Happy (Intersectional) International Women's Day!

This year at Container Solutions we've asked ourselves to reflect on International Women's Day and what it means to us. We've chosen to share our experiences, our thoughts, and hopes—and we'd love for you to do the same.

A message from LIan Li, engineering manager at Container Solutions, public speaker, and community organiser:

Today is International Women’s Day, when we talk about the contributions made by women which were often overlooked, minimised, or otherwise not given the attention and praise deserved.

But I want to be honest here. I don’t know about you, but I’m already bored by reading once again about Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper. They are fantastic role models for aspiring engineers. But, personally, I think they have been given a lot of attention already.

Instead I want to speak a little bit about intersectionality, which means to not look at race and gender separately but understand how they intersect and how this affects how we view diversity. Practically all women have to deal with sexism, but Black women and other women of colour additionally face obstacles because of their race and their gender, which is often overlooked when we speak about the struggles of women in tech. So for this years’ International Women’s Day, I want to highlight the contributions made by Black women and other women of colour to our industry and our communities.

Being an ally to the cause is all about making an effort to understand and empower those who are less privileged. If you don’t know where to start, here is a list of people I recommend following on social media. This list is by no means exhaustive but it can serve as a starting point to diversify your tech bubble.

Kim Crayton is an antiracist economist who has helped companies design and implement strategies to increase diversity & inclusion. She also hosts the podcast #causeascene.
Pariss Athena is the founder of Black Tech Pipeline, a recruiting agency that focuses on connecting Black tech workers with diverse and inclusive companies.
Tatiana Mac is a freelance engineer who has worked to improve accessibility and inclusion in software products as well as development practices. She is the creator of self defined, a dictionary for inclusive language.
Aniyia Williams is an inventor and creator of Black & Brown Founders an organisation with the mission to create access for Black and Latinx people to venture funding
April Speight is a senior cloud advocate on the Spatial Computing technology team at Microsoft and the author of Bite-Size Python: An Introduction to Python Programming.
Rachel Wong is a stem-cell researcher who designs wearable fashion tech.

“Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”

— Emma Lazarus, poet and activist

Voices of Container Solutions

We have asked our colleagues at Container Solutions what International Women’s Day, and diversity and inclusion, means to them. Here’s what they had to say: