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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.

#41

Post by theorique »

Jun8 wrote: post #20

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…

This kind of crap is at least part of the reason why there are relatively few women in tech. Yeah, some of them are natural pitbulls who will power through every obstacle. They aren't fazed by this kind of stuff.

But then there's the quiet majority who could go either way - this kind of thing says "Working in technology isn't for you. You're not welcome here".

Not really the message we want to send to people we'd like to attract into coding as a profession / hobby.

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

#42

Post by Cushman »

funkah wrote: post #18

Guy in a polo shirt talking about "chicks": Garden-variety moron. Guy in a C++ shirt talking about "chicks": Representative of the RAMPANT MISOGYNY in our industry.

Well, yeah. Duh.

Does it make sense if you replace "C++ shirt" with "military uniform"?

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

#43

Post by Jun8 »

RegEx wrote: post #28
Jun8 wrote: post #20

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…

> 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. Interesting perspective. Could you please elaborate?

Sure: Let's focus on the women in tech problem, leaving aside minorities, which has also been previously discussed on HN (e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3169475). This was discussed many times on HN in the context of sexist language, booth babes in conferences, etc.

My thoughts on the subject are:

1) There is a gender imbalance in the tech community, regardless of how you slice it (e.g. founders, developers, etc.).

2) Many people when faced with what they perceive to be sexist language, take it to be a political statement rather than the idiotic flyer (as in this case) or the casual blog comment(e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3602762, which caused a firestorm on HN) that it is.

3) Don't get me wrong: I'm against crude use of sexisms such as this one, GoDaddy commercials, photos of women in bikinis on Rails conference slides, booth babes. The point is that these offend not only my anti-sexist sensibilities but also my intelligence, so even if I were sexist I would still be offended by these and ask for their removal, on the grounds that they show that the mental model of me that the people responsible have is a brainless, easy to manipulate moron.

4) However, thinking that eradicating the above will lead to considerably more women in tech, I think, is mistaken. I believe addressing the issues that are less obvious but more influential in consciously or subconsciously turning off women is more important, e.g. rather than getting worked up when somebody uses the word girl in a post, thinking about the "cool" but male-oriented terms like code ninja that are prevalent in job postings (e.g. all of the 10 types of programmers mentioned here are all male oriented: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10things/10-types-of-progra...).

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

#44

Post by chernevik »

So, one, whoever wrote this is an idiot.

Given the free and easy style of the startup eco-verse, it's pretty hard to say exactly what this does or doesn't say about whoever / whatever was behind the event. Maybe the President approved this. Maybe an intern slapped it up. Maybe the VP of Marketing submitted the wrong copy by accident. Want to know why Big Corporate has so much bureaucracy? This is why.

But they didn't fix it immediately! Yeah, or perhaps the responsible parties were meeting with investors or home sick or some such.

Things move fast on the intertubes but maybe giving management an evening to 1) realize something's wrong and 2) fix it would provide a better signal of who is and isn't completely out of their minds.

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

#45

Post by thisduck »

[deleted] wrote: post #40
thisduck wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why would putting women in an ad be any different? I mentioned Indian because I am of that descent, but that your mind jumped to "illegal" is something you need to examine about yourself. I think this is probably somehow connected to why you can't understand using women for this purpose in this advert is not appropriate.

[deleted]

Okay, maybe I jumped the gun a bit.

I'm not sure why you're repeating the "that's all women can do" part. I don't think that's the specific complaint.

Perhaps you can tell me why having women on the list of things, bolded no less, is a selling point? Why is it relevant? And to whom?

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

#46

Post by ugh »

rjdagost wrote: post #35

While I don't condone the choice of words used in the ad I am underwhelmed at the "offensive" content. If you are offended by this you need to get some thicker skin.

It’s blatant sexism and misogyny. That is always offensive. I’m not sure why you don’t seem to have a problem with sexism and misogyny. That’s all being offended means: I have a problem with you saying stuff like that. That seems reasonable enough to me.

No, whoever is offended by this is exactly right. They do not need a thicker skin.

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

#47

Post by ugh »

chernevik wrote: post #44

So, one, whoever wrote this is an idiot. Given the free and easy style of the startup eco-verse, it's pretty hard to say exactly what this does or doesn't say about whoever / whatever was behind the event. Maybe the President approved this. Maybe an intern slapped it up. Maybe the VP of Marketing submitted the wrong copy by accident. Want to know why Big Corporate has so much bureaucracy? This is why. But they didn't…

Sometimes there are no second chances. Sometimes you should get it right the first time. Especially when it comes to something as obvious as this.

Sorry, but this is not some subtle mistake.

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

#48

Post by ismarc »

angersock wrote: post #39
alinajaf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am saddened by the implication here that selling good software that solves problems for everyone should somehow be less lucrative then exploiting cultural norms and stereotypes. I'm not sure I did imply that. I don't think we're particularly good at selling software that solves problems for everyone to women.

Sorry, I'll try to rephrase my question slightly. If the software truly solves problems for everyone, why should we have to pick a marketing strategy that segments the population of potential users (previously stated to be everyone) by sex or gender?

I read their comment as saying that we sell software that solves problems for everyone, but we only sell it well to men. We need to find a way to sell to women as well.

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

#49

Post by [deleted] »

thisduck wrote: post #45
[deleted] wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Okay, maybe I jumped the gun a bit. I'm not sure why you're repeating the "that's all women can do" part. I don't think that's the specific complaint. Perhaps you can tell me why having women on the list of things, bolded no less, is a selling point? Why is it relevant? And to whom?

[deleted]
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