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Why point out they’re women?

October 5th, 2006 Posted in Business Strategy

A time honored tradition on this blog happens every one in a while – a Jake Rant. Bear with me… it’ll all be over soon.

We all know that the tech industry is dominated by men. Most of us want to see that change, and do our best to help that happen. But an annoying trap that too many of us men (and plenty of women) fall into is our  inability to not call attention to the sex of the successful. Even TechCrunch Michael feel into this trap recently with his post: "All Women Team Takes Yahoo Hack Day Top Prize".

Why do we have to call attention to the fact that this smart group was also women? I’m sure men do it mostly to help highlight that success comes in both genders, and I’m sure women do it to provide clear examples that girls can be smart/geeky too. But I’m pretty sure that when there’s a picture of three women holding a trophy next to some copy about them being top winners, we can all make the leap that the two are connected.

When we specifically point it gender, time after time after time, here’s what I think may occur:

  • Men’s instincts kick in and drive them subconciously to pound their chests and find a way to dominate another situation to make up for the loss…"to girls"… in order to regain their masculinity.
  • The women involved in the winnings are instantly placed into a situation where they have to question the motives of the judges, thus never really giving them the amount of "success confidence" they deserve.
  • The conversation immediately takes on a hobbled position. The context is not about the top achiever, it’s about the top achiever within a certain category. "She’s the best CEO in the world… for a woman".

My fear is that in our desire to encourage women, we unknowingly hobble their confidence in their own abilities.

What do you think? Am I spot on or way off base?


This entry was posted on Thursday, October 5th, 2006 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Business Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • So Jeneane, I'm confused if you agree or disagree with me. It sounded like both :)


    Perhap it's a simple issue of me hoping we were already to a point where we didn't need to specifically call out the attributes of success. To me it feels condesending to do so.



    As Donna said - for firsts, yes, call away. But I think we help to propegate the problem when we ALL seem to be incapable of letting go. In my mind, every time we say "The female team won" without any need to specifically call them out as women, we're relegating them to "their place"...which is that of an oddity, a side-show, so to speak. Do young girls who don't feel like they're the odd woman out in their techie interests get thrust into that feeling when it's constantly, repeatedly shown to them that being interested in the things they are is, in fact, strange?



    Do we break the cycle by highlighting this, or do we continue to feed it?







  • donna
    Interesting indeed. I personally don't think there is any need to point out gender or race or any physical characteristics in a situation like this one. It would be like saying the winning team all wore khaki pants and white shirts - it is immaterial. The only way it's material is if it's something that females have previously been unable to do or have been excluded from. First woman priest? You bet that would be newsworthy BECAUSE of gender.


    Personally, I don't question the motives behind women winning or succeeding in anything. My assumption is that women won for the same reason a man might have won - because they were the best.
  • I have to say I'm with Joanne, but I also "feel your quandry" about mentioning that women did x-y-z whenver something is done that happens to have been done by women.


    If it were an all black tech team to have won the hackathon, would the headline have said so, or let the photo do the talking? ANd why would it matter? But then, it would. In subtle an non-subtle ways each of these scenarios say: Status Quo look out, we're coming for you.



    Of course, although the woman team angle is only one angle of the story, it happens to be an important angle in an industry where boys (as opposed to "girls") get the majority of the attention and gigs.



    Thanks for thinking thru some of this stuff with us. ;-)


  • Joanne,


    Huge appreciation for your honesty. I'm not sure if I agree (still chewing on this whole topic), but I'm really glad you posted. I'm hoping we get more feedback from others on this too!




  • Joanne
    I think you're way off. The point is to highlight that, in a male dominated field, women can be successful, which may encourage other women. In this case, the prize was not for the best women's hacker team, but the best overall team. Unless the women involved are extremely insecure about why they won and or it's clear they did not actually deserve the prize, they are not going to question motives. If a group of men are emasculated and need to pound their chests ...well... sore losers simply don't warrant attention. I believe it's good to point out that they are women.
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