Rumyra's head

Ada Lovelace Post - Women in technology

I couldn’t think of any one woman in particular I wanted to blog about for Ada Lovelace day, in fact I struggled to think of one woman I knew of and respected, in a technology based industry, who wasn’t a work collegue. Due to this I decided to give my respects to all women in a technological environment, mainly because I work within one myself.

The problem that will arise with me paying respects to all those women, who everyday have to speak louder, prove themselves far harder and have the patience of saints to work within a male environment, is that no matter what I think of about this post everything in my head is extremely sexist.

Having experienced a very male dominated industry, (I have been a web designer/developer for five years now and have only in the past year come across other females in my line of work), my feelings are mostly of resentment and lack of respect towards my male counterparts. Thus I begin to question why this is and then begin to feel as if I could write five other posts with personal reasons. One example I can’t let go, (and wonder whether I will), is a couple of months into one role my manager actually turned to me and stated (as if it was one of his best achievements), ‘-well we only employed you because you were a girl’. This was quickly responded to with a fixated glare from me and he stuttered ‘-well we were looking for a year and you were the best by far’. With comments like this littering my daily routine, my respect for male colleges gets knocked down more and more everyday.

Stop Rumyra! See it’s inevitable… how do I pay respect to these women without making this post a personal sounding board.

Maybe I don’t, maybe I do just pay my respects for every woman who’s ever been told she was wrong when she wasn’t, who’s had to raise her voice in the boardroom to be heard, who’s had to bend her knees so her male junior is looking at her in the eyes and not in the chest and who has had to work twice as hard to prove she knows just as much as her male counterpart - it’s not hard it is just rocket science/brain surgery/quantum physics!