When our blog editor asked me to write a blog post about Tech Crunch’s recent rant by Michael Arrington about women in tech and the numerous responses, such at Allyson Kapin’s post on FastCompany’s blog, I immediately thought about another recent blog I had read on Slate.com by Dahlia Lithwick about the U.S. Supreme Court now having three women titled, “The Female Factor.”
You see, as a techie myself, I’d already read Mr. Arrington’s rant as well as tracked the story using web applications and readers to follow the various responses it was getting across the web.
And I found that most of the responses, including Kapin’s, touched on but did not directly address what’s discussed in the “The Female Factor,” which is: when will the tech world achieve a critical mass of women who will actually influence it rather than be counted as part of it?
I personally think there are plenty of women working in technology and they do make themselves known. Events like Women Who Tech prove that. Just look at the list of speakers in Kapin’s blog post.
Lithwick explains it well in “The Female Factor”:
…it’s not that females bring any kind of unitary women’s perspective to the board—there’s precious little evidence that women think fundamentally differently from men about business or law—but that if you seat enough women, the question of whether women deserve the seat finally goes away.
Until we reach such a point, I’m excited about participating in events like Women Who Tech which is currently happening online now! Go to their website to get highlights from this past event.