I have hesitated to write about this for years. Mostly because the people who push the agenda of attracting more women into tech and STEM mean well. This issue is also extremely personal for me as I was explicitly told by an authority figure as a young adult that I could not study engineering because I am a woman. You can hear me tell that story here. Because it is so close to my heart, I reflect often as to whether I am bitter about the initiatives because they weren’t around when I needed them. And surely, there is some of that trauma mixed into the feelings I have about the topic. Nevertheless, here are 5 reasons why the “Women in Tech” narrative needs more nuance.
- Most jobs in tech are not technical
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There is another post on LinkedIn. It is a man trying to show allyship by encouraging women to apply to the technical jobs he has posted. He really does want to have more women in these roles, he just can’t find them. Seems that all the qualified ones are taken. The simplistic conclusion is reached, “We need more women in tech.” And yes, we do. But there are other reasons the women who are in tech are not applying for these jobs.
I have worked with ERP systems for 14 years and I almost always have to laugh when I read job ads for ERP related roles. Senior ERP project manager roles looking for people with degrees in computer science. Or they want a leader of the entire program to be an expert in one particular module of one particular type of ERP. This is perhaps the very reason these programs fail at such a high rate.
To lead an ERP project, you need to understand causal relationships. Sure, we need technical experts who can code in certain languages and can configure what is needed. But we do not need technical experts running the projects. Instead, we need people who understand complex networks and understand enough about the technology to ask the right questions. This obsession with specialization is causing our technology projects to be driven by people who do not understand how things are connected.
Continue reading: https://sarahannefreiesleben.medium.com/how-the-women-in-tech-narrative-needs-more-nuance-3b883bf0eb23
