Tag Archives: women

Women need more self-confidence to emerge as web heroines in Design and Technology

23 Jan

This post also appeared on The Huffington Post.

It’s a well-known fact that there are not enough women working in the Technology and Design industries today. Women only make up 12% of the workforce, and only 5% of board members at FTSE listed companies are women. However, withs girls outperforming boys in education, with 72% gaining A-C’s against 55% of boys in Sciences and Arts subjects. We have the talent, but it’s not coming through to the industry. With 95% of women seeing the industry as nerdy, more is needed to inspire women to work in this rapidly expanding industry.Web Heroines, founded by successful web designer Keri Lambden in 2011, was set up to celebrate women working in the Tech and Design industries, bringing women together and inspiring others to work in the growing tech industry. Rather than criticise and point fingers at the restrictions, the group’s aim is to showcase and celebrate achievements, sharing opinions, and then investigate potential solutions to the girl gap.

Emerge was a mini conference set up to start that very conversation. The three day event ran during the 16-18th January, starting with webinars by speakers from all over the world sharing their knowledge on a variety of subjects from SASS to juggling a freelancing and a day job, accumulating with a panel discussion in the British Library with four inspiring women all working in the industry. Julie Howell, confidently claimed that she ‘invented social media’ back in 1995 by setting up one of the world’s first online communities; Jooly’s Joint, and has won 5 awards for her influence on accessible design. Sarah McVittie co-founded Texperts, the world’s first text message questioning service, which was sold to KGB in 2008 in a multi-Million pound deal. She has since founded Dressipi, a ‘contextually aware fashion recommendation system’. Sarah Parmenter started her business at 19, and is a completely self-taught UI designer and coder. An early adopter of designing for the iPhone/iPad, she regularly speaks at conferences both in the UK and abroad and recently won .net designer of the year award 2011. Jess Ratcliffe came up with the idea for her video game swapping website, gaboom, when she was just 15. She has recently appeared on Dragon’s Den,and has recently re-launched the website.

The first question posed is was one on all of our lips; why are there so few women working in Tech and Design? Confidence is felt to be the main issue. Julie Howell said there is the talent but people are just not coming forward. Women need to adopt more of an ‘headphones off’ method of working, by talking and sharing ideas with other people and not hiding away. Sarah McVittie agreed and said there are not enough women role models in the industry, more needs to be done to inspire other young women, and as an entrepreneur you have a responsibility to educate others. The panel agreed that there is less of a gender difference in the workplace these days, and women should embrace that they are better at different things, such as nurturing and being empathetic, all qualities of fantastic leaders. As more gender specific products are being built with women in mind, this will hopefully encourage more women into the industry. Sarah Parmenter even said that sometimes being a woman has played to her advantage when winning contracts, such as her work for Breast Cancer UK, and women should not be afraid of playing this to their advantage.
The topic of self confidence kept popping up through the hour long talk, with the panel agreeing that having bags of it and the passion for your idea can be a real driver for your work, but lacking self esteem and even listening to social media backlash can put some on the backfoot. The real issue isn’t that women are lacking talent, but they lack the self-confidence to continue with their ideas. The best thing to do to combat this is to put yourself out there, be it through teaching, mentoring or even taking part in conferences, which will not only boost your own confidence, but will also help inspire others. Emerge was a successful event, and hopefully this is the start of many more conversations to get more women into the tech sphere.

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Make your own Graffiti Infographics

16 Jun

There are not enough infographics in the world. They transform dry and unappealing facts into visual and engaging stories. Some of my favorite infographic sources include Information is Beautiful, Visual Complexity, and Information Aesthetics. Now, thanks to Golan Levin, you can make your own.

