Where are the female developers? The development department have some very talented technical testers who happen to be women, and are used to programming test harnesses and debugging applications. We also have female project managers, product managers, technical writers and usability specialists - but no developers. I went along to a girl geek dinner with a colleague in October and, given that women already play a significant role in product development at Red Gate, I was wondering why I keep thinking it would be so cool to hire a female developer.
At the event, Dr Elizabeth Kelan from the Lehmen Brothers Centre for Women in Business presented her research into gender proportions on teams in the workplace (among other things). The premise was that innovation is foremost in making organisations successful, and so businesses should strive to create teams which maximise innovation.
“In companies around the world, executives are putting the capacity for innovation top of their strategic agenda. At the heart of the innovation strategy are people prepared and able to work collaboratively in teams, and to exchange and synthesise knowledge from many different sources”[1]
She talked us through factors which drive innovation, including experimentation, efficiency, task performance, self-confidence, psychological safety and knowledge transfer. And it turns out teams with a 50/50 split between men and women will be the ones most prominently displaying the drivers for innovation (and the speed of innovation). While some of her graphs only showed marginal benefits in each criteria for these 50/50 teams, when these are all added together the overall benefit is compelling!
The basis for the research is pretty impressive - they collected data from over 100 companies in various industries, with varying team sizes and teams with different balances of men and women. It still caused some interesting debate in a room full of girl geeks, and gave insights into how some of them feel when they are a minority. One woman described how she instinctively clears up coffee cups after a meeting, and then worries if the serious technical issues she’d raised would somehow be invalidated by her attention to domestic tasks. Women also expressed how they felt they had to prove their geekiness in a technical environment by openly out-smarting their male colleagues, and even covering up ‘girliness’ to fit it with the guy geeks. On the whole, it was agreed that there are negative outcomes when either gender are in a minority. The study even suggested findings such as lower life satisfaction, negative moods and decreased commitment to a company in those imbalanced situations.
Thankfully, the feeling of being in a gender minority hasn’t been raised as a concern with women working here. But maybe that’s because there are already several women in the development department, in roles other than software engineering, and overall there’s a supportive culture where everyone has a voice. If we do ever employ a female developer, or indeed manage to create a team with a balance of genders, at least we know they’ll be at the peak of innovation!
What are your experiences of working on development teams with different gender proportions?
Post by Helen Joyce
[1] From http://www.london.edu/assets/documents/Word/Innovative_Potential_NOV_2007.pdf