The topic of women in tech is making headlines around the world, with recent light being shed on the gender inequality plaguing Silicon Valley. In the WordPress space, this isn’t really something we talk about.
While I have personally found the community to be inclusive and accepting, the reality is that women are dramatically underrepresented in the space. This shouldn’t come as a shock considering the overall distribution of women in the technology space, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it.
We interviewed three women in the WordPress space — Bridget Willard, Jennifer Bourn, and Petya Raykovska — about what inspired their career path, why we need more women in WordPress, and how to encourage them to get involved.
Bridget Willard, marketing manager at WordImpress
Bridget Willard is the marketing manager for WordImpress, whose flagship plugin is Give, an online donation plugin. Willard’s WordPress journey began back in 2007 when she started using WordPress.com after hearing about it from Leo Laporte on his podcast MacBreak Weekly.
Torque: Did anyone in your life inspire you to follow this career path?
Willard: I had quite a bit of inspiration from the people that I met doing social media on Twitter. When I started social media marketing in 2009 in the construction industry, there were only a handful of us — mostly women, by the way. After a running joke on Twitter that we were the Pink Ladies of Twitter, we started a private Facebook group, went on a couple weekend retreats together, and have mentored each other ever since. We’re all still friends.
It was those people who helped me see that I was a natural at marketing even though that wasn’t my education. As a collective, they have and continue to inspire me.
Torque: Do you have any interesting stories about your journey?
Willard: I once recounted a story on an episode of WPblab about a staff meeting with Jason Knill and Devin Walker about a client’s site and “just adding x or y.” I thought — that’s fine — but can I do it? “Sure. It’s easy for a dev. But is it Bridgetable?”
That’s become a running joke that sometimes appears as a hashtag on Twitter. But the kernel of truth is this: we’re all always evolving. What I couldn’t do 12 months ago (use Beaver Builder, for example), I can do now. I am the only one who limits myself.
Torque: Do you think it’s important to get more women involved in WordPress?
Willard: I absolutely think it’s important to get more women involved in WordPress. WordPress allows anyone the freedom to work regardless of your education, status, or previous experience, really. If you have children, you can work at night, remotely, or when they’re at school. If you’re care-taking for your parents, you can still work. You only need self-discipline, grit, and WiFi.
In my experience I’ve found that WordPress honors the self-made man (or self-made woman). This is intriguing to me, as a global phenomenon, but WordPress as a culture is very American in this way. America has always honored the self-made man — from Andrew Carnegie in the Industrial Revolution to Steve Jobs to Matt Mullenweg himself. All of these revolutions — tech or otherwise — are led by people who have ingenuity and vision. They did the work.
Freedom is one of the most important things to me as a woman. Freedom to try. Freedom to excel. Freedom to soar. If you’re willing to do the work to learn, you can advance as far as you want in the WordPress ecosystem. I don’t see any glass ceiling — figuratively or literally.
Most of the developers I talk to at WordCamps, Meetups, or other events talk to me straight. They don’t look down on me because I’m “only a marketer” or “just a girl” or someone with only limited HTML skills. The WordPress community is full of the most amazing, generous, and smart people I’ve ever met.
In fact, the more that I learn about WordPress and the longer I’m in this space, the more I feel the whole community rooting for me. There’s a bit of a joke that my first plugin will be called “Bridgetable.” It remains to be seen since I don’t know a lick of PHP but I know that if I wanted to, I could study the Codex and Hello Dolly. I know that I could, if I wanted to. And I know plenty of people willing to mentor me.
Torque: How could we encourage more women to get involved?
Willard: I’m a practical person — a doer. I believe that if you want change you have to do it. You have to be it. You know? So, I think the way to encourage more women to get involved is to be more involved.
Last year, Jen Miller and Elizabeth Shilling had this idea to start a women’s Meetup for WordPress. They asked if I’d come and do the social media. Why not? It was one of those wonderful moments of serendipity. A “what if” moment. What would happen if a bunch a friends got together, had dinner, and talked about WordPress?
What happened is that WomenWhoWP.org was born. March marks our year of being a monthly Meetup that seeks to encourage and inspire all women who work in WordPress from marketers to writers to developers. We’ve seen remarkable results this year.
