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I am tech – Real stories from women in technology

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Re: I am tech – Real stories from women in technology

#71
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One thing I have learned from my wonderful partner is stories like this can be incredibly alienating to women who don't fit into them. For example, the "all women get catcalled" - my partner notes that since she never gets catcalled, she must be too ugly. So what about the women who have an entirely different kind of experience? This article is a classic: https://medium.com/@maradydd/okay-feminism-its-time-we-had-a..…

Is the implication here that we shouldn't let women tell any stories unless their experience is an utterly universal one experienced by every woman? Just seems like a way to derail a worthwhile project like this. It is clearly collecting a wide variety of stories, and IMO that's worthwhile. After all, minorities - by definition - don't have universal experiences, but surely they're still worth telling?

Is the implication here that ryanobjc's partner can't tell the story of how alienating these stories are to her, because that would be derailing a worthwhile project?

In fact, is the implication here that any story that is not in harmony with such a project's goals may immediately be shot down as 'derailing', without addressing the actual concerns or criticism at all?

That is how you get groupthink and echo chambers.

Re: I am tech – Real stories from women in technology

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of women that study math and physics. I know this because they were in my classes in CS, math and physics, and beside me on graduation day. Your assumption that women don't like these topics is wrong. I'd encourage you to seek an alternative explanation for why you are having trouble hiring women.

Although there were women in my math and physics classes to, there were definately way more men than women. And not only that, some of women eneded up doing something different after graduation. Just because you have a degree in something doesn't mean you're will go into that field. A lot graduates ended up with a career different from their degree. Most of the time, the degree is used just as a 'certificate that i f…

The argument is:

a. Since there are not many women in these professions, young girls and women don't aspire to them. b. A decent amount of women enter the STEM fields but fall out of them because they feel unwelcome, discriminated against, etc. c. The discouragement starts early too. Our culture is very gendered and girls get pushed towards pink and fashion and boys towards soldiers and tech in general.

Here are some examples of things that make women feel unwelcome. It's pretty depressing. http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents

I don't disagree with you re: the current STEM ratios and I do think it's a hot button issue because tech fields are lucrative (and of course because articles that piss people off get more clicks). You don't see women complaining about the construction, trucker, fisherperson, etc. jobs that are predominantly male nor do they ask for more men in nursing and education to have more gender balance there.

So tl;dr: fix the STEM pipeline starting at age 6 or so and treat the women that are here with some common decency.

Re: I am tech – Real stories from women in technology

#73
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interesting, i was unaware of a movement in childcare to get more men involved. i do think it similar to tech, in that(historically) if a man said he wanted to run a daycare for a career, it would have raised eyebrows. just as a woman saying she wanted to be a software engineer might have at a time. that said, in the above reference. the man would still, to this day, get a lot of strange looks for picking that as a c…

In spite of the fact that countless surveys and specific women regularly report that they often still face difficulties being accepted as techies, both by male technical peers, and by nontechnical people, and that they are persuaded against going into technology by both explicit advice from family, teachers and role models, as well as cultural expectations and media images, you're saying you think that women don't ge…

you are assuming that men don't also face this issue or similar? not dressing hipster enough, not being a mac fanboy, being older then the rest of your team, preferring one programming language over another, etc. Men have issues as well, and I've seen men catch much worse hell at work in IT then any woman i have worked with. until you have worn another's shoes, you cant state that they have it any easier with any more certainty then picking a keno ticket.
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