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

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

imallika.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 147 posts

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

#111

Post by andrewflnr »

_jahh wrote: post #83
andrewflnr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tragedy here cannot be overstated. The truth itself has been demonized by people who claim to be "just speaking the truth" when they lie, and people who can't see through it and believe it's ok to sacrifice truth on the altar of their ideology.

The tragedy is that for hundreds if not thousands of years half the population has had their voice muted and ability to contribute intellectually hamstrung

No one here is disputing that. Your comment is pure whataboutism.

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

#112

Post by scotty79 »

fatbird wrote: post #44
belorn wrote: post #16

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 un…

The problem with sexless-ness is that it only addresses what we're conscious of, when we know that there's lots of unconscious or systemic biases that still exist. One famous example was a study that involved submitting resumes to various jobs with names removed and then randomly reassigned (to avoid any actual correlation between the name's perceived gender and the quality of the resume). Resumes with female names r…

How do you know people who responded to resumes weren't aware that they were discriminating?

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

#113

Post by belorn »

flukus wrote: post #91
_jahh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tragedy is that for hundreds if not thousands of years half the population has had their voice muted and ability to contribute intellectually hamstrung

For hundreds if not thousands of years 90%+ of the population had their voice muted and ability to contribute intellectual hamstrung. It's only the few hundred years that we've had the resources to change this.

90% is an heavily underestimated number, where reality should be closer to 99%. We only need to go back a bit more than 100 years where researchers either was extremely wealthy and supported the work themselves (generally through inheritance), or required a patronage from someone who was wealthy. Going through the list of famous scientists that dates back hundreds if not thousands and the idea that you need to be rich to do intellectual work is a repeating pattern.

Not many people, then or now, can afford at an early age to stop focusing on creating food on the table and roof over their head, and on top of that fund what is generally a rather expensive passion.

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

#114

Post by scotty79 »

mcguire wrote: post #100

" I come from a country and a back ground where intelligence and the ability to work extremely hard is valued highly, with beauty, money and popularity ranked far, far below. " Wait! Where is this fabled land? I would bow humbly before the philosopher-kings who rule it, grovel at their feet to learn how they so wisely manage mere human weaknesses! Surely there the streets are paved with gold and happiness and good fo…

Even developed country that was never exploited, suffered no war damage to their production capacity since the beginning of industrial revolution, basically used WWII to switch their industry to high gear and sucked in half of the world scientists doesn't have streets paved with gold.

Then again it might be just because they think they owe their success to being right about everything, which they are not.

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

#115

Post by scotty79 »

EliRivers wrote: post #108
chewxy wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's Indian. Does lived experience not matter?

Living one life provides one datum. Given a population of 1.3 billion, it seems a small sample.

South India has population of 1.3 billion? Although I'd like to see some statistics too.

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

#116

Post by belorn »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #26

Something I've noticed after 10 years in tech/finance is that there are very, very few western women in engineering roles. I think I've only ever worked with 1 woman who wasn't an Eastern European or Asian immigrant (and yeah, I eventually married one of the immigrant ones). The gender gap is purely cultural, and we should be learning from what those cultures are doing that's different than us. This article really hi…

If we made a poll for boys and girls from the age they learn to speak until 18 years old, and asked to rate 3 statements:

Math is important.

Money and getting a high paying job is important.

Having rich social life and a large family.

What will the gender differences be, and which will have a bigger extreme? Which will see an reinforced difference as the children grows older and into puberty, the time where career directions are usually made? Last, how does the economy of the country in which the children live influence the answers.

Here is a bet: Its all about the second question, for which math correlates to. Culture will influence children to strive for money if there is a risk to not have food on the table, roof over their head, and parents that will go without both at elderly days. This result in gender roles to merge on the subject of being the provider. "math is for boys" is identical to the idea that "beauty parlors are for girls"; inter-gender competition thats are effective strategies when other basic needs are fulfilled. Focusing on inter-gender competition while starving is a poor strategy. A collaborating evidence to that bet would be if women in countries with lower gender segregation in tech has a better chance in escaping poverty through math than marriage. It would then be maladaptive in those places to have stereotypical gender roles where men are the sole providers.

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

#117

Post by austinjp »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #63

On the one hand, I agree. And on the other hand, I wonder how helpful it is to be writing this and posting it to HN instead of writing about some engineering subject and posting that instead. I think we need more women in tech talking about tech and less women in tech talking about the problems with being women in tech and only getting attention of the wrong kind -- for being women in tech. I mean, it's kind of recur…

I feel it's true that we should set our course for a (near) future wherein women in tech writing about tech is the norm. Unfortunately this is likely to take some time.

That means, between now and then, we're going to hear from plenty of die-hards with opposing views.

En route it will be necessary to remind ourselves of the course we should be plotting, and to continue to respond to opposition.

Articles such as this are part of that journey.

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

#118

Post by EliRivers »

scotty79 wrote: post #115
EliRivers wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living one life provides one datum. Given a population of 1.3 billion, it seems a small sample.

South India has population of 1.3 billion? Although I'd like to see some statistics too.

All of India has population 1.3 billion

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

#119

Post by belorn »

fatbird wrote: post #44
belorn wrote: post #16

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 un…

The problem with sexless-ness is that it only addresses what we're conscious of, when we know that there's lots of unconscious or systemic biases that still exist. One famous example was a study that involved submitting resumes to various jobs with names removed and then randomly reassigned (to avoid any actual correlation between the name's perceived gender and the quality of the resume). Resumes with female names r…

Thats not studies on sexless-ness, but rather plain discrimination. There are many such studies, some which favor men and some which favor women, but all falls within typical gender roles and expectations. Sexless-ness and gender roles are opposites.

Lets bring in other similar studies. Physiologist that work for the juridical system and makes decisions about the mental status of accused criminals. Identical submitted profiles with female names received twice the number of judgments on being criminal insane than men, resulting in more lenient punishment and more time in medical care. Physiologist outside of the juridical system has also got similar studies where identical profiles of clinical depressed people, and women are twice as likely to be correctly diagnosed. A female name is more likely to get social support while being homeless, and similarly if you test judges who decide over family disputes you see a clear bias.

Neither of those involve a society which practice sexless-ness. All dictate that professionals (including those in government) treat both women and men equally. Culturally we do not practice sexless-ness and we are nowhere near in abolishing gender roles. What the studies do prove is that gender roles has still a major impact on people in professional positions and rules of equality do not trump peoples expectations when the only clue to a gender is a name.

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

#120

Post by austinjp »

zeep wrote: post #32
programmarchy wrote: post #3

This seems like a good illustration of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Yes, we should make an effort to be inclusive of all individuals, but when that's done by putting people on a pedestal simply because they're a minority, it's superficial, cringy and embarrassing for everyone involved.

When a minority isn't being hired, it is probably hard to prove that it was because of discrimination... that's probably why a minimum is sometime required

I'm not sure why you're getting downvotes. A couple of thoughts:

Phrasing such as "a minority" might be seen as unfavourable.

"A minimum is sometimes required" -- if this is about positive discrimination / affirmative action, this is a potentially controversial and complex topic, as other posts in this thread reveal.

However, I do agree with your point that discrimination in employment can indeed be very hard to prove for individual cases, even though broader statistics may illustrate that it occurs.

Post reply on HN