5 Strategies for Being an Ally to Women in Tech

I recently read this great post by Rachel Thomas about why women quit tech, which is a critical topic as the percentage of women in technical roles continues to drop. Upon discussing it with others, the point was raised that this article, along with many like it, raise action items for managers or even upper management but few pointers for lower level allies who also want to help move the needle. While it is important for our managers to do all of the things suggested in that post and many others, there are also a number of things that any individual, male or female, can do within their team to help make sure people aren’t being marginalized or discriminated against.

1. Look at Who Does Your ‘Housework’ Tasks

There are tasks on every team that take up time, have little career value and no one really likes doing. These vary across teams and companies but include things along the lines of taking notes in meetings, scheduling and planning offsites, picking up food for team celebrations, interviewing or even helping others. These tasks are often mostly handled by a few people and statistically this is usually women. Women are also seen more negatively for turning down these tasks. Obviously, a lot of these things still need to get done, so take a look at your team. Is everyone doing their fair share? If not, consider putting together a rotation or looking at how some tasks might be redistributed. If any of the tasks don’t really need doing, discontinue them.

2. Be Mindful of the Peer Feedback You Give

There have been multiple studies and articles siting the fact that women are given less actionable feedback and they’re more likely to be given critical feedback about personality flaws. The statistics are independent of the gender of the person giving the feedback. We don’t all write performance reviews, but many of us do give formal peer feedback and we all have the opportunity to give informal feedback. When giving feedback, take a minute to think about if your feedback is actionable and specific. Does it tie back to business outcomes? Would you know what to do with the feedback if you were on the receiving end? Also consider if you used words like bossy, abrasive, strident, aggressive, emotional or irrational, which are used almost exclusively in feedback for women. Would you have said the same thing if the gender of the person was different? Is the feedback fair? It’s still hard to know that you’re fully correcting for gender because each person and therefor their feedback is unique, but being mindful of it, is a great first step.

3. Help Make Sure People Are Credited With Their Ideas

Several articles recently have talked about how women are less often credited with their ideas and sometimes ignored outright. Keep an eye out for when a good idea or argument seems to be getting overlooked and bring it back up while crediting the original person or better yet, bring attention back to that person and have them repeat it — ‘I think we’re glossing over Sarah’s idea; Can you repeat that?.’ Even if you aren’t the one to bring it back up, don’t be afraid to come back in and credit the original — ‘Yeah, Jane mentioned that earlier and I think that’s a great idea’ or ‘Alice said something similar. Is this what you had in mind, Alice?’ If you’re building on an idea already mentioned, consider something like ‘I really like Sarah’s idea, maybe we can extend that to …’

4. Create Space For Others in Meetings

Along a similar vein, some people are just much better at being assertive or talkative in meetings than others. Specifically, women are statistically much more likely to be interrupted, less likely to talk and more likely to be punished for talking too much when they do. A former manager of mine told me that in one of his former roles, he made an informal partnership with someone who was the opposite — someone who easily dominated the conversation. The partnership was that he would have a signal to tell the other guy that he was talking too much, while the other guy would make space for him to talk. ‘I don’t think we’ve heard from Bob in a while. What are your thoughts on all of this?’ While you may not feel comfortable setting up a two way partnership like this, if you are one of those people who is easily able to dominate conversations, keep an eye out for people who don’t talk much and find ways to draw them into the conversation. Or look for ways to make sure everyone is given a chance to share — have everyone write down ideas and then read them all aloud. Also keep an eye out for when you or someone else might be interrupting someone. The best ideas don’t always come from the loudest or most assertive person.

5. Make Sure Team-Building is Inclusive

It’s important to make sure that people aren’t implicitly getting excluded from team-building activities. There are the obvious and common examples of getting taken to Hooters for lunch or having work conversations over the golf course, but there are plenty of more subtle examples as well. Having activities later in the evening makes it difficult for anyone with a family and especially women, who often carry more of the burden with children, to participate. Even if everyone on the team comes to activities, they may or may not be enjoying them. Make an effort to make sure that people aren’t obviously being excluded and that activities appeal to everyone. If one activity doesn’t work for a few people make sure that the next one does — and be willing to try out something new yourself. Keep an eye out for things that are particularly exclusionary. For example, one team at my company had a pull-up bar and some of the teams would bond over going and doing pull-ups together every day. I get that I can’t and probably won’t be interested in participating in everything, but women are statistically unable to do a pull-up — the average is actually less than one. I, and most other women, couldn’t have participated even if we had wanted to. I’m sure they weren’t purposely trying to exclude us, but they were anyway.

There are many additional things we all can do to make our teams more inclusive for women and for everyone, and this is meant to be a starting point for the conversation. Since every team is a little bit different, ask the women on your team what you can do. Ask them what things about the team bothers them or what discrimination they notice. Their answers might surprise you. None of us can change everything on our own, but together, along with the support of all of our allies, we can make a difference.