female privilege & tech

does feminism have a place in tech?

If we have a 'top women in tech' list, shouldn't we have a 'top men in tech' list too? So joked a panel moderator.

Isn't that equal? Sure. Absolutely. I say go for it.

 Incensed? So was a great majority of the audience at the Girls in Tech chapter launch in London last Friday. A female audience member raised her hand and said that it was an inappropriate joke because joking about privilege only condones it.

The conference organisers quickly said that they had no opinion on the matter beyond that men were as welcome at Girls in Tech events as women, indeed they were encouraged, and that they supported equality for both genders.*

I thought back to a dinner table discussion at Thinking Digital a few days before in which a fellow delegate and diner said that he hadn't even noticed that half the speakers were female. 

I think the women in the audience was wrong, we should have a 'top men in tech' list. Let me tell you why:

These incidents typify, for me, two things: the difference between British and American feminism, and the hang-up with real gender equity.

Click to read more ...

Why 'Men's Work' is important to me

Last year I covered a conference: the "Mens' Gathering" -- a conference for people interested in or working on something called 'Mens' Work'. It is a movement that asks what a man's role is in the modern world, and how that role manifests itself in societal institutions: home, work, school, the community, what have you.

The resulting article 'Concerning Nigel: The Future of Men' remains one of my favorites.

This week I'm headed to the National Men's Conference in Brighton for research on a future documentary.

Journalists don’t cover a topic unless it’s important to them. Indeed, many journalists become experts on subject areas and even campaigners as they cover topics over a lifetime.

I wouldn’t cover this area if I didn’t have self interest in it, some personal identification within the topic.

But as I came to write this post it’s not that I found that I couldn’t, but that I shouldn’t put all the details here in the open for you. You see, it’s not just my story to tell and the person -- the reason-- this is mostly about is still alive and whilst there’s very little chance you’d probably ever run across him I know that putting that much personal detail online (as much as my life is open to the public on social media) would be extremely uncomfortable for him. So I won’t.

But do feel free to ask me in person and I will tell you.

I’ve also written this post because I know that there are people I will meet today who will go away and want to look for my website and figure out who I am, why I should be wanting to make a documentary about Men’s Work. I wanted to have some kind of answer for them.

Beyond what’s above there’s this: I’m a woman and I’d like to find a partner one day. I need these stories to be told because this is important work that these Men are up to.  I believe in that nothing exists in a vacuum; we are all part of society so of course feminism had an effect on men and not just the one we like to talk about -- rights for women -- but something else, something unintentionally harmful, something we must deal with.

Moreover, what if the still disparity in wages, in rights, what if women have pushed feminism and LGBT community have pushed as far as they can go, what if the answer is this Men’s Work that will take it the rest of the way and finally fully equalise the relationship between genders, between sexualities?

Isn’t that a question worth asking?

But you all expect this from me, by now, right? Because that’s sort of my ‘brand’: make sure you’re asking the right question first, above all.

annlytical: “question everything.”