I apologise to the one regular reader for veering away from programming in this post, but this is something I’ve wanted to write about for a while. I assure you we’ll move firmly back to the topic in hand with my next post looking at some javascript.

I am not a feminist…

Yes you read that correctly. The intersection of feminism, equality and politics is a really interesting one. But before we get there let me apologise for the clickbait title and explain myself.

Yes, I am not a feminist

Why do we have feminism? Generally your answer will have some mention equality. At the end of the day we have feminism because we don’t have equality.

Our parliament is 29% percent women in the Commons and 26% in the Lords. The boards of almost every major corporation are dominated by men. The pay gap is very real and women are severely underrepresented in STEM careers. And that’s not even to mention the fact that in the UK 1.4 million women suffer domestic abuse each year. Two women a week die at the hands of their partners.

I am not here to argue that we live in a deeply unfair, unequal, and generally not very nice society. I state unequivocally that feminism needs to exist, and we have a long way to go before we can say we have an equal society.

But to my earlier point, the reason I refuse to call myself a feminist, is that fundamentally this dilutes a movement that exists to give women a voice. We already see that it has become almost fashionable for men to call themselves feminists. When a group loses its identity it ceases to be a meaningful or useful entity.

Third wave feminism has already become wildly diverse. We have a schism at the centre as it rightly tries to become intersectional, while the peripheries are involved in new struggles daily. While every one of these struggles is a cause that needs fighting, by loosing the single focus of earlier waves, feminism risks becoming a church for all people, but incapable of driving real change.

It’s this last point that really drives home why I think it’s important that feminism remains an arena where women have the only voice.

For us to have equality, men have to loose. We have to loose the privileged position we’ve had since the start of human society. We have to learn that its ok not to be the loudest speaker, that listening is more important than talking. If every man can simply call himself a feminist and not actually address the fundamental structural issues we will never have true equality.

So thats why I would call myself an ardent supporter of feminists. But I would never call myself a feminist.

Women and Tech

So to bring this back to the point of this blog I’d like to close with a few thoughts on the current state of the tech industry. Please be reminded that I have exactly zero experience actually working in such an industry, so this is very much the view of an outsider.

That said, I want to dive straight to the heart of the issue. It’s pretty clear that there is a real issue with the gender balance in this industry. While there are definitely companies out there that have taken a stand on the issue (Red Badger immediately spring to mind), we need to be careful that we’re not just fudging a quick solution so that we can ignore the wider problem.

Solutions like gender equality targets, specific female only scholarships and female focuses spaces all have there merits. But none of the fix the inherent structural problem we have. Simply we have a gender bias at the earliest age. Young girls are less likely to study STEM subjects at GCSE/A-level then boys. In the case of Computing over 80% of entrants in 2014 were male. Unless we can change this we will be fighting an un-winnable battle.

So while providing incentives to adults to pursue a career in tech may make us feel like we’re addressing the issue, if we want to get serious we need to start championing our causes before kids even hit GCSE’s. I’d love to see our tech community get involved at a grassroots level.