Our approach to gender diversity • Hacker News Board

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#21

Post by leoedin » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 1:03 PM UTC

I agree with the start of the article. The tech industry (and engineering in general) suffer from a distinct lack of women. It's a problem that starts at school and filters all the way through to the top end. It's also a problem that's not getting better particularly quickly - in my mechanical engineering course (graduated 2012) the class was around 12% female. It's a slight improvement on my dad's experience in the late seventies, but not by much.

I also agree that good female role models are important. Selling technology and engineering to girls as a viable route to take is the key to increasing gender equality in the field.

This said, we also need to accept reality. The reality is that the experts in their conference's area are primarily men. Based on my experience, I'd be willing to be that somewhere around 95% of people who work with the database technologies the conference targets are male. Assuming that only a small proportion of people who start working with a particular technology end up being considered "experts" in the area, it's fairly obvious that the pool from which to select women is diminuitive compared to that from which to select men.

My experience of technical presentations is that the level of expertise the person giving the presentation has directly impacts the quality of the presentation. I'd argue that by taking the approach they did singnificantly diminishes the quality of their conference. This isn't unique to gender - if they'd selected based on any under-represented group they'd have a similar outcome.

Promoting female role models in tech is hard. Perhaps a compromise - ensuring female representation was at least a certain proportion - would work. Affirmative action is always a tricky area to deal with, and it is always more complicated than it first seems.

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#22

Post by batemanesque » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 1:18 PM UTC

013 wrote: post #6

pstack wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is their inclusion of transgender, gender dysphoric, gay, and lesbian speakers? Also, where are all the non-white/asian/indian speakers? I think this is going to require a bigger spreadsheet!

Simple. 1. Invite straight white male 2. Invite straight white female 3. Invite gay white male 4. Invite gay white female 5. Invite straight black male 6. Invite straight black female 7. Invite gay black male 7. Invite gay black female etc. etc. I think the best way to be diverse with genders, ethnicity, sexual orientation, is to ignore genders, ethnicity, sexual orientation, not to invite male, female, male, female.…

problem w/ that is that regardless of how good yr intentions are, you can't prevent unconscious bias from coming into play.

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#23

Post by kivikakk » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 1:26 PM UTC

pstack wrote: post #19

masklinn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is notable that both these are transgendered women I don't know of any transgendered men. Might be because trans men in tech are men and thus "the norm"? Further, maybe most of them weren't in tech or high-profile before transition? Both Tang and Wilson were high-profile before transitioning. (no evidence or anything, just providing possible working hypothesis).

I am so confused, now. When we speak of a trans[$], is the noun used supposed to be the source-sex or the target-sex? I know it is common courtesy to refer to a person as their current preferred/identified gender, so does that apply to this terminology, too? That is, a transgender man would not be a man who became a woman, but a woman who is now a man?

Hint: if you leave off the word transgender, it should still describe who they are; Audrey's a woman. Audrey's transgender. Audrey's a transgender woman.

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#24

Post by RyanMcGreal » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 1:27 PM UTC

spindritf wrote: post #9

rayiner wrote: post #5

I think this sort of affirmative approach is going to become more common as tech is dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. When I was an engineer, I never worked under a woman in a technical role. Since I've been a lawyer, I've had a majority of female bosses and mentors. 50 years ago, this would have been unthinkable. Doctors, accountants, and many other professionals can tell the same story. Today nob…

Nobody may be thinking twice about the head of internal medicine being a woman. But they do about just regular physicians. > We find that the median female (but not male) primary-care physician would have been financially better off becoming a physician assistant. This result is partially due to a gender-wage gap in medicine. However, it is mostly driven by the fact that the median female physician simply doesn’t wor…

We might ask why it is still broadly assumed and expected that women will scale back their career hours so much more than men within a given profession. To suggest instead that women doctors should have become medical assistants is astonishingly blinkered.

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#25

Post by JPKab » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 1:29 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #5

I think this sort of affirmative approach is going to become more common as tech is dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. When I was an engineer, I never worked under a woman in a technical role. Since I've been a lawyer, I've had a majority of female bosses and mentors. 50 years ago, this would have been unthinkable. Doctors, accountants, and many other professionals can tell the same story. Today nob…

I am 31 years old. When I went to college in 1999, jobs which were considered to be high-status and high-pay: medical doctor, lawyer, engineer (I almost hesitate to include it because American society doesn't bludgeon you with the "engineers are all rich" meme like it does with doctors and lawyers.

Computer programmer is not one of them. In fact, we were constantly being told by the media that the future for programmers was bleak due to outsourcing.

The point I am making is that medical school and law school are viewed societally as risk-free, guaranteed paths to wealth. This is of course turning out to be a myth for law school. They are huge magnets for smart people who are following the standard path of university to job.

The "not enough women in tech" concept never took off until tech became consistently viewed as a high-status job. The vast majority of construction workers and mechanics are men, but you don't see a huge societal uproar about it. This is because these positions are low status in our society.

