Presenting on Gender Bias & Inequality at SQL Saturday #527, Columbus, Ohio

     This coming Saturday, July 16th, I'll be presenting my Women in Technology session on Identifying, Understanding and Combating Gender Bias.  First, let me thank Dave Maxwell (T|B) & the other organizers for inviting me to be a part of this event. Second, let me congratulate them on selecting so many sessions presented by women.  It wasn't a conscious effort on their part but I think that's just as amazing.  I'm told frequently by organizers that they'd love to pick more women speakers, but they just aren't submitting.  That wasn't the case here, 7 of the 30 sessions are presented by women.  We've seen similar ratios at Pensacola & upcoming in Baton Rouge. (SQLSat515)  Some of you may have noticed that we now highlight women speakers on a section of the PASS WIT page.  We continue to tweet about upcoming webinars and SQL Saturday speakers from the @PASS_WIT account.  Check these out frequently to see the great work women are doing in the PASS Community.

Here is a peek at the amazing line up of women coming up this Saturday in Columbus.  

Event	Location	Date	Session Title	Organizer
SQLSat#527	Columbus	7/16/2016	It's OK to Talk to Strangers	Cassandra Faris
SQLSat#527	Columbus	7/16/2016	Inside the Black Box - Making Sense of Service Broker	Colleen Morrow
SQLSat#527	Columbus	7/16/2016	Navigating the Options for Data Redundancy	Wendy Pastrick
SQLSat#527	Columbus	7/16/2016	Improving Your PowerPoint Skills	Evelyn Maxwell
SQLSat#527	Columbus	7/16/2016	Designing Stored Procedure Solutions	Jennifer McCown
SQLSat#527	Columbus	7/16/2016	WIT: Identifying, Understanding, and Combating Gender Bias	Rie Irish
SQLSat#527	Columbus	7/16/2016	(Way Too Much) Fun with Reporting Services	Stacia Varga

Check out their full schedule here:  SQL Saturday 527 Schedule

Do you think we need Professional Development sessions? What about WIT?

     You'd think by now that a WIT topic or even a Professional Development track would be at least without controversy and at best, expected.  That isn't the case here.  I don't intend to give someone more attention than they deserve, so I'll simply say that a few, isolated individuals think Prof Dev & WIT topics have no place at a technical event.  When they compare my session on Gender Bias to sessions on office lighting or their favorite flavor of Mountain Dew, their comments make me think Women In Technology topics are more needed than ever. I wanted to scream to the Internet what this session means.  This session defines inequality & bias, helps you identify when it's happening, provides context on why it's important to know and gives the attendee positive steps they can take to combat it.  Bias in hiring & promotion means dollars not invested in women in technology. Inequality in the work place is a big reason women are not coming to IT & why they aren't staying.  These things should be obvious, right?  How can you not get it?  Instead of screaming, I opted for a few deep breaths, a few edits and a calm, professional tone. Basically, I decided not to feed the trolls.

The SQL Community seems to think so.

     Then the good guys and ladies arrived. The outspoken, weight-carrying, vocal majority stepped up and defended the need for both WIT & Prof Dev sessions.  They cited reasons these sessions are important, related what you'd learn to common work-day scenarios and drew parallels instead of resorting to emotional, name-calling comments.  To call the outpouring of support "amazing" is an understatement.  It helped me put these negative comments into perspective. The insensitive jerks are the minority in IT.  The vast majority of our colleagues really want to be supportive & help further our push for equality.  And they want us to help them get there.

     As I read the positive comments from Andy Warren [T], Aaron Bertrand [T], Tim Radney[T], Neil Hambly[T], Steve Jones[T], Stephanie Locke [T] and Christine Assaf [T], I was reminded  how much I love and appreciate my SQL Family.  In-person friends & Twitter connections stepped up with their very welcome two cents.  Some people took the author up on his suggestion & emailed the event organizer.  Only instead of asking these sessions be removed from the schedule, they told him how much they loved his line up! They reinforced that Prof Dev & WIT sessions are very important to the SQL Community.

The friends and colleagues that sent me private messages of support or other solutions were appreciated as well. That being said, I've got this.  But stand by, just in case I don't.

