Surprisingly, this is not yet another male bashing rant on how women in technology are expected to dress geekily in order to be taken seriously by their male colleagues. If you’re expecting to read a complaint about the perception that a well dressed woman is just not as technically inclined as the sloppily dressed guy, you’ll be disappointed. If you expect to read that a woman’s high heels clickety-clakking as she walks down a corridor (a non carpeted one, of course) is a sure way to reinforce the glass ceiling, it’s not exactly true.

You will read no such thing here (well, except for the part where we said you wont read it here). Dressing up geekily to leave no doubt about your technical capabilities is actually a gender-neutral issue. It’s one of those “when in Romem dress in a toga” thingummys. A man who wears a well ironed dress shirt, or God forbid, a suit and tie, is just as likely to face much the same criticism from the silly folks who’re immature enough to make such dopey clothes-to-skills associative inferences. Even the most open-minded, who will consciously not even dream of discriminating in such ways, do subconsciously talk in a different language with a less geeky looking person. It’s how you communicate with someone from your own tribe/hood vs someone from a different tribe (tech vs management). Clothing style is a kinship thing.

Having said that, we do wish it wasn’t the reality though. We do wish to clickty clack down the assembly lines (if only OSHA approved steel-toed stilettos like we lobbied them to – as always OSHA seems to be too short-sighted to see the potential of a genius idea like stilettos with steel toes!), but then the assembly technician would call us “young lady” or “Miss” and start talking all formally. We would never know what part of the design frustrates the assembler unless he’s comfortable enough to swear in front of us. With a tucked in polo shirt, blue jeans accessorized with enormous safety glasses with side-shields, a hard hat, steel toed boots (those that make you look like you’ve got mickey mouse’s feet!) and a pony tail though we can be slick camouflaged spies. Observe the environment in it’s native state (in your face Heisenberg!). Oh, and don’t forget the ear plugs, the cursing does get a bit uncomfortable.