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Introducing “Ask a Female Engineer”

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Re: Introducing “Ask a Female Engineer”

#311

Post by PavlovsCat »

RodericDay wrote: post #247
RonanTheGrey wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine men saying to women "you are not welcome here" in any context except a bathroom and you begin to see the problem.

I'm just baffled by this comment. You seem to mean as in "these women are setting a double standard, see!". As in, the cure these women are proposing is just more of the disease. However, it implies you think that the women told "you are not welcome here" is currently a solved problem, a thing of the past, and that they don't actually face any scenarios were they are told "you are not welcome here". Or, at the very l…

> However, it implies you think

It does none of the sort. It correctly points out a double standard in supposed progressive culture and that's it. As for "clubs":

> "Putting on a man-tailored suit with shoulder pads and imitating all the worst behavior of men? This is the noblest thing that women can think of?"

-- George Carlin

But hey, what good old George surely didn't realize (being such a sexist as he was who would never make a whole track ranting just about how bad ass women are), is that "they did it first, they are doing it more". Very inspiring.

Yeah, I also say it's more of the same. Support and safe spaces are one thing, using them as fig leaves for some rather more sinister another. There are grey areas and who can draw the line and yadda yadda, but that doesn't mean there are not several "poles" to this stuff, very distinct things, some of them using the language and issues of others to cloak themselves.

Is it like communism? You have all these girl clubs to counter all these boys clubs, then ???, and then a society of humans who have first names and other fancy stuff and have grown beyond identity politics? At what point, exactly, would a vehicle for power and double standards cease to be one? All you said is that boys club's are worse - okay, granted, but if the proposed solution, is to make girls clubs just as bad and powerful, if looking any further than that is too "baffling" to even consider -- then what?

Re: Introducing “Ask a Female Engineer”

#312

Post by gwenzek »

Mz wrote: post #298
gwenzek wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that would be the worst for a woman: working in an office where nobody talks to you in fear of being misinterpreted.

I think that is a common experience for women. I find it really challenging to get men to engage me in meaningful, meaty discussion. Often, once they have, they suddenly are interested in a romantic liaison. It's maddening.

Lol, maybe the problem is not working among many males but among many single males craving for a girlfriend!

Re: Introducing “Ask a Female Engineer”

#313

Post by Mz »

gwenzek wrote: post #312
Mz wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is a common experience for women. I find it really challenging to get men to engage me in meaningful, meaty discussion. Often, once they have, they suddenly are interested in a romantic liaison. It's maddening.

Lol, maybe the problem is not working among many males but among many single males craving for a girlfriend!

I wish sorting for marital/relationship status solved this issue. I haven't found that it does.

Re: Introducing “Ask a Female Engineer”

#314

Post by nsxwolf »

Chinjut wrote: post #272
__s wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shun women because if I casually mention saying something about having talked to a non male while my wife wasn't around the wife'll beat me. If I don't say anything about talking to non males then I'm hiding things, which never goes well if wife ever meets a non male coworker who doesn't describe me as super shy

Y'all have some super-paranoid jealous partners, if you can't even talk to a colleague of a particular gender, purely as colleagues. I hope both for your partner and for you that they stop being that way someday.

Oh sure I can. I'm just not taking one out for coffee alone.

Re: Introducing “Ask a Female Engineer”

#315

Post by PavlovsCat »

stale2002 wrote: post #163
FT_intern wrote: post #102

Diversity initiatives for the tech world baffle me. The tech world is already very diverse, along lines that transcend race and gender. I am talking about national diversity. Engineering teams are composed of a huge percentage of foreign born workers who carry truly diverse experiences. The difference in experience between nationalities completely trumps the differences in experience between gender and race within th…

Most women engineers seem to disagree with you. The experience of women engineers is vastly different than those of male engineers.

Nah, they don't seem to, and it's not. Isn't intellectual debate fun?

Also, what do they disagree on - that an Iraqi bombed to death is worse off than even a poor albino woman in the US? That starving to death in Africa as a male is worse than being a female engineer wherever? Technically, you just called "most female engineers" very ignorant and selfish.

Re: Introducing “Ask a Female Engineer”

#316

Post by crapolasplatter »

vacri wrote: post #292
crapolasplatter wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice, why the hostility? Nobody said anything about catering . I was curious on the importance of defining the individual as female , but leaving other non engineering characteristics out?

