I just was forwarded this old post: DaveNet : Gender balance in high tech featuring this sterling quote: "Men are the artists of our species, women are the infrastructure."

I was sent it because I was complaining to some pals that web word's interviews were reaching a new level of gender imbalance this year with 0 women interviewed. Some people would look at that and assume, as Dave seems to, that women just aren't any good at these things. Not true: women are culturally trained to assume positions of deference. Self promotion tends to be our worst skill-- it's unladylike. I'm lucky to have been raised by cantankerous feminist parents; few can rival me for boisterousness.

So what do we do? How do we tip the scales? Raise consciousness? I know in the wake of the WTC this may seem to many a small issues, but honestly I want to believe I have a country worth fighting for. The taliban forbid their women education, property, to leave the house: don't we want to claim we are better than that?

I'm thinking of a kind of "surf the chicks" day... maybe we can create a list of great sites run/designed by women, and come up with female alternative web icons to zeldman and glassdog -- both of who are sweet guys and chick-friendly. I'm not slamming those guys. just looking for heroines...

thoughts?

I totally agree with you Christina, I love to colaborate with you in this, I think that it's time to show, what we did and could do.

*if you're not on this list it doesn't mean I don't think you'd be interesting in an interview. It just shows that omniscience eludes me at the moment. Maybe tomorrow ;)

and lots more who i can;t think of right now...

i didn't know adaptive path had a christina.... looking at their site I only see janice and indi (i'm familar with indi's *highly* innovative work on task analysis. good stuff, that)

(in my defense, commas delimit all the name/firm pairings in that sentence)

- John

I'd love to see all the interviews on webword for the rest of the year be chicks. wouldn't it be sweet?

there are a lot of us out here, doing good work in places that are big and small. we are unnamed and generally not out for glory - but discovery is always a good thing ;-). I am always asked to point out women who are doing good work or are role models, and the same names come up over and over because the rest of us are behind the scenes.

btw, if you want inspiration, check out sfWOW's annual 25 most influential woman on the web. They've been doing it since '98, and they've got great names. I nominated Oliva Ongpin every year until she won. She's amazing; definately a chick powazek: codes, designs, does it all...

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