The Sydney Feminists

A few months into joining my current company, I got pranked by my work friends with a USB stick that controlled my cursor, making me accidentally archive/delete emails, type words within words, and discard drafts. This prank had been making the rounds since before my time, and everyone had had a different reaction to it; some called IT immediately, while others smelt a rat and found the culprit. My choice of reaction was to spend two whole days updating mouse firmware, rebooting, reinstalling Outlook – basically to try to find what I believed was a genuine problem in my computer on my own – until I finally gave in and called IT. The colleague who pranked me (a friend of mine) christened it the Female Engineer Syndrome. Image 1 by Sara Alfageeh @TheFoofinator / http://sara-alfa.com/ The Female Engineer Syndrome is, at times, a by-product of the Imposter Syndrome (self-doubt of abilities in one’s own field of expertise), and at other times it is a reaction to others showing...

Gender reveal parties are the latest celebration for expecting parents,  increasingly visible on all forms of social media.  If you type ‘gender reveal party’ into Youtube, you will be inundated with videos of expecting parents announcing the sex of their unborn child to the world. Parents-to-be announce the gender of their child, based on the sex of the child provided by a medical assessment by doctors between the 16th and 20th week of gestation. Similar to their well known analogue the baby shower, these events routinely employ stereotypical representations of gender to indicate the child’s sex. Typical symbols include pink, princess themes for girls and blue, cowboy decorations for boys. Gender reveal parties often employ dramatic techniques to reveal the unborn child’s sex, such as fireworks or the release of confetti or balloons. The once private moment for expecting parents has transformed into a public display, with these parties inextricably linked to social media. ...