What's in a name?

The logo of the University of Sheffield LGBT Committee

As some of you may be aware by now, I am a part of my university’s LGBT committee. It’s a really great thing to be part of, and I enjoy being a representative of the LGBT students, but it’s not always easy or without controversy. In fact, it is often very definitely with controversy, as you’d maybe expect when we’re trying to represent such a diverse and passionate group of people. The most recent source of controversy is over, of all things, our name.

LGBT & Diversity in the STEM workplace

I recently attended the LoneStar PHP conference in Texas. Right now you may be thinking, “PHP, what’s that?” I’m an application developer, and PHP is the language that I use to program web applications at work. That’s not what I’m here to share with you. I would like to highlight and recap a single relevant talk from this conference, “Programming Diversity” which was presented by Ashe Dryden.
 

She spoke about a common topic these days: “In the US, women earn 80.9% of what men do” for the same exact job positions. I was thankful though, because she showed recognition not just for how highly straight white male the STEM (Science, Technology, Education, Math) industries are, but also how very few LGBT members are in this community.