The Women in Technology / SFWA Response (tags #SFWA #WIT #Technology)
Originally published at Ramblings from the Flip Side (Site under construction). You can comment here or there.
After fellow writer (and my VP mentor) Steven Gould retweeted my “Why the SFWA Debate Matters to Women in Technology” post, a male twit (aka twitter user) responded with the tweet asking what he gets out of it.
There are two ways that response can be taken. The first way is to be offended and assume he’s deliberately trolling or trying to pick a fight.” The second way is to taken the question seriously from an interested party. I am choosing to answer the question as if it were a serious inquiry.
Why should men care about the SFWA debate and women in technology? What do men get out of more women joining previously male-dominated fields, gaining positions of authority and trust? Quite a lot, based on my personal experiences.
1) Women are more likely than men to mentor the new recruits, regardless of the recruit’s gender. Most men, especially in technology, are so terrified of losing their jobs that they tend to horde knowledge and business history, believing they are immune to the eventual layoffs if they are the only person who knows how to do their job. Holding this information hostage tends to backfire more often than not.
2) Vital projects succeed more often and are completed more quickly with women on the team, even if the project was created by and is being driven by a male coworker. Why? Because women are more willing to build consensus and team build for the sake of the project rather than defending a piece of territorial turf that could sink (or mire in red tape) the project. Consensus and team work make for a smoother project path.
3) Women’s attention to details can save a project, or save the team a lot of work. Many men tend to overlook previously existing business rules, potential business scenarios that the business users forgot to mention, and regression testing. Women pay attention to details like this and are less likely to care about how foolish it is to ask the so-called obvious questions, bringing potential project problems into the light of day before the project gets too far along, looses too much time, or wastes too much money.
4) Women share the tribal knowledge. Again, where men assume other people may know a thing, or actively refuse to train and share the tribal knowledge in fear of losing their jobs, women know that the only way the team (and the business) can function properly is if everyone knows necessary and needed information. Whether that’s business history over a specific subject, training on specific procedures, or sharing information on customers and vendors and other teams, this information is vital to a healthy working environment. By sharing the tribal knowledge, women make it less likely a customer (et. al.) will get conflicting information about company policies or that team time will be wasted running around in circles while everyone tries to find the Right Answer.
5) When was the last time you saw Scott Adams have an incompetent FEMALE manager or CEO in Dilbert? I’ve never seen that character. There’s a reason for that. Incompetent female workers don’t tend to make it that high on the food chain where as there are plenty of self-sabotaging (and company sabotaging) male managers that have sunk corporate ships. While women are perfectly capable of embezzlement, theft, breach of trust, and other fiduciary crimes, we are statistically less likely to commit them because … well, we don’t like the consequences if we get caught.
6) Women are more likely to support our coworkers (regardless of gender), pitching in when help is needed and suggesting alternate solutions to problems, because women don’t just know the adage “United we stand, Divided we fall.” Women live it. It’s a required tenant of our every day lives, part of how we manage our family lives. We take the skills we learned in raising and being part of a family and bring it to the workplace. Quite effectively too.
Now granted, not all women fit this model. I’ve met micro-managing “I’m always right, you’re always wrong” type of women who don’t share and back-stab their coworkers. But they are rare in my experience. Rarer, at least, than their male counterparts.
So what do men get out of all this? Projects completed on time with a minimum of complaints, critical information to get their jobs done, training they may not receive elsewhere, and the ability to shine to upper management because when the team does well, it reflects well on everyone, including the men.
Agree? Disagree? What are your thoughts?