How XP Can Improve the Experiences of Female Software Developers

2.1 Non-XP Workplaces

I have 17 years’ experience in the profession, but due to a four-year career break in the middle, it is twenty-one years since I started my first software engineering job. At that point I had just graduated from an MSc in Computation, which was a “conversion” course - designed to transform people from diverse academic backgrounds into computer graduates. My previous degree was a BSc in Mathematics and Philosophy. It was 1995, and Agile and XP were barely heard of.

During the course of the MSc, we were told that the main careers available to us would fall broadly into two categories: Analysis, and Development. The course was a popular course, and split quite evenly between men and women. It was noticeable that the women tended to be drawn towards analysis, with the men being attracted to coding. But personally I was more excited by code than anything else. The object-oriented C++ we were taught was very attractive to my logical, analytical, puzzle-loving brain.

It didn’t surprise me to find that I was the only female developer in my first job. I was used to being in a minority – as a mathematics undergraduate, myself and my fellow female students represented approximately 10 % of the total population. I was also used to an accompanying feeling of inferiority: In this case it seemed to me that my male colleagues knew everything there was to know about computing, whereas I had walked straight into the job after a year’s study.

I suppose it was at this point that a thought took root in my brain, which I have never quite lost: These men know so much more than me. I’m only a girl, I’ll never catch up. This is a common experience for women in our industry, and in fact for anyone operating in an environment as a member of a group which suffers from an adverse stereotype. That is to say, assumptions are often made about women in technology which suggest they will not have the skills they need to succeed. The general term for the way people respond to this is Stereotype Threat, and it is discussed at more length in section three of this paper.

It’s worth stating at this point that I have never seriously believed that men have a superior intellect to women. But the inner voice which tells me I’m inferior is one that sneaks in without my permission. It curls up without me noticing, and can stay there for quite a while before I spot it and shoo it away (I now know that this voice has a name: It is called unconscious bias, and I will describe this more in section three).

2.2 Imposter Syndrome and its Effects

For those first ten years, I suffered significantly from self-doubt. I rose to the position of senior developer very quickly, and always got good feedback. I loved writing code and took it seriously. By all objective standards, I was in fact good at my job. But I still believed that most of my colleagues knew more than me.

I frequently suffered from imposter syndrome, i.e. the idea that I was not good enough for the role, and would be “found out”. This is not unique to women – men can suffer from it too – and not all women have it. But it tends to be common amongst women in IT, and it’s not difficult to see why: If you’re part of a minority, you feel like you don’t fit in. Like you’re an imposter.

So, when I was offered voluntary redundancy, the decision to leave was not hard. In my exit interview, it was suggested I might try being a social worker! This did not appeal to me.

2.3 The Welcoming Environment of XP

By the time I was made redundant, I was very bored of my job. My skills had stagnated so much, that as well as having very little enthusiasm for finding another software role, I doubted my ability to find anything new. As a result of these factors, I left the career altogether.

After four years out of the industry, I realised that I was more suited to software development than anything else. I decided to return. I was honest about my out-of-date skills, and got myself a job with a company that specialised in taking on graduates and training them up. It was a revelation. Because of the emphasis on training, employees were not only encouraged, they were exhorted to ask as many questions as possible. There was no problem with people being too busy to help. Everyone in the company was expected to both ask and answer as many questions as possible.

The teams I worked with had daily stand-ups, where each team member would report on what they were doing and flag up any problems. The company’s design methodology was largely waterfall, but the cultures of communication and collaboration were filtering through from XP working practices in other parts of the industry. This included regular and in-depth code reviews, and an introduction to the concept of clean code.

I was now back in the career and enjoying myself enormously. The idea that it was OK to ask questions was exhilarating. It also helped that I had those twelve years of experience behind me, so I no longer felt like everybody else was more experienced than me.

I deliberately made coding my hobby, and got involved in events run by organisations like XP Manchester [3]. This meant that I was learning about such practices as TDD and pair programming. This excited me, and I was able to move to a more XP-focused company. My progress at this point accelerated rapidly. It wasn’t long before I gained the confidence to become a contractor, at which point I moved between several companies on various contracts, and experienced several different implementations of XP.

My confidence increased, but when I felt the old insecurities creeping back in, I decided to approach specific colleagues and ask them to act as sponsors or mentors on my behalf. I also gained the security to discuss the value of positive feedback with my line manager. I have learnt over time that, because of the various insecurities I face as a minority within this profession, I benefit enormously from explicit encouragement. I believe that there is level of openness and communication implicit within XP that has given me the strength to ask for this kind of support.

