While I understand the idea this take on women’s issues, I question again whether this is an issue that is a “test” or “IT” issue. Yes, it’s a male vs female issue in the workplace in general – but what does it do for testing in particular? It may be a bit of a scoping question again where it’s an issue that is really a broader one than in software testing itself.

Breastfeeding or pregnancy doesn’t make me a better tester or, I don’t believe, a different tester than I am non-pregnant or non-nursing.

Thanks for stopping by. It’s an interesting thing for me to think about.

\Being women isn’t much different from any of those other groups other than it’s an identifiable social programming.\ I disagree with this. Being a woman has one key difference from other categories: Women often have biological reproductive responsibilities, and though not all women are mothers, those that are have a particular set of challenges that are unique in that they are not imposed on us by society, but by our biology and life decisions. Other socio-economic groups simply do not have to balance pregnancy and breastfeeding as well as stereotypes and myths; in theory, if the stereotypes and myths went away, most socio-economic groups wouldn’t have problems or need special treatment anymore (think of the integration of Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans). Not so women (or at least mothers), who would still continue to bear children and breastfeed.

However, as you point out about \Women in Agile\, this is a problem for all working women, and it might have enough unique solutions available in the field of IT for women in IT – but it is difficult to see how any of these problems would take on a different nature in Agile, either. I just wanted to mention this category of \women’s issues\ in the workplace that really does raise some distinct challenges from the challenges of other socio-economic groups.