Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I won't speak at women-only events

guardian.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 136 posts

Re: Why I won't speak at women-only events

#61

Post by parfe »

The blog post conflates two issues. First there is the societal issue of the gender gap in tech. That involves discussions and education with the community at large regarding why women are underrepresented and how the gap can be closed.

The second issue is an implementation of the first. Women only events are one of many contributing solutions to the gender gap. A woman only event ending with an invitation to a larger general event will likely do more to bring women into that event than sitting on a panel with a 95% male audience lamenting the fact that women seems to be missing.

Re: Why I won't speak at women-only events

#62

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

VLM wrote: post #50
ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #16

I wouldn't believe for a second that Meg Whitman, Marissa Mayer, Virginia Rometty, or Carly Fiorina have this problem. Parmer's column is accurate but not perplexing given what she said about being the CEO of Lady Geek. Her choice of target market (explained fairly well in its name) defines the context of her target audience.

"Meg Whitman, Marissa Mayer, Virginia Rometty, or Carly Fiorina" Terrible examples. I was motivated enough to wikipedia them to gather the following data. Whitman and Fiorina have no tech background at all and have never worked tech jobs, pure management material all the way. Fiorina is legendary for destroying HP not exactly a glowing endorsement for women in anything. Mayer and Rometty went to school for tech but b…

Very fair point.

I pointed them out mostly because these are "celebrities" in the tech world that you could easily find giving talks at various venues. Real people who get real work done tend to not have time for such nonsense :)

I could/should have noted Mayer only because I consider her to be one of the most influential people in the (FTSE equivalent mentioned by Parmer) NASDAQ. While the jury is still out on her tenure at Yahoo!, several of Google's recent missteps _could_ be attributed to her absence at Big G.

Re: Why I won't speak at women-only events

#63

Post by VLM »

theorique wrote: post #3

She nailed it: it's a waste of my time to be invisible to half the people I need to talk to. The danger with women-only events is that they become perceived as a ghetto. By opening the doors to all, the entire community has a voice, which is as it needs to be if women are to be full, mainstream members of tech communities. There's a place for "safe spaces" if people are sharing extremely personal stories (e.g. sexual…

"it's a lot harder for a 1000 person auditorium to be a true "safe space"."

My limited personal observation at real world events is when you go to a con where they strongly encourage female attendance like the HOPE cons a couple years back (even if just "bring your SO; because its a cheap date") has dramatically better behavior than "if it happens in Vegas it stays in Vegas" class of behavior. I'm sure contrary anecdotes also exist, although probably not many.

Another observation is that brogrammer events aren't really tech events... a different clique of morons doing keg stands doesn't really change anything.

Finally I've noticed that once event attendance exceeds 1/3 or so journalists, it stops being a tech event and turns into the usual journalist boozing and schmoozing and related unsavory activity, but anything negative will of course be blamed on the techs, as if its still a techie event. You get 1/3 journalists, and 2/3 marketing and management drones at an event where they talk about techies but none are actually there, and anything bad will get blamed on the techie culture despite being practically no representation present. It would be very much like if things got out of hand at an SCA event, then blame it all on the historical figure Richard the Lionhearted even if he didn't attend. After all, the problem can't be the people who were actually there; they're the people who are in charge therefore they don't make the mistakes.

Re: Why I won't speak at women-only events

#64

Post by gizmo686 »

jusben1369 wrote: post #36
Wintamute wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone says they believe in equality, why do you then say they have an issue with women?

Sentence 1) I'm a victim. I'm oppressed by women who won't allow me to express my opinion because it differs from theirs. I believe in equality so I guess I'm implying they don't. Sentence 2) I'm uncomfortable talking about this so I'll try and say let's not talk about it at all and just focus on some abstract technology discussion. 3) We're doomed. You can't solve the problem. It's just the way it is so leave it the…

Sentence 1 speaks only about the "women in tech" movement. The fact that "women in tech" self selects a mostly women population does not mean that commenting on it is commenting on women.

Sentence 2 is again speaking specifically about "women in tech" event, not about talking about the subject.

Sentence 3, is admittedly a defeatist attitude. However if there is nothing we can do about it, then why should we waste our time talking about it. In this case it is more of, if the people who are heavilly invested in this have not come up with something we can do about it yet, why should I waste my time unless I want to be a major activist. And, based on point 1, the movement is already hostile to what I have to say, so forget about it.

Admitadly, I am probably projecting my own thoughts on sentence 3.

Re: Why I won't speak at women-only events

#65

Post by theorique »

GhotiFish wrote: post #37
theorique wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason I don't listen to women in tech presentations I assume you mean "I don't listen to 'women in tech' presentations", rather than, "I don't listen to women, in tech presentations". The former is a political stance, the latter is excluding an entire sex for unknown reason, even if they are talking of emberjs or thorium.

Yah I read those two sentences as well. A piece of advice from my father: If you have two ways to take something, take it the nice way.

Good advice :)

I try to follow it in my life.