I can't find a male teacher in my son's elementary school, and yet a highly talented male teacher I know was turned down for a position at his school which was given to a young woman. While this issue (including the self-reinforcing feedback loop that deters men from becoming elementary teachers) has been well documented and discussed in niche circles, its not something that graces the cover of newspapers and magazines like the women in tech issue does.

Now that tech is a high status job, instead of just a high pay job, this will correct itself just like it did for law firms and medical practices.

I can tell you this: anyone who thinks that artificially shrinking the pool of experts which you can pick to speak at a conference won't affect the quality of the presentations is deluding themselves.

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#26

Post by jgroszko » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 1:31 PM UTC

pstack wrote: post #19

masklinn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is notable that both these are transgendered women I don't know of any transgendered men. Might be because trans men in tech are men and thus "the norm"? Further, maybe most of them weren't in tech or high-profile before transition? Both Tang and Wilson were high-profile before transitioning. (no evidence or anything, just providing possible working hypothesis).

I am so confused, now. When we speak of a trans[$], is the noun used supposed to be the source-sex or the target-sex? I know it is common courtesy to refer to a person as their current preferred/identified gender, so does that apply to this terminology, too? That is, a transgender man would not be a man who became a woman, but a woman who is now a man?

You refer to them by their preferred sex. A transgender man is (usually) female-to-male or FTM, and would be referred to with male pronouns. Using the pronouns of their birth gender is considered rude.

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#27

Post by masklinn » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 1:32 PM UTC

pstack wrote: post #19

masklinn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is notable that both these are transgendered women I don't know of any transgendered men. Might be because trans men in tech are men and thus "the norm"? Further, maybe most of them weren't in tech or high-profile before transition? Both Tang and Wilson were high-profile before transitioning. (no evidence or anything, just providing possible working hypothesis).

I am so confused, now. When we speak of a trans[$], is the noun used supposed to be the source-sex or the target-sex? I know it is common courtesy to refer to a person as their current preferred/identified gender, so does that apply to this terminology, too? That is, a transgender man would not be a man who became a woman, but a woman who is now a man?

Yes:

> a transsexual man is a person who was assigned the female sex at birth [but] identifies as a man and is transitioning or has transitioned to a male gender role and has or will have a masculine body.

They're separate components of the person's identity: a transgender man is a man and transgender. From [it is common courtesy to refer to a person as their current preferred/identified gender] it follows that a transgender man is transitioning, has transitioned or will transition to masculinity.

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#28

Post by RobAley » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 1:42 PM UTC

spindritf wrote: post #9

rayiner wrote: post #5

I think this sort of affirmative approach is going to become more common as tech is dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. When I was an engineer, I never worked under a woman in a technical role. Since I've been a lawyer, I've had a majority of female bosses and mentors. 50 years ago, this would have been unthinkable. Doctors, accountants, and many other professionals can tell the same story. Today nob…

Nobody may be thinking twice about the head of internal medicine being a woman. But they do about just regular physicians. > We find that the median female (but not male) primary-care physician would have been financially better off becoming a physician assistant. This result is partially due to a gender-wage gap in medicine. However, it is mostly driven by the fact that the median female physician simply doesn’t wor…

I currently work in the UK Medical Careers Research Group at Oxford University. [edit: this post isn't an official communication from our group!]

To give a UK perspective, what our research has found is that, in general, female doctors are only disadvantaged in their career (in terms of career progression and so on) when they have periods out for maternity leave and work part-time for childcare reasons. And then, they are only disadvantaged to a similar level as male doctors who took time out or work part-time for the same or different reasons.

In medicine, in the UK at least, there is a lot greater gender parity than there is in the Tech industry (which being a programmer I also am part of).

This conference looks really interesting, aside from the gender issues, and it's happening right here in Oxford. Its a shame I don't have funding to attend conferences, academia can be very fickle like that!

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#29

Post by philjackson » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 1:48 PM UTC

sambeau wrote: post #7

pstack wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is their inclusion of transgender, gender dysphoric, gay, and lesbian speakers? Also, where are all the non-white/asian/indian speakers? I think this is going to require a bigger spreadsheet!

The Tech industry has many male asian speakers, I suspect there is still a strong white-male majority (I can't find any reliable figures) but asian (men) are the other race who seem to be well established in the world of IT . We do have incredibly talented transgendered speakers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson and at least one very talented asian transgendered speaker: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_…

Sophie Wilson is amazing. For those who don't know, she designed the Acorn Micro-Computer, the Firepath processor and biggest of all the Arm chip.

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#30

Post by dep_b » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 1:50 PM UTC

I can't help but wonder how this guy would go about to fix the lack of white people using public transportation. Reserve special seats in the front of the bus? It's discrimination all the same even though it's well meant.

Please stop portraying the lack of female programmers as a problem caused by males while it's a problem that women just choose to not do it. From what I have seen most United States tech companies are exceptionally welcome to people from all different kinds of backgrounds. All women I ever met were that worked as a programmer or related (UI, QA, etc) always treated with respect. If you're female and you are an awesome programmer you will notice that you have a big advantage in this industry.