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Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

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Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#321

Post by gldalmaso »

mturmon wrote: post #305
britta wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're close to any of them, it may be interesting to ask them. A lot of women in technology (and women in general, and also people in general) choose to not talk much about bad experiences, for many reasons, so there is an underreporting effect - and a lot of harassment also isn't in obvious forms witnessed by other people. Some women are fortunate to not have had a lot of problems, of course - but if you ask a f…

So true. In a similar but infinitely more serious vein, men often don't hear about women's experiences of violence at the hands of men. Unless you're a particularly approachable man, you might, like me, be surprised at how many women you know have been touched by this problem.

I'm not sure if this statistic is global, but for actual abuse, one in four women has been a victim. If the rate is so high for close-up abuse, you can imagine how it will be when you add online anonimity to the problem.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#322

Post by gldalmaso »

cygx wrote: post #227
franticpedantic wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your attitude highlights a big part of the problem nicely as well. Whether or not women are more, less, or as interested in tech on average than men due to biological predisposition should be treated as a scientific question, not outright rejected as absurd because it could hurt someone's feelings. Maybe it's not a worthwhile question to examine, but to say it's wrong because it's offensive is incredibly unsc…

There is - and probably never will be - a scientific answer to this particular question, as establishing such an answer would involve taking a few thousand kids and raising them in isolation. The offending statement is thus nothing more than unfounded gender-based stereotyping, which I consider sexist. Personally, I suspect that social norms play a more important role here than genetics, so it's as ridiculous as the…

Agreed.

A lot of differences between men and women are measured in adulthood and just presumed natural, though a lot if it can be understood as the result of kid being shaped up by cultural expectations.

Since before my daughter was born, whenever I entered a baby store there was a drive from the salesperson to separate the stuff for girls and for boys. Well, should my daughter wear only stuff in the purple-pink palette? No thanks, but I got more than a couple askew looks from people when I got clothes, or socks "for boys".

Add that up 10 years of girls getting easy-bake ovens from relatives and boys getting firetrucks and you'll wonder why women tend towards humanities and men towards technical.

Add that up 20 years in life and what you'll have are very strong differences between men and women. Are they biological? Could they be the result of a sexist culture?

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#323

Post by britta »

piccadilly wrote: post #306
ladyada wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah, you are conflating two things. the hacker scene is full of assholes, but they are not the batshit crazy people. so all the fucked up people you're thinking of? no, i'm saying there are other people, and they are /much much/ worse because they dont even have a 'scene' with basic social pressures and 'outing' them has no effect

I agree the hacker scene is full of assholes. I ask this not to argue, but because you seem both pleasant and informed/opinionated and will likely have something useful to say: what as a male hacker am I supposed to be doing about the issue in this thread? Let's assume what I know's not true for many men - that I am not even slightly coming on to or harassing or creeping on anyone and am very polite to women personal…

Keep learning, keep reading, keep building empathy and understanding, keep piecing together an understanding of what people mean when they say privilege and why they think it's important, learn more about the history of feminism and of the different approaches to feminism, skim some articles about intersectionality; over time you'll notice more subtle forms of sexism, develop a better vocabulary for identifying it, and develop a better instinct for what you should do.

Examples off the top of my head: sometimes it may be as simple as noticing that people keep unconsciously interrupting a female coworker for no real reason, so you casually and non-condescendingly form a pause so she can finish talking - or maybe you're helping pick speakers for an event and you've thought of a person who happens to be a woman who would be great to round out the day, but she hasn't submitted a proposal yet or whatever, so you email her to ask if she's interested. And of course you also keep a friendly non-condescending eye out for men who similarly may be getting unfairly ignored or underestimating their own skills, but that kind of subtle social support often already comes naturally for people dealing with their own gender, and it's also somewhat less common for men to be randomly assumed to not know what they're talking about, etc.

In other words, being an active feminist is just generally being a decent human being, to women and to men, but also including a well-informed eye toward the biases left by generations of discrimination.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#324

Post by KilgoreTrout »

zasz wrote: post #188
jxcole wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am apparently not allowed to edit something that has been downvoted but here is my edit: Martin Luther King Jr stood up for his rights and was shot. As we all are, I am very saddened by his loss. However I think that this brings up a very important point. If you stand up for an unpopular belief, you can expect abuse. Should you expect abuse? Should you be forced to endure unpleasantries because you expect the same…

Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't alone in his civil rights work. Unfortunately, judging by your commentary, this poor woman is.

I LIKE TURTLES...bitch

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#325

Post by efsavage »

Tichy wrote: post #269
efsavage wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't be asking for examples if he was a woman!

Um, why not? Sorry, but that is over the top. Maybe it surprises you that I have in fact talked to women in real life before. I even asked them questions occasionally. Most didn't falter from that kind of "aggression". Also I didn't even look at his username, so the gender really played no role.

You asked for an example :)

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#326

Post by Tichy »

efsavage wrote: post #325
Tichy wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, why not? Sorry, but that is over the top. Maybe it surprises you that I have in fact talked to women in real life before. I even asked them questions occasionally. Most didn't falter from that kind of "aggression". Also I didn't even look at his username, so the gender really played no role.