Re: Why I won't speak at women-only events

#66

Post by tehwalrus »

toble wrote: post #12
tehwalrus wrote: post #2

I've attended several gender balance events (in politics, more than tech) and been one of the 2-3% of the audience who were male. They were some of the best I've been to, and I wish more dudes would turn up and learn from them.

The few female focused technology events that I have seen promoted locally give off the vibe of a private members club. They don't say it explicitly, but hint with words like attendees are welcome to take their partners etc. It just seems strange to me because other events have nothing like that style of language.

If I'm interested in an event topic (and have time, etc) then I go. end of.

Even if I disagree with the majority opinion, it's better to turn up and ask one polite awkward question than to just leave it to people who wouldn't question their own ideas there (making it a less interesting session).

Re: Why I won't speak at women-only events

#67

Post by VLM »

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #62
VLM wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Meg Whitman, Marissa Mayer, Virginia Rometty, or Carly Fiorina" Terrible examples. I was motivated enough to wikipedia them to gather the following data. Whitman and Fiorina have no tech background at all and have never worked tech jobs, pure management material all the way. Fiorina is legendary for destroying HP not exactly a glowing endorsement for women in anything. Mayer and Rometty went to school for tech but b…

Very fair point. I pointed them out mostly because these are "celebrities" in the tech world that you could easily find giving talks at various venues. Real people who get real work done tend to not have time for such nonsense :) I could/should have noted Mayer only because I consider her to be one of the most influential people in the (FTSE equivalent mentioned by Parmer) NASDAQ. While the jury is still out on her t…

I think you're still missing my point. A management drone, or at least a more or less non-techie, prognosticating about cultural issues in tech, is almost meaningless other than maybe simple P.R. "we care about diversity" and such. Unless you have techies in the executive suite, the answer to techie problems is not going to come from the executive suite, or at least not any more likely than any other random unqualified group. Its not enough for one's subordinates 8 times removed be techies, or to have a PR campaign aimed at techies.

There's an impedance mismatch. It would be like sending me as a missionary to encourage young black men to enter the religious seminary, and then being surprised at my remarkable ineffectiveness. Why, VLM has a lot of karma on HN, how could he not have been effective?

Re: Why I won't speak at women-only events

#68

Post by theorique »

epsylon wrote: post #29
3pt14159 wrote: post #20

The reason I don't listen to women in tech presentations: 1. I'm basically not allowed to voice an opinion that isn't completely aligned with the feminist status quo (I believe in equality, fuck me right). 2. I'd rather learn how to build a better emberjs app. Or learn more about thorium. 3. Unlike the vast majority of problems, there are few concrete steps to be taken to correct the imbalances that do exist. Edit: I…

> 1. I'm basically not allowed to voice an opinion that isn't completely aligned with the feminist status quo (I believe in equality, fuck me right). Yes, because there is actually a single, unified, globally agreed upon feminist status quo who tries to silence the voices of brave dissenters...

There isn't a 'single' status quo, but if you question and/or debate the existence or definition of certain articles of feminist faith such as 'patriarchy' or 'rape culture' or various statistics about the relative status of women versus men, watch out.

Re: Why I won't speak at women-only events

#69

Post by icebraining »

papsosouid wrote: post #53
rmc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I'm basically not allowed to voice an opinion that isn't completely aligned with the feminist status quo (I believe in equality, fuck me right). Many people not involved with feminist groups often think feminists think the same about everything. Which shows they know nothing about actual disagreements within feminists groups. Just look up transexual issues & feminism. That's a big source of disagreement right ther…

That doesn't mean there isn't a significant amount of mythology that is widely agreed upon in feminist circles. If you expect insane conspiracy theory nonsense like "patriarchy" to actually be supported by evidence rather than accepted on faith, then you are not welcome in feminist discourse, plain and simple.

I'm rather confused by your post. I've never seen the patriarchy described as a "conspiracy", or a willful choice by men to control women, but has a social structure - perpetuated by certain social institutions - that ensure that men as a gender (not every individual, of course) maintain oppressive power over women.

Regardless of the existence of the patriarchy as a phenomena - and there are many critics of the theory, from the right and the left -, it makes no sense to dismiss it as a conspiracy theory.

Re: Why I won't speak at women-only events

#70

Post by jb17 »

papsosouid wrote: post #53
rmc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I'm basically not allowed to voice an opinion that isn't completely aligned with the feminist status quo (I believe in equality, fuck me right). Many people not involved with feminist groups often think feminists think the same about everything. Which shows they know nothing about actual disagreements within feminists groups. Just look up transexual issues & feminism. That's a big source of disagreement right ther…

That doesn't mean there isn't a significant amount of mythology that is widely agreed upon in feminist circles. If you expect insane conspiracy theory nonsense like "patriarchy" to actually be supported by evidence rather than accepted on faith, then you are not welcome in feminist discourse, plain and simple.

Do you really think societal structures that privilege men are a myth? Apart from being quite obvious to anyone who is not extremely biased, there are whole academic branches that study this. I'd say calling that "mythology" puts you into conspiracy theory territory.
Post reply on HN