Creating Change » Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology

We are changing the world for women and technology one woman at a time. The Anita Borg Institute:

• Offers workshops, publications and information aimed to develop leadership skills
• Celebrates and highlights the success of women who are changing the face of technology
• Provides programs that change the way technology is created, learned and taught
• Creates new communities to change the culture of technology
• Enables our sponsors to recruit, retain and develop technical women resulting in higher levels of technology innovation and better financial performance

via anitaborg.org

#feminismfail at #cua09 the Connecting Up Australia Conference. I loved the session with Jody Mahoney, the VP for Business Development of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. Like Cheryl Kernot in the opening address discussing technology and society at large, Jody had all the facts and figures about women's participation in technology.

But the thing that I HATE is that Jody was preaching to the converted. The audience at her session was the smallest I'd seen all Day One. 20 women and 1 man. I can add that I think 1 man was present rather than ZERO men because this was a conference about technology and social change. BUT WHY WASN'T THE ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE OF ALL GENDERS? Because this WAS a conference about technology and social change.

This was a support group for women in technology. I loved it. We need it. But for every support group there must be an equally effective group for social change. The onus is not on women to do all the changing. That is what I ardently disagree with the Anita Borg Institute on "We are changing the world for women and technology one woman at a time."

We should be changing the world for people and technology one person at a time, recognising that women a minority group. I believe that if the workshop had been titled "Minorities and Technology" it would have been packed to the rafters. From now on in fact, I think I am not a feminist. I have become a refugee from the patriarchy. I am a gender role dissenter. I am an authentic ethnic technology minority. 

Let's have another workshop on the topics covered in the Anita Borg 2009 research paper on"The Prevalence of Gender Stereotyping and Biases"only drop the word gender from the agenda and reflash with emotional decision making and modern neurological cognitive theory.

Posted via web from andragy's posterous