The Feminisation of the Web - Part II

Great post Janet, I'm very late to it as have been on holiday. In terms of Alan's prefaratory remarks that:"there are many women as customers, but far fewer people developing services that give women the UI / UE they prefer".. it's also worth bearing in mind that "developing services" also includes the advertising, marketing and creative communications and services brands offer online both in their own web offerings and in broader digital campaigns.

That side of things and the issue of women's contribution and talent therein is being addressed directly in the UK (and recently extended to New York) by SheSays who started running regular topical discussion events in London in March 2007 and are also pioneering a mentoring service for women in digital marketing (agencies and client-side).

You can see what they're up to and what they've done already here (website site currently a bit glitchy - first time i've seen it out of whack BTW):
http://www.shesays.org.uk/missing-out.aspx

I've been to a few of these and the standard of both speakers and group discussion is of a very high calibre. Whilst I harboured deep reservations about the idea of women-only events I have to say I withdrew them immediately after partaking of the convivial atmosphere and innovative talent celebrated in each event.

These events are also incredibly popular with each one booking up in a day or so - much like MoMo London does on the mobile side - so there is clearly a huge well of demand that the organisers Laura Jordan Bambach and Alessandra Lariu have tapped into.

It mightn't be so much the denizen of coders, biz dev peeps and the 'same old faces' that other London web events are dominated by - which is mightily refreshing! - but there's a good spread of skillsets represented in the audiences each time. Events like this make me very hopeful that women's contribution can be both promoted more equitable and their influx into digital production increased if we would only think more seriously, creatively and consistently about spheres of mentorship and influence and how they operate.

Given the skills shortage and associated pressures on recruitment into the digital industries, initiatives like SheSays and the Girl Geek Dinners should be welcomed and supported more widely in the digital scene.

As a footnote: an interesting point made by a speaker at the last SheSays I attended was that women need to improve (or at least establish!) their negotiating skills in the sector. In other words, the pay differential for men and women doing the same jobs is mainly down to women not going in with with a higher request, or the mindset to negotiate, and just accepting what they're offered (or thinking about the "needs of the business" rather than their worth or needs primarily). The speaker that night reminded us that men do this much less and suggested we bear this in mind when going for job interviews or annual pay reviews... the speaker was Nikki Barton, who has recently been appointed Head of Digital Design at Nokia and (disclosure) also blogs for Chinwag.