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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

#31

Post by seivan »

sktrdie wrote: post #3

Am I the only one who thinks "sexism" is overrated? It's misinterpreted by so many and I'm not sure I understand what it means most of the time. I think humans are prejudice about so many things that it's hard to keep track and "give a name" to every single prejudice. Obviously "sex" does set us apart much more strongly than, say, race, or probably any other thing, so I really find it normal that there are stereotype…

There is also those who see vulgarity as a form of Sexism/racism.

It only helps alienating people if you brand anything as sexism.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#32

Post by scintill76 »

bramblerose wrote: post #10
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…

> it's prudent to avoid language that could make people feel uncomfortable. The weird thing is not that he apologized (that's reasonable), the weird thing is that he apologized /to her/ (and not to the group as a whole).

What if the reason she was "singled out" was actually that she was the only person the swearer didn't know well enough to feel OK about swearing around? Or was the only one he considered to be in earshot? Or she was just the closest and he felt he should make some gesture because he regretted it, but it wasn't bad enough to personally apologize to every last person?

I guess the author's impression trumps ours (and only the swearer's honest account of his thoughts could trump hers), but she didn't really address those, so I have some doubts on whether it's as clear-cut as you say.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#33

Post by Chris2048 »

DanBC wrote: post #15
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.

> 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.

It's also asked how prevalent those programs are compared to IT. "Women in Tech" is now a common phrase in IT, is "Men in Education" as well?

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#34

Post by rmc »

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.

That is on possibility. However there is strong evidence that people judge the same work worse when it comes from a woman. Here's[1] a study where identical resumes were sent to science labs applying for a sciency job. The women were rated less suitable.

And yes, people do look into why there are fewer male preschool teachers[2], and blame sexism.

Some people want to believe that the world is 6,000 years old, or that Big Phrama wants to hide the fact that vaccinations cause autism, or that tech is a meritocracy where code and only code is valued. But sometimes the evidence doesn't support that.

[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract#aff-1 [2] http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/09/30maleteacher_e...

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#35

Post by bcook »

swombat wrote: post #28
avz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Why can't she be treated as both simultaneously? Why does treatment as an "engineer" require the abolition of her "lady" role? Are the two roles not compatible? I personally thing it is more sexist to try and deny gender differences than simply recognise them and deal with people respectfully. I find the implication that the only way to not be sexist is to treat everyone as gender neutral disturbing.

Yes. We are different and there is nothing wrong with that. Hell, we might even have different skill-sets, meaning that for a given task, a certain sex might be a better choice than another... still not a problem.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#36

Post by cdash »

swombat wrote: post #28
avz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Why can't she be treated as both simultaneously? Why does treatment as an "engineer" require the abolition of her "lady" role? Are the two roles not compatible? I personally thing it is more sexist to try and deny gender differences than simply recognise them and deal with people respectfully. I find the implication that the only way to not be sexist is to treat everyone as gender neutral disturbing.

You are going to have to make an argument on what the gender difference is that would result in it being considered appropriate to cuss in front of males but inappropriate in front of females.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#37

Post by meowface »

lmm wrote: post #9
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…

I think the point is that deliberately trying to accommodate women can result in being more sexist. Which is pretty ironic.

I'm not a woman, but if I were one, I think I'd be pretty irritated if I was given special privileges or encouragement over male peers to "help me succeed" or something. That seems condescending and unfair.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#38

Post by daleharvey »

It really isnt surprising this is pretty much the only article about gender discrimination that is allowed to be on the hacker news front page.

Lea is obviously a talented and confident person and it is great that she has had such a positive experience. Entirely agree that she can and should share it.

It is however sadly predictable that the comments on HN lean very much towards self congratulatory 'gender discrimination isnt really a problem!' discussions. The huge amount of discussion around the problematic areas of tech culture are routinely censored from this site giving people who have the privilege of not having to suffer from the systematic discrimination an easy pass to believe that there is no problem when even a token effort to look makes it more than obvious that there is a massive problem of discrimination in our field.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#39

Post by meowface »

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…

>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.

You have me.

>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 ratio of men and women in tech to see there is a problem - even in modern, western, progressive San Francisco.

>So globally, sexism is a violent oppressive force holding back progress for billions.

Yeah, you lost me. Not only are you comparing things of very different degrees, your second example doesn't even support your point.

Of course sexism is a major problem in large parts of the world. But you completely failed to apply that to San Francisco. Evidence of an employment ratio difference, or even a wage gap (without careful controlling of as many variables as possible), is not necessarily evidence of sexism.

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