Brograms and #Femfuture Reading Response

I think Hicks brings up a very good point that we shouldn’t take lightly the perception of others simply because we think that they aren’t the majority or that these brogrammer’s output isn’t significant. Stereotyping is exactly what has caused this gender difference and people’ s perception need to be changed, not left alone. It’s sad that even today we are surrounded by these stereotypes and how engineering and computer science jobs are mostly comprised of men. Hicks is right though, jobs and activities have been feminine and masculine code and it would seem out of the norm for others to see one stepping into the territory of another. Only a couple years ago, male nurses would have been a very weird thing to people but now it’s totally normal. I think these perceptions can be changed with time.

In class today we talked about online activism and I feel these articles we read are a good example of how even if they aren’t out there protesting they are spreading feminism in another way. Teaching others about what’s going on and spreading awareness is important because the people you are spreading these issues to might be able to go out there and protest and do something about it physically even if you yourself can’t. For example Hicks talks about the hashtags on twitter surrounding women’s advancement in STEM fields. It may not seem significant that they are hashtagging thesse terms but someone out there might wonder why something like #changetheratio is trending and might decide to look up the issue.

I think Dzodan brings up a good point that even within feminism there is this separation between what people hope to gain due to their upbringing and the environment around them. Women from one country are experiencing totally different inequalities compared to women from another country.  There may be overlapping concerns that are central but there are still a lot of issues that are ignored to the area being more isolated. For example the United States is a lot more vocal and the concerns of women from the United States are probably heard a lot more compared to a small developing country.  It shows how we have to take the bigger picture of feminism and break it down so that we can address different issues. I think online feminism may be key for communication between women in different countries to share their different concerns.