The data confirm its paucity, and stereotypes
and prejudices do not help to reverse this trend.
At the same time, the network connects them,
and more and more information technologies and technologies can become a
neutral territory.
"Girls need modems!" ... In the
1960s, it was a call to protest by Jude Milhon, a computer programmer and
tireless champion of women's active participation on the Internet, in front of
a society in which a new form of communication was born. In the nascent sexual
revolution, Milhon asked women to experience the joy of "piracy" and
programming in an already predicted world dominated by men. More than 50 years
later, statistics on the presence of women in technical fields such as computer
engineering reflect an uneven reality.
According to 2011 INE data, women make up 54%
of the total enrollment in Spanish universities, while their presence in
technical professions is declining to 28.4%. Another European Commission report
from 2011 found that most girls work in the medical sciences (70% in Spain),
while in mathematics and computer science, the number of female students in
European universities drops to 25%, and in engineering. and architecture is
only 15%.
In terms of specific communities of free
software developers, Miriam Ruiz, engineer and editor of the Barrapunto blog,
gathered some data in a 2012 study on x women's participation in this area that
leaves no room for doubt. Debian: 1.3% female, 12 out of 873 developers;
Ubuntu: 5.1% women, 32 out of 625 people Mozilla: 16.75% female, 68 female out
of 406. However, the choice of area of expertise is usually determined by
preference, not skill. So where does this preference come from?
“I think a lot of women don't even consider a
tech career small business ideas as an option. And if you're not sure, you allow yourself to be
carried away by what everyone expects, ”Laura Morillo, a computer systems
technical engineer, told eldiario.es. “When I was studying, I graduated in
2007, there were ten of us out of a hundred, exactly 10%, and they told us that
we were the biggest class in recent years.” The biologists' idea that men are
the best for this type of subject does not work because the women who do it are
just as good (or bad) as they are.
“What happens when you are confronted with
such an overwhelming majority is that the environment does not become hostile,
but it becomes a little difficult, and it can make you feel insecure,” says
Nereya Luis Mingeza, who received her bachelor's degree in computer science.
Engineering is currently pursuing a Master of Science and Technology. “It still
happens that when someone does the wrong equation, they say, 'This is a
blanket,' but when a girl does it wrong, the perception changes. Deep down, you
kind of imagine the world, and they immediately come to the conclusion that
"it's because girls don't know how to do it."
Female technophobia?
Stereotypes in the world of computer geeks,
the subtle prejudices women face, the challenges posed by working in a predominantly
male environment, and the sexist biases used in language are factors that can
influence the scarcity of women and your preferences.
In the late 90s, philosopher Sadie Plant (one
of the first to coined the term cyberfeminism) tried to reconstruct the history
of women in technology in her book Ceros + Unos (Destino, 1998), where she
refuted the generalized stereotype: female. technophobia.
This idea, which still permeates the social
fabric, affects not only the digital gender divide, but also the labor market,
as well as the possibility of getting a more responsible position or deciding
to start a technology enterprise. For Marissa Mayer, a model successful woman
in her work at Google, the problem of the small number of female programmers
and entrepreneurs on the Internet is the problem of how we see technology and
how it makes us see it from a young age. ...
“It is clear that the stereotype of a computer
scientist is masculine, as is the stereotype of an aviation pilot, policeman,
football player, etc. I wonder if the most beneficial action for changing
stereotypes is to make them visible or normalize,” says Margarita Padilla,
computer engineer, former director of Mundo Linux magazine and author of El kit
de la lucha en internet (Traficantes de Sueños, 2012). “This appearance, in my
opinion, is more counterproductive than useful, although it seems like a
paradox. Every time the presence of women is considered as something
exceptional, the rule is confirmed that it is an exception. "
Padilla, who has devoted half of his life to
hacktivism, along with the other hackers who founded Sindominio.net, is
concerned about cyberfeminism: “In my opinion, feminism, like many other recent
utopias associated with communication technology, is in a state of shock about
promotion and push Web 2.0, which, in a nutshell, are business strategies that
have managed to combine, very much in their favor, with the desires of people
for relationships. In other words, they have lost the initiative. "
Network offers
Despite the data presented at the beginning,
there are proposals from the Internet that have spawned communities of
programmers or computer scientists. Laura Morillo and Nereya Luis are part of
the Agile-Girls group. “The initiative was born in AOS2010 (Agile Open Spain)
because of our concern for our gender in computing. We know that many will now
say that this is normal, that there are professions that appeal more boys than
girls, and vice versa, etc. However, we believe that this profession,
especially in its more technical part, should not depend on from gender issues,
”explains Morillo.
The Agile Girls idea, dubbed through Agile,
was to create space for women, but not exclusively for men, emulating the
experience that already existed with Rails Girls. “They started in Finland and
spread all over the world. They run weekend programming seminars for people who
are learning. They don't have to be professional computer scientists, and we
want women to come, even if they don't know it, ”adds Amaya Castro, computer engineer
and, like Laura Morillo, Ruby on Rails developer. According to its members, the
purpose of creating such groups is to show that they are more than they
originally thought, that "they are not unicorns."
There are other initiatives that started in a
specific location and spread throughout the world. Like Pyladies, a group of
developers using the open source Python programming language or the Debian
Women project. Since 2004, they have encouraged more women to use free
software, in particular Debian, and have investigated cases of sexism in
Debian. The LelaCoders project examines women's participation in the
development of computer science and free software and highlights the exact
groups that already exist, such as Systers or LinuxChix.
“Eventually, the goal is to get more women
involved in the issues we are discussing,” concludes Laura Morillo. “So that
they stop thinking that they are 'uncles' or 'geeks' and that they are not
afraid to attend the event, thinking that they will be left alone. We are more
than meets the eye. "
