Jen Heilemann. “Women in Tech:Scarcity, Sexism, and Solutions.” The storyexchange. N.p., 9 Apr. 2013. Web.

Jen Heilemann is a Developer at The Nerdery, which is a company for custom software design and development. Helieman feels “female participation in Computer Science and particularly programming conferences is pitiful” and she offers a link to a number of statistics that support her idea. These links lead to credible sources. She states that “in 1987, 42% of software developers in the US were women, while today, that number hovers around 28%.” “Today” is reference to the year 2013, the reader could question whether these numbers are still active.

The author then talks about how the number of female participants in the industry varies and leads to the “Steve Rule”, blatantly stating there would be greater number of men named “Steve” than female participants. It is said that culture has a lot to do with this, because according to society men and women are suppose to assume a certain role. In the end the author offers incidents to support the claim of sex-based discrimination and she offers some solutions.

This source is useful. It offers good detail and the author offers links in order to support her claims. The article was published in 2013, so some of the information may have updated. I feel this article is very useful looking to discover the effects of gender on digital designs.