My Experience in Tech and Its Reflection on Women in Tech in India

Hi, I am the author here. I am kind of overwhelmed that my post got onto HN and there are so many comments :)

This post was not meant to be a comprehensive social commentary. The post was triggered in response to a question from one of my friends at a local meetup on how to improve the gender imbalance. So the post tended to be more in tune with how to address that particular issue.

This post is also not meant to decry or judge the women who voice out their opinions and experiences at work. It takes a lot of courage to talk about sexism at work as it can potentially affect the relationships with colleagues and also their future employment. Besides, it is impossible for me judge something based on just news reports.

Women in India too have issues to tackle. The disproportional work for women at home in general which affects their participation outside. The inability to take off from work post-pregnancy for more than the prescribed period even if she wanted to. Cultural restrictions on what a woman can do or cannot do. These need to be addressed. But I believe these are more social issues than issues in tech. I respect the women who speak out regarding these and the men who acknowledge and support them. Without them progress would not be made.

Unfortunately the proportion of the polarity of reports turn out to be more like product reviews. Say 10% of negative issues are reported. Not even 0.1% of the positive aspects are reported. (I am pulling numbers from the air, but I hope you get the picture ;) ) Thats because, when things go right, we often fail to notice. This often results in a skewed negative image. I have mostly been surrounded by men (father, brother, hubby, friends, colleagues, professors, teachers) who were most supportive of what I did and I believe they deserve credit too. Also, there must more such men and women out there in tech, who can/do inspire more girls into this interesting field. I believe as individuals, we can make a difference.

Also, again, my experience is not definitive. Others might have had a different experience.

As the author points out, the path into tech in India is seen as a lot more broadly applicable; it's a pathway into middle-class job like being a doctor. It's also a good base on which you can move overseas to work in the Middle East or Western countries.

An interesting point she brings up is that gender bias in how one looks at STEM subjects is not universal. In many countries there isn't a prevalent idea that girls won't do well in math or programming classes. This helps with the "pipeline" problem because you end up with more educated women with expertise in these subjects.

As someone who's lived both the US and India I also think one shouldn't consider Hacker News or tech blogs as particularly representative of the US software industry either. Narratives of conflict make for juicy reading, whether on Twitter or in the mainstream media but they are not holistic representations of how it is to live in a country or work in an industry.

There's an NGO I work with that teaches girls in Dharavi (the big slum in Mumbai) to program Android apps. They did a great job.

I think a lot of people in the US don't get that in a lot of ways, the middle class in Mumbai or Hyderabad is really a lot like the middle class in the US (it doesn't help that the diaspora in the US mostly came over in the 60s and 70s, and there's a kind of "frozen in amber" quality of their memories of the old country).

good read it is.