Our mission, once our 501(c)3 status is approved by the IRS, is to offer scholarships to defer costs (often soft like child or pet care, gas, lodging, etc) in order to encourage more women to apply to speak at a WordCamp. We find that women tend to self-deselect, having difficulty justifying the cost to attend and speak at a WordCamp.
Torque: Name a woman in history who inspires you?
Willard: I’m not really a follower in that way. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t amazing women who have shaped the course of history like Hedy Lamarr, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ameiia Earheart, Condoleezza Rice, and Abigail Adams.
If I had to choose a woman who’s actually inspired me as a person, though, I would have to say Brené Brown. Her talks on vulnerability and shame have inspired me to be a more open person — online and in person. That strength through vulnerability has helped me write more honestly and connect deeply. This has been an especially important part of my healing process as I lost my husband of 23 years on May 31, 2016.
Jennifer Bourn, founder and creative director at Bourn Creative
Jennifer Bourn uses WordPress daily both in her personal and professional life. She is the founder and creative director at Bourn Creative, where she designs custom WordPress themes, manages their clients’ site content, and consults on website strategy. Bourn also co-organizes the Sacramento WordPress meetup, and helped to bring WordCamp to Sacramento in 2016, where she was the lead organizer. She also shares her person family adventures, thoughts on work-life balance, and recipes on her personal blog Inspired Imperfection.
Torque: Did anyone in your life inspire you to follow this career path?
Bourn: I have been lucky enough to have worked for/with some incredible people who have impacted and influenced my career decisions. Without them I wouldn’t be where I am today.
My very first employer, Jeanne Mabry, ran a successful advertising agency out of her home while raising three small children. She inspired me to follow my dreams and set my own path, and showed me that I could have a family, be a great mother, and enjoy a thriving career. She was also the person who encouraged me to switch majors partway through college from Electrical Engineering to Graphic Design.
During my major coursework, the head of the graphic design program, Gwen Amos, took mer under her wing and was an extraordinary mentor who pushed me not only to my limits, but past them. Her belief in me and what I could achieve was far greater than my own belief at the time, and with her guidance, I improved my craft each and every day.
When I made the decision to leave agency life and start my own business as a freelance designer, Steve Telliano, the VP of the agency I was at who was also my immediate boss, pulled me aside and gave me the push I needed to begin learning how to design and build websites. Until then my entire design background was in print, and he wisely insisted that if I really wanted to be successful, I needed to invest my time and energy into the web.
Torque: Do you have any interesting stories about your journey?
Bourn: My journey has been fraught with highs and lows like most freelancers and entrepreneurs who venture out on their own. When I started my business, I had no idea how to do business. I worked too cheap, had too many clients, said yes to everything, and for the first several years, worked 16-18 hour days, 7 days a week.
I was constantly exhausted and overwhelmed, and I felt like a failure at everything, especially being a mother of a baby and a toddler. But it forced me to learn about business management, systems and processes, project management, and effective pricing.
I only found WordPress out of desperation. At the time, I was using a private label CMS that just wasn’t cutting it. Clients didn’t find it easy to use and they were still emailing me constantly to make minor content updates to their website. I hated making those revisions and all I wanted was a way for clients to easily be able to make minor content changes themselves.
WordPress ended up being the solution, and when building one of my very first WordPress sites, I had gotten in a little over my head (okay, a lot), and guess who the freelancer was that saved the day and got the project done? Dre Armeda.
Torque: Do you think it’s important to get more women involved in WordPress?
Bourn: I think its important to get not just more women involved in WordPress, but more people. We need a variety of voices from different backgrounds, and we also need new, fresh voices to share their experiences interacting with the software.
The WordPress community at large, and our local meetup community, is made up of some of the most generous and welcoming people I have ever met, yet we still struggle to get people to speak at the meetup and apply to speak at WordCamp — even when we reach out personally and practically beg.
I would love to see more women represented. I would love to see more designers, copywriters, photographers, and bloggers represented. I wish more agencies would get involved. I wish more developers who work with WordPress would get out from behind their computers and come to a meetup or a WordCamp.
Torque: How could we encourage more women to get involved?
Bourn: In my experience, and from the conversations I have had with other women, getting more women involved in WordPress has a few obstacles.
First, it’s sort of a catch-22. They don’t go to events because it is dominated by men (or they believe it is, even if it isn’t). They wait until more women start going. But that’s the problem. Women don’t attend because they want there to be more women, but there isn’t more women because they are waiting to attend.
