Our Giants are Female

Our Giants are Female is an initiative where presenters at technical conferences start their presentations by talking about a woman in tech history. The initiative is meant to raise awareness of the contributions of women in technology and to inspire women to pursue careers in technology.

Origin

It was brought to the LabVIEW community by Fabiola De la Cueva through her blog post of the same name. It is inspired by a quote from Isaac Newton:

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

In her post, Fabiola outlines her own experiences as a woman entering a field that is predominantly represented by men and where women's roles were mostly administrative or eye candy. She also highlights how she was encouraged by a friend and gave feedback to the conference organizers of a technology conference she attended. In response to her feedback, Shane O'Neill replied with a link to Women in computing and his own words:

The idea that software engineering is a man's world is actually the most blatant form of mansplaining and gender appropriation. Arguably, the whole caboodle was started by Ada Lovelace, a remarkable woman with a brilliant mathematical mind and the wisdom to see the real-world applications long before the established "gentlemen" of the era had a clue.

She then went to Steve Watts who came up with the idea to ask all presenters at software conferences to start their talks by talking about a woman from Women in computing. They also came up with #OurGiantsAreFemale that Fabiola would post on Twitter^{[citation needed]}.

In her post, Fabiola also emphasizes the importance of inclusive events instead of catering to specific groups.

I would prefer a technical conference that is more welcoming to women than a technical conference that has a special event for women.

I would prefer that the female leadership panels take place at a keynote of the main event rather than in competition with other worthwhile technical presentations.

The initiative has been well received by the LabVIEW community and has been adopted by many presenters at LabVIEW conferences.

See also

• Events

External links

• Standing on the shoulders of giants (Wikipedia)
• Women in computing (Wikipedia)