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To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

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Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#81

Post by tommorris »

jmnicolas wrote: post #17
notastartup wrote: post #7

To the Boys of HackerNews: I am a Male Founder who Codes but no one cares because there's too many of us and that makes us not at all interesting. Have women have ever been robbed of being able to code like voting? Why does it receive so much attention? What adversity did they need to overcome to be where they are? Is it physical like someone who suffers from carpal tunnel syndrome or glaucoma overcoming their disabi…

Yes exactly. I'm a bit fed up with people advocating more women in . As far as I can tell these same people don't complain that teachers and nurses jobs are mainly occupied by women. Everybody seem to agree that a nursing job is not attractive for most men. Maybe the reason that women are few in tech is because these professions are not attractive to them.

I was doing a Ph.D to become a lecturer, which is technically a teacher. Have you seen the pay for teachers and lecturers? I'm making more in my first year of tech contracting than a mid-career academic or teacher would make in salary.

I've got a male friend working in nursing. I admire his dedication to caring for people, but there's no way I'd switch places. I get to write Python all day, he gets to clean up other people's bodily fluids for a dismal salary. We both think we've got the better deal in life because he gets to care for people while I just write dull programmes for computers to make some business more financially successful, and that's got no grand overriding meaning unless you are a hardcore capitalist Ayn Rand type.

Why is nursing not attractive to men? Because men don't care about people? Absolutely not. How about: because of low pay and because gender roles dictate that it's not a "manly" thing to do? Indeed, the friend who works in nursing is a campy and effeminate gay man. Which matches the stereotype.

The reasons men and women go into particular jobs isn't set in stone. There's no gene that turns one person into a programmer and another into a nurse. It's social conditioning, it's stereotypical gender roles, it's educational opportunities, it's pay and benefits - it's a whole bunch of shit we can change.

If a woman wants to go into computing, she should be able to without having to deal with stupid nerds-as-the-new-frat-boys brogrammer bullshit, and if guys want to go into nursing, they should be able to do so with their heads held high and without anyone questioning their masculinity or making assumptions about their sexuality. Blowing up society's gender roles and expectations is key to this.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#82

Post by _bfhp »

shangxiao wrote: post #30
smtddr wrote: post #19

To the author of this blog and all ladies reading this: I'm sorry, but just like stories around racial diversity in tech you're about to see a bunch of HN comments making _EVERY EXCUSE CONCEIVABLE_ , and then some, to dismiss your concerns and/or say this blog is doing damage instead of helping. I think they're all wrong, but I can't argue against all of them. All I can do is upvote your supporters and downvote the d…

Your condescending attitude just makes you sound like a tool, not a hero

OP was the one calling out condescending people, actually

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#84

Post by DanBC »

hueving wrote: post #62
smtddr wrote: post #19

To the author of this blog and all ladies reading this: I'm sorry, but just like stories around racial diversity in tech you're about to see a bunch of HN comments making _EVERY EXCUSE CONCEIVABLE_ , and then some, to dismiss your concerns and/or say this blog is doing damage instead of helping. I think they're all wrong, but I can't argue against all of them. All I can do is upvote your supporters and downvote the d…

Way to throw out the righteous indignation before anything actually happened. That doesn't add to the conversation at all and, if anything, just invites problems.

It did have a horrible tone but we know it's true. There are some deeply unpleasant people on HN who are happy to spew some really vile opinions.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#85

Post by jacobtracey »

pyrocat wrote: post #75
animus9 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually most men who program are just interested in it. Same with the ladies. Discussing gender is irrelevant to this forum. This new age jargon will have a short shelf life once the truth gets out. Those who sow seeds of discord will soon have to reap their crops.

So how's your militant MRA cult going?

What?

