I'm not a Woman in Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#531

Post by tuna-piano » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:31 AM UTC

1. Take a look at this chart[1] and let me know

(1) Which professions have a gender diversity problem? and

(2) Given that the population's gender ratio is ~50/50, which male stone mason (99.5% male) do you want to be a preschool teacher (97% female) and which preschool teacher do you want to make into a stone mason?

I've seen a bizarre thing with a certain portion of women in tech, which this article kind of alludes to. Instead of being interested in new technology or being really interested in tech itself, some number are interested in "women in tech". It's bizarre, and I believe a symptom of this effort to bring women into tech by emphasizing that they're women. Women/Men/Whatever should just be people in tech, stop focusing on gender and get to work.

[1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#532

Post by TrinaryWorksToo » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:33 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #279

imjlu wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if segregation adds unnecessary constraints to the lives of the people involved. You'd think people would have figured this out centuries ago, yet we still self-segregate and divide ourselves wherever possible. Shame.

There is utility in being part of an in group be that people from country X, religion Y, or just credential Z. The trade off is worse global performance, but MBA's networking with other MBA's can be good for people with MBA's and eff anyone else. On top of that their are cognitive biases like I got an CS degree so getting a CS degree must be a good idea. Therefore I will give preference to others with a CS degree. PS…

That is something I also see. All sorts of discrimination gets put under the umbrella of networking. It's a lot harder to apply to a CS job through Indeed, Dice, Monster, et cetera, but my current part time job I got through an industry networking event, which I was only able to go to because I have the luxury of free time to search for a job.

I'm curious if anyone has thoughts to what might change this.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#533

Post by koaladevops » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:36 AM UTC

lotharbot wrote: post #500

koaladevops wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit : clearly hackernews is not my audience.

Dove is a woman. (Source: I'm her husband.) EDIT: the issue isn't the Hacker News audience; the issue is that you were wrong in your assumption that Dove was male, and your entire comment depended on that assumption. There is no audience for which you could write that comment where it would have been correct (though some audiences might have cheered it, that would be a fault, not a virtue, of theirs.) One of the beau…

> One of the beautiful things about the HN community is that we expect and welcome disagreement

don't think this is really true ... in any online community.

My comment would have been the same regardless of gender. Since apparently I can't articulate what I meant, let me direct to a blog post written by better writers than me : https://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/10/18/phmt-arg...

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#534

Post by johnsonjo » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:39 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #481

omegaworks wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They revolted Hardly[0]. Don't believe the hype. The GOP won using gerrymandering, voter-suppression tactics and clever electoral positioning. Its tools: Voter ID laws and propaganda that deactivated potential voters. 0. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...

Trump won because he ran a better campaign. It's that simple. And people voted for him because they liked what he had to say. Not sure why you're looking for some magical reason why he was elected.

Atleast here in Utah (which is a Republican state btw) I had a few friends who were voting Trump to make sure the Supreme Court wasn't too far left.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#535

Post by Klockan » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:51 AM UTC

richmarr wrote: post #458

Klockan wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubling down on sexual harassment and other abhorrent behavior is very different from having stuff like women-in-tech awards and women only tech meetups. Also we have more initiatives than ever trying to get women into tech yet the numbers are at an all time low, shouldn't we admit that we need to change our approach?

Men-only clubs were broadly a problem because (at the time they were prevalent) men and their clubs held a significant portion of the money and power in society. Exclusion was an extreme sanction. Why do women-only tech events bother you? Do you think women are meeting up to exert power over you?

They don't bother me, it is just that I think they might hurt women more than they help. If they helped we should have seen it in the statistics a long time ago. Instead I think that they just redistribute the women who already are in tech to different schools/companies.

You could say that doing something is better than doing nothing even if it is worthless, but I don't agree. Celebrating tokenism just means that companies will pat themselves on their backs for implement these token measures and then forget about their diversity problem.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#536

Post by joe4353444 » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:54 AM UTC

If you don't show your code it's hard to take you seriously especially when you are making a social opinion.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#537

Post by wutbrodo » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:13 AM UTC

unidentified103 wrote: post #526

wutbrodo wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, why take things like that personally? Why liken it to a ghetto? Man, it's beyond irritating to see this kind "what's the big deal? just chill" type rhetoric used in this context. Particularly because it's a hard-fought (and ongoing) battle to stop this _same exact logic_ from being used to deflate complaints about what it's like for underrepresented minorities in the workplace.

