Challenges for women in technology.

In the field of technology, there is a growing awareness that more women are needed to grow businesses and meet the demands of a global marketplace. But the challenges are ongoing and there are current examples that highlight the problems many women face within the industry. Two female academics were recently advised that adding a man’s name on their paper would improve it. This is an overt example but there are many others faced by women already working in technology fields that are numerous, subtle and often unintentional. The most common and obvious of these is what’s become known as mansplaining – a term that refers to men over-explaining things to women that they already know. As a woman working in technology this is a phenomenon that I have experienced often. If I ask for technical support, I will be given a simplified explanation and told that the ‘tech guy’ will do it for me. Despite the fact that I can easily connect a laptop to the Wi-Fi, there is an assumption that I wouldn’t understand their explanation of IP addresses or machine-based certificates. I wish this was a single example. In contrast, some of my male colleagues have reported the opposite – that technical staff speak to them at a level that is technologically beyond them, based on the assumption that as men they would understand what is being explained.

While it makes me smile ruefully and roll my eyes, mansplaining actually poses a more significant and serious challenge than just being an annoyance. Mansplaining can make it almost impossible for women to aim high in technology careers when they are denied access to complex language or problem-solving opportunities. There is a real danger that women exposed to mansplaining could end up restricting their career choices as it risks “crushing young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world.”