In April 2014, I organized the first SheHacksATX in Austin, TX. The event was unique; in that, we paired women startup founders with female coders to work on real products. It was so successful that I organized SheDesignsATX a few months later. Again, similar concept but instead of coders women startup founders were paired with designers.

My goal in creating all female events wasn’t to marginalize or segregate women. I don’t view women in technology as a specialist issue reserved to a niche audience. The reason I created all women events was to cut out the noise of gender politics for the day. Attendees were to be exposed to an all-female environment which is radically different from their workplace where they are (typically) a minority. This cultivates a sense of safety and security allowing attendees to come out of their shell, let down their guard and take risks. Simply, by creating all women events I wanted to create safety for attendees to be vulnerable in a way they (typically) cannot be at work.

However, I recently attended an event for young girls to learn more about computer programming and web development. It was a requirement that all of the girls be hispanic and the organizers asked me to help them find women of color to attend as mentors. While I applaud any action towards inspiring young people to consider a career in technology I don’t feel that segregating children in a learning environment based on their cultural background is progress.

There is research supporting the value of all-female learning programs. However, all of the research I’ve read about segregation within the learning environment tells a different story.

In sixteen weeks, I’ll become a mother for the first time. It saddens me to think she might not grow up thinking of herself as an individual. Being white and being a female isn’t the sum of her identity, but American society seems to be pushing us towards such a conclusion.

As we near 2015, fifty-two years have passed since Martin Luther King’s famous speech, I have a dream. And the harsh truth is that we have more segregation in America then when I was born in 1978.

As of today, I am no longer running all-women groups in Austin. SheHacksATX and SheDesignsATX will invite men to participate. The goal remains to be a safe environment of learning where each attendee can take risks without judgement or fear.

This blog post is a call-to-action to all of those who want to create an environment for the day that resembles our ideal workplace. One of inclusion, diversity, acceptance and innovation. As Kerry O’Connor said in a recent talk at the Austin Center for Design, “lets kill the phrase think outside the box and instead work to unpack it”.

Please join me on Twitter, tweet @jeslowry #shehacksatx to start our conversation on how we can co-create an event that resembles the future Martin Luther King imagined for us.