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My positive experience as a woman in tech

lea.verou.me

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Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#11

Post by adrianN »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #6

Sexism is not "over-rated" OECD's Social Institutions and Gender Index Is at http://www.genderindex.org , and is a litany of baked in prejudice, violence, lack of access to education, lack of access to property and other normal legal rights. When we compare the lot of a 16 yo girl in Rwanda to a High schooler in SF, yes it is hard to find where the High schooler is having problems, but we just have to look at the rat…

I'm still not convinced that the lack of women in tech is due to sexism. Maybe women just aren't as excited by the field as men? Nobody seems to question that this is the reason why there are so few male preschool teachers.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#12

Post by facepalm »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #6

Sexism is not "over-rated" OECD's Social Institutions and Gender Index Is at http://www.genderindex.org , and is a litany of baked in prejudice, violence, lack of access to education, lack of access to property and other normal legal rights. When we compare the lot of a 16 yo girl in Rwanda to a High schooler in SF, yes it is hard to find where the High schooler is having problems, but we just have to look at the rat…

I find it a bit funny that they call it a "gender index", but it really just cares about discrimination against women. Way to go... Are girls equally likely as men to be recruited as child soldiers? Presumably their statistics won't show it...

Also I think access of women to education in the third world might be a good indicator of economic and health care in those countries, not necessarily discrimination. If women are more like to die or be unable to work for extended periods of time because of childbirth, and you can only afford to send one of your kids to school, it just makes more sense to send the boy. It's unfair in a way, but not because people don't like girls, but because of biological and economic realities.

As for women in tech: women have other options than going into tech. That might be all there is to it.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#13

Post by Already__Taken »

adrianN wrote: post #11
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #6

Sexism is not "over-rated" OECD's Social Institutions and Gender Index Is at http://www.genderindex.org , and is a litany of baked in prejudice, violence, lack of access to education, lack of access to property and other normal legal rights. When we compare the lot of a 16 yo girl in Rwanda to a High schooler in SF, yes it is hard to find where the High schooler is having problems, but we just have to look at the rat…

I'm still not convinced that the lack of women in tech is due to sexism. Maybe women just aren't as excited by the field as men? Nobody seems to question that this is the reason why there are so few male preschool teachers.

There a few male preschool teachers because of the threat of accusations and prejudice. I work in schools, you're told not to be alone with children. You can work 10 or 20 years to get into your stride teaching in lower school and it can be all undone in one bad press piece. It's a massive problem.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#14

Post by Wintamute »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #4

> "Ironically, one of the very few times I have experienced any sexism in the industry was when a dude was trying to be nice to me." I'm not sure how ironic this is. It seems to be setting up a straw man of sexist behaviour being the domain of moustache-twirling villians, rather than something that often perfectly normal men and women inflict on each other and experience unwanted outcomes of because of their culture…

> something that often perfectly normal men and women inflict on each other and experience unwanted outcomes of because of their culture and the structures of the society they grew up in

This is ideology, it's not a given that everybody thinks the same as you on this point.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#15

Post by DanBC »

adrianN wrote: post #11
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #6

Sexism is not "over-rated" OECD's Social Institutions and Gender Index Is at http://www.genderindex.org , and is a litany of baked in prejudice, violence, lack of access to education, lack of access to property and other normal legal rights. When we compare the lot of a 16 yo girl in Rwanda to a High schooler in SF, yes it is hard to find where the High schooler is having problems, but we just have to look at the rat…

I'm still not convinced that the lack of women in tech is due to sexism. Maybe women just aren't as excited by the field as men? Nobody seems to question that this is the reason why there are so few male preschool teachers.

> Nobody seems to question

Yes they do - there are programmes to get more men teaching, especially to younger children.

