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

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

#271

Post by kaitai »

clifanatic wrote: post #182
jondubois wrote: post #61

I don't think women have it particularly hard in tech. Some aspects are harder but other aspects are easier.

> I don't think women have it particularly hard in tech. That's the thing: we'll never know, because no one person has ever really been both. What's disheartening is that everybody seems to think that they _do_ know, men and women alike.

There are some interesting reports by trans people in tech: https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/gender-bias-in-hiring-in... is one example.

Ben Barres in biology also has some interesting stories (FTM).

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

#272

Post by namelezz »

mdorazio wrote: post #118
jsprogrammer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Of course, I'm a tall well-built, well-dressed white guy, i.e. all the things that automatically command respect. ? None of those things automatically command respect.

Yes, they do. Tall people make more money and are more successful in the workplace [1]. Wearing higher-class clothing elicits more responsiveness and lowers the perceived social status of others [2]. And of course, leadership is associated with being white and male, which leads to better responsiveness in work-type environments to white males [3]. I also seem to recall a talk by a professor at Berkeley showing that h…

The role of prejudice and discrimination in Americans?

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

#273

Post by uola »

dragonwriter wrote: post #231
skylan_q wrote: post #188

If there is no gender parity, there is a problem. No, there isn't. We don't have a "gender parity problem" in nursing, pre-k education, garbage collection, nor boilermaking. Just because it isn't 50/50 doesn't mean it's a problem.

> We don't have a "gender parity problem" in nursing, pre-k education, garbage collection, nor boilermaking Says who? I'm less familiar with the latter two sectors, but I've certainly seen considerable gender issues raised with the first two.

I would definitely say there's a gender problem in many blue collar jobs leading to a culture that negatively impact safety, productivity and the long-term well being of workers.

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

#274

Post by beevai142 »

j_s wrote: post #134
BrainInAJar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whose career ? Name one.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419071 I don't have more time to figure out the guy's name but his HN username is mr-hank: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681

Richards got fired and got loads of death threats and racist messages, because of a single tweet. The guy got off easier with just being fired.

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

#275

Post by ben_jones »

ionforce wrote: post #173
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…

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.

If you play Blizzard's latest title Overwatch you'll probably have complaints about balancing issues. If your post on their forums you'll likely get a response akin to "the statistics show a 49/51 spread, it's balanced!".

Why don't people realize that 50/50 won't actually make them happy? Ever.

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

#276

Post by throwaway991823 »

Had to use throwaway here, sorry.

I attend and organise various conferences and its simple. You got to get Women. 10% minimum, more is better.

One of our own engineer (who is very mediocre but a women) got accepted to a major conference. She was told her talk is not so good, but they still want her and she should think of something.

End result? When I see a woman talking in a conference I assume she is there because of her gender, not skills.

Lose lose to all

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

#277

Post by kaitai »

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... .

The interesting thing about the study you cite is that it only focuses on children and adolescents. You fail to mention that the majority of research has been carried out in college student populations and the findings are fairly robust. One resource for dozens of articles is the bibliography at reducingstereotypethreat.org; since you seem to be down on it I'll just link straight to their discussion of criticisms of stereotype threat [1].

However, stereotype threat is not the only mechanism that fits the poster's description. Most Americans, upon hearing that I'm a mathematician, say, "I hate math! and I suck at it." Then they stare at me hostilely or say, "You must be really smart." There's a little subset of 40-65 year old women, though, who say wistfully, "I loved math and it was my best subject... but... in high school they said I wouldn't need it so I couldn't take the calculus class, I had to take typing instead..." Tracking in high school is used extensively and dissuades people tracked into crappy high school STEM classes from pursuing STEM degrees in college (or getting in at all).

[1] http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/criticisms.html

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

#278

Post by james-watson »

jondubois wrote: post #253
smt88 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the "harder" aspects are being sexually harassed and intimidated in ways that aren't possible to do to men. I have a friend who was raped by her boss, and then he raped another coworker. They were afraid of getting fired, so they didn't tell anyone. Finally her friend spoke up and was fired. (This was at a VC-backed, Silicon Valley firm, by the way.)

That sounds terrible, but these things are quite rare. They should have gone straight to the police and pressed criminal charges. As a woman in the office, your main issue is that some male bosses won't take you seriously. On the other hand, if you're a woman, many bosses (female bosses and also some sympathetic male bosses) might give you extra help/special treatment (which is fair enough).

Precisely. I am completely flabbergasted by the parent comment.

How can someone allow a rapist to walk free? What job is worth keeping that interferes with justice being done? Which VC can survive a lawsuit resulting from firing an employee who was raped by her direct supervisor????

These questions must be answered if the parent's story is to be believed. If the story is true, it would be international headline news for weeks.

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

#279

Post by [deleted] »

Grishnakh wrote: post #245
Wintamute wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the statement that on average women are less likely to be interested in tech careers is likely reasonable. For example, take veterinary science ... this is a rigorous and demanding area of study previously dominated by men, but now dominated by women. You can Google about this yourself, but here's an article I just found [1]. So why has this happened in the veterinary sciences, but not tech? One answer could…

>In the case of veterinary science that synergy would come from the female predilection towards caring and nurturing. I'm not saying every woman cares about things like that, but on average more do than men. I think that's BS. From what I've seen throughout my life, women are much more likely to be cold, uncaring parents than men. Notice how you always hear horror stories about mothers-in-law, but you almost never he…

[deleted]

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

#280

Post by dang »

cheez0r wrote: post #234
dang wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the subthread that is off topic, and we detached it at the point of offtopicness ("Just ask Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson.").

I'm not sure what's off topic about drawing parallels between the search for racial equality and that for sex equality. It's entirely cogent to the topic.

I disagree. These discussions get less substantive and more uncivil as they become more generic. Eventually the only conversation left to have is repeating the same worn and entrenched claims that we've all heard countless times. What results is tedious for two important reasons: it's predictable, and people use it to attack each other. That makes such discussions violate the mandate of this site, which is to be intellectually interesting.

If there's an antidote or at least a retardant to this, it's to focus on the concrete specifics of the article and inhibit the rush to grand abstractions.

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