Reading Response – 10/10

In Halberstam’s “Automating Gender: Postmodern Feminism in the Age of the Intelligent Machine,” she mentions that Susan Bordo criticizes Donna Haraway for multiplicity (448). This critique of multiplicity can extended to the discussion of whether women can have it all: Do women lean into one identity (ideal worker or ideal mother) or do they try to balance the various identities they have? “Feminism’s Tipping Point:Who Wins from Leaning In?” and “Lean In? Sure – Been There, Done That – Now What?” deal with the issue of leaning in into a man’s sector of work and the myth of having it all.

Kate Losse describes her experience of attempting to lean in alongside the experience of Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In:Women, Work, and the Will to Lead and Facebook COO. Sandberg blames women themselves for not advancing in the corporate world instead of institutional sexism. However, Losse’s experience as Mark Zuckerberg’s speechwriter maps out how Sanberg’s feminist advice is not the case. Losse moved up in position, yet she did not earn more than male engineers because her promotion and a salary raise would be seen as threatening. As Losse notes, leaning in benefits the company than the workers and it appears that no significant changes have really occurred under Sanberg’s leadership for women at Facebook.

Alternatively, Annie discusses how she too could have had it all, but instead of leaning in for the long run, she leaned back to allow herself personal growth rather than stability for herself, her family, and her company. Instead, she now has her own startup where she can work more than she would if she were still at her old job and still have more vacation time as well. As she states, “I wanted to work somewhere where I would be recognized for my abilities, not somewheer where I’d have to wage war against the patriarchy each and every day.”

That leads me to the sexism discussed in Tasneem Raja’s “‘Gangbang Interviews’ and ‘Bikini Shots’: Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem.” Brogrammers and their language make me feel unwanted in a field of computer science. The language especially is violent (i.e. gangbang interviews, hogramming) and it’s not fair that the lack of female programmers is leading to issues such as that of the Siri example Raja uses. If women could lean in, I’m sure they could if there wasn’t sexism to face in the field.