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My positive experience as a woman in tech

lea.verou.me

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Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#281

Post by leaverou »

kazinator wrote: post #257
Balgair wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, what does flexible working hours, personal development opportunities and workforce diversity mean in practice? The faults are hard measurable things, but the solutions are more fuzzy and not as easy to measure. When you measure flexible hours, what is your metric for saying that someone has that? When you say dev opportunities, how do I know if I have given my employees enough of them and of what quality? What d…

Probably this has to be just be looked as simply avoiding being bad. To avoid being bad, you don't have to overcompensate; that just creates reverse biases. Just don't have a bias: for instance, don't make a decision because someone is a woman, or Asian or whatever. Any decision: hiring, awarding a raise or promotion, etc. A discriminatory bias cannot be measured by simple proportions, like how many women work at Com…

“Just don’t have a bias”. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. The problem is that it’s very hard to know when biases are affecting your decisions. You cannot just decide to not have them. Agreed though that fighting bias with bias is not a solution. What is the solution then? I don’t know. :(

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#282

Post by sokoloff »

eric-hu wrote: post #166
userium wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on discussions we have had with women in tech at https://keepwomen.com , it's not just sexism, but many women leave tech due to working conditions (low salary, no advancement), work-life balance (too much travelling, commuting), or the company environment (poor cultural "fit"). Some solutions for retaining women in tech are e.g. flexible working hours, personal development opportunities and workforce diversity.

Those are the same reasons I've heard for why we have a young age distribution in tech relative to the age distribution of the general population. Poor industry retention seems to be a problem across the board.

How much of the industry retention problem is that the high pay scale allows for early retirement or early semi-retirement for many?

I'm in my mid-40s and could retire today if I wanted to. I don't because I really enjoy the challenge and stimulation of my work, but I could.

To the extent that's the root cause of low industry retention, I'd consider it a feature not a bug.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#283

Post by leaverou »

oldmanjay wrote: post #207
kelukelugames wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think it's okay to make dick jokes in the workplace?

What about the concept of a penis is offensive exactly? No one has ever been able to give me a reason that doesn't devolve into a repetition of "you just don't talk about that" and I'm not prepared to care about that.

THIS. There is nothing wrong with dick jokes. The only sexist thing about them is the imbalance: We need more vulva jokes too :)

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#284

Post by Qworg »

dragonwriter wrote: post #244
ManFromUranus wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does nobody make this argument about Nursing, or Teaching, or Social Work, or Psychology, or any of the "Female dominated" fields? When men don't go into a field, they find a way to blame men for it, when women don't go into a field, they find a way to blame men for it. Don't women have any agency? Are they dumb robots that only do what men tell them? Maybe they don't WANT to be in STEM fields...

> Why does nobody make this argument about Nursing, or Teaching, or Social Work, or Psychology, or any of the "Female dominated" fields? People make this argument about female dominated fields (particularly education and nursing, which are, or have been, areas of perceived shortages) all the time; they probably don't make it as often in tech industry focused discussion fora , for reasons of lack of relevance to the v…

Another issue with this argument is that all of those fields are considerable less well remunerated than technology.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#285

Post by gone35 »

douche wrote: post #173
SCHiM wrote: post #110

Keep in mind that the situation she recalls, the one with the guy that apologizes to her for cussing, is perhaps not the sort of sexism you would want to try and get rid of. The way I see it, this coming from a early 20s male (read, shall we say, constantly aware of the opposing sex), is that that attempt to be polite to a woman has nothing to do with her being a woman in tech, but simply being a woman in a social si…

Women really, really, don't want to be treated the way men treat each other when they get together without external sources of censure. Trust me on that.

Trust me on that.

Nah, you need much better evidence than that --esp. for such a sweeping claim.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#286

Post by alashley »

kaitai wrote: post #238
humanrebar wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're jumping to some conclusions there. Most "creepy" men are socially awkward and can't do anything about it, or at least they haven't been able to do anything about it yet. To villainize them out of hand isn't helpful either. Some of them undoubtedly have social disorders, so coming down on them seems unfair as well. Maybe there are some people that are creepy on purpose , but I suspect that is a very sma…

I have to say, I've met a number of socially awkward guys who flirt in a cute way, and a number of socially smooth guys who are super creepy. And some people are creepy on purpose -- negging, pushing boundaries, looking for the weak one in the herd or the woman who can't say no because of her own internal algorithms. They are often not socially awkward, either. I think Captain Awkward and Dr. Nerdlove have done some…

I get the sentiment of the thoughtcatalog link you posted, but aren't those exchanges either an extension of people taking advantage of either the relative anonymity provided by the internet/social media or private text conversations where no one else will likely ever read the messages?

