Why my career shift in tech is a way to express my feminism

Let me get a bit personal here: I have three teenage daughters. Yes, I have a lot on my plate each day, but this endless book will be written another day. I had in mind to make a drastic career shift in tech for several years, but this idea seemed insurmountable to me. Dealing with the current job, the children, the studies, the job search in the new field, with all that entails — it all seemed too much. But one day, it was time for my eldest to choose her own path in high school — gymnasium in Sweden.

With her who doesn’t know in which field she wants to work later in life, I was fearing she would choose a more conventional program only to follow her (mostly female) friends… But I was thinking: her first love was the TV remote control, and she’s always making wonderful discoveries in the electronic waste bin by our house!

On your marks, get set, go!

As a feminist always trying to break down gender stereotypes, as a mother who wants to be a role model for my daughters, the opportunity was too good to pass up, so I decided to just go for it: I took the first step towards this career change and applied for Technigo’s web development boot camp.

As my daughters’ adult woman of reference, I need to be a role model for them as they look up to me and create their own selves based on how I act, among other things (unfortunately, they don’t really care about what I say, it would be so much easier then…).

We all know the impact of how we act about our appearance on our girls (“Don’t complain about you being a bit too fat and skip meals in front of your daughter, or she will become anorexic”, they say), but I want to talk more about how they deeply see themselves as women, about their possible future and the ambition that they can have for themselves.

I want to empower them.

I want them to see that it’s possible to go back to school even when you are a mother, that starting a family doesn’t equal the end of your professional progression, even if evidence shows it has a negative effect. I spent most of my parenting years putting my children’s interests first, even career-wise, but I am not the only one. And now my daughters see that it’s the right thing to do to put myself first with my (intense!) frontend development studies and my job search.

I want them to see that they don’t have to choose a path traditionally chosen by women. Frontend developer is not the first job that comes to mind when suggesting career options for a girl, let’s be honest. But it’s not true that most girls want to work in the service/care industry, it’s only how we are modelled growing up. Even if they are encouraged into STEM jobs in many, many, many, many, many ways nowadays!

There are, of course, many reasons that led me to choose coding for my career change, and empowering my daughters is surely one of them.

The end of the story for my eldest daughter? She’s now happily studying in the technology program (teknikprogrammet in Swedish) in high school…