Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

soledadpenades.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 375 posts

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

#191

Post by Wintamute »

belorn wrote: post #159
FungalRaincloud wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to see the studies you're referencing. However, taking what you're saying as truth (a thing I am reluctant to do), I still find it a big leap to claim that the reason that there are fewer women in tech is that fewer women are interested in tech, and I would still be inclined to believe that women in tech are at a disadvantage. Proving lack of interest seems difficult, at best - for instance, is it that w…

> Women in tech are part of an out-group, just by being in the minority. A key insight I also saw in a study about gender equality in the teaching profession (done by the Swedish institute for higher education). If you are a male student entering a profession with 80% women, you are naturally going to doubt and question that decision. If you pass that first wave of doubt, you get hit by a second wave as soon the firs…

> The trend from the last 30 years has been steadily in the wrong direction, with more gender separation in the work force

Interestingly this has been a trend most strongly observed in the most free, socially egalitarian and rich countries. In other words when men are women are most free to pick a career path they naturally self segregate. In countries that are less free and have more pressure to pick economically efficient career paths (i.e. social/financial risk of career failure is severe) there is a more even spread of genders. So I'm not sure that increased gender separation can be easily characterised as the "wrong" direction...

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

#192

Post by redthrowaway »

jordigh wrote: post #185
ionforce wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are completely lost on the idea of intent vs the result. If we're not 50/50 on gender balance apparently we're all super racist.

It's pointless to argue about whom to blame as it is to defend oneself against accusations of blame. Fix the problem, not the blame. If there is no gender parity, there is a problem. You didn't do it, I didn't do it, but it still needs to be fixed.

>If there is no gender parity, there is a problem.

This seems to be an extraordinary claim made in the complete absence of evidence. Is it a problem that there are more women going into early childhood education or biology, but more men going into petroleum engineering? Why? Why aren't men and women allowed to express their preferences without it being pathologized?

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

#193

Post by Broken_Hippo »

jonnybgood wrote: post #41
someone7x wrote: post #15

I went to ngconf this year and two of the talks that stood out to me were given by women. One was the angular materials talk / demo and it was amazing. The presenter was exuding tech prowess, I was blown away by how easy she made it look to make a dog adoption website. One of the best talks. The other was by the CEO of girl scouts giving a patronizing 5 minute talk about how we need all help women in tech succeed and…

Well, I don't think it's the goal of a CEO of a social organization to give a talk on tech issues. Their focus is on social issues, so I don't see this as a good example.

What would you expect a male CEO of a social organization to talk about at a tech conference?

I suspect that while social issues might come up, the expected talk would be the male CEO focusing the talk on running his organization and the tech that is involved. Perhaps the importance of competent tech or something or another. The actual social issues would merely be highlights, and he'd probably skip talking about the male experience in tech.

I'd understand if she were talking about tools they were using to get young women and girls interested in the tech field, as I'd expect this sort of thing with someone involved with Boy Scouts - but this doesn't seem to be the case.

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

#194

Post by busterarm »

redthrowaway wrote: post #192
jordigh wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pointless to argue about whom to blame as it is to defend oneself against accusations of blame. Fix the problem, not the blame. If there is no gender parity, there is a problem. You didn't do it, I didn't do it, but it still needs to be fixed.

>If there is no gender parity, there is a problem. This seems to be an extraordinary claim made in the complete absence of evidence. Is it a problem that there are more women going into early childhood education or biology, but more men going into petroleum engineering? Why? Why aren't men and women allowed to express their preferences without it being pathologized?

Right. And I'm all for encouraging more people to get interested in this industry, but I don't do it by pointing my figure at all of the people already working in this industry.

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

#195

Post by ZeroGravitas »

fdsaaf wrote: post #129
smt88 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just sleight of hand. Race isn't even a scientifically defined concept, and it can't currently be defined or measured with existing technology. Everyone is a wide mix of many races.

Genome-wide clustering algorithms that are run with no a priori assumptions about population structure end up discovering human population groups that match almost perfectly with self-identified "race". The claim that race doesn't exist is simply false. We can talk about whether or not it's useful to make policy decisions based on race, but if we're respecting the data, we can't say that there are no coherent human p…

Hmm, yes those popular racial categories of "European/West Asians" and "Hispanic".

If your test can accurately group "Hispanics" which no-one actually claims is a race, then it doesn't prove that any other grouping it finds is a "race", however that is defined.

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

#196

Post by xenophonf »

clifanatic wrote: post #184
btilly wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim was pretty clearly meant as sarcasm.

I don't think he was being sarcastic at all. I'm sure it's true of younger women.

Sadly, that is not the case. From the aforementioned link:

http://www.aauw.org/files/2016/02/Fig-5_spring-2016.jpg

The median salary of younger women, ages 16-34, is 90-92% that of their male peers, a smaller but still significant gap compared to the median salary of older women, ages 35 and up, which is between 76% and 81% that of their male peers.

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

#197

Post by mining »

pythia__ wrote: post #25
netsharc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say at the moment there's still a feedback loop. Little girls somehow learn that they're expected to be not as good at math, and maybe they try less hard and give up more easily. Not to mention socio-economic backgrounds when you bring race into it.

What you are describing is stereotype threat. High-quality evidence for it is scarce to none; a recent meta-analysis: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022440514... .

That's not just stereotype threat - to give an example, there are people I know in their early 20s who were strongly discouraged from doing higher level maths in high school, and as a result, had a much harder university level maths experience.

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

#198

Post by forgottenpass »

415Kathleem wrote: post #171

While I can certainly understand where the woman who wrote this article is coming from, I really enjoy hearing and seeing women in tech. I work in tech, albeit peripherally (EA/Admin role at the moment, just getting in the door), and 99% of the time I feel like I've wandered into a men's club. I am treated really well by my male colleagues (I'm lucky enough to work with a group of kind, talented people, though), and…

I have a feeling that the second that happened, a large percentage of the men who are now cordial to me would be less than that.

If you expect it, then that's how you'll perceive it. Even if they're just worried about the project quality. They might even be treating you with kid gloves compared to their male colleagues. But if you expect to find it, you'll find it.

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

#200

Post by dang »

socalnate1 wrote: post #190
Meegul wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people's opinions should totally be discounted based on the color of their skin! Privileged or not, I will never support those who try to fight that privilege with discrimination and censorship.

Not discounting, but we really must at acknowledge the irony that this discussion on women/diversity in tech is largely being undertaken by white men.

Acknowledging irony is fine, but posting uncivil, unsubstantive comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12130815 is not fine; please don't do so here.
Post reply on HN