3.1 The Importance of Diversity Within XP

It may or may not be true that the number of women in XP is a bit higher than elsewhere in the industry, but even if it is, they are still in the significant minority. It’s important that we don’t simply sit back, cross our arms and say “Oh, we use XP. We don’t have a problem with women in IT. We’ve solved that one already.” There is still room for improvement, and XP practitioners have an even greater responsibility than elsewhere in the industry to increase the numbers of women in tech. This is true for several reasons:

XP emphasises the importance of seeing things from the end user’s perspective. This is helped when we have things in common with our end users. Obviously those end users are as diverse as our populations are. The more diversity we have within our teams, the better chance we have of appreciating our end users’ experiences.

Also, XP is a forward-looking movement which emphasises flexibility, change and progress. As agilists, we value individuals and interactions over processes and tools, therefore if there is any group of people (for instance, women) whose ability to contribute towards their teams is compromised in any way, then this should be a matter of importance within the XP community.

3.2 Stereotype Threat and Unconscious Bias

Stereotype threat describes the experience of any group who suffer from negative stereotypes. In the case of women in technology (and also men in the caring professions, as just one other example), these negative stereotypes manifest as a general assumption that they will not have the skills they need to succeed. Such damaging ideas put people under threat, because they constantly feel they have to disprove them.

There is a large body of research which supports the statements I will make in this section. Several examples are referred to in the excellent book Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine [4], and I will quote some of them here. For instance, research shows that women’s ability to perform is hampered by their anxiety about negative stereotypes. Instead of being able to concentrate on difficult tasks, a significant proportion of their mental concentration is taken up by trying to quell their fears about their potential lack of ability [5].

My own experience bears this out. I have described in this paper how, after a few years in the profession, I found myself in a job where my requests to do more interesting work were denied. There was always a part of me which believed I was less capable than my male peers, and that it was therefore quite reasonable for those requests to be denied. I decided that I would be better off looking for success in other areas of my life – my family and my hobbies – and that I would accept that my job was simply something whose purpose was to pay the bills, rather than something I could expect to excel at or enjoy.

Another problem is that the more successful a woman becomes in a male-dominated profession, the more she will be affected by stereotype threat. This is for several reasons: The more she moves up the ladder, the more of a minority she will find herself in. This will make her more anxious about other people’s assumptions, but will also encourage her to believe – by sheer force of statistics – that those assumptions are true. “One study found that the more men there are taking a mathematics test in the same room as a solo woman, the lower women’s performance becomes” [6].

The problem is not that girls are inherently less good at technology, or even that they’re less interested; it is that people expect less of them. For instance, some men and women were given a difficult mathematics test. Before they started, they were told that it was designed to better understand what makes some people better at mathematics than others. A control group were told the same thing, but were also told that thousands of students had been tested and no gender difference had ever been found. In all groups, the average score for men was 19 %. In the first group, women also averaged 19 %. But in the second group, women averaged 30 %. Even though gender was not explicitly mentioned to the first group, it did not need to be. They could make that connection for themselves, and their performance was affected. But once that stereotype threat was removed, the potential of the women appeared to be unlocked [7].

As well as stereotype threat, another important phenomenon is “unconscious bias”. This is effectively the technical term for what I have referred to in this paper as an “inner voice”. It refers to the automatic connections that most of us make, for instance between women and the arts, and between men and technology.

One effect of unconscious bias can be that even when women are working within technology, both they and their colleagues do not see them as being in the correct role. This can be particularly true of women doing purely technical roles, such as software engineers. During my own career I have twice faced significant pressure to move out of a software role and into an organisational or management role. Luckily I was quite clear that I wouldn’t enjoy those roles. In both cases I did temporarily make the change, but quickly recognised that I was moving in the wrong direction, and fortunately I had the confidence to move myself quickly back into a technical role.

The good news is that both unconscious bias and stereotype threat can be mitigated against by education. When people become aware that the problem exists, and how wide-ranging its effects are, they can start to do something about it. There are various organisations which offer “unconscious bias” training: this allows people from across a company to become aware of how unconscious bias and stereotype threat affect both the recruitment process and the ability of individuals to progress within the workplace. We are hoping to introduce this at LateRooms later this year.

3.3 The Positive Impact of XP

All of these practices should already be present in XP teams, but it is worth being aware what a positive impact they can have on minority groups, and therefore consciously practising them with that in mind.