I personally think the intense focus on programmers is shortsighted. It saddens me that most of what I see is where popular culture happens to point out or become popular on the blogosphere or tumblerverse. This kind of discussion needs to happen at all levels of society and not just the elite.
This quote, from a great article, frames up the issues facing women in the much larger ecosystem of technology in general (emphasis is mine):
Beyond the layers of middle- and working-class American workers who make the work of Silicon Valley possible, there is a huge workforce invisible to most Americans who manufacture our electronics. I’m hopeful that most people are generally aware of the working conditions in some of these manufacturing plants in Asia, India, and South America: 14 hour work days, worker suicides, living on-site at the factory in cramped barracks, workers going into debt just to get a job, and allegations of use of child labor.
What many may not know is a huge portion of the workers in these factories are women-- and they are usually in the lower-level, most gruelling positions. While it is difficult to identify with people you may never actually meet, or conditions you can’t personally see, each of us in the US really shows our callousness to these women every time we buy a cell phone without considering how it was made. Ultimately, while much of the work to change these labor conditions will come from activists on the ground, people in the U.S. have a powerful role to play as major consumers of these electronics.
When we consider feminist and anti-racist activism in the tech world, we ought to ask ourselves what will make the lives of the most marginalized and underrepresented groups in tech better. While as a woman programmer, the weight of brogrammer sexism feels overwhelming to me, a part of me asks: how many women’s lives will I actually improve if I focus only on fighting brogrammers? What would the women who made my iPhone think if I spent all my time fighting for codes of conduct at conferences I go to, and none fighting for better labor conditions for factory workers?
Moreover, how many people’s lives could we improve if instead of worrying about whether VCs fund enough women, we instead advocated for redistributing their wealth back to the people whose labor they became wealthy on? I realize these kinds of questions are sensitive to bring up, and I don’t want to dismiss the existing work of amazing activists in the tech world. But at some point, if we truly care about ending sexism, racism, and classism in technology, we have to recognize that tech justice goes way beyond the lives of marginalized people in the world of programming.
And to tie this back to the original article. Take a moment to consider that 'puter that your kid is dragging around. Another article puts it into perspective:
Have you ever thought about how the metal parts in your smartphone were sourced? If you’re a proud owner of an Apple device, that could be shocking for you to learn that Guardian found last year that unregulated tin mines, Apple’s suppliers, employed child labour, damaged local environment and caused 100-150 miner fatalities on average every year. Perhaps, you would feel guilty using your iPhone now, wouldn’t you?
I realize that this isn’t how popularity works, and that in the grand scheme of things doing something for social-justice is good no matter how it came about, but please take this moment to consider the plight of those affected that don’t have as strong of a voice in the popularity contest of concerns.
