Women in Web Design

I just learned a disturbing statistic in a blog I read today: The number of women in IT and Web Design is actually declining. How strange. Read about Jeffrey Zeldman's piece Women in Web Design: Just the Stats - it is full of good research and little-known facts.

Workplace Generation Gap

I work in an office that is more or less an engineering firm - a field in which women comprise no more than 15% of the industry. In other words, I work with a whole bunch of men. A great majority of these men have seen the feminist revolution wax and wane, they respect their spouses and daughters, receptionists and marketers, but a few were simply born too early to get it.

My supervisor (a female) is an amazingly inspired person with a sunny demeanor and a lot of ambition. She is the head of business development and marketing here at our quickly growing firm. She sits on the board of a regional marketing organization. She travels extensively with the owner of our company in order to make connections and bring in new business. She is working with a business development aid in order to draw up a more organized business plan that will expand the company to double its size in the next few years. All of this she does because she believes this company has greater potential than what it shows today. And she puts in her long hours and personal time all with a guilty conscience over leaving her 3 year old daughter in day care.

Recently, my supervisor was called upon by a coworker (read as: not a superior) to help out with a presentation for a project we were shortlisted on. Great! That is what we marketers are here for - we can be available to come up with content, make sure it is well edited, has all the appropriate logos and catch phrases, and that no Power Point slides are missing or out of order. We are great proofreaders and are full of ideas. However, this was a different sort of "help out" situation. We were teamed with a larger company on this project and they were in charge of the actual organization and content of the Power Point presentation. My supervisor was a little confused as to what she would be doing at this presentation, since there was very little to take care of on our end. The coworker informed her that he had been put in charge of advancing the slides - pushing the button to move forward in the presentation. He didn't like his assignment and enlisted her help because she was a woman in a position he considered below his own. He was too good for that. Instead, he would be sitting on his ass during the presentation, looking like a very important person while she advanced the slides.

At first, I saw this as clearly a male/female issue - he had his idea of a woman's position in the workplace as a servant of sorts. But I've been giving it some thought and my inner feminist has backed down a bit. I'm thinking this is more of a generational issue - he is about 30 years her senior. My feeling is that he is refusing to learn this new-fangled technology in favor of bossing someone else into doing it for him. We are all his assistants - and the "we" just happens to be a handful of females.

According to the Mayo Clinic, the workplace these days is made up of four generations of individuals (traditionalists, baby boomers, gen-Xers and millenials) which takes the possible tension in the office from simply male/female to a whole new level - males and females of all ages competing. This article from CNN.com highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each of the four age groups and offers a few tips on how to get along: Workplace Generation Gap

The Case of the Disappearing Bee

Having nothing to do with design, women or the like, this article from the Washington Post should be concerning for all of us: Honey, I'm Gone