You asked for an example :)

So my comment was sexist in your opinion? Well I think your comments are sexist. Whatever.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#327

Post by aphistic »

jff wrote: post #295
aphistic wrote: post #121

This reminds me of back in University ~10 years ago. In one of my Java courses we had a female professor and one female student. The female student ended up dropping the course within the first month not from harassment by her fellow male students but because the professor was embarrassing/harassing her in almost every lecture by bringing up the fact that there was a female student in the course. As a side note, that…

Regarding Queues and Sockets: what? Can you give her explanation for that? Was it just "those terms sound difficult and women don't like that kind of thing", or something even sillier like "queues are phallic"?

Well, at that point sockets were something that really interested me (still do) but I didn't know much about them. I asked her if she could spend a lecture going over them and her response was something like "See? This is why there aren't many women in IT, you men make up terms like Queues and Sockets to keep them out!" It's been awhile but that was the gist of it. I don't know if it was meant in jest but she sounded serious.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#328

Post by airlocksoftware »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #298
airlocksoftware wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sure, I'll try to clarify. I'm not advocating that we should stop them from speaking with any kind of legal measure. I value free speech too highly for that. I'm referring to the specific comments that I paraphrased. I don't think those posters have any specific malice towards women. I don't know them, but they're probably smart, generally respectable guys. But they are an example of people who are apparently u…

So the problem is, near as I can tell, that some people don't accept personal experiences and want harder evidence. Is that right? Incidentally, your comment exhibits some bias of it's own: People with no personal experience in the matter saying it's not a problem and ignoring the fact that those who do have personal experience are saying that it is. Wait a second - women have no personal experience being a male publ…

I'd totally be up for more research into this area. The comments I'm talking about are not asking for harder evidence. They're saying "my personal experience is worth more than yours."

And there aren't any women (that I know of) who are telling men that they can't complain about their treatment as public figures. So you've created a false dichotomy. Plus there's the fact that there are male public figures in this thread saying that women are harassed more than they are. So really, we've got people who aren't might not be public figures of any kind telling women who are to suck it up.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#329

Post by godDLL »

tptacek wrote: post #195
bkrausz wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply the lack of magnitude of the problem. I don't think the problem is as prevalent in YC, one of the main circle of startups I know. Maybe that's because JL does a good job filtering out jerks, or maybe it's something inherent to the YC-compatible startups. Out of curiosity: was she talking to larger companies or startups? I am curious how prevalent the problem is in the larger startup comm…

Both. Very common problem: interviewers asking questions about who was going to take care of the kids. Actually happened: an interviewer displayed a picture of himself not wearing pants. That interview was in Chicago; I was in Michigan at the time, thankfully. I see no correlation between company size and occurrence of this stuff. I have friends who happen to be both notoriously successful in the tech field and femal…

I have to say that to me (a non-native speaker, a youngling, a geek) there's nothing offensive about "who's going to take care of the kids". If I had kids and a working wife, then got asked that question in an interview -- I better know how to answer it, if only for the sake of my kids, no?

I'm also now scared that you get offended while I really don't want you to; that's not why I asked. I might be missing some connotations, or the specific tone that goes with that phrase.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#330

Post by bermanoid »

propater wrote: post #210
ubercore wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have there been any articles/studies about what gender relations are like in other equally "divided" industries? I'm wondering if it's related to a certain type of person naturally attracted to software/tech, or if it can develop naturally in any industry split pretty starkly along gender lines.

It seems to develop naturally in any industry/community with a strong gender imbalance (cf. the "elevatorgate" in the skeptic community.) The situation seems to improve as populations approach parity.

The situation seems to improve as populations approach parity.

This can appear to be true even if men don't, on average, change their behavior at all.

Think about it: if 10% of the people in a field are female, that means that 90% of a woman's interactions in the field are with men. If the field becomes more balanced, that will come down towards 50%.

Even if men in the field individually keep acting the same, that's almost a 50% reduction in the amount of sexism a woman will experience, because she's interacting with fewer men and more women. We tend to notice offensive things by counting them, not by figuring out expected values based on sample sizes, so things would appear to improve, even though the men will not have changed their behavior at all.

The real WTF odd fact is that as the field tips towards 50/50 women, the amount of sexism that (non-sexist) men will observe will actually go up, because a higher proportion of the interactions they observe will be male/female (whereas with a highly tilted sex ratio, they usually mainly see male/male conversations taking place).

IMO the real problem with the lopsided male/female ratio in tech is that women experience almost double the harassment they would if it was 50/50, so they think things are much worse than "average", and meanwhile men witness a much smaller amount (almost 3:1), so they think things are better.

Then both sides clash, and argue about whether there's a problem or not, relative to other industries. Based on their observations, both men an women could probably be forgiven for jumping to the conclusions that they do; unfortunately, I haven't seen any sort of actual numbers that might help pin down whether men in tech are actually worse, better, or the same as men in other fields. That women experience more harassment does not necessarily mean individual men are more likely to harass.

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