Lady Trent Supports the Ada Initiative

[swan_tower]

The Ada Initiative, which "supports women in open technology and culture," is running a fundraising drive. They're currently about seventeen thousand dollars short of their goal, with four days to go.

I read the reviews for A Natural History of Dragons, and I see a lot of readers mentioning how much it means to them that Isabella is a scientist, and how resonant they find her struggle against the restrictions placed on her gender. As much as I'd like to say that struggle is over today, let's face it: we as a society aren't that perfect. Women still face obstacles on that path, and harassment at the end of it; especially in the open-source tech world, there's a lot of lower-level primate chest-thumping that makes the environment kind of toxic to women (and to men who like the idea of having women in their community). That's one of several things the Ada Initiative -- named for Ada Lovelace, of course -- works to counteract.

So if this is the kind of thing that matters to you, and if you can spare a bit of money, please consider donating. There was a matching donation offer from Jacob Kaplan-Moss, up to $5000, but I think we may have burned through that already, or near to it -- the meter had more than twenty-five thousand dollars to go when I saw that announcement yesterday. But it's still true that if you donate $128 (whether in a lump sum or installments), you get this lovely pendant, which is indeed "schwag done right."

Let's see if we can't get them over the finish line.

Comments

[starlady]

Thank you for this!

[green_knight]

Going off on a tangent (and not trying to take away from the awesomeness that is the Ada Initiative):

how resonant they find her struggle against the restrictions placed on her gender.

Why I think that we need those narratives - because women *still do* struggle in this manner - I think that they can also be toxic, because the woman who makes it tends to be 'not like other women' and 'exceptionally good' and accepted in the end because she's has proven that she is 'better than the boys' so even the grudging mysogynists have to admit that she's earned her right. (I can think offhand of half a dozen novels fitting that pattern.)

I think it's tremendously important - and I don't see this half as frequently in SF/F - to have narratives where women have their places as a matter of course, where they hold their own beside the men and are accepted as individuals, and have a network of other women (and men) around them, and are allowed to be mediocre and *still* be appreciated for their contributions.

[swan_tower]

I'm there with you -- I think we need those kinds of stories, too, where this is treated as a non-issue. And the problems with the "exceptional woman" narrative are part of what shape my decision-making choices in this series; to pick one non-spoilery example, that's why Isabella gets married in the first book, rather than rejecting the idea as oppressive and horrible and she has to be free. (There are more things I could say, but most of them are spoilers for the second book, so . . . .)

I'd also like to see more stories about what happens after the First Girl Ever. Because that's just as hard, if not harder.