by, for, and about women in science, technology, engineering, & math

• The Male Programmer Privilege Checklist has been around for a while, but now there’s an editable version on the Geek Feminism Wiki. A worthwhile read, especially for male programmers who’d like to be more aware of how their experience differs from women’s.
• Femmeonomics is seeking submissions for a list of 50 women to watch in tech — submit yourself or another woman for the list (deadline September 16)!
• AT&T is trying to track down the women engineers featured in a recruitment film made in 1975. Watch the film for a look at the women working in technology in the 70s!
• Chemist Piper Klemm writes in Ms. Magazine’s blog about hosting a WikiWomen party — in response to the statistic that only 13% of Wikipedia contributors are women, Klemm invited four friends, also chemists, to spend time together and share some of their expertise with the wiki-reading world.
• The Fog Creek blog has an interesting story looking at historical trends of women in computing (when computers first appeared on the scene, the field was female-dominated; as the field of computing grew in size and prestige, the percentage of women dropped a lot; and according to the blog, the numbers have been going up in the past few years!) and interviewing the only woman currently on Fog Creek’s technical staff.
• In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Nancy Linde talks about how groups looking to attract young women to science and technology need to learn to use marketing techniques to refine their approach.

Share your own links for women in STEM in the comments!

• In the New York Times, four top women scientists — a physicist, a neuroscientist, a geneticist, and a cryptographer — are interviewed about the challenges they face (both the general challenges of advanced research and the specific challenges they face as women and mothers) and the strategies they’ve used in rising to the top of their respective fields.
• The DevChix blog has started a series of Q&As on its members, beginning with programmers Nola Stowe and aimee daniels.
• BetaBeat profiles 25 women with prominent roles in the New York City tech scene — and it doesn’t just include “women near tech”, as in so many similar sets of profiles, but features several coders and engineers along with businesswomen and entrepreneurs.
• A neat article at the Atlantic about Project Euler’s approach to teaching programming
• Women in business blog The Glass Hammer posts about stereotype threat; a consensus is fast emerging that this phenomenon — as the article says, “the fear of proving a negative stereotype true actually causes someone to underperform” — is one of the biggest factors keeping women underrepresented in STEM (along with the vicious cycle it forms with the shortage of role models in these fields)
• Under the Microscope has a piece about “STEMebrities” — female scientists, teachers, or fictional characters who provide geeky inspiration and serve as role models for young women and girls
• Two awards from the Anita Borg Institute accepting applications:
  • Applications for the Anita Borg Pass-it-On Awards — small grants for individual technical women to pursue projects or studies — are open until July
  • The Anita Borg Top Company for Technical Women Award is accepting applications through October for a U.S. company
• Location-specific events in Los Angeles and Columbus:
  • In Los Angeles, there are several upcoming Python Ladies events
  • GirlDevelopIt in Columbus is looking for mentors in programming and web development

• At Flickr, you can now browse or add your image to the group This is What a Computer Scientist Looks Like, featuring images of contemporary computer scientists, mostly women.
• The Anita Borg Institute has posted videos of the winners of their 2011 Women of Vision award: Chieko Asakawa, Mary Lou Jepsen, and Karen Panetta
• Futurity discusses subtle (and probably unintentional) gendering in job ads through the use of words like “competitive”/“dominant” (coded male) or “compassionate”/“nurturing” (coded female).
• Under The Microscope posts about a high school Women in Technology club that increased retention of girls in the computer science program by providing a social support network.
• Gail at The Female Perspective of Computer Science discusses the ways computer science is relevant to other academic realms.

• The NCWIT award for aspirations in computing, targeted at high school. girls, is accepting applications soon! There are local awards in a number of areas, and winners get sponsored to an awards event where they can meet other bright, ambitious girls interested in technology.

• The Systers Pass-it-On Awards are now accepting applications — small cash awards intended to support women in technology who will, in turn, “pass it on” by supporting other women.

• The ACM-W is providing scholarships for women graduate students or undergraduates to attend technical conferences.