The argument here was that being offered assistance is personally insulting. In this case, I think the "same exact logic" holds. Yes, the line of questioning is a bit of an abrasive way of putting someone on the defensive, but I wanted to have a clear and direct answer for why the ghetto comparison held.

My point is that all the arguments used to rebut this line of thinking when applied to more conventional complaints from underrepresented people apply just as well here. If "the same exact logic" holds, what exactly makes the same exact rebuttals magically invalid?

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#538

Post by jancsika » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:19 AM UTC

Dove wrote: post #318

fruzz wrote: post #14

There's sexism in tech, and to address it you have to call it for what it is. I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers, but other people have, and they need these words and spaces. Take my previous job. Women were objectified on Slack. A woman was groped, though she didn't report it out of concern for the repercussions. In meetings execs, male execs would only address/look at the m…

> but as a group, it's undeniable that there's extra obstacles I'm not sure you can really say that. It's true, women as a group encounter problems with being treated as sex objects, and there are cultural reasons for that, blah blah blah. So women have a unique experience. BUT! Men experience a pressure to succeed that we as women can hardly fathom. Consequently, they wind up in jobs they need , in a way we never wi…

> And people overcome these things because they're AMAZING!

Other times they overcome them because someone did research and found out that putting up a curtain between the musician and the judges removed a visual gender bias from the orchestra's hiring process.

The correction for bad gender-equality policy isn't for everyone to take a ride on a sine wave of understanding through equally unsupported opposing viewpoints. It's to do the difficult and probably boring work of researching and implementing a more effective policy.

Edit: changed last word from "system" to "policy" for clarity

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#539

Post by unidentified103 » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:28 AM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #537

unidentified103 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument here was that being offered assistance is personally insulting. In this case, I think the "same exact logic" holds. Yes, the line of questioning is a bit of an abrasive way of putting someone on the defensive, but I wanted to have a clear and direct answer for why the ghetto comparison held.

My point is that all the arguments used to rebut this line of thinking when applied to more conventional complaints from underrepresented people apply just as well here. If "the same exact logic" holds, what exactly makes the same exact rebuttals magically invalid?

What are the rebuttals?

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#540

Post by ansi7120 » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:32 AM UTC

I learned long ago that as an Asian(not White, but...) male working in technology, you are not to express your honest thought on issues with a designated "victim" class, unless you're a part of the class. Words have consequences and you can't share your intent with a toneless text. Not only are you easy to be misunderstood, but oftentimes inadvertently insult. No, not everyone is thin-skinned or "snowflake" as a denigrating term, but non-zero are. I think many people learned this when Adria Richards got two engineers fired at the PyCon on an inoffensive(subjective) joke.

Nowadays, I self-censor more than ever. I've seen friends, people in my networks, or people two-degrees-apart getting torn apart by expressing their opinion. I don't want to waste the lessons I've learned in proxy. I find myself either avoid getting in the situation with "dangerous"(i.e., the "marginalized" group) people, or prefer people I trust when working with important/interesting project.(you can read high-profile instead). I may be stymying the junior developer girl's success by not giving her the opportunities she deserves by preferring "the guys" over her.

Am I a part of the problem? Based on the lambastings on sexism in tech, I guess I am. In fact, I know I'm perpetuating the diversity problem, and I should be more inclusive. Of course, I do not harass and work professionally, but the risk is just too high. Despite low likelihood, the risk of being misunderstood just once is too high. The optimal strategy is to protect myself by eliminating any potential situation as much as I can.

My only cowardly push-back is that I don't participate in "Asian-only" event, or the ilk that promotes exclusivity in the name of diversity, lest I perpetuate the issue.

Even in HN where I've been active for half of decade I couldn't comment on my original account.

Kudos to Maria(OP) with her expressions. I just wish I were as brave.