Designed in just four hours during a F.A.T speed challenge, the ”Infoviz Graffiti” is a stencil that can be downloaded from Levin’s blog and created at home. The design includes a set of re-arrangable letters, a pie chart with a movable sections and an arrow pointing to the portion your statistic represents. The materials you need; hard card, tape, craft knife, a bag to store the letters, are all easily obtainable. Creating your own political statements has now never been so easy. Can’t think of a hard hitting fact? Why not give some of these a go?

20% of children in the US live in Poverty. 22% of people in the UK live in poverty. (Poverty & IRP)

60% of rapes go unreported to the police. Including this figure, only 6% of rapists serve jail time. (RAINN)

12.5% of the workforce in Science, Engineering and Technology are women. (Guardian)

 

Discovered via The Daily Good.

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bad… to be a bad auntie…

7 Dec

I heard some news last night that was expected… but not as quickly as it came. My sister, who has just recently became happily engaged to her boyfriend on her 21st birthday, is pregnant. I am going to be an auntie and now feel 23 going on 33. The more I talk about this the further up the years creep. I am finding this all very unsettling.

Don’t get me wrong… I am very happy for my sister. While I felt happily nauseated while she ran through the romantic story of unexpectedly receiving a rock and red roses; its just all a bit sobering. People (who are younger than me) getting on with LIFE. Embracing that big scary doom cloud that is commitment. I would hate to get the key to a ball  and chain on my 21st. Its everything against those hairy feminists have been fighting for all those years. I was only thinking a few nights ago that I shouldn’t be taking life so seriously, soon I will get slapped around the face with shitty nappy for a wake up call. Then the harsh realization that you are trying to make this world better for the next generation, when you struggle to make it better for yourself… I am too young for all this and its not even happening to me!

Mind you… I am looking forward to having a naive little thing calling me cool auntie Rosie…

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gender gender gender…

27 Nov

Uni work is kind of taking over my life. Not just in a typical third year way. The days spent hanging out in the gender section of the library are really taking their toll. I love gender studies, the way that men and women see and interact with each other in a never ending struggle between matriarchy and patriarchy is fascinating to me.

However, the endless amounts of books that I am reading about masculinity in all its forms are not only infiltrating my brain, but are seeping out into any other conversation I may have in the real world. Generally it all boils down to sex, but with words like ‘castration’, ‘phallic power’ and ‘emasculated’ providing a saucy icing. After Tuesdays lecture, when after work drink conversation turned onto the subject of Twilight, where I went to explain why women were so obsessed with Vampire culture (something along the lines of wanting to drink the blood of the glamorous image they want to be like, thus becoming vampires themselves), which was met with raised eyebrows and silence. Its great that I am digesting all this critical theory. It’s not so great to verbally regurgitate the contents of this delightful meal on the unsuspecting public.

Furthermore, because I am constantly reading about it, I am constantly thinking about it, thus sex is forever on the brain. It is really hard not to when reading things like The Male Body by Susan Bordo or Female Desire by Rosalind Coward. But then sex is everywhere to be readily digested in culture anyway. Too much for my little brain (and my ovaries). Too much as well for the sufferers of my sexually deconstructive ramblings all around me. Over analyzing, is not a good thing.

Maybe I should stick to portait miniatures. And then overanalyse how we frame and view everything. Then I really will lose all my friends.

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whats love got to do with it?

5 Oct

Apparently nothing… where sex is concerned for women anyway.

Browsing the online papers on a Monday morning came across a bit of a risque subject; why women have sex. According to Cindy Meston, a clinical Psychologist and a author of a book about the subject, there are exactly 237 reasons why. And love isn’t one of them. We are apparently a lot more manipulative in our reasons for choosing out sexual  partners, often looking for the benefits. Men it seem, have less reasons to do so, other than the obvious. They just wanna get laid.

I wish this analogy was so simple. Yes, we do have our reasons… but this article makes out there is always a background philosophy behind doing it. What about if women just enjoy it? I guess I goes along the reasoning of a release, but this article does not imply so. Particularly when the aparently happily married woman says that she “makes lists in her head” while making love to her husband. Nice.

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