Last week, I plucked an article from our submission inbox. It was about getting stuck in the “friendzone,” and likened women not wanting to date men to both the Holocaust and terrorism.
It was obviously ridiculous—a terrible article terribly suited to our magazine. I told the author it was sexist, made a joke about it on the ALA Slack channel, and moved on with my life.
We’re A List Apart, after all. We published “Responsive Web Design.” “The Discipline of Content Strategy.” “A Dao of Web Design.” We’re here to help you make better websites and digital products, not get bent out of shape about every stupid example of sexism we see.
And yet. Someone thought that was right for us.
I woke up Saturday morning to news of tragedy, and watched as that tragedy turned into #yesallwomen, a Twitter conversation about sexism and violence against women so large, so powerful, that most of the women I know contributed to it.
The women I know, by and large, work in tech. They’re your designer, your developer, your content strategist, your user researcher. They’re our authors. And more often than any of us wants to believe, they’re getting groped at tech meetups. They’re receiving death and rape threats for speaking at a conference. Their bodies are being made the targets of office jokes.
They’re being talked down to, fired, catcalled, harassed, abused, and raped—and blamed for it, too.
But of course, that’s not our subject matter. A List Apart is about publishing the Next Big Thing in design. It’s about shaping standards. It’s about the business of building websites.
And yet. When I look at those articles that most influenced my career (and probably many of yours), I see our mission, clear as day: to encourage a more thoughtful, curious, and engaged web industry—one that pushes past easy answers and encourages ongoing growth and learning.
Technical skills—and by that I mean everything from JavaScript to typography to taxonomy—will take us part of the way there, but they’re not enough anymore. Not now, not when we’re facing the big, messy problems that come with designing for an increasingly web-connected world.
We need as many brains and hearts as possible to solve these problems. And if we do not make this a welcoming place for people of all kinds of backgrounds—women, as #yesallwomen clearly shows, but also people of color and younger people and older people and people who don’t speak English as a first language and people with disabilities and even people who don’t think gifs are funny—then we, as an industry, will miss out. We’ll miss out on talent, on perspective, on ideas.
So we, the staff of A List Apart, are putting a stake in the ground: we will be part of this conversation, too. Sexism and discrimination and diversity are not fringe issues—not problems that should be relegated only to niche sites or individuals’ blogs. They’re mainstream issues that have found far too comfortable a home in our industry. An industry we’ve worked too damn hard to grow, guide, and collaborate with to watch it falter and flail now.
We’re not going to stop publishing articles about CSS Shapes or Sass mixins, not for a second. But as we do, we’re also going to be thinking about our responsibility to this community. And that means a few things:
- We expect the people we publish to be respectful to their community, and we will not publish those we see doing otherwise.
- We will be vigilant about the voices we choose to amplify, and those we do not.
- We will actively, purposefully seek out diverse contributors.
- We’ll be spending more time talking about sexism, racism, and other forms of discrimination, even if it makes some readers uncomfortable.
Most of all, we’re here, and we’re on the record: the web industry has a diversity problem. It’s got a misogyny problem. It’s standing in the way of the web we want, and we are all—every one of us—responsible for changing that.
@ Cary and Matthew:
I appreciate you wanting to keep your web design and your social commentary separate, but really, the purpose of this article was to demonstrate why we believe that’s a false separation.
Just as ALA has always covered topics related to our industry’s culture—just look at Nishant Kothary’s column, “The Human Web,” or Jonathan Kahn’s article, “People Skills for Web Workers.” At ALA, we believe that the best web professionals combine technical skills with a thoughtfulness for people—the users we make things for, of course, but also the people they make things with—our teammates, clients, bosses, and peers. We all need to gain skills for working with diverse people and building positive and sustainable workplaces. And we absolutely believe that has always had, and will continue to have, a place in ALA.
We’re not going to publish articles solely about diversity or inclusivity—but we will publish articles about those topics when they relate to our industry, and when we think they will help people who work on the web make better decisions, and ultimately build better products. In fact, we’ve always been open to this.
The biggest change, here, is that we decided to put it into writing, to make clear for others what we believe: that this is a mainstream problem in our industry. And as a mainstream industry publication, we are responsible for covering it.
That was a wonderful read. I agree 100% that this is a mainstream problem. Glad to see more people engaged with that issue. We can and we will change this, but we need to talk and create as much awareness as we can!
This was a great read, but I was terrified to scroll down into the comments section… what a surprise, though! It’s really encouraging to see so many people in the industry agree so wholeheartedly about this. It makes me hopeful that some real change is on the horizon.
I have been reading ALA regularly since I started learning web development and today I’m proud to say I am a reader. It is an wonderful initiative and I hope at least the female workers there enjoy their freedom.
Thanks a lot for your words, Sara. It’s important to encourage this kind of reflexions also in our industry, and to make visible problems that seem to have disappeared but, unfortunately, there are still everywhere.
This post is certainly a step in the right direction, though sexism and racism is really just the tip of the iceberg. There’s still classism to deal with. There is nothing quite so difficult as trying to land a job in Web Design, UX Design, or UI Design as a self-taught (i.e., no expensive Master’s or PhD in Graphic Design or any other related subject), female in a rural area who has never worked for a major tech company. I have plenty of freelance experience (though I’d rather work in a team for stable pay, stable hours, and a place to belong and code), yet none of it seems to count without the right degree and high-level college buddy connections.
The day when merit trumps all else (race, native language, gender, age, financial standing, culture, and the bias against people self-motivated enough to learn on their own) will be a beautiful day for the web.
Thank you for taking this stand! You’re spot on right that it’s a mainstream problem no matter what you do or where (I’m from the Netherlands) in this industry (and many other industries if I may say so). We’re getting accustomed to blame ourselves, look away or after yet another issue think ‘that’s just the way it is’. You have to move on right?
Raising your kids otherwise doesn’t fight the really annoying (game and advertisement) media where sexism is magnified. This is what we see during World Cup soccer: http://youtu.be/KLcjaDca4Po
Do I still wonder why my daughter (9 years old) wants to dress up like a model when she is going to play tennis?!! It really makes me sad, knowing what things come ahead for her. Your post gives me hope and I know we all can change this, starting with speaking out like you do. Thanks again!
This shows real leadership, well done.
I’ve always thought of industry culture as part of ALA’s bailiwick.
Please consider this my signature for a petition to think beyond the culture at my firm and to confront such inappropriate behaviour wherever I see it.
I agree with this point of view, the environment has to evolve and being inclusive.