 My name is Amy and I'm a developer at Airbnb in San Francisco and today I'd like to talk about presenting as feminine while working in tech. So first let's take a look at the phrase like a girl. This is from an advertising campaign by Always. Show me what it looks like to run like a girl. Show me what it looks like to fight like a girl. Now throw like a girl. My name is Dakota and I'm 10 years old. Show me what it looks like to run like a girl. Like a girl. Fight like a girl. What does it mean to you when I say run like a girl? It means run fast as you can. At some age we become convinced that doing anything like a girl means that you are doing it ineffectively, wimply and in a way that can't be taken seriously at all. What then does this mean for women and non-binary people who work in technology and present as feminine? What does it mean for those of us who code like girls? So one category of things I deal with all the time from presenting feminine in tech is no one believes that I'm a programmer. I can't tell you how many people when meeting me and hearing my profession tell me that I look like a designer, someone in accounting, someone in marketing, anything but a programmer. I have been a TA for weekend workshops that teach women how to code. I've had male co-TAs ask me how I was enjoying learning to program. Apparently presenting as feminine makes you look like a beginner. It's very frustrating, it's very frustrating that I will either look like not a programmer or look like a permanent beginner because I have programmed since age eight. I have basically always wanted to be a programmer. I received undergrad and grad degrees from MIT. I worked as a visiting researcher in Honda's humanoid robotics division in Tokyo doing machine learning research on as a mom. And I'm not saying these things because I feel like they make me a better programmer. I'm saying these things because I feel like if a straight white cis man had all of these qualifications, no one would ever be doubting whether he was a programmer or not. So Tracy Chow, an engineer at Pinterest, shared this story with me. Last year she attended a technical conference to recruit for Pinterest and on the first day she dressed the way she usually does on a daily basis in a cute feminine dress. When she walked around the conference no one came up to talk to her. When she asked people very technical questions about their stack, questions she assumed would indicate that she was a programmer. She was brushed aside and people literally told her, you wouldn't understand so I won't bother explaining. But I could talk to someone else on your team that's more technical instead. She went back to her hotel that night really frustrated and flustered. She almost didn't feel like going to the conference the next day. But she did and instead she wore a nerdy t-shirt and jeans and everyone was interested in talking to her. People came up to her and asked about working at Pinterest. People assumed that she was technical and they didn't dilute their explanations. So what can we as a community do better? First of all, you should assume that people who present a feminine are as or more qualified than you. If you're at a conference and talking to a feminine presenting person. Assume that they're an expert in the field of the conference. Before you're about to explain a paper condescending me to someone in the dress, maybe assume that they wrote it. Never ask who are you here with. Instead assume someone is at an event out of their own interest. Instead of assuming what someone's position or career is, ask and ask politely and don't ask surprise at the answer. Another category of things I experience all the time from presenting a feminine is when I get feedback, I get gendered feedback. I remember giving project presentations during college. We received feedback from peers and the professor would also hand out awards for the projects and presentations they thought were best. Despite several times getting awards from professors on my presentations about deduplication algorithms for backup storage or face recognition algorithms for image processing class, this was the kind of feedback that I always got from my peers. Why are your slides so pink? It's very distracting. Stop pushing your hair behind your ear when you present. It's very distracting. Your voice goes up after every sentence you say, as well as comments rating my appearance. I also talked to Liz Rush, a new programmer who graduated from the ADA Academy at Ruby Conference last year. In her year of giving talks about tagging civic data with her project partner who was also an ADA Academy graduate she talked about how her most frequent feedback was statements like, I really like your outfit and you're so pretty instead of comments about the actual content of the presentation. One person started asking her a technical question after a presentation and then changed their mind saying actually let me ask your partner instead about this. I think she might have more to contribute. Liz's partner is a woman who doesn't present a feminine while Liz does. These experiences have made Liz decide that she doesn't want to give as many talks next year or maybe only in women-only spaces and that's a huge shame for this community. We can do better. What are some things that we can do better? We can give feedback based on content versus presentation style. And when you think of something as distracting in a presentation and are thinking of giving that as feedback do you really just mean that you are not used to seeing that in a presentation because you're not used to seeing feminine people present and ask yourself would you give this feedback to a masculine presenting white cis man? And by doing these things hopefully we can show women that we value them for their achievements. Another thing that feminine presenting women and non-binary people have to deal with the tightrope walk of professionalism and fashion when deciding what to wear to interviews or presentations. I've seen women tweet before their first technical presentation. Wearing a dress is out of the question for this right? Women worry that if they wear dresses when they present they might not get taken seriously or that they might receive unwanted comments or advances. I've also read so many internet advice columns that recommend to women don't distract from your own presentation. Dress nicely but not flashily. I've seen women worried that if they wear makeup or dress up that they're not being feminist and I've seen feminist child women who present as feminine. It's one kind of progress for people to agree with a statement women can be anything they want. It combats the kind of sexism called oppositional sexism but there's another kind of sexism traditional sexism that we've made less progress on. You could get more people to agree with the statement that women can be anything than to agree to the statement that femininity is as valuable as masculinity. Let's take for example the idea of a strong female character. There are plenty of them in movies but think of what comes to mind as traits for a woman being badass. Loud, assertive, by the motorcycle, maybe she's really good at martial arts. And yes that woman does sound badass but we pretty much never explore the idea of strong female characters that save the world by being feminine, empathetic, and caring. This is also part of the problem of lean in. Women should feel free to be assertive if that's their personality and let's celebrate that instead of criticizing it but let's also celebrate people that display leadership by empathy and encouraging. I once had an ex-partner tell me, you look better in jeans and in t-shirts, why do you wear dresses? Why do you wear makeup? You don't have to dress up to impress me. And that gave me so many realizations. That most people think femininity is an app to impress men. And it was them that I realized that it wasn't for him at all because I didn't care if he disliked my dresses or makeup. I was wearing them for me. And it was them that I realized that continuing to wear dresses just for myself was a totally valid way to say a big fuck you to the patriarchy. So I'd like to say if you feel like you are able to and if you don't feel like you're up for it, that's totally okay because self-care comes before any kind of activism. But if you feel up for it, I encourage you to wear exactly what you want be as flamboyant, fancy, frilly, girly as you would like to be. Do it while being a gamer, a programmer, a game designer because you are helping to change people's ideas of what a programmer, gamer, game developer looks like and you are making the world a better place just by being your awesome self.