Second, there is a stigma around contribution that it’s a developers game and that if you don’t know everything and aren’t an expert, you’re going to be looked down upon. Some of this perception comes from comments made on social media by core contributors. Also, there are articles floating around the community about what a “real developer” is, and they hurt not only others’ self confidence, but it affects their desire to get involved too. This is especially true for women who are working in a male dominated industry.
The easiest way I see to get more women involved in WordPress is to start at the local level, at the meetups and WordCamps. The more women feel represented and welcome, the more women will show up. This means shooting for women as 50% of speakers, as 50% of the volunteers, and as 50% of the organizers. It means using photos of women in event marketing and going the extra mile to welcome them at events and introducing them to others.
I believe that a positive experience with WordPress at the local level is what drives everyone to want to get further involved.
Torque: Name a woman in history who inspires you?
Bourn: I fell in love with Nora Ephron the very first time I read the quote from her in college, “Be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”
In an industry dominated by men, Nora Ephron stood firmly as a woman who did it all. She was journalist turned Hollywood playwright, screenwriter, director, and producer, turned candid novelist. Ephron wrote interesting, dynamic roles for women that were true to life and realistic, depicting them as both powerful and fragile at the same time. She also wrote frank, honest books about her own journey. She was a champion for women to go after what they wanted, work hard, and never give up.
Petya Raykovska, Sr. PM at Human Made
Petya Raykovska is a senior PM at Human Made, where she works with clients and developers to bring big enterprise projects to life. Raykovska also organizes all sorts of events around WordPress, including the WordPress REST API conference, A Day of REST, her local WordCamp Sofia, and WordCamp Europe. She also dedicates a big part of her time to contributing to the WordPress Polyglots team, where she works with contributors from around the world to translate WordPress into different languages.
Her journey with WordPress began in 2011 when she started translating the software to her native language, Bulgarian. “But I really got into it after contributor day at WordCamp Europe 2013 in Leiden where I met so many inspiring people and really felt like a part of the global family. It all snowballed from there.”
Torque: Did anyone in your life inspire you to follow this career path?
Raykovska: Oh, so many people! I got introduced to open source by a friend of mine – Vladimir Petkov, who is a huge open source enthusiast and was translating Gnome in Bulgarian long before I even knew of WordPress and Open Source. Then I was lucky to be introduced to some amazing people in the community before I even got involved.
Zé Fontainhas, who is the first lead of the WordPress Polyglots and one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met, introduced me to the team and taught me how to approach multicultural communication in a volunteer environment. My friend and WordCamp Europe co-organizer Tina Kesova, whose energy around the days of putting together WCEU 2014 in Sofia was igniting. In Leiden I met Naoko Takano, who started the Japanese WordPress community. And Noel Tock, who believes in me and is constantly pushing me to go the extra mile. These days I meet inspiring people everywhere I go — it’s almost overwhelming.
Torque: Do you have any interesting stories about your journey?
Raykovska: Tina and I volunteered at the first WordCamp Europe in Leiden. The energy at the event was so different than anything we’ve ever experienced, that we decided to form a team and apply to host WordCamp Europe in Sofia the year after.
Torque: Do you think it’s important to get more women involved in WordPress?
It is important to have a diverse community, open to anyone who would like to get involved.
Torque: How could we encourage more women to get involved?
Raykovska: We could encourage more women to get involved by inviting them in, setting a right example, standing our ground, doing excellent work, and being vocal about it. By standing up for anyone when they’re being stumped in open discussions, it’s tech after all and our community is not even close to being perfect in that regard.
Torque: Name a woman in history who inspires you?
I grew up hearing stories about the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova. She was only 26, an ex textile worker in a factory in Russia. She was my childhood hero. I love the Bulgarian poet, author, and politician Blaga Dimitrova. I’d say she’s to this day one of the most inspiring women in my life. And, even though she’s not a part of history yet (and I hope she won’t be for a long time), I am constantly amazed and inspired by climber and sky diver Steph Davis. If you have 10 minutes today, watch her video Choosing to Fly. And Happy International Women Day.
All paths lead to WordPress
WordPress allows for diversity — diversity in circumstances, language, geography, education, and experience. And while WordPress does boast an increasingly global community, there is still so much work that needs to be done.
When it comes to gender diversity, we must lead by example, support each other, and create a space where women feel encouraged and empowered to join the community.
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