Some Comments on Gender Inequality

If you haven't already seen the PASS Women in Technology March Webinar on Unconscious Bias and Gender Inequality, then you’re really missing out.  You can find it here:  

PASS WIT Unconscious Bias and Gender Inequality

I hesitate to use phrases like “life changing” but I think that’s what happened.  To say the evidence presented really rocked me back on my heels is an understatement.  It made me sad.  Then it made me mad.  How have we let this happen?  This kind of thing just gets excused & dismissed all the time.  It’s easy to not call it out when you see it because who wants to be labeled as some over-sensitive, angry female?

I've submitted a session to SQL Saturday Atlanta  entitled 

Women in Technology: Identifying, Understanding and Combating Gender Bias. 

Abstract: Gender Bias is something we’re all guilty of. It’s typically unconscious and often stems from long held misperceptions about women and job responsibilities. We’ll learn about the origins of some of these biases and how to identify gender bias when we see it. We’ll discuss some strategies for how both men and women can combat this at work and in our everyday lives. This session is about developing positive solutions to a problem that often goes undiscussed.

Need some examples of what Unconscious Bias looks like?

How about something a bit more overt?

A elementary classroom experiment on Gender Bias...  The first graders started brainstorming a list of words that spontaneously come to mind when they think of “girls” and “boys”. 

Then they temporarily disregarded the lists and asked the students to raise a hand if one of these words applied to them, as we read words from BOTH the girls’ and boys’ lists. Girls comfortably raised their hands for words like “soccer,” “powerful,” “hard challenges,” and “Karate”; and boys raised their hands for words like “feelings,” “ponies,” and “peaceful.” 

Products are marketed to women in the stupidest imaginable way.

  

As I’m looking through sources for the article, I thought I should share them with you.  This will help you get a more complete picture of the problem.  These sites help identify gender bias for what it is, offer positive solutions & ways to combat it and frankly, educate people on all aspects of the problem.

Gender Bias Bingo

Tools For Change in STEM

IDRA Unmasking Gender Bias

The Coop School First Grade Gender Bias Study

Celebrating International Women's Day

Earlier this week, the world celebrated International Women's Day. I was dismayed to read a few posts from friends on social media, lamenting "another international day of something made up".  Comments comparing it to National Grilled Cheese Day (which, let's be honest, is AWESOME) to National Yoga Pants Day (which I think probably IS made up).  Let me reassure you all, International Women's Day is a real thing and has been celebrated for over 100 years!!  In 1975, it was first celebrated by the United Nations. In 2011, President Obama helped celebrate the 100th year by declaring March to be Women's History Month.  

What it's about

From the website  http://www.internationalwomensday.com/About

International Women's Day (March 8) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.International Women's Day (IWD) has been observed since in the early 1900's - a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies. 

International Women's Day is a collective day of global celebration and a call for gender parity. No one government, NGO, charity, corporation, academic institution, women's network or media hub is solely responsible for International Women's Day. Many organizations declare an annual IWD theme that supports their specific agenda or cause, and some of these are adopted more widely with relevance than others.

"The story of women's struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights," says world-renowned feminist, journalist and social and political activist Gloria Steinem. International Women's Day is all about celebration, reflection, advocacy, and action - whatever that looks like globally at a local level. But one thing is for sure, International Women's Day has been occurring for over a century - and is growing annually from strength to strength.

Women all over the world facebooked, instagrammed, blogged, snapchatted & tweeted about being a woman, celebrating women and supporting women. Some held rallies & marches. 

Here are some of my favorites.

Blogs & Links

Career Advice You Probably Didn't Get
Amy Poehler: Great People Do Things Before They're Ready
Ted Talks: This isn't her mother's feminism
Feministing.: A List of TED Talks
PASS WIT VC Gender Inequality & Unconscious Bias
Celebrating Women Inventors!

Tweets

Inspiring Quotes

So how did you celebrate International Women's Day?

A Call for Help: Supporting a Young Speaker

I could really use your help showing some support to a new speaker.  There's a young woman presenting her first SQL Saturday session this week.  Evelyn Maxwell, 7th grade daughter to Dave Maxwell is presenting at SQL Saturday Cleveland on Feb 6, 2016.  If you could take a few minutes to send a tweet offering words of encouragement, empowerment & support, I'm sure she'd appreciate it.  Be sure to use the hashtag #WIT4Evelyn.  I'll have Dave show them to her on Friday or Saturday night.  

