Transgender Careers in the Software Industry

Reviewed by Greg Wilson / 2023-04-05
Keywords: Inclusion

If the true measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members, the true measure of a profession is how much it does to protect them. Software engineering does poorly by that standard: despite decades of hand-wringing, women and some racialized minorities are still often made to feel unwelcome, and programmers continue to build systems that codify discrimination against them.

This recent paper looks at the experiences of transgender people in our industry. They are still frequently discriminated against, but many find programming to be a safer career than other options, in part because of its early and widespread adoption of remote work. With far-right politicians in the United States and elsewhere stirring up transphobic hysteria, work like this helps us see where we are and how far we have to go.

If you'd like to know more, please watch this moving talk by Naomi Ceder.

Ronnie de Souza Santos, Brody Stuart-Verner, and Cleyton Magalhães. What do transgender software professionals say about a career in the software industry? IEEE Software, pages 1–6, 2023. doi:10.1109/ms.2023.3257743.

Diversity is an essential aspect of software development because technology influences almost every aspect of modern society, and if the software industry lacks diversity, software products might unintentionally constrain groups of individuals instead of promoting an equalitarian experience to all. In this study, we investigate the perspectives of transgender software professionals about a career in software engineering as one of the aspects of diversity in the software industry. Our findings demonstrate that, on the one hand, trans people choose careers in software engineering for two primary reasons: a) even though software development environments are not exempt from discrimination, the software industry is safer than other industries for transgenders; b) trans people occasionally have to deal with gender dysphoria, anxiety, and fear of judgment, and the work flexibility offered by software companies allow them to cope with these issues more efficiently.