81–90 of 165 posts
> That day in the Family Restroom I threw a fit. Hurled my water bottle at the wall and screamed, "This is not OK!" What? I can understand being frustrated but that reaction doesn't seem constructive at all.
Compare and contrast to the story about John Orwant throwing his mug at a wall at a Perl conference - and single handedly inspiring the start of the Perl 6 project.
But then that's ok. He's a guy.
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The point isn't to have exact same gender ratios in the tech industry. There are women out there who would make great programmers / sysadmins / etc, but never finish the process of becoming one, are dissuaded from ever starting, or flat-out quit the industry after N number of years, simply because of the barriers put in place by men assuming that the field is only for men.
What are the barriers exactly? Programming is about most gender-agnostic industries there are: there's no heavy lifting of anything (except figuratively speaking) and you don't need to deal with that many people so it doesn't basically matter if you're a man, woman, or an alien. It certainly is that programming isn't for everyone, men included, and the current bias seems to signal that significantly more men are inte…
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What sort of barriers? Most of this seems to come down to "Women feel uncomfortable in tech because there are too many men" which of course prevents there from being more Women in tech. It's also possible that some of the pressure comes from other women , not just men. A woman might be considered weird by other women for wanting to hang around in an environment dominated by geeky men. I know tech women who have been…
Example from the article: at a conference, the audience thought the author is a recruiter because she's a woman.
People do this all the time if one room is full.
It is the weekly females in tech industry time again? At the risk of derailing the thread, why do so many people want to get more women into programming? Isn't that just as misguided as trying to get more men into nursing? Just because we strive for gender equality doesn't mean every job has to have exactly the same gender ratios.
There is a huge stereotype that tech is for men. There is a ton of misogyny in the tech sector. The hope is that by bringing women into the tech sector this stereotype ceases to exist. This is important because there are women out there that get interested in tech but society pushes them away because it's not feminine. There is a ton of wasted potential out there.
>There are women out there that get interested in tech but society pushes them away because it's not feminine
I'm not sure if it's societal pressure that is the deciding factor for young women they picking a field of interest.
Everyone who rushed in here to say "calm down, dear" in a patronisingly male tone of voice, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. Stop being sexist.
I'm kind of disappointed by the comments here. Not just by the fact that people couldn't read the entire article before making judgments but more that I would have thought the people of this website would understand why it's important to bring women into tech. Women aren't biologically inclined to not like STEM fields (which I sadly see is a popular sentiment). The reason women don't go into these fields is because o…
That is quite an assertion. Surely you can see that there are many, many more factors than just this one, even if you discount "biological inclination"?
She isn't upset by the fact that the ladies room was relabeled as a mens room, she was frustrated by the fact that she didn't find as many female peers at the conference. She felt encouraged around other women to discuss technology and wants to encourage other women to become excited about the field. I have some insight into this. I'm engaged to a mechanical engineer who works in a largely male dominated industry. To…
Because for every 10 people with no passion who simply want a job, you get one who is incredibly passionate but simply wanted a job. One who didn't realize that hey, this is actually pretty cool stuff, and maybe it's more than just a job, it can be a passion and a career.
I am of course making up the numbers. But discarding someone because they don't care before they've even learned a subject is even sillier than assuming that women don't want to be in tech because they're not interested in tech, rather than simply because they never took to looking into it because of all of the stereotypes (many of them true) about the male dominance of the industry.
I'm kind of disappointed by the comments here. Not just by the fact that people couldn't read the entire article before making judgments but more that I would have thought the people of this website would understand why it's important to bring women into tech. Women aren't biologically inclined to not like STEM fields (which I sadly see is a popular sentiment). The reason women don't go into these fields is because o…
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You can't see why a woman would want to be paid quite handsomely to do work that is mentally challenging, not physically arduous, and -- in many cases -- can have a positive societal effect? So... why do -you- want to work in IT?
Let's compare this to golf, circa 1965. Caving to pressure, a local club opens its memberships to Blacks. One or two tokens with strong business relationships to Whites join, but where are all the other Black businesspeople and professionals? A liberal White member sighs, "I don't understand why the Black people don't want to relax in our luxurious club, play a round on our excellent course, and eat our sumptuous din…
Augusta National isn't remotely comparable to the issue at hand. Its a VERY private, invite only club. There are numerous private clubs of all sorts that only allow men, only women, only blacks, etc. You can't compare a private club to a employment profession.
I don't necessarily agree with Augusta's position but they are a private club, so I just wouldn't join. If you were going to force Augusta to admit everyone then you'd have to go tell the Junior League they have to let men in, head up to the Ladies Golf Club of Toronto and tell them they have to admit male members, etc.
That said, Augusta National has invited black members since ~1990 and two women as of last month, Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore if it tells you anything about the exclusivity of this club.