Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#141

Post by 1_2__3 » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 4:54 PM UTC

cloudjacker wrote: post #43

I agree Now for the counterpoint, there are a lot of people in the marginalized group that actually do look up to people that advertise their marginalization. Everyone that doesn't advertise that they are a "woman in tech" or a "black executive" flies completely under the radar. There are literally groups I've been invited to where people make lists of these inspirational characters, because they want to support thei…

We're not here to make people feel better about themselves, we're here to get things done. Someone who obsesses over marginalized groups so much that they can only respect people who play the victim are exactly the sort of people I don't want to work with.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#142

Post by striking » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 4:54 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #135

striking wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not entirely sure you can tell if this group was biased or not with this one interaction with them. As you mentioned: > I also don't think they'd have sat there, chattering away, if a man had used the same framing story (father and son, father and daughter). If you didn't observe them sit quietly for a talk before this given by a man, who's to say they didn't just do this to every presenter (man or woman) for the…

You must go to a very different type of conference to me. I've never heard anyone being heckled at a professional programming conference.

My anecdote was a little further reaching. I don't go to many conferences, so I referenced the sum of my experiences, professional or not.

You're right, though. Professional conferences should at least be better than the average of all of my experiences.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#143

Post by belorn » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #40

btilly wrote: post #23

I personally know several successful professional women who have a policy of refusing to belong to any women-only groups. Their reason is that in their experience such groups are populated by people seeking reassurance. The result is that they offer the "support" of lowered expectations. Which won't help you succeed. One also pointed out to me that if a group of men were to form a men's only business club, that would…

> It is no less sexist to form a women's only club, but nobody sees fit to criticize it. It is not -ist if a disadvantaged group does something to counteract its disadvantage without considering the privileged group. If women are disadvantaged, it is reasonable to do something to fix their disadvantage without having to interject "but what about men!?" So, for example, Ubuntu/Debian/Arch Women groups are not sexist a…

The Black Panther Party are often regarded as a -ist group, and their goal was to counteract an disadvantage in society. The methods used however had a lot to be criticized, and I would hope that society could learn by such movement and see what approaches work and which didn't. Segregation in the name of diversity has historically a bad reputation, so I would consider criticism regarding "women only" groups to carry enough history to be worth addressing.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#144

Post by onetwotree » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

Snargorf wrote: post #111

jordigh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is no less sexist to form a women's only club, but nobody sees fit to criticize it. It is not -ist if a disadvantaged group does something to counteract its disadvantage without considering the privileged group. If women are disadvantaged, it is reasonable to do something to fix their disadvantage without having to interject "but what about men!?" So, for example, Ubuntu/Debian/Arch Women groups are not sexist a…

>If women are disadvantaged Except they're not. In fact, in tech, they're advantaged. Female names on resumes get more callback than male names. This has been studied. The reason there are fewer of them is because fewer of them are interested.

Fewer women are interested because they don't want to work, go to school, and socialize in sexist environments. While I'm sure that not all "tech environments" are sexist, enough of them are to convince women not to pursue careers in this field.

That's a disadvantage, especially because tech careers are luxury careers these days.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#145

Post by return0 » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #28

Personal story time...I was at a recent conference, listening to men, women given talks. One of the women, in her talk, uses an interaction with her daughter as the framing narrative for the talk (imagine Socrates and Glaucon, only this woman and her daughter). Almost immediately, three guys to my right start making fun of the speaker, sotto voce, making all manner of little jokes to themselves, that are becoming inc…

There is an element of revolt among techies too. When you tell people (men or women) not to do X , you should always expect them to do more X out of defiance. Techies get preached on a regular basis about women in tech nowadays.

As an experiment, try to do the same preaching about latinos and watch the racist remarks rise.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#146

Post by tzs » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

Tcepsa wrote: post #33

sakaloda wrote: post #13

Diversity in tech will never work. You are going against reality if you think everyone has the same aptitude to be good at math/engineering. Look at the data below. SAT Math by race [1] : - Asian/Pacific Islander = 598 - White = 534 - Mexican American = 461 - Black = 429 SAT Math by gender [2] : - Men = 537 - Women = 503 [1] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171 [2] http://www.fairtest.org/sat-race-gender-…

Going by your extremely tenuous suggestion that genetics is an accurate predictor of math/engineering aptitude because of how people of certain ethnicities or sex perform on the SAT, we should have a distribution in tech that looks like this: - Asian/Pacific Islander = 29.6% - White = 26.4% - Mexican American = 22.8% - Black = 22.1% - Men = 51.6% - Women = 48.4% In other words, roughly equal numbers of all of the dem…

Aren't you making a big assumption about linearity?

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#147

Post by renegadesensei » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

I feel similarly about being a black guy in the tech industry. It is always the deliberate efforts to "reach out" to minorities that make me feel the most uncomfortable and unwelcome. I have given talks on AWS, Cassandra, Python, and other subjects. You could never get me to talk about "being a minority in tech." Similarly I live in Tokyo and have no interest writing or talking about "being black in Japan."

Thoughts from my blog: https://righteousruminations.blogspot.com/2014/11/another-si...

Recent thoughts on tokenism: https://righteousruminations.blogspot.com/2016/07/on-changin...

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#148

Post by rarec » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

mordocai wrote: post #125

Snargorf wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If women are disadvantaged Except they're not. In fact, in tech, they're advantaged. Female names on resumes get more callback than male names. This has been studied. The reason there are fewer of them is because fewer of them are interested.

> The reason there are fewer of them is because fewer of them are interested. Which is at least somewhat due to societal pressures though.

Could it not also be said that societal pressures push men towards tech and other high stress/paying work?

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#149

Post by wccrawford » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

thonos wrote: post #108

I went to a recent tech conference and a few things came back when I read this article. In particular that the conf had a lot more female talkers than male ones (It was curated and invitation based). Most talks were good but a handful were nuggets where clearly the deciding factor why that person got the talk was because she was a woman and not her expertise in the area. Your typical dose of women who code talks were…

My wife gave a tech talk locally earlier this year and I didn't even think anything about her gender in regards to the conference until just now. Thinking back, there were very few women giving talks that day, and none of them were about 'women in tech'.

My wife does talk about being a woman in tech, but not in conferences. And in general she says, "Whatever, use the term 'guys' if you want. It doesn't matter." She's more worried about people treating her differently (changing their speech patterns when she's around!) than anything else, I think.

The idea that women should work remotely so they can cry if they get upset is... Horrifying. For many reasons.

First, that women should cry if unfair things happen. And that guys shouldn't, or that they don't have a reaction at all. (Hint: They do.)

Would some prefer it? Sure, but so would some guys, for the same reason. And other reasons.

Anyhow, good on Soledad for insisting on talking about the things that she wants to, instead of being pigeon-holed. In the end, I suspect her talks about actual tech are a lot more effective at raising awareness of the women-in-tech issues than talks on the subject itself would be.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#150

Post by wicker » Wed, Jul 20, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

Snargorf wrote: post #111

jordigh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is no less sexist to form a women's only club, but nobody sees fit to criticize it. It is not -ist if a disadvantaged group does something to counteract its disadvantage without considering the privileged group. If women are disadvantaged, it is reasonable to do something to fix their disadvantage without having to interject "but what about men!?" So, for example, Ubuntu/Debian/Arch Women groups are not sexist a…

>If women are disadvantaged Except they're not. In fact, in tech, they're advantaged. Female names on resumes get more callback than male names. This has been studied. The reason there are fewer of them is because fewer of them are interested.

I'd like a source for that, since my understanding was the opposite.[1]

Quoting from the abstract:

"In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. ... Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent."

[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract