71–80 of 157 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless your first hand account involves an actual rape, please leave the term 'rape culture' to situations involving actual rape. The linked story certainly didn't invoke any mentions of rapes occurring - why dilute a real problem with unrelated 'creepiness'? Secondly, females complaining about 'creepiness' is a difficult problem to quantify or solve, as females find attention from unattractive males 'creepy' regardl…
I agree that the term "rape culture" is unhelpful. It's an extreme term that alienates people. When you equate undesired behavior to rape, you both trivialize rape and cause people engaging in the undesired behavior to disregard anything of substance you might say. When you call someone a rapist, they aren't going to listen to you when you try to explain why hitting on a 21-year-old coworker is inappropriate. I do no…
I can only comment from personal experience, but many of my female friends will call ANY interaction with an unattractive male 'creepy', regardless of how polite or nonthreatening that person has been. An ugly male will warn them that their car tires are low, or that they dropped something, or ask them about their volunteer organization (that they are promoting via a t-shirt), and these women will either give a quick response and leave, or give no response and actually physically flee the scene. Afterwards, they will ALWAYS say "some creepy guy tried to tell me that my tires were flat", or "some creeper was trying to find out where I worked. Is he going to be stalking me in my parking lot?" And I will have been there, observed the same individual, and say "what's wrong with you? He was just trying to help you out", etc.
I realize that the above is just anecdotal evidence, and that the normal/typical behavior of women could be completely different in most/all other situations, but can I really help that my observations shape my worldview?
Oh no, they were tricked into a high-paying, in-demand career! What a disaster!
Or it could be that tons of girls get sold into taking up the tech field at a young and impressionable age by presidential speeches, books telling them to "lean in", and articles like this that hint there is some conspiracy of men out there actively working to damage women and they are needed to right the wrong. Then, after spending 4+ years in college studying surface friction losses or CRDT applications without tom…
At least not with the data points that I have. 1) Former boss, who is now managing over 100 people at Intel. Smart engineer and totally into the technology. I loved working for her. 2) Former female employees and coworkers that are every bit as much into the technology and every bit as capable as male engineers. 3) Friend and female no-nonsense CEO of startup who has had to fight jack-asses like you for her entire career and would very quickly plant her boot up your ass for talking that way. 4) My own daughter, headed off to MIT this fall, who is very capable of doing the bench work and has been instructed in no uncertain terms that if some lab partner displays your attitude and says something like: "Let me do the measurements and you can just write them down for me, sweetheart." that she is to grab the multi-meter probes and poke the bastard's eyes out.
Wake up and grow up, dude. The world has changed.
Lucky for her, I guess, that she is usually the only one of her level of expertise at a company because no one else can typically do the work she is capable of.
> Twenty percent of engineering graduates are women—but only 13 percent of the engineering workforce is female. >It’s not a pipeline issue Aren't women half the population? That still sounds like a pipeline issue.
My company has desperately tried to hire female candidates into our engineering team, which is currently all male. From the dozens of applications that we got for the position, only about 5% were female. After interviewing them, they either declined the position, or weren't able to complete our take home challenge (nothing against these women, we have lots of guys fail it too!) So, yeah, I'd love to have some females…
http://www.gayle.com/blog/2013/09/18/companies-who-give-cand...
From her blog post on general interviews and take-homes:
http://www.gayle.com/blog/2015/6/10/developer-interviews-are...
"Be fair to candidates. Balance the demand on their time with the utility you get from it. If you're giving a longer project, these should largely replace your interviews. Be aware that this means losing candidates who have other responsibilities."
(in the context of github and other outside contributions, but applicable in my opinion to take home exams as well): "You may really struggle with female developers here. They're more likely to have substantial family responsibilities (and thus can't do as much out of work)."
I think whenever you are a "minority" in anything you run the risk of being felt left out. If your group comprises only 20% of something, then it is always going to be an issue. The problem with the gender gap is that it will never go away. Prejudice against a race, ethic group, or religion is a mistake. People are generally people and we have more in common than we don't. And as time goes on, I think you will see th…
Lawyers and Doctors seem to be faring better than Programmers. "Because they wanted/didn't want to do it" isn't where the trail of inquiry ends, btw.
Absolutely this. I think a lot of educators today understand that they should encourage diverse students, but they still exhibit a variation on the old "X hours of homework isn't that bad" where they ignore that their class isn't your whole academic life.
Socrates may be a fantastic ally himself, but it's very likely some of his students' other teachers aren't, so it's completely reasonable for them to fall out of STEM "despite the support."
I think using the word 'fun' in this title is demeaning and misleading. Women aren't looking for fun, they're looking for meaningful, interesting work and are being denied it. (Obviously not all women, etc. etc.) I know a very talented woman with more experience and talent than her teammates who constantly deals with the interesting work being given to men instead of her. In meetings men look to the other men for opi…
> Partly it's because corporate environments prefer bluster to quieter expertise but the answer shouldn't be to tell women to be bigger blowhards than the men in order to get to do interesting stuff. This often seems like a better dimension on which to analyze these "gender in the workplace" issues. That is, these issues arise more often due to the typical characteristics and behaviors that members of each gender dis…
I've come to learn it's a much more complicated problem than I initially thought.
I think whenever you are a "minority" in anything you run the risk of being felt left out. If your group comprises only 20% of something, then it is always going to be an issue. The problem with the gender gap is that it will never go away. Prejudice against a race, ethic group, or religion is a mistake. People are generally people and we have more in common than we don't. And as time goes on, I think you will see th…
