At the Let’s Test Oz conference I actually forgot about gender inequality in IT for three days.

I don’t complain about gender inequality in the workplace per se, for the usual reasons which I try not to complain in general. It’s not efficient, it’s not effective, and no-one listens anyway… I prefer to act. For example:
– Supporting and advocating for my team members who’ve escalated issues of harassment (albeit to no avail).
– Working to ensure that team members can return to work part-time after a career break if required.
– Championing pay rises for team members who are comparatively underpaid (and usually aren’t aware that they’re underpaid).

At most IT events I can’t help but notice that I’m in the minority. At CITCON 2014 approximately 10% of attendees were female. At a recent Splunk seminar in Auckland less than 5% of us were female, and that was confronting. On the other hand I’ve gotten used to management meetings with predominately male co-workers, because that’s the norm today.

The Let’s Test Oz 2014 conference was an exception. During the conference wrap-up Anne-Marie Charrett observed an almost equal number of men and women at the conference, both speakers and attendees. I looked around and saw that she was right, and then I allowed this to really sink in… The gender distribution at the conference matched the real world closely enough that I’d gotten through an entire IT conference without noticing the percentage of women attending. That’s progress!

While writing this I realised that I’ve never noticed gender at the Auckland Testers Meetups either, again because attendance is representative of the real-world. I think it’s great to notice and celebrate these examples of progress.

I’ve written for the Women Testers magazine and attended the Women in Tech meetup to support both initiatives, to further my learning, and to build my professional network and industry profile. I was silently cheering for the few men at the last Women in Tech meetup because they genuinely came to listen and learn about the issues women face. We could do with more of that in tech.