Everywhere I turn - in the United States, due to my specific choice of career, I’m hit with “Girls who code // Women in tech // Girls who want to code” or something similar.

This has started to highlight something that I find extremely disturbing. I find myself often singled out as the pink elephant in the room - for the wrong reasons.

Before you, dear reader, jump to conclusions and write an angry comment, let me explain. I come from a country and a back ground where intelligence and the ability to work extremely hard is valued highly, with beauty, money and popularity ranked far, far below. Growing up as a South Indian in Mumbai, neither me, not anyone I know or grew up with, has ever had to defend their choice of or fight an uphill battle while selecting engineering as a career choice, regardless of their sex. Intelligence was, and still holds the top spot amongst almost all South Indian families. It is a matter of parental pride as to whose kid, regardless of sex, aced Math and Calculus. My first real toy was a thick book written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - which I read and understood with a fat dictionary by my side at the age of 5, and my second real toy was a game that involved artificial trading in a make-believe stock market. I also played chess every spare second. My parents were not against dolls. They were laser focused on letting my natural intelligence shine. There was no mention of what a “girl” could do - and my family was not unnatural. I was not “lucky” - this IS the norm in a culture that respects and prides itself on intelligence. And no, before you jump to conclusions here - I did not come from a wealthy family. I went to a public school, I came from what you could call squarely lower middle-class. I didn’t have access to private transportation growing up - much less a car. Money, by itself, was never important, the ability to earn with your brainpower however, was prized. 

This brings me to my main gripe - being treated - today - as the “pink elephant” in the room by well-meaning folks. Now, I have presented at several prestigious conferences a number of times, and I have been an engineer-in-training since the day I spoke my first word. I recently spoke at a technology event, and the well-meaning event manager asked me later - “When is your talk?” I responded, saying I was done, why did she want to know? She responded with, “Oh I really wanted to listen in, because you are the only woman here.” That singular comment alarmed me, more than anything else I had heard or encountered in a long time. She wanted to listen in, NOT because she was interested in the subject, but quite simply because I was a woman. I can see how some people might see this as “being supportive”, but it IS more harmful than supportive.

Again - before you, dear reader, jump to conclusions, let me reiterate that I advocate sexless-ness in technology. But I don’t, however, support the idea of being the “pink elephant” in the room. The nature of technology is such that it CAN be the most impartial, mathematical, pure world where code is either clean or messy, your architecture either works or doesn’t, it is either resilient or it is not. There is no room for “maybe” - and there is no room for “is this a woman who wrote this or is it a man”. All one should care about is - is this excellent or is it not? Is this right or is this wrong?

Unfortunately, that is not the case. In a well-meaning effort to be inclusive, and not drive women out of the field, what is also happening is a definite, probably unconscious bias, towards the women who ARE in this field, and who are being made AWARE that - they are “WOMEN” in this wonderful field. I don’t need to be aware of that. And I don’t need to be made aware of that. No, it is not a big deal that I am an engineer because I am a woman. Walk into any engineering school in India - this “problem” does not exist.

Here is what you CAN do - next time you see a woman present at a technical conference, don’t speak to her because she is a “woman” in technology - speak to her because you are interested in the field and interested in what she had to say, regardless of her sex.

Here’s why you should do it - I believe this single action on our part will take away bias, and stop us from seeing each other as women or men in technology. We start seeing each other as equals, and that’s a wonderful place to be in.

(Image licensed under CCO Public Domain)