Ladies in tech: Is this underwear ad really helping your cause?

Honestly I'm not particularly exercised by this, it's an advert!

As a campaign it's a smart, if not novel concept, real women with real bodies in a diverse group -reminds me of the marketing for Dove toiletries.

However empowering it is for the women who took part I think it does nothing for gender equality in tech.

I'm a bloke, and so in view of the 'Women: what...' question perhaps shouldn't be responding.

As for 'struggles of female founders' and 'gender equality'... I don't see that's relevant... this is output from a business trying to sell its stuff, and as such is probably quite good and isn't/shouldn't objectively be considered offensive.

I read that the business is a 'made by women for women' thing, so they probably know enough about their market and likely operate in an appropriately 'reasonable' manner.

But hey, as I said, I'm a bloke so what do I know?

<a href="http://glvr.com" rel="nofollow">I'm happy to not be anonymous, and welcome sensible contact.</a>

Worse than the entrepreneur Barbie currently out.

I guess the question you have to ask yourself is "would a similar article featuring male subjects be awkward?"

This female founder says OK from the marketing perspective of reviewing an ad: a range apparently made for women in a specific industry sector, with the whole real-bods-of-all-kinds to boot. From a IT industry perspective, I'd never participate in such an ad because I'm completely uninterested in having my colleagues (especially males) view/assess me in any other light but work.

They could have used models or other (non-tech) people of different body types. If tech dudes were in a similar ad I'd roll my eyes, but whatevs.

It has nothing to do with equality in tech, and the company didn't declare that as an aim, so I'm not sure why we're even discussing that angle. The company is merely trying to sell a product.

As a female founder, I find this ad appalling. Especially the Python code on the second picture (import os, then import os.path in the next line ... really?)

Have you checked the product?! That's what they sell!

A woman in a bikini to sell a car/coffee/the emmys/a conference - > problem.

A smart woman in a bikini to sell a "smart" bikini -> brilliant.

Signed: a woman.