Many people won’t speak their minds because they believe it will hurt them personally. I think we need to tell the truth in order to make a difference for everyone.

The past year has sucked for me. Like, really really sucked. My Dad died, a friend I’ve known since I was 13 unexpectedly died, I lived on a property with a really crazy and invasive person living behind me, and I’ve been wrestling with myself trying to figure out what I’m truly passionate about so I can figure out what to do career-wise. I holed myself up and didn’t feel very social and definitely didn’t want to network. It actually turned out to be a good thing because I really only found the energy to do things that I liked, such as attending Transmedia LA meetups, hanging with close friends, reconnecting with nature, and working with musicians.

After a year of just doing my own thing and playing around with tech, I’m ready to dig in more. I want to know who is running these companies that I admire, tweet about and promote for free.  So far, I’m disappointed; the tech world is still a sausage fest . There aren’t very many tech companies run by women and there certainly aren’t exec teams dominated by women unless it’s on purpose (created by women, for women).

I think I’ve been fortunate to work for companies that did have a good balance of men and women so I wasn’t very concerned about what was going on elsewhere when I was an employee. After I graduated from BCIT I worked for a data warehouse consulting company and they had very strong, technical women leading projects. In BCAA’s IT department, again, strong technical women. Then at Microsoft, I worked with strong technical women that also filled Senior VP positions. At Topspin there were (and still are) more men than women, and I started to feel the unbalance, but not enough to really care.

After being sheltered from the truth, I clearly see that the tech industry is in dire need of balance. Technology is used by both sexes and in some cases used more by women. If you know anything about UX, you know that you are building for your audience, and I just don’t see how a bunch of men are going to get it right if at least half their user base is women. Do all the focus groups you want, it’s just never going to happen.

Here are a few cases that I’ve been noodling on most recently:

In addition, we need to get more girls interested in science, math and technology. I think by default technology is not a problem because it is becoming more and more available to young children. But we want kids to create, not just be consumers.

It makes me happy that there are popular women in new media that are making headway in popularizing the idea of geeky women. Many of those women aren’t strong technically, and although I love gaming, it’s not really the big push that I want to see. But, it’s a start.

I know that this is old news, but it matters to me much more than ever before. Trust me when I say that I’m not about to tear off my bra and burn it (my boobs couldn’t handle it), but I also don’t want to just complain about this problem anymore. Technology is moving ahead, but women filling important roles are not.

I am one person and I believe that change happens most effectively when you start small and local. If you live anywhere near 90039, then please hit me up and let’s get like-minded, technical women together on a regular basis to talk about projects, opportunities, mentorship – whatever you need to feel supported and to get more women in tech.

How do you feel about women in the tech industry? Do you agree it’s an issue? Do you think it matters? Are you doing anything about it?

Talk to you soon,
Tara

Day 1:  30 Day Challenge to write for at least 30 minutes/day.