Is her cleavage the ultimate signifier of a Lady Geek? Last Thursday I attended a Girl Geek Dinner and this was the question that led to a huge debate among the 100 plus women who work mainly in the area of technology.

 

Julie Lerman talked about her own journey as a woman in technology. She mentioned how her girlie interests were slowly relinquished to become one of the boys. She wanted to fit into the tech community and therefore she did not want to stand out as a woman. Over time she discovered how she can be a woman and a technical specialist and what combining these two identities means.

 

However she asked if some women in technology go in fact too far. Julie talked about how one female technologist used an image as her speaker photo for conferences which revealed her cleavage (the head of the woman was cropped to protect her identity). Julie commented that this sexualised image might go a bit too far. I somewhat shared her discomfort with it.

 

Some women in the room found this photo rather liberating. One woman said that men should get used to the fact that women have breasts. Others said that the cleavage shot is actually too sexualising and men would see the woman merely as a sex object rather than a serious speaker with a message. One woman replied that this might just be a clever way of advertising herself. But would that be an appropriate tactic for drawing attention to your work?

The issue came quickly to authenticity and being yourself. One woman said that the female technologist might just want to be herself. For her, this might mean to show her femininity through her cleavage. Is showing cleavage then the latest Lady Geek chic?

 

The discussion resembled debates around feminism and postfeminism. While feminists would stress that showing cleavage is demeaning to women because it objectifies them, postfeminists would say that it is actually liberating for women to show their cleavage and also – in a further step – to control men through it. We can think here about the Wonderbra ‘Hello Boys’ adverts with Eva Herzigova: many women found them empowering whilst others saw them as demeaning for women.

 

What would that mean for women working in technology and selling technology to women? Should technology being sold using women and their cleavages? This would be very similar to how technology actually used to be advertised. And these adverts speak mainly to men. Based on that, I would assume that only a fringe group of women would think that cleavage is geek chic.

 

There is also a professional dimension to all this: Women in the workplace in general have to navigate a narrow path of acceptable behaviour, and from my experiences, using too much of a cleavage is doing nothing for your professional image. It will position you mainly as an object of male desire rather than as a professional. That does not mean hiding your femininity but finding a way to emanate professional femininity.