I want to talk about the reality of women in computing right now. The challenges, but also the successes. The frustrations, but also the history that we have always been here and we will be here. The camaraderie, support and achievements women are responsible for. My hope is that young girls can see computer science as a profession with problems, but one worth fighting for.

Even looking at the past doesn’t have to be a bleak event.

There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now

Eugene O’Neill

The Guardian reported today that female doctors are generally paid about £15000 less than their male counterparts.

Despite legislation to the contrary, the existing incumbents of one of the major employers in the UK appears to be blatantly discriminating against professional women. Once you take up a career in a male dominated environment and become a professional in that environment you can be hooked into an abusive discriminatory system that discourages you from pursuing equality in salary and career expectations on the basis it is unprofessional. Any women subject to such environments who actually takes up the banner of equal consideration has to accept they will lose their career.

Until we observe that and start to make inroads into dealing with that problem, women are very infrequently going to come forward and deal with the problem in isolated cases. I think it would be good to have a place where not only successful women are highlighted but also the problems encountered by women who protest against their treatment in the professional work environment, what the procedures are; the steps the women had to take to protect themselves, their careers and their families plus their perception of it before, during and after the experience of the abuse and the complaint/litigation procedure.

I don’t wish to exclude non-professional women from this debate. I have the view that professional women may be more open to abuse because there might be an implied vocational element i.e. a calling to go into a specific area of working life e.g. hospital doctor, engineer, and I believe it is more likely for abuse to exist because of the difficulty in speaking out against intrinsic abusive behaviours and cultures within an organisation or industry wide within a vocation.

Hope this all makes sense !

Rafiki hits Simba on the head with his stick

Simba: What was that for?
Rafiki: It doesn’t matter! It’s in the past!

The past appears to start about ten minutes from now, and it keeps rolling forward.