I’m a straight, white, cis-gendered man in tech. How can I be a good ally to underrepresented groups?

As the title suggests, my career so far has benefited from many privileges. I’m a straight, white, cis-gendered man from a middle-class, English-speaking background. I studied a mainstream STEM subject at university and then progressed through the software engineering ranks before making a switch to engineering management. At no point in my life or career has any aspect of my identity been held against me, unconsciously or otherwise. So why am I writing about Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) in technology? Firstly, I think it’s imperative to remember that supporting diversity and inclusion is everybody’s responsibility, especially if you are in a position where you have responsibility for others’ careers. Anjuan Simmons describes a number of ways people can use their privilege to support members of underrepresented groups in his popular talk: Lending Privilege. Secondly, it has been my experience that members of privileged groups can believe their contributions are unwelcome, and I want to show that not only is this not the case but that there is explicitly a need for these people to be involved in diversity movements.

There are many different definitions of what it means to be an ally, but to me, there are two elements consistent across them all: showing support for marginalised people and groups, and actively working to remove barriers to inclusion of those people in a workplace or community.

In this article, I’ll look at how we can demonstrate support for underrepresented groups, and I’ll touch on what actions an ally could take to improve their community for members of such groups. Although I talk primarily about women in technology, I think it’s important to remember there are a range of underrepresented and marginalised groups in technology and other industries. These groups will all have their own specific identities and experience different challenges, but the principles I outline below should be general enough that they’re a good place to start in supporting any of them. My focus in this article will be on support and allyship in the broader technology community, but I hope to follow up with more targeted advice on how to apply this to the workplace.

My inspiration to write this post came when I stumbled across a LinkedIn post for an event run by Women In Tech South Australia. Because I passionately believe that careers in technology should be accessible and welcoming to everyone, I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to support local women in the industry. As I was eagerly checking my schedule to make sure I’d be able to attend, I was suddenly struck by the question, “what am I hoping to achieve by going to an event for women in tech?” I came up with a few different answers - mostly unconvincing variations on the theme of “I can solve all the problems women working in technology might face”. Disheartened by the realisation that even though my heart was in the right place, I was just another dude with a hero complex, I reached out to a friend and colleague at Octopus Deploy for advice. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be part of making the world a better place. Still, problems of underrepresentation are typically systemic and can’t be solved by one individual, however passionate they might be. It’s also important to realise these groups aren’t reliant on the help of outsiders and to avoid accidentally positioning yourself as a saviour figure. If I was going to start attending events for underrepresented groups in technology (of which I am not a part), I wanted to make sure I was doing it in a way that worked for the people the groups are set up to serve.

Rache is our in-house recruiter and is actively involved in running multiple groups serving women in technology across Australia. Talking to Rache helped me get a grasp on how I would want to approach an event like this in the future and guided my further reading on the subject. I hope to share what I learned with other people who might find themselves in the same situation.

Starting your journey as an ally

It’s great that you want to help make a difference, and you should know that this alone is appreciated! But I was right to think my plan to single-handedly solve everybody’s problems isn’t helpful, so what should an ally do when considering attending one of these events?

Be respectful

I mean, come on, this is the basic minimum table stakes for attending any event in any industry. But what does it actually mean in context? How can I action “be respectful”??

There are several different elements to being a respectful attendee at an event like this, and that respect can start before you even turn up. Depending on how well you know the organisers, the group, and the event, you may wish to ask an organiser if you’re welcome. Even if you think you are, you’ll already be making a good impression by double-checking. Assuming you’re welcome and you attend the event, don’t make the event about you. If your intent is just to make sure everybody knows how much you know about a given topic, this isn’t the time or the place for that. Worse, you’d be taking away space and airtime from the members of the community the event is set up to serve.

There’s a good chance that if you aren’t part of the target audience for the event, you may find yourself in a noticeable minority among the attendees. That’s no bad thing, and acknowledging and understanding this feeling will help you build empathy for individuals in underrepresented groups who often find themselves as noticeable outsiders elsewhere in the industry.

Listen

This is an excellent opportunity for you to show you care. Speaking with Rache and other women I know who organise tech industry events, this was one of the key elements they’re looking for in any good ally. Whether the topic of the event is about being a member of an underrepresented group or not, listening is a vital part of understanding the challenges that the event’s core group are facing. If you don’t listen and understand the challenges, how can you expect to truly make the industry a better place? Good listening is an active skill, but it can still feel like you’re not really doing anything. But that doesn’t mean you’re not doing anything, or that people don’t notice. Rache told me that in her experience, what makes good allies stand out at these events is when they’re clearly engaged but focused on listening to what people have to say. The absolute worst thing you can do as a man attending events run for women is to conform to the negative stereotypes that exist and actually try to take over the event.