In addition to blogs and other public online resources, one of the great ways the internet can support women in technology is through mailing lists. Lists have the advantage that your message asking for advice or suggesting a meetup goes directly into people’s inboxes — but even more importantly, lists and the messages on them can be private, so you can complain about a co-worker or ask about a delicate situation on a private mailing list and feel safe saying things you wouldn’t want to share on a public blog. Women-only or women-primarily lists are also great places to ask technical questions with less fear of embarrassment for asking something that might be obvious to someone with more experience (most of these lists have policies explicitly supporting “newbie” questions and requiring a polite, friendly attitude from anyone who responds).

Here are some of the lists I’m on:

• Systers — this list has been around since it was founded by Anita Borg in 1987(!). It’s a big list with a lot of members. People on the list share job offers, ask for advice, or just rant about their experiences. Systers is part of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, and in addition to running the mailing list, sponsors the Pass-It-On Awards (which are funded by donations from members).

• Linuxchix — this organization for women interested in Linux/free/open-source software (motto: “Be polite. Be helpful.”) has several lists with different purposes. Grrls-only is a private, non-archived list only for women (which makes it particularly suitable for discussing sensitive issues); to join the list you have to confirm that you are a woman and interested in Linux. Part of the point of this list is to provide a resource for women trying to learn more about Linux to ask questions without encountering the condescension or sexism that Linux-using men in other fora are sometimes prone to. Men are welcome in the other LinuxChix lists, like Programming or Techtalk, but the lists will still be more women-dominated than your average technical mailing list.

• Devchix — this list is specifically for women who are programmers (while the other lists above are broader in scope, encompassing fields like system administration or simply using Linux). There are a lot of vocal members who are Ruby programmers, but the list isn’t Ruby-exclusive and you can probably find “chix” on there who use whatever your language of choice is. Devchix also has a group blog on technical issues.

I don’t know if there are similar lists available for women in other areas of STEM — if you’re in a non-computing field, please share your experiences with mailing lists in the comments!

• I just discovered Riot Nrrd — an awesome webcomic about geeky teens where most of the main characters are female (and the cast also features characters who are trans, queer, people of color, etc…). Plus their links page includes the sections “Feminist/Womanist Nerd Stuff”, “Nerds of Color Stuff”, “Disabled Nerd Stuff”, and “Queer Nerd Stuff”.

• Another comic, this time a one-off by Lucy Knisely, about the experience of women in nerd culture.

• Joe Clark posts a misguided response to Stubornella’s post (linked earlier this week) about women in technology — Elaine Nelson posts a sensible reply.

• At Tiger Beatdown, Garland Grey posts about his experience of queer nerd identity.

• Mashable posts a list of developer/hacker women to follow on Twitter. The list itself is great; some of these women I’m familiar with, and some are new to me. But something about the way the list is framed (it opens with “Everyone should know at least one woman who can code her way out of a wet paper bag”) rubs me the wrong way. Thoughts?

• On Twitter, check out the Anita Borg Institute’s list of programs supporting technical women
• BlogHer posts a list of 10 great technical blogs by women; Geek Feminism readers share more in the comments. Know another great blog not mentioned? (Maybe your own blog?) Share it in the comments here!
• UK blog Women in Technology posts about the growing number of female science teachers
• Microsoft’s Imagine Cup featured several all-female teams, and one of those teams, Mirror Vita from Thailand, took first place in the Digital Media category. Congratulations Mirror Vita!
• Facebook is offering a scholarship to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing for university students majoring in CS! If I were still in school I’d be all over this.
• The fantastic Amanda Hess of the Sexist enlists feminist geek Courtney Stoker to help answer a man’s question about how to make his corner of geekdom more accessible to women.
• Mashable posts a list of 5 organizations helping women get ahead in tech — including the Ruby on Rails workshops for women, which I know are awesome because I TA’d for them when they came to Boston. (Also, it looks like Mashable changed the title of this article from when I saw it a few days ago, which is nice; the original “Why Women Programmers Aren’t a Fad” was a little off-putting in its implications. I’m a person, not a fad!)