- What is your understanding of gender, gender identity, and biological sex? Is there anything more you need to learn?
Gender includes your gender identity and gender expression. Your gender identity is which gender that you associate yourself with and identify as. Your gender expression is the type of gender that you present yourself as, how you dress and how you act. Your biological sex is the gender that you are born with. There will always be more for me to learn about gender and I am excited to learn new aspects about it.
- What was your familiarity with the history of women and software development? What surprised you about that history?
I wasn't extremely familar with the details of womens history in softare development, but I do know the story of Margaret Hamilton and her work for NASA and how she basically made the Apollo mission possible. I was surprised to see just how many major breakthroughs and innovations made in software development were made by women.
- How do you see gender bias playing out in tech?
It seems like women aren't given as many opportunities or exposure to software development growing up. This creates a gap in the number of men and number of women working in the industry. It seems like this causes people to think women aren't as capable as men in the workplace, when in reality the women are probably better software developers.
- What do you think about Q?
I think that the concept is a great idea and I think having a genderless voice will probably be on all phones in the future. I think its hard not to place a gender to the voice even if it is gender neutral. I think the idea is great but the execution could use more work before its ready to be unveiled.
- Why would creating genderless software matter?
Genderless software is important because it makes everyone feel comfortable. It gives a voice to the population that doesn't identify with male of female. It gives a better option for the people that want more than just men and women categories.
- What are you taking away from this session? How will you use this in your Turing (and future) experience?
I am taking away how important women have been in bringing software development to where it is today. Without women, we wouldn't have coding as it is known today. Moving forward, more opportunities and exporsure needs to be given to girls as their growing up. Some of the best software developers of all time are women. However, there is still biass against women in software development workplaces. The more exposure that we can spread about how crucial women are to this profession, the less biass there will be. I am going to use my knowledge moving forward to make sure that I don't discriminate against women, but give them the time and respect they deserve.