I have never seen a guy get turned down by a woman in the real world and disparage her in such a way. Not at the bar, not anywhere else. The exchange is often over as quickly as it started. Any guy who responds to rejection in such a way and using such mediums of communication is spineless. I've come to see the terms "b---h" and "a--hole" in a dating context as words people use to describe others who won't give them the time of day.

At any rate, I think with dating today, people who are uninterested tend to just cut off all contact. It sucks to have somebody just ignore you, but they if they weren't an absolute "yes" to dating you or going on a date, then what's the point?

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#287

Post by lifeisstillgood »

meowface wrote: post #53
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidence of an employment ratio difference, or even a wage gap (without careful controlling of as many variables as possible), is not necessarily evidence of sexism. Yeah it is. Hear hooves, think horses, don't try too hard to eliminate zebras. EDIT: I am one the many reasons women don't like working (in tech). Friends of mine are at work, overly enthusiastic when engaging with female colleagues - nothing overt, noth…

>Yeah it is. Hear hooves, think horses, don't try too hard to eliminate zebras. Not sure what you're trying to say there. No studies have empirically gotten at the root causes of the gender gap. Sure, sexism probably accounts for some percentage of women deciding not to choose such a profession, but there's no evidence to think it's a predominant role. Sounds like you may be projecting your own attitude towards women…

this is the point I am making - you want proof you are part of the problem before believing there is a problem.

We are so ingrained in this it's hard to think our way out.

The scientific approach here would be to record our words and tonality when dealing with all our co-workers and look for patterns. Anecdotes from blog posts are not going to cut it. This is something really deep in biology and society.

Good luck

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#288

Post by sokoloff »

kaitai wrote: post #241
humanrebar wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...assuming something about somebody based purely on their gender is precisely what sexism is. I'm going to challenge that definition. There are absolutely biological difference between men and women. When I offer to help a young woman carry her suitcase up stairs, am I being sexist because I assume she would appreciate the help? The definition of sexism needs to have room for some reality or the definition is usel…

Well, think about whether you'd help a young man or leave him in the lurch, and think about whether you'd help if the woman in question is 6'1" and 190 pounds of muscle, handling the suitcase quite easily. Agreed that the definition needs to have some room for reality.

It may be a little old-school (which itself might be code for something else nefarious), but I will almost always stop for a woman [or the elderly] with a broken down car or flat tire on the side of the road (and have often doubled back from an exit a few miles down the road, then past the exit behind me, then returned if I couldn't safely stop as I initially passed). I will virtually never stop for a male in the same situation. (I have done so only when it's been dangerously cold out and in a fairly rural area.)

It comes up a couple times per year; more than half end in "I'm OK, AAA is on the way", the next most common is me changing a tire for them, and the rarest of all (nowadays) is them borrowing my phone to call for help.

If that's sexism, it's a type of sexism that I have no intention of stopping nor apologizing for.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#289

Post by oldmanjay »

theinternetman wrote: post #209
SuperComputing wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the "sexism" debate was stirred by people who were only tangentially involved in Tech, like the PR person "Adria Richards". If you listen to actual women with actual Math, CS, or EE degrees, you'll hear a different story.

Way to downplay their contributions in tech just because they work in a department you don't deem as important.

There is a very basic dynamic at play here. Take away every department outside of engineering and you still have the chance to actually make technology. Take away engineering and you have literally nothing. The contributions don't need to be downplayed. Logic demonstrates the hierarchy of importance rather plainly.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#290

Post by jkot »

venomsnake wrote: post #163
jkot wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor and oppressive countries (India, Ukraine, Saudi...) typically have more women in tech compared to western countries. There are not that many job options, and IT is often only reasonable option to get western salary.

I am not quite sure why you lump Ukraine with the others.

It should be probably 'poor or...'.

I was at Ukraine a few times. Tech is one of a few ways to make good money there.

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