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I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

imallika.com

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Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#11

Post by danaliv »

edmccard wrote: post #10

>It's substantive and grounded in personal experience. Yes, but it's the personal experience of someone who has never "had to defend their choice of or fight an uphill battle while selecting engineering as a career choice". Which makes it seem like more of an "argument by outlier" than the expression of some deep universal insight-- yes, maybe Mallika doesn't appreciate someone listening to her talk as "being support…

Indeed. When I visited India on a delegation to learn about these very issues, I was told that the local elementary schools didn't even have girls' bathrooms, that young women can't attend the entrance exam prep classes because they're held at night and it's too dangerous, and that when women do get into engineering schools, it's never the tier one schools.

Obviously I did not grow up in India so I can't say with certainty that the author is an outlier. But I have heard face-to-face from many, many, many Indian women who tell a very different story from the one we're reading here.

Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#14

Post by kazinator »

dang wrote: post #2

This article was flagged unfairly. It's substantive and grounded in personal experience. Those are good qualities for an HN piece whether one agrees or disagrees, so I've turned off flags and rolled back the clock on this submission to give it a second shot. If you want to comment here, please (re-)familiarize yourself with the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html , including this one:…

All I get is a "Loading ..." spinner; maybe people flagged it for that. Can someone post a direct URL to the actual content?

Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#15

Post by dizzystar »

edmccard wrote: post #10

>It's substantive and grounded in personal experience. Yes, but it's the personal experience of someone who has never "had to defend their choice of or fight an uphill battle while selecting engineering as a career choice". Which makes it seem like more of an "argument by outlier" than the expression of some deep universal insight-- yes, maybe Mallika doesn't appreciate someone listening to her talk as "being support…

You wrote the very problem.

You don't agree with the thinking therefore the author is wrong and her experience and opinion isn't worth considering. This is the very antithesis of acceptance, inclusiveness, and diversity.

I think her message is very simple and powerful. Just be interested in what she is working on based on the merits or her work. I think that's an excellent model to strive for, and really, it's sad anyone has to even say it.

Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#16

Post by belorn »

I often see people arguing against the idea of sexless-ness based on the idea that its been tried and failed, but I honestly the only time I truly seen evidence of this is in movies making fun of the 70th's. It seems that when the feminist movement moved away from equality feminism it cultural had to disavow the concept of sexless-ness.

The idea of sexless-ness, which can also be describe as women/men as equal and undifferentiated from that of men/women, seems to me as the way to reach optimal freedom and agency in life. Gender roles and associated expectations affect incentives and disincentives, neither which is optimal if we want to reach the point where every individual can seek their own passions. I only hope that the ideas behind equality feminism can once again raise to be dominant within the progressive culture.

Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#17

Post by calvinbhai »

danaliv wrote: post #11
edmccard wrote: post #10

>It's substantive and grounded in personal experience. Yes, but it's the personal experience of someone who has never "had to defend their choice of or fight an uphill battle while selecting engineering as a career choice". Which makes it seem like more of an "argument by outlier" than the expression of some deep universal insight-- yes, maybe Mallika doesn't appreciate someone listening to her talk as "being support…

Indeed. When I visited India on a delegation to learn about these very issues, I was told that the local elementary schools didn't even have girls' bathrooms, that young women can't attend the entrance exam prep classes because they're held at night and it's too dangerous, and that when women do get into engineering schools, it's never the tier one schools. Obviously I did not grow up in India so I can't say with cer…

I hope anyone (including you and the author) talking about India is aware that it is a country of 1.3 billion people.

So you can find a Germany+Austria+Italy equivalent number of poor people in desolate conditions, but there also a UK+France+Spain+Nordic-countries equivalent number of people who are doing much better and have access to many resources.

So one's view of India totally depends on which European country equivalent you interfaced with, unless they have travelled to every region/state in India and lived there for a few months/years, without having a political/religious/NGO entity planning their itinerary.

In support of the author, I agree with what she says. Those women who do make it to engineering / tech / high-skilled professions tend to do so without having experienced the pink-elephant phenomena. In fact, I can totally empathize with what the author is saying in her post.

PS: I just made up the list of countries and equivalents, but I hope my analogy helps in understanding how vast India is, in terms of population, the demography, including the languages spoken, scripts written, religions / cultures followed by people.

Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#18

Post by slowmovintarget »

edmccard wrote: post #10

>It's substantive and grounded in personal experience. Yes, but it's the personal experience of someone who has never "had to defend their choice of or fight an uphill battle while selecting engineering as a career choice". Which makes it seem like more of an "argument by outlier" than the expression of some deep universal insight-- yes, maybe Mallika doesn't appreciate someone listening to her talk as "being support…

It is not an "argument by outlier", though. She describes a culture where her experience is normal. This culture results in both male and female engineers. Her critique is about a culture that feels compelled to pretense instead of compelled to change.

Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#19

Post by rdtsc »

dang wrote: post #2

This article was flagged unfairly. It's substantive and grounded in personal experience. Those are good qualities for an HN piece whether one agrees or disagrees, so I've turned off flags and rolled back the clock on this submission to give it a second shot. If you want to comment here, please (re-)familiarize yourself with the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html , including this one:…

Wonder if the flagging system can be enhanced by having the flagger provide a reason. Maybe having to explain would reduce the incidence of drive-by flagging.

Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#20

Post by weberc2 »

21 wrote: post #8
pavel_lishin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that evidence that there's a "softer" path to employment, or that the regular hiring track sucks?

That's exactly what I'm also wondering. Given that the whole company seems genuinely devoted to increasing diversity, I would tend towards the first possibility, especially since the team manager boasted a lot that his team has one of the highest female to male ratio in the company.

Why would one boast about less diversity? Did you mean "highest ratio"?
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