> Nice, why the hostility? Because your original comment wasn't innocent or genuine, and you already know the answer to it. It's a comment that gets made every. single. time. something like this comes up, has been answered a million times before, and it's not worth pandering to.

Or maybe you can't justify the value of simply stating female in the topic heading.

Or are you saying that all females have the same experience?

if not perhaps you can explain what is the value of stating they are female when not all females are the same , nor do they automatically have the same experiences simply because of their sex.

surely a fat , short , ugly , female engineer would not have the same experience or struggles as a skinny,tall, pretty female engineer. Perhaps one finds it as a positive experience while the other has the exact opposite experience.

Not all women and men are created equal and other factors such as looks,weight,height,color can make all the differences when it comes to experiences.Even among the same sex.

Re: Introducing “Ask a Female Engineer”

#317

Post by Whitestrake »

cynoclast wrote: post #209
20years wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My answers as a female. 1.) Not completely. This profession isn't appealing to a lot of women for many reasons outside of it being prominently male dominated. 2.) No 3.) In my early career I was always the only female on smaller male dominated teams. New male devs that came in initially automatically assumed I was administration. It only took a few days for them to realize what I did and all had total respect after.…

>I personally think the heavy PR push towards women in code over the last couple of years It's not been 'the last few years' It's been about 30, now. I can remember them pushing when I was in elementary school. Also, it's a misnomer to call it '[gender] dominated'. Tech is largely female rejected . Just as most men reject teaching, nursing, or the social sciences. Those aren't female dominated either, but male reject…

It does seem to me that calling it female-rejected is a more accurate way of framing this topic.

Addressing it this way doesn't diminish or invalidate the issues people have with this state of affairs. And it still allows people to constructively ask the question, when a desire to increase the diversity within tech workplaces is present: How do we make tech more attractive to females?

"Male dominated" is, yes, technically the current state of the tech industry, but it's not accurate to ascribe male domination as a self-fulfilling cause when female rejection consists of many other reasons too.

Re: Introducing “Ask a Female Engineer”

#318

Post by justinpombrio »

kaybe wrote: post #299
1_2__3 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be even nicer if people stopped being so judgemental that they no longer judge people's unrevealed thoughts and instead base their opinion on actions. Because telling people they have a secret and unknown racist/misogynist hiding inside them guiding them covertly is probably never gonna convince anybody to change their mind.

Current research shows this is not something you can just change your mind about because you want to, sadly. But I agree, being confrontational will not fix things. At the same time, it being subconscious makes it not a single person's fault. One can and should do better than that, but if sub-ideal situations happen (within reason), it does not mean the person is bad. So actions can be judged with this in mind for no…

> Current research shows this is not something you can just change your mind about because you want to, sadly.

Could you link to this research? I'm curious to see what studies have to say.

Re: Introducing “Ask a Female Engineer”

#319

Post by morgtheborg »

rcba wrote: post #6

How active should men be in actually helping to solve the gender diversity problem vs sitting on the sidelines and sharing the work of women who are solving the problem? I've been working on an initiative to encourage more of my male peers to do more to make their organisations more diverse and was recently criticised by a female software engineer who told me that I shouldn't "come into a feminist space" where "women…

> I've been working on an initiative to encourage more of my male peers to do more to make their organisations more diverse and was recently criticised by a female software engineer who told me that I shouldn't "come into a feminist space" where "women are already organising, telling stories and advocating for themselves".

I think that is the silliest thing. It sucks but men follow men. I hate that reality, but a key element of my happiness at my current position is that I DON'T have to be the advocate for change or the enforcer. I had to at the very beginning, but once it became clear what my standards were (pretty basic things like don't call people 'bitch') the co-founders began to enforce it. That was fucking awesome. It made me feel supported and as if I wasn't being 'that women', but rather we all were acknowledging it was inappropriate. Not inappropriate because I was there, but simply not okay in a professional environment.

I often think the feminist movement would be doing a heck of a lot better if we had some Navy Seal as the figurehead giving most of the speeches. The point of sexism is that people don't respect women, so broadcasting "women are people and deserve the following" from a woman is clearly not going to do as much as having it broadcast by some alpha male.

Or perhaps I'm too cynical.

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