Digital Pinay 2005: A great leap _backward_ in promoting women in IT

Miguel Paraz just forwarded a _very_ interesting contest application to the CompSAt-EB mailing list, and I'm sending this to you because it is worth talking about, and that is because it is completely wrong.

The Philippine Computer Society (PCS, the largest Philippine IT association) is doing a search for "Digital Pinay 2005". They're looking for role models for information and communication technology (ICT), "women who exemplify the qualities expected of future women leaders of the Philippine ICT industry."

To help them find worthy candidates, their application form asks for information like name, paragraph or two about why you deserve the award, IT experience, and such essential information as height, weight, bust, waist, and hip measurements.

cmarguel made an HTML version at http://www.livejournal.com/users/cmarguel/22494.html#cutid1 and I have the DOC it was based on at http://sacha.free.net.ph/notebook/personal/digitalpinay.doc . Read it all the way to the end. You may start out amused, perhaps annoyed. I hope you end up horrified that such a thing could have been thinkable, much less thought a good idea. That it was proposed at all could be chalked up to temporary insanity, but that it reached this point cannot be attributed to reason.

A beauty pageant does not pretend to be anything but a beauty pageant. On the other hand, "Digital Pinay 2005" pretends to define an ideal woman in ICT, and _that_ is why it is so insulting. Or perhaps our IT curricula are missing charm classes to help women learn how to wear business suits and casual clothes well?

Our industry _cannot_ be like this. Until now, I have not come face to face with such discrimination in what I believe to be such an egalitarian field. Our industry _is_not_ like this. But the existence of this contest sends a message to students, to professionals, to people inside and outside our industry. The message is that ICT in 2005 is about appearance more than substance, that how a woman looks and how she walks is more important than what she learned and what she
can do. If nothing else, it tells us that our industry thinks this view is acceptable.

It is a farce that I must denounce in the strongest terms. If the PCS would like to beautify its meetings with models, it should not pretend at all to be promoting women in ICT when it is actually doing the exact opposite. If PCS would like to say that women are valuable contributors to ICT, it should not attach such values to them. For what will these women be but stereotypes and living proofs of discrimination in IT? What is their value? What will they be beyond a pretty face and a nice body?

(I find it interesting that winners are required to attend all PCS official functions. Essentially, you can buy a professional woman's time for P 25,000. The co-ed winner costs only P10,000 and the runners-up are free. Why will they grace the PCS functions with their presence? Who will take them seriously knowing the criteria by which they were judged? What of this promised visibility in the job market? Is that really the kind of job market students prepare for, where appearance matters more than substance?)

The contest insults women by objectifying them, and men for proposing that such objectification is commonplace and normal. The contest insults our industry and our society. Will we not discuss it? Will we not consider how such a situation came to be? Will we not point at it and say that this is wrong?

Exams are going on and there seems to be no time to talk of things like this, but these are things that must be thought about. Even without philosophy or morality, even without religion or social science, even if only considering that still and quiet voice within you, you know this is a matter of right and wrong. Whether you are in the IT industry or not, you can still feel the magnitude of this insult.

I believe that just because something _is_ doesn't mean it has to be. So read, reflect, and be angry, for this is the sort of thing that should never be complacantly ignored. Realize that this _is_ a problem, that it _does_ exist, and that we contribute to it with our silence. Write your fury, your shock--even if all you feel is a mild surprise that such an attitude can be held in our field and in our time, share your thoughts with your readers and your friends. E-mail the organizers at secretariat@pcs-it.org and digitalpinay@mediag8way.ph . This is not just my story, and I am not the only one who is humiliated and embarrassed by it. I am not the only one who sees this as wrong, and I am not the only one who can do something about it.

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Please leave a link to your entry in the comments so that people can see the situation from other points of view.
Feel free to link to the application form (DOC or HTML) to support your entry. You can copy the DOC to your website as well, if you want.

I'm not a real journalist and I haven't been able to call them up to check this, but I trust mparaz and I checked their SMTP server (see log below). You might want to check the following organizations to make sure they're really holding "Digital Pinay 2005" with such incredible rules. It's so weird. I can't Google for it, and you'd expect something like this to have had a bit more buzz.

I don't want this to be a fake, and yet I hope it is.

Philippine Computer Society Secretariat
Unit 263, Cityland Dela Rosa Condominium
Dela Rosa Street
1200 City of Makati
or fax to (02) 894-4325
or e-mail to secretariat@pcs-it.org
From http://www.pcs-it.org/
Telefax: (02) 894-4325 or 840-0985
Tel. No.: (02) 840-0986

Media G8way Corp.
3rd Floor, Eurovilla II Building
118 V.A. Rufino Street, Legaspi Village
City of Makati
or fax to (02) 894-2487
or e-mail to digitalpinay@mediag8way.ph

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Update: 2005.01.18 2:18 AM : Geeky verification

Martin Gomez helped me poke around and verify some of the facts. I can't call people up--it's the middle of the night--but I can talk to computers, and if mediag8way accepts mail for digitalpinay, then chances are that the contest is real. (Therefore the company sucks in terms of publicity, considering how I can't Google for it...)

Martin pointed me to mail.mediag8way.ph . The application form lists www.digitalpinay@mediag8way.ph, but that wasn't recognized by the mailserver. digitalpinay@ was, though, so if this is a hoax, then it's a hoax that is either
controlled by the same people who control the mediag8way.ph domain or it hijacked an old project name. The simplest explanation would be that the contest exists. I still hope not.

Script started on Tue Jan 18 02:14:19 2005
$ telnet mail.mediag8way.ph 25
Trying 61.9.31.121...
Connected to mail.mediag8way.ph.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 xt.localdomain F-Secure/virusgw_smtp/203/xt.localdomain
HELO sacha.free.net.ph
250 mail.mediag8way.ph
MAIL FROM: sacha@free.net.ph
250 Ok
RCPT TO: www.digitalpinay@mediag8way.ph
450 <www.digitalpinay@mediag8way.ph>: User unknown in local recipient table
RCPT TO: digitalpinay@mediag8way.ph
250 Ok
DATA
354 Enter mail
Testing to see if mediag8way.ph accepts mail for digitalpinay.
.
250 Ok: queued as 0034D6307B
QUIT
221 Bye
Connection closed by foreign host.

I can't verify on the PCS end because the PCS-IT website hasn't been updated in ages and secretariat will accept anything you send it, so now people need to do their fact-checking by calling the offices up and asking whether this never existed, has been discontinued or is still ongoing. I would really appreciate hearing any news.

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Thanks to Sean Uy, Clair Ching and Ranulf Goss for helping me check the facts. They called up PCS, Media G8way, and Computerworld. Digital Pinay 2005 is real. ARGGGH.

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More resources:

• del.icio.us/sachac/digitalpinay - List of links to other blog posts and resources related to Digital Pinay 2005
  
• sacha chua :: wiki :: DigitalPinay - Other notes