This is mentioned in every single thread about women in tech on HN, btw.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#16

Post by duncan_bayne »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #5

She had me until the very end, with the anecdote about the guy apologizing for swearing in front of her. I would apologize if I said "fuck" near my country's president, or even the president of my small-ish company. Both of whom are male. It's a sign of respect. In the context of women, I see it in a similar light to holding the door open for a lady. It isn't me assuming she's too weak to open a door, it's just a com…

> I would apologize if I said "fuck" near my country's president

I'd be pretty pleased if I managed to hold down a conversation with any of our political 'leaders' that didn't involve a good many expletives.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#17

Post by avz »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #5

She had me until the very end, with the anecdote about the guy apologizing for swearing in front of her. I would apologize if I said "fuck" near my country's president, or even the president of my small-ish company. Both of whom are male. It's a sign of respect. In the context of women, I see it in a similar light to holding the door open for a lady. It isn't me assuming she's too weak to open a door, it's just a com…

You're missing this important point:

> His effort to be courteous made me feel that I was different, the odd one out, the one we must be careful around and treat like a fragile flower.

We should respect all our colleagues equally regardless of the type of sexual organs they happen to be equipped with (and regardless of other irrelevant characteristics). Singling out one group over others for additional "respect" is what makes them feel different and out of place.

In the setting of this anecdote her role was not that of a "lady", but that of an "engineer".

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#18

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Already__Taken wrote: post #13
adrianN wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still not convinced that the lack of women in tech is due to sexism. Maybe women just aren't as excited by the field as men? Nobody seems to question that this is the reason why there are so few male preschool teachers.

There a few male preschool teachers because of the threat of accusations and prejudice. I work in schools, you're told not to be alone with children. You can work 10 or 20 years to get into your stride teaching in lower school and it can be all undone in one bad press piece. It's a massive problem.

^this; after a large child abuse scandal in an Amsterdam day care, male day care employees were scorned, distrusted, frowned upon, etc, and a lot of them either lost of quit their jobs. The sexism is real, and that industry doesn't get as much pressure to increase diversity either - mostly because their customers (i.e. parents) pressure the day cares into discriminating based on gender, either directly or indirectly by taking their children elsewhere.

That just doesn't happen in IT. Nobody cares by who software was written, as long as it does the job right - as it should be. Real tolerance is not worrying about the demographics of people in a certain industry.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#19

Post by indifferentalex »

10/10 Will read again.

The sexism debate has indeed painted a bleak picture, people so often try to show a different side of the picture but end up using the wrong words or simply adding ambiguity to the discussion, most of the time only making the matter more complicated, and worst of all, pulling us even further from a potential solution. This one showed us not only a potential solution, but also proved it's effectiveness.

Lea Verou (the author of the article) perfectly explains that even though there is undoubtedly a problem, a problem whose degree is not/can not be calculated (she also indirectly, simply by not giving it more article-time, makes us understand that the lack of statistics doesn't mean this problem doesn't exist or should not be resolved), this problem can and has already been solved, not by company policies or special rules, but simply by people treating others (women included) nicely, or as my first grade teacher taught me, by following the golden rule, treat others the way you want to be treated, and amazingly across all mindsets and ways of thinking this rule means, for anyone beginning from the wee age that they understand what those words mean, that one should be treated in a way that is free of bias, fair and rational.

I will read this article again, and I will recommend it to friends and acquaintances and family, because sexism is a problem beyond tech too (in certain industries it might be an even bigger problem). I think this article and hopefully ones like it that either exist already that I do not know of, or ones that will be written afterwards, are a great way to make us realise that all people should be treated the way that we want to be treated, and I truly believe that will be enough to fix the problem of "women in tech".

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#20

Post by DanBC »

indifferentalex wrote: post #19

10/10 Will read again. The sexism debate has indeed painted a bleak picture, people so often try to show a different side of the picture but end up using the wrong words or simply adding ambiguity to the discussion, most of the time only making the matter more complicated, and worst of all, pulling us even further from a potential solution. This one showed us not only a potential solution, but also proved it's effect…

> treat others the way you want to be treated,

You've never had a pathological arsehole for a boss?

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