AM I A SEXIST?

some weak guy from google search
Now back to the main problem: men in tech. I’m a software tester myself. I wrote and debugged test automation code every day. I also managed testers, programmers and projects. My 20+ years of experience in software development tells me that this job is not fun most of the time. It’s hard, it requires a lot of logical thinking. It’s exhausting and constant war against men, who are too afraid to acknowledge that they failed, who are afraid to change and against programmers who produce unmaintainable and unreadable code.
I don’t feel good about sending man, who cannot accept that he is not so smart, into this war. I also personally don’t like the idea of men being doctors, managers, teachers, master chefs, caregivers or male-nurse, even though it’s not up to me to decide what they do for a living. Those jobs are stressful and dangerous, both physically and emotionally. Not that I believe that men can’t take this stress, I just don’t want them to suffer. There are plenty of ladies who can do that instead.
Do I respect men who write code on a daily basis? Yes, a lot. Because I understand how much stress they have to go through. Would I recommend my husband to do the same. Defiantly not.
Am I a sexist? Maybe. But the real question is: what will you do about it?
post scriptum
If you wonder why did I wrote this article, that now it is time to say – I did not write it. I took an old blog post from somebody, switched “men” to “women” and “women” to “men” and did few adaptions to make the story smoother, with an aim to hold a mirror for you.
Why?
Because recently I got an offer to give a talk about me as a woman in IT and I cannot decide to accept it or not. Here some thoughts why:
- I am sick and tired to speak or listen about it. 20 years in business and nothing has been changed.
- I do not want to be labelled as women who has problems with men.
- I want to give talks about testing software or requirements, about digital transformation, software development, agile practices and my life as a trainer.
- If nobody will talk, nothing will change.
This blog post is another experiment. We will see where it goes. May be it will help me to decide to give or to refuse a girl-in-IT talk.
add on
After I published my post, I got to know that there is a tool for swapping genders on the websites: GenderSwapper!