There are quite some women in QA, it\u2019s true, absolutely fantastic.<\/p>\n
It feels that in QA women are even more frequent than in development. Is it because of this sad perception of mothers, who clean-up after their children and men? And testers cleaning up after development? So sad! Apart from all political questions or that \u201ccleaning-lady\u201d perception, I also have seen\/heard about the \u201cnerd\u201d perception. And girls don\u2019t want to become nerds. Still.<\/p>\n
(here is a word of warning: this is written after having watched about 10 videos from http:\/\/everysecondcounts.eu\/, so sorry for my English.)<\/p>\n
I really thought nobody grabs women in QA by the \u2026 . In real world and in work environment.<\/p>\n
Inspired by an article of Christin Wiedemann<\/a> and other statistics I started thinking about it again.<\/p>\n On the American National Public Radio (NPR<\/a>), statistics were published that basically try to explain the decline of interest in computers by girls with the advent of home PCs and stupid, testosterone driven PC games. And I was shocked, my son used the very same argument today when I complained about the absence of girls in his advanced computer high school class: because of the games, boys are more interested into computers, and then girls realize that they have to work too hard to catch up.<\/p>\n (Only that I respect them) We are not missing positive examples. I do not know where to start without missing the most important ones\u2026 please add more in the comments. However, right now come to my mind a few I met or I worked with. This list is extended by a starting list of other women whose articles I love to read.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n QA people do not clean up afterwards. Not in theory, neither in agile nor in V-model. In practice they do it every once in a while, but that is where all of us want to get away from. So, no need for a cleaning woman. \u00a0Just don\u2019t mess to begin with: #bugban<\/p>\n QA people also cannot just be a nerd. They (also) need to be able to talk to business people (business analysts, clients, product owners) and even to developers. They need to criticize the product, not the developer, even if it works on his machine (only). In large V-model driven projects, test managers need to be able to deliver the bad message, fight for acceptance and leverage the different interests between quality, time and costs.\u00a0 This needs communication. Absolutely.<\/p>\n I guess we also should further push the idea about Unicorns<\/a> in testing. Collaboration, happiness, it\u2019s great.<\/p>\n Oops, did I forget to talk about female specifics? I guess, it wasn\u2019t relevant here\u2026\u00a0 no need for a great wall here.<\/p>\n If you look in the internet for \u201ctesting female\u201d, you will end up with fertility testing, look for \u201cQA female\u201d you end up on fashion pages. On bad pages, you can probably find something about testing women, and locker room talk about them\u2026. That is not helpful.<\/p>\n So why don\u2019t you find highly ranked pages about women working in technology? My standard answer usually is: we do not really care if good work is done by a woman or a man. But not only above statistics but also my own experience has taught me that sometimes it is important to encourage women to consider a certain profession and to prove that it is possible that women are great here. Females need female role models in their direct environment and as thought leaders. But then, did you see many women lately on conferences? Other women have written great articles about this phenomenon<\/p>\n I also have to admit, that I have not been to many conferences. \u201cToo many real life challenges\u201d, would be my usual excuse. But even more often, I just cannot see much value for myself \u2013 apart from the fun hours at the conferences. But I love to go and network in a nearby location, where it doesn\u2019t take too much effort. And I start asking other women personally to join me. It seems the normal communication doesn\u2019t reach too many (see above statistics with the STugHH). It seems as if the value added by visiting such meetups is esteemed differently by men and women. And I am sure that there is already some research out there, why this is the case. Just search in the web \u201cwomen don’t network\u201d and you get more than 160.000.000 entries.<\/p>\n I would like to think that I professionally do not really distinguish between male and female colleagues just because of their gender. I would like to think that there is no need to wonder about orienting oneself as a woman in QA. I grew up in a world dominated by males (brothers, university, work), and I think I never asked myself that question.<\/p>\n I actually like to work with men. And women. But then I happened to lead a team of 12 women only, almost by accident (the only man in the team left, as he felt lonely). That was a very positive experience for me. It took some time to form a team out of these people, but that was due to their different backgrounds. The following accumulation of \u201cfemale role model stereotypes\u201d made me think that maybe there is some truth to the idea that QA is female:<\/p>\n Hm, rereading this I wonder about my perception of women and men\u2026 Fact is, that the atmosphere in that team led to a great way of working. I know some men who would have fit into this team. I know others. But I definitely could see, that a prospering atmosphere helped these women to develop, even those, who had not thought they would fit into the role.<\/p>\n So let us just try and get women doing quality assurance. There are chances they like it!<\/p>\n I think, as with female leadership stereotypes, it would need some research to prove if there is some relevance to those, if they exist at all. But if you consider above stereotypes as typically female, then I had the impression that they really helped to be successful. These abilities should be positive also for mixed teams.<\/p>\n We as testers praise our own ability to think into different directions, be diverse, open and whatever else. This should be the same for the gender of a person. There are differences due to gender or education based on gender? Well, let me try to answer this in an \u201cagile way\u201d:<\/p>\n While there might be differences in male or female approach to QA, we value the opportunity such diversity will give us.<\/p>\n So, dear Mr. customer, I totally understand that (\/if!) you say \u201cQuality First\u201d, but could we say \u201cgender second\u201d, or \u201cknowledge second\u201d or \u201cmethods second\u201d or \u201chappiness second\u201d or \u201cexperience second\u201d, or \u00a0\u2026 \u00a0as in above video series of #everysecondcounts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are quite some women in QA, it\u2019s true, absolutely fantastic. It feels that in QA women are even more frequent than in development. Is it because of this sad perception of mothers, who clean-up after their children and men? And testers cleaning up after development? So sad! Apart from …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-not-so-serious","category-stughh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testhexen.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testhexen.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testhexen.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testhexen.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testhexen.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/testhexen.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"https:\/\/testhexen.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testhexen.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testhexen.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testhexen.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}True Statistics. Period.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Nobody Respects Women More Than Me.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Developers are Bringing Code, they are Bringing Failures, \u2026 and some – I assume \u2013 are Good People!<\/strong><\/h3>\n
No Locker Room Talk\u2026 Absolutely.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Make QA Great for Women?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Quality First<\/strong><\/h3>\n