Check out her session here Evelyn's SQL Saturday Cleveland Session 
Evelyn Maxwell is a 7th grade student at Gahanna Middle School West. She is a frequent attendee of local SQL Saturday's. Since 4th grade, (age 10) Evelyn has been working with presentation software and has given multiple school presentations. She currently has 0 years of IT experience.

WIT-Diversity Panel: Parenting Daughters in an IT world & Why Its Important

I recently had the opportunity to facilitate a panel at SQL Saturday #480 in Nashville, TN.  Instead of a traditional Women in Technology panel, this one was a diversity panel discussing a WIT topic.  We assembled a group of SQL professionals, Justin Dearing, Patrick LeBlanc, Arlene Rose and I to discuss raising daughters in a very tech savvy world.  Parenting is hard.  We all know that.  Parenting girls is really hard.  Adding to this already complicated job, is our technology based way of thinking & problem solving.  It's probably not a great idea to create a project road map for your children. The IT field isn't very diverse, but we have the opportunity to change that in a generation: encouraging young females, calling out other biases in the field and coming up with positive solutions.  Are we raising tech savvy daughters? Should we be? 

We asked each panelist to talk about themselves, their family & how they approach parenting in general.  Two men, two women.  Married, divorced. One girl, two girls, a boy & girl. Teenagers, toddlers.  Varied backgrounds but similar answers to the questions presented.  Would you encourage their daughter to enter the tech industry? Why or why not? What tech opportunities do you provide? What do you do to encourage a positive attitude toward tech?

Both Arlene & Patrick don't have to push their daughters into tech at all.  The girls gravitate toward it. So these parents only have to fuel a fire that's already there. When presented with the chance, the girls have opted to find IT solutions to problems, even if that problem is just boredom.  My daughter is aware of technology, uses it to her advantage, games for hours but has no interest in the creating... only the creation.  Justin, the father of one 2 year old girl with another on the way, is only beginning to identify how he wants to approach technology.  He jokes that as a programmer, he wishes he could automate parenting.  I have friends who would love to write a PowerShell script to handle the job. I think that was something a lot of us can relate to.  He made a great point though, parenting is a little more free form but there is no restore from backup. 

We went through a few different topics.  I'd like to hear your thoughts below.

How does being in IT affect or change the way you parent? Does it affect the way you parent a daughter vs a son? Should it?
Has parenting a daughter affected the way your recognize/define diversity?
Would you encourage your daughter to enter the tech industry? Why or why not?
What are your expectations for your daughter in everyday life? How do those apply to your expectations around technology?
What tech opportunities do you provide?
What do you do to encourage a positive attitude toward science & tech?

I often tell my daughter this. 
I don't care who you love; I care that you love. 
I don't care what you do; I care that you do.

Ultimately we all agreed, technology field or not, we'd encourage our daughters to just to be happy.

A Thank You, to MY Women in Technology

“You should write a blog.” my friends told me, “You have a lot to say!”  I’ve long suspected what they meant was “You sure do talk a lot.”  I finally decided that both could be true.  I wondered what I really had to talk about, what inspires me & gets me talking.  That part was easy: supporting women in technology, my #SQLFamily, my daughter, my job.   I’ve recently accepted a leadership position for the SQL PASS Women in Technology Virtual Chapter, along with Kathi Kellenberger.  I’m thrilled by the honor & humbled by the responsibility.  Those that have held this position before me have grown this chapter, it’s involvement in the community and it’s presence at PASS Summit each year.  

I've started thinking lately about all the strong, smart, beautiful women that played a role in my being here.  I'd like to say I've been lucky but that isn't true.  It isn't luck. These women are here because I chose them.  I sought out women that challenged me, supported me, understood me and loved me back.  And there's no slackers in my crew either.  These women kick ass and take names.  They run virtual chapters, user groups, SQL Saturdays, present at PASS Summit, teach tech to young girls, and support women already in tech.  They don't settle for second place.   Most importantly, they leave no woman behind. 

So, my first blog post is for them.  It's to say thank you for your love, your support, your help, your answers to questions and your occasional shove in the right direction.