an email describing the program and inviting me to participate. Instead, I got an email from a stranger, completely unannounced, saying "Hi, I'm your intern buddy!"
It was the assumption that I needed help because I'm a woman that I found condescending. I'm not saying programs like this aren't good, or that nobody needs them, it was the blanket application to an entire group without consulting them first that I took issue with. The difference between a safe space and segregation is whether or not your participation is voluntary. Had it been offered as an invitation I might have even taken them up on it, but nobody bothered to ask first. It was just assumed that because I'm female, I needed help. I disagreed.
Nothing can be described as meritocratic because meritocracy is a myth.