Ever since I've started seeing outright discrimination against males in tech, I've adjusted by always answering prefer not to say / other.
Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?
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Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?
#72> HN does not specifically ask for gender in the profile (which is a good thing, IMO, since it's not necessary for the discussions) Agree. > Maybe we are in for a pleasant surprise in terms of demographics How can any such result be pleasant or unpleasant?
Pleasant in the sense that I'd love to see some myths about this being a 'man-only' site dispelled. Should have clarified that!
"this site just has too many blacks on it"
see how that's problematic?
Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?
#73Ever since I've started seeing outright discrimination against males in tech, I've adjusted by always answering prefer not to say / other.
> outright discrimination against males in tech
I'm sure you've seen some things here and there, but truly, saying "discrimination against males in tech" is a problem is quite ridiculous.
Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?
#74If you haven't already, check out StackOverflow's Developer Survey. The historical data goes back to 2015. Strangely, it looks like the 2023 StackOverflow survey opted not to collect gender among their demographics responses. IIRC, the breakdown is approximately 90% male, 5% female, 1-2% non-binary, 1-2% prefer not to answer or prefer writing their own response. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/
Thanks, will do! It is not relevant for the discussions as such, but still an interesting aspect of HN to study, IMO.
Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?
#75Notes on survey bias. HN community is international and from [1] it is around 3.5M monthly unique users. A representative sample would need to be stratified since it is unlikely that — for example — the proportion of female readers will be the same across countries. The poll would need to run for a long time since the daily and monthly unique figures are different by order of magnitude. Further, there are many times…
I agree that this will be biased and I don't think this should be used for any serious type of survey. I was literally just interested in the results. :-)
Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pleasant in the sense that I'd love to see some myths about this being a 'man-only' site dispelled. Should have clarified that!
"this site just has too many blacks on it" see how that's problematic?
Fully agree with you there! As I said, I'm merely interested in getting a rough picture of the demographics (INB4: selection bias etc.). I find the statement you mention just as problematic as if you were to switch out the ethnic identity with _any_ form (self-identified) identity. That being said, I don't see anything problematic about looking at population demographics and then asking _why_ some identities are over- or under-represented. This poll should not be used for that, though :-)
Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pleasant in the sense that I'd love to see some myths about this being a 'man-only' site dispelled. Should have clarified that!
why do you use the term 'myth' ?
Maybe 'assumption' would have been the better choice. Given that HN is (for me!) broadly about playfully engaging with technology and society at large, I would expect that this _should_ attract a relatively diverse audience.
Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
This helps explain to me why, when there is a thread about a woman being mistreated in the workplace, there’s just loads and loads of comments dismissing the concerns and saying she’s overreacting. Quite unfortunately that’s exactly the reaction that leads to those problems persisting.
I have no idea how this helps explain that to you.
I’ve spent enough time at places like google and spoken to other women about how they are treated by men in those workplaces to understand why I’m seeing the exact same behavior from most users here. Men in our culture are more trusting of other men and more dismissive of claims made by women, in my experience. When I see an article about a woman who was mistreated by men in her workplace and her claims were dismissed by other men, and then I see threads here filled with men dismissing her claims, everything falls in to place when I see that this place is 95% men. There just aren’t enough women’s voices here to explain what’s really happening, and the men here demographically are the same men that contribute to these problems in the workplace.
Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no idea how this helps explain that to you.
i think he's pointing out how a male-dominated culture would respond with mansplaining about one's responsibility to adapt to the workplace, where a woman-dominated culture might focus more on the emotional toll of such failing to adapt edit: on second thought, your comment might be snarking about how a poll is unnecessary to assume that this is a male-dominated space, making me the fool
Well first off I’m a woman. But I wasn’t talking about women focusing on “the emotional toll of failing to adapt”. I’m talking about the fact that in our culture men are more likely to trust other men than women, and more likely to dismiss the claims made by women. This directly leads to discrimination against women in the workplace. The specific ways this happen can often seem subtle from the outside, but the persistence and prevalence of this is clearly felt by women in tech. There is nothing women can do to adapt to the fact that men won’t listen to them, men need to change their behavior. Women who try to adapt by being more assertive can be labeled as aggressive and will be dismissed all the same.
Then when women make claims about discrimination in the workplace in a manner which finds its way to this website, the same men who would have dismissed them in the workplace will dismiss their claims of discrimination in comments here. This leads to an echo chamber of men saying to each other that discrimination against women isn’t happening, when in reality they just don’t see it from their position.
Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?
#80Ever since I've started seeing outright discrimination against males in tech, I've adjusted by always answering prefer not to say / other.
> outright discrimination against males in tech I'm sure you've seen some things here and there, but truly, saying "discrimination against males in tech" is a problem is quite ridiculous.
It's vastly male dominated, so you could argue that if there's discrimination against men it's not very effective. Probably there's discrimination for and against women, and for and against men, in all sorts of ways.
But I'd bet that discrimination against hiring men into a tech position is probably the norm.