Gender and Tech with Open Source Community

Embedded for Her, is a 10 weeks workshop conducted by FSMK ( Free Software Movement of Karnataka) to promote more women  coders in the specific field of embedded systems. As an Open Source Community, they  believe that more and more people need to join in the free software movement to make technology more democratic. There are very few women in this specific field and FSMK aims to encourage more women to come forward and become active members in this domain and create products accordingly. As part of this workshop, Hidden Pockets was invited as speakers to discuss the role of gender in technology workspaces. Hidden Pockets works on making cities and digital spaces more inclusive for everyone. Hidden Pockets has been conducting Code of Conduct workshops for different organisations to make their spaces more gender friendly.

Systems and Gender

Organisations like Python Girls and Women who Code focus on the software side but there is hardly such representation in the embedded systems community. An embedded system refers to a computer system with a specific function within a larger mechanical system and with real-time computing constraints.  With a future in embedded systems, it was felt that it was necessary that more and more women be part of these processes. Women coders in this workshop were in the age group of 20 to mid 30s. Some were still in college while some others were taking a break from their career.  As part of these discussions, workspaces and gender was discussed. There was a limited understanding around gender and sexuality. The participants did feel that different genders used spaces around them differently which affected their productivity and growth in a company. Some of the participants shared their experiences while working in different workspaces.

 Code of Conduct 

Code of Conduct helps the participants and the employees see value in diversity and makes spaces more inclusive by bringing in experiences from different backgrounds and connecting these experiences to different themes. The participants were asked for some of the good practises that they would like to see in their workspaces to make it more women friendly. Most of the participants felt happy about the fact that workshops like these were being included to help them develop products which would be more inclusive.

Images Courtesy : Sekuly Nyekha.