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Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

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Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#11

Post by lomegor »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #5

God. This stuff is beyond tacky. It's not just insulting for females but it reminds other LGBT geeks that they're outliers. Who cares whether a man or woman is delivering my drink? Like seriously, I'm gay and I don't think I've ever thought "Damn, a woman delivered my drink instead of a dude".

Exactly. Not only did it implicitly say that women can be seen as a perk, but that there are only heterosexual men who want to attend to this event, and that they all want to have a drink served by a woman. It just wrong in so many levels.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#12

Post by lomegor »

ArtB wrote: post #9
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #5

God. This stuff is beyond tacky. It's not just insulting for females but it reminds other LGBT geeks that they're outliers. Who cares whether a man or woman is delivering my drink? Like seriously, I'm gay and I don't think I've ever thought "Damn, a woman delivered my drink instead of a dude".

> Who cares whether a man or woman is delivering my drink? If you don't get this, then you are missing a lot. Generally speaking men on average will enjoy themselves a lot more if there are pretty girls around. There is a restaurant in town that serves Swiss Chalet grade food in town but all the chicks wear miniskirts and look like models. Even on a week night it is packed with businessmen tipping extravagantly. Sex…

Do you have sources to back that up? (That it appeals to 85% of the target demographics).

Either way, you are treating women as objects, as perks, as things that men want to look at. And you are treating men as cavemen who want to see women all the time. These ideas have affected (and are affecting) society in a bad way. By using women in that sense, they are promoting the idea that women can be used in that way if you like.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#14

Post by olliej »

mirsadm wrote: post #10

I wonder if the brackets were not around the word female if it would be considered as offensive. Regardless it was a stupid thing to put on there. I don't even get why they added "female" to that sentence.

um, read it more carefully. It's saying women are a perk, then clarifies by saying that the women in question will be the ones serving drinks. Paraphrased: Perks: * women: they're there to serve drinks.

The problem is not the "(female)" bit, it was the fact that the existence of women is reported as a "perk". Because after all, women are just objects that exist to serve drinks to men.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#15

Post by pavel_lishin »

ArtB wrote: post #9
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #5

God. This stuff is beyond tacky. It's not just insulting for females but it reminds other LGBT geeks that they're outliers. Who cares whether a man or woman is delivering my drink? Like seriously, I'm gay and I don't think I've ever thought "Damn, a woman delivered my drink instead of a dude".

> Who cares whether a man or woman is delivering my drink? If you don't get this, then you are missing a lot. Generally speaking men on average will enjoy themselves a lot more if there are pretty girls around. There is a restaurant in town that serves Swiss Chalet grade food in town but all the chicks wear miniskirts and look like models. Even on a week night it is packed with businessmen tipping extravagantly. Sex…

> Generally speaking men on average will enjoy themselves a lot more if there are pretty girls around.

Sexism aside, if I'm some place where I intend to get some coding done, pretty girls in short skirts are only going to distract me.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#16

Post by akdetrick »

ArtB wrote: post #9
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #5

God. This stuff is beyond tacky. It's not just insulting for females but it reminds other LGBT geeks that they're outliers. Who cares whether a man or woman is delivering my drink? Like seriously, I'm gay and I don't think I've ever thought "Damn, a woman delivered my drink instead of a dude".

> Who cares whether a man or woman is delivering my drink? If you don't get this, then you are missing a lot. Generally speaking men on average will enjoy themselves a lot more if there are pretty girls around. There is a restaurant in town that serves Swiss Chalet grade food in town but all the chicks wear miniskirts and look like models. Even on a week night it is packed with businessmen tipping extravagantly. Sex…

It's off-putting to me too, and I fall into a category of overrepresented people in the industry (straight, white, male).

The pointlessness of this "perk" is what bugs me the most. It's an API hackathon - how is it relevant to include a statement that basically says: "nothing better than hawt women bringing you beer, amirite?"

That sort of copy has the target demographic of potential Hooters customers, not programmers.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#17

Post by alinajaf »

ArtB wrote: post #9
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #5

God. This stuff is beyond tacky. It's not just insulting for females but it reminds other LGBT geeks that they're outliers. Who cares whether a man or woman is delivering my drink? Like seriously, I'm gay and I don't think I've ever thought "Damn, a woman delivered my drink instead of a dude".

> Who cares whether a man or woman is delivering my drink? If you don't get this, then you are missing a lot. Generally speaking men on average will enjoy themselves a lot more if there are pretty girls around. There is a restaurant in town that serves Swiss Chalet grade food in town but all the chicks wear miniskirts and look like models. Even on a week night it is packed with businessmen tipping extravagantly. Sex…

> Generally speaking men on average will enjoy themselves a lot more if there are pretty girls around.

And I wouldn't argue with that. In the short time I was in Japan I blew I don't even want to think about it levels of money on hostess bars and just about all the other sort of fun you can imagine.

But really, there's a time and a place for that sort of thing and a hackday/tech-conference just isn't it.

> The problem is that what is a perk targetting 90% of the target demographic and appeals to probably 85% of those, happens to be off-putting to minorities some want to attract into the industry.

I'm in an ethnic minority for the industry and I simply do not care about attracting minorities. What I do care about is the mountains of gold in them there hills that are ready for the plundering when we learn how to start selling software to women. Having female engineers will probably help with that.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#19

Post by angersock »

lomegor wrote: post #12
ArtB wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who cares whether a man or woman is delivering my drink? If you don't get this, then you are missing a lot. Generally speaking men on average will enjoy themselves a lot more if there are pretty girls around. There is a restaurant in town that serves Swiss Chalet grade food in town but all the chicks wear miniskirts and look like models. Even on a week night it is packed with businessmen tipping extravagantly. Sex…

Do you have sources to back that up? (That it appeals to 85% of the target demographics). Either way, you are treating women as objects, as perks, as things that men want to look at. And you are treating men as cavemen who want to see women all the time. These ideas have affected (and are affecting) society in a bad way. By using women in that sense, they are promoting the idea that women can be used in that way if y…

"Do you have sources to back that up?"

Interesting article here covering sex (not gender) gap: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/programming-and-development...

...and then there's the actual BLS stats here (ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat11.txt) which suggest something like 20% females in the workforce.

In the game industry, at least as of the IGDA survey in '05, we see something like 92% identify as straight (http://archives.igda.org/diversity/IGDA_DeveloperDemographic...).

So, we could back-of-the-envelope that perhaps a figure of 75% is reasonable, and 85% is not absurd as a guesstimate if you don't fact check.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#20

Post by Jun8 »

Here's more coverage: http://bostinno.com/2012/03/20/boston-api-jam-publishes-even...

The organizers' apology is:

"While we thought this was a fun, harmless comment poking fun at the fact that hack-a-thons are typically male-dominated, others were offended. That was not our intention and thus we changed it."

Which completely misses the fact that the other items on the announcement seem to be written by a 11 year old or someone after downing quite a few beers.

Here's the point though: Getting super worked up about this idiocy and saying "THIS is why there are few women in tech", as some tweeters did, is not constructive either and trivializes the problem of women (and minorities) in tech.

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