Ask good questions

Listening helps us learn, but asking good questions can help accelerate that. Good questions are respectful, but don’t have to be insightful or demonstrate how much you already know. It takes bravery to make yourself vulnerable and ask something the rest of the crowd might think is basic - but if you don’t work on challenging your own assumptions and biases, then you likely won’t be learning the right lessons.

Consistency

Don’t expect a medal just for showing up, and don’t even expect everyone to be immediately comfortable with your presence. They might be, but it’s not a given if you haven’t already built a reputation as a good ally. It’s sadly all too common for these groups to be ambushed by people who may mean well but fail to act accordingly. If members of the group don’t know you yet, don’t expect them to implicitly trust that you won’t be that person. Showing up to events consistently, and consistently showing that you can be that respectful presence that listens and asks good questions will ensure that your attendance starts to be truly valued.

Call out bad behaviours

Unfortunately, not everyone who attends events puts as much thought into respecting and supporting the aims of the community the event serves. This can lead to situations where men might become overbearing or dominate the event. If you feel confident, and can do so without making matters worse, a valuable contribution might be to help get the event back on track. This could be a polite reminder to the person in question of the reason you’re all there or something as simple as changing the topic and referring back to the speaker or facilitator. For a longer-lasting positive impact, you might give that person direct, specific feedback at an appropriate time (drinks break / networking) so that they can help improve their behaviour in future. This is the closest you can come to making things better for the group you’re supporting, incrementally correcting inappropriate actions one person at a time.

Making a bigger impact

In the section above, I talk about attending events by Women in Tech, Black Girls Code or any of the many other groups doing great things for underrepresented people in tech. The approach here is primarily about listening, learning and showing your support to these causes in a relatively subtle way. But what if you want to go further than that? What actions can we take to make a bigger impact?

Access & Inclusion

For members of an underrepresented group, the experience of attending mainstream industry events can be intimidating or uncomfortable. Even when all participants can be relied upon to behave appropriately, being the only woman or person of colour in a room of white men immediately marks you out as “different”, and it would be easy to think that these events “are not for people who look like me”.

One of the great things that groups such as Women in Tech are able to provide their members is a safe space to engage with other people in the industry without the challenges of feeling like an outsider. As a privileged person within the industry, can you work more broadly to ensure that other events and groups are safer and more inclusive spaces for underrepresented people??

For example, if your local .NET User Group is a predominantly white, male environment, how might you go about making it more inclusive and welcoming to people from marginalised groups? Could you work with the organisers of both the .NET User Group and Women in Tech to arrange and promote a crossover event between the two groups that allows the underrepresented members access to and connections within the community in a way that is safe and supportive? Once these relationships have been established in a psychologically safe environment, it makes ongoing involvement in the communities that much easier to access, which in turn enables these underrepresented people to benefit from the same networking and learning opportunities as the privileged people of which the community is largely formed.

Collective Change

It is also essential to understand that good allyship is not simply an individual activity. Although working as an individual to improve equity and inclusion in your local tech community is a brilliant first step, the biggest impacts will be felt when systemic change is achieved. As Lily Zheng argues, good allyship is less about making sure our own individual impact is correct, and more about achieving shared outcomes at a collective level. These outcomes take continued, coordinated work.

As an individual with a growing skillset helping to improve DE&I, you’ll need to bring others on that journey with you. It’s a great opportunity to practice those skills of influencing without authority that you’ve read so much about. Systemic or structural change cannot be achieved by one person alone, so build your allyship from the immediate interpersonal level through to team and organisational culture. From there, you can continue to make progress by identifying like-minded neighbours in your organisation, industry and society and collaborating with them to continually broaden the impact radius of your positive change.?

Conclusion

I wrote this blog post to help people like me answer the question “as a straight, white, cis-gendered man, how should I be a good supporter at events for underrepresented groups?” So how would I answer that question? At this level being a good supporter can be as simple as attending the events, respectfully listening and learning about the interests, priorities and challenges these groups have. It’s not about being a hero - attend, listen, learn, understand.

As I’ve been researching and writing this piece, it’s become clear to me that good allyship goes so much further than being a good supporter. To be a great ally, focus on the change you can influence at a wider community, team or organisational level. If you want to take a more concrete action, look to be a supporter of underrepresented people within the broader industry and find ways to expand that community to serve those groups instead of focusing on working only with the people you are trying to support. DE&I is not a competition, so avoid the temptation to compare your results favourably to others and instead seek to share the benefits of your progress with them too. And finally, remember that the goal of allyship is ultimately about outcomes, not inputs. So measure your impact by looking at what positive change has really been achieved, however small and localised it may be, and not simply what well-meaning actions have been taken.