Men! Mule Design co-founder Erika Hall has seven ways for you to counteract sexism at work. Some will help you shut down overt sexism; some address more unconscious habits such as interrupting women. And you don't need to be in a position of power to use them. Hall's article is free of filler, so read it all, but here's our favourite tip.
"You don't look like a Magic player," a familiar comment to women in the Magic: The Gathering gaming community, is also the title of a Metafilter post (by user Fizz) compiling six pieces on gender and sexism among the game's players and creators. The quoted pieces address issues of in-person sexism, gender and identity representation, and the gender gap in fantasy art.
"Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things," writes Jenny Offill in her novel Dept of Speculation. "Nabokov didn't even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him." Women, instead, are forced to "balance" work and life.
Workplace sexual harassment affects far more women than men, but men are the ones who bear responsibility for ending it. Besides, of course, not harassing women, we need to stand up for them, especially (and unfortunately) as we're more likely to be heard and respected than the victims themselves. Esquire has a guide to noticing, handling, and reporting sexual harassment, including how to escalate a complaint to a superior, HR, and even the press.
In the latest episode of Rick & Morty alternative The Simpsons, guest star Alison Bechdel describes her famous Bechdel test for films: Do two female characters have at least one conversation that's not about a man? Marge immediately brings up Homer, provoking Bechdel's FAIL animation, shown here in handy exploitable form.
The term "mansplaining" is relatively new, but the concept is an old one. If you aren't familiar, the term refers to when someone (most often a man, thus mansplain) explains something to someone (typically a female) in a condescending or patronising way. If you're a woman, then chances are this happens to you on a weekly if not daily basis. However, figuring out what to do about it can be a bit challenging.
Artificial intelligence is infiltrating our daily lives, with applications that curate your phone pics, manage your email, and translate text from any language into another. Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are all heavily researching how to integrate AI into their major services. Soon you'll likely interact with an AI (or its output) every time you pick up your phone. Should you trust it? Not always.
This evening I'm giving a talk to my daughter's Girl Scouts troop about careers in technology. I'm going to tell them that women have done amazing things in tech. I'm going to tell them that they too can do anything they set their minds to in this arena. But I will be lying to them.
It's a continuing disgrace that women workers rarely get paid the same as their male counterparts -- something that's as true of IT as any other sector. What strategies can female engineers and developers use to ensure they are paid what they deserve?
