Announcements etc:
- Long Hidden, a Kickstarter-funded anthology of spec fic centering marginalised characters, is now available for purchase.
- Registration for Solutions Summit 2014: Women in Science Writing (June 13–15 at MIT) is open.
- Model View Culture’s Queer issue is out! Individual articles will be scattered over the spam over the next week, but check out the whole thing.
- FOSS4G — a conference for open source geospatial software, to be held in Portland Oregon in September — is dedicating 50% of their travel grants funding for women and minority attendees. Applications close May 30. They’re also looking for donations to the travel fund; you can donate when you register for the event.
Gender diversity data and tech companies:
- Associated Press’s story Google to release diversity data about workforce | Washington Post (May 14) is all over the place.
- Silicon Valley can change the diversity conversation by telling the truth about its workforce | Michelle Quinn at San Jose Mercury News (May 16): “The decision this week by Google to release information about its workforce’s gender and racial makeup is a challenge to all of Silicon Valley to do the same.”
- The We Can Do Better page by Ri Liu is tracking how different technology firms do.
Spam!
- A group of women leaders in technology have written An Open Letter on Feminism in Tech, available at Model View Culture (May 22) and at aboutfeminism.me (living document).
- Managing Yourself: Women, Find Your Voice | Kathryn Heath, Jill Flynn, and Mary Davis Holt at Harvard Business Review (June issue): “The people described above have several things in common. They are all successful and ambitious. They are all admired by colleagues and superiors. Yet they have all failed to assert themselves in high-level meetings. And they are all women.” Mostly advice for women to speak up more, but some advice for organizations to enable it at the end.
- Nerf Rebelle does damage – and not the good kind | Geek In Sydney (May 16): “There’s nothing intrinsic that requires girls to have pink Nerf guns. It’s purely a marketing decision and in my view it’s sad that it works. More importantly, though, every single time we go down this road it’s another brick in the wall that artificially separates girls and boys expectations.”
- Not a Tech Bro, but Not a Tech Lady | Anonymous Author at Model View Culture (May 19): “If the purpose of the event is to support gender minorities in tech, then the event needs to be inclusive and supportive of trans individuals, regardless of whether or not they identify as women.”
- Chelsea Manning may be transferred to civilian prison for gender treatment | Associated Press at The Guardian (May 14): “The Pentagon is trying to transfer Chelsea Manning to a civilian prison so that she can get treatment for her gender disorder.”
- Growing Your Tech Pipeline: Build a Paid Internship Program for Moms | Tina Lee at the Anita Borg Institute (May 21): “Did you know that most women in the U.S. become moms?… In today’s tech-driven economy where cutthroat bidding wars for technical talent are par for the course, wouldn’t it be wonderful to tap into an existing, under-utilized pool of talent that’s already educated and have work experience and are hungry for a chance to skill-up so that they can bring those to bear?”
- Transitioning in the Digital Age | Jessica Lachenal at Model View Culture (May 19): “What I didn’t expect, however, was having to take on the monumental task of going back across my entire online identity and having to filter every post, every tweet, every photo that was from a life that was no longer mine.”
- Ignore data, focus on power | Cathy O’Neil at mathbabe (May 20): “I like data that shines light on powerful people. Like the Sunlight Foundation tracks money and politicians, and that’s good. But I tend to want to protect powerless people, like people who are being surveilled with sensors and their phones. And the thing is, most of the open data focuses on the latter… The power is where the data isn’t.”
- 5 Upcoming Female-Led Games to Get Excited About For the Rest of This Year | Lauren Puga at The Mary Sue (May 20): “2014 is already shaping up to be another good year in terms of women in games, and I wanted to highlight some upcoming lady-led titles that I think are worth getting excited about.”
- Uses and Abuses of Girls | Janet at Dear Author (May 20): “However, the emphasis here is not on content, but on the production of celebrity as a function of teen girl fan loyalty, a commodity generated by these young girls, and then commodified by men and sold back to them in the form of celebrity stand-ins.”
- Moving Tech’s Moral Compass From The Inside Is Harder Than It Looks | Kim-Mai Cutler at TechCrunch (May 20): “‘There’s this frustrating catch-22 for those of us in the tech industry who’ve been arguing for social good,’ [Justin Rosenstein] said. ‘Before you’ve achieved success, no one listens to you. And after you achieve success, you’re considered out of touch.’”
We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs. If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.
You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, Delicious or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).
Thanks to everyone who suggested links.
