Recently there have been a lot of posts floating around the blogosphere about “Women in Tech”. Michael Arrington wrote a post titled “Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men” This really hit a nerve for some people and the web was littered to responses to his opinion.

I knew about the article the day it came out but I had decided not to read it. The entire topic of “women in tech” just tends to upset me. Not because I think there are too few women, but because as a women I want to be good in the field I work in, not just good among to women in that field. I don’t like to make generalized statements about a gender in a certain field.

That being said, after reading Jolie O’Dell’s post today entitled “Why We Don’t Need More Women In Tech… Yet” I agree with her point.

This dubiously accurate nomenclature of “women in tech” places the entry-level PR girl at a startup in the same monolithic group as 50-year-old engineer at IBM. This is unfair to the women who do real technology work; it’s doubly unfair to women as a gender, as it smashes the “tech” label onto anything related to the Internet. Does having 50 male engineers and 50 PR women at tech companies mean we’ve achieved gender equality? Hardly, but it does make it more difficult to correct the true imbalance: There are not enough women doing real technology work.

The whole article is a great read.

I have often been referred to by others as a “women in tech” and frankly the title makes me uncomfortable because in my opinion, I’m not! It would be MUCH more accurate to refer to myself as someone in media or communications, not technology. I studied Media Studies, not Computer Science. While I have worked for tech companies in the past, it was always in a media, marketing, or community capacity.

I enjoy technology, but I’m not out there creating it. Not one day goes by where I don’t wish that my coding skills were better (or that I had any to begin with) but presently it’s not my goal. I applaud those that are doing real technology work and those like Jolie who have been inspired to go back to school for computer science. I can’t wait to see the amazing technology that they produce.

At the end of the day I hope that these discussions and opinions encourage everyone (regardless of gender) to go out there and be innovative! While there may be more room for women in technology, there is always more room for innovation.