Emma McGrattan of Ingres & Lesley Eccles of Hubdub
In the outstanding venue of the Informatics Forum in Edinburgh, on Tuesday the 9th of March, Girl Geeks once again had a place to meet, network and learn – a place were women’s talents, intelligence and experience were celebrated and reflected upon.
As the wine flowed, the room filled with (mostly women) and was buzzing with excitement. The networking session sent the room into a chatting frenzy as everyone began exchanging business cards, email addresses and ideas for future projects.
After some fantastic food, the audience sat and listened to Emma McGrattan (VP of Engineering for Ingres) talk about the ups and downs of being a woman in the software engineering business. Emma sent the room into uproars of laughter with her wit and hilarious stories. She spoke about rebelling against her parents by becoming a software engineer and how newspaper articles gave her ‘bad press’ – although “all press is good press right?” A discussion broke out about Barbies and how Mattel may be creating a ‘Software Engineering Barbie’. This lead many of the audience to question the relationship between how Barbie subliminally encourages women to become nurses or vets, more maternal, feminine roles. However, a show of hands round the room suggested that most of the girl geeks who attended the event did play with dolls when they were young, and now as adults work in animation, multimedia, computing or engineering. So that theory was perhaps not true. Perhaps it is their individual up bringing or personal goals that encourages women into male dominated jobs.
Discussions of the possibility that women are perceived as incapable of doing “heavy lifting” jobs may be the reason that more women are not taken seriously in IT and computing jobs. Emma McGrattan also posed the question – “Do women code differently to men?” She suggested that women are perhaps more caring and gentle on the person reading the code and so often leave comments to clarify the exact meaning of the code.
The audience were welcomed to ask questions and debated Emma’s thoughts until a final conclusion was made – a balance of both men and women in the work place can only be a good thing.
More wine was poured and dessert allowed the women to do some more chatting and networking.
The second speaker, Lesley Eccles, Co-founder of Hubdub Ltd (an online social games development company) based in Edinburgh, was then introduced to the audience, and she told the story of how she got to where she is now. She described the challenges she faced while setting up a business with her husband, ploughing in time and money to take a leap of faith for a business that they both believed would work. Lesley said, “I can’t imagine a situation where a man, standing in front of a group of men, would be talking about the challenges of being a working father.” Lesley emphasised her devotion to her family and how having a business, which is flexible means that she could spend valuable time with her children. She spoke of the pressure of being a mother while working hard in her career. A show of hands round the room indicated that most women would like to be mothers at some point, despite their career driven mindset. Is it possible for women to be successful in their careers while being good mothers? Lesley Eccles encouraged the audience, “with an awful lot of hard work, and quite a lot of luck, you can really get what ever it is that you want.”
The idea behind Hubdub Ltd, originally thought up by Lesley’s husband, is based on American sports fantasy leagues. Launched in 2008, Hubdub Ltd has since received great responses from the public and continues to flourish.
The two speakers were completely different, however they were both women in a man’s world. Lesley and Emma are intelligent, motivated and enthusiastic individuals with a strong passion for women’s capabilities. Emma McGrattan empowered the women in the audience with her confidence in women, especially in the software engineering industries, while Lesley Eccles empathised with mothers who struggled to balance their family life and work. The overall evening was a great success, with women of all backgrounds taking what they had learned that evening, uplifted and confident to take on their ambitions.
By Dawn Campbell