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#86

Post by primitivesuave »

obstacle1 wrote: post #53
primitivesuave wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never consider a female coder to be any different from a male one. I am merely giving anecdotal evidence that female students of the 11 - 17 age group learn significantly better when they are amongst their peers. My decision to make a few of our classes into girls-only ones was to allow the girls who felt uncomfortable in a male-dominated setting to still have an opportunity to learn in a setting they found c…

>I would never consider a female coder to be any different from a male one You literally segregated males from females in your coding class. That is considering them to be different. >female students of the 11 - 17 age group learn significantly better when they are amongst their peers. So male students aren't peers of female students? Really? I'm pretty sure you're not being purposefully malicious, but jeeze... Your…

I understand that from an idealistic perspective what I'm doing can be regarded as malicious or sexist, but I'd like to point out two very important things: 1. there is no requirement for girls to only attend the all-girls classes. 2. this is not my philosophy, this is a data-driven decision that has nothing to do with my perception of the abilities of males or females. The all-girls classes were a result of us seeing a significant drop in the percentage of girls enrolled in a programming class.

It was a management decision that many of the parents in our community appreciated, and quite frankly I'm a bit shocked by how quickly people on HN jump to the conclusion that I'm some kind of misogynist.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#87

Post by DanBC »

romanovcode wrote: post #58
jmnicolas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes exactly. I'm a bit fed up with people advocating more women in . As far as I can tell these same people don't complain that teachers and nurses jobs are mainly occupied by women. Everybody seem to agree that a nursing job is not attractive for most men. Maybe the reason that women are few in tech is because these professions are not attractive to them.

Never in my life I've seen an article named I'm teacher and I'm a male! ; Life as a male nurse ; etc .. I think these articles are mainly link-bait for pageviews, nothing more.

Do you hang out on teaching or nursing forums?

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#88

Post by _bfhp »

MichaelGG wrote: post #67
primitivesuave wrote: post #9

I run a private education organization that teaches kids how to code at a physical facility, and we get a gender breakup of male and female students that is similar to that of the industry (around 80 - 20). Because of the overwhelming male presence, it is difficult to make a comfortable learning environment for the female students, who may often feel uncomfortable, at odds with, or ostracized by pseudo-masculine effo…

How about just being harsh on "psuedo-masculine efforts"? Just like if you had mostly white kids and they made the black kids "feel uncomfortable" by "awkward" kids, the answer is to meet the stupid jokes and what not with sincerity and make them realise how absurd the behaviour is. Just like in other co-ed classes if boys make whatever jokes, it gets slapped down. Separating things sounds like it'd just make the mal…

I agree -- kids receive all kinds of messages about how girls and boys should act, from the media, their parents, and their peers, and a lot of it is just plain toxic and manifest in masculinity-affirming posturing and violence. It's essential to look at these things if we really want "equality".

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#89

Post by kamaal »

aortega wrote: post #78
kamaal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not about programming. Or anything to do with the profession. Its has much to do with the culture. In my first project near impossible work conditions and deadlines were placed on us. Most of us had to make extreme sacrifices(health wise, socially and in many aspects)- The other option was being out of the job. The problem is you need a supporting family. Here in India, its difficult for women at least socially a…

It's very simple for me: From 20s to 30s most women are having babies, because it's the only time on their lives when they can do it safely. They can go startuping later. Male coders on their 20s are mostly coding and brofounding because they don't have a better thing to do. IMHO It's even not such a good idea to go having babies at this age for a male because you are mostly broke all the time and you are still a tee…

Please note there are age related discrimination problems in our area of work. And frankly speaking when you talk of management you are talking of glorified desk supervisors and when you talk of architects you are talking of UML-drawing clueless people in semi-managerial roles.

Almost anything that requires solving hard engineering problems like scalability, quality you will again get back long hour working engineering culture.

The competition is fierce from younger people. Also the level of learning you are required to do to just 'catch-up' with existing trends in technology in simply too much.

In all the problems look very similar to that in other branches of engineering too. Mechanical engineering for that matter sees too little enrollment from girls, same with civil engineering.

Re: To the Girls of HackerNews: I am a Female Founder who Codes

#90

Post by primitivesuave »

kamaal wrote: post #36
primitivesuave wrote: post #9

I run a private education organization that teaches kids how to code at a physical facility, and we get a gender breakup of male and female students that is similar to that of the industry (around 80 - 20). Because of the overwhelming male presence, it is difficult to make a comfortable learning environment for the female students, who may often feel uncomfortable, at odds with, or ostracized by pseudo-masculine effo…

>>Our solution was to simply make a small set of our classes for girls only. Your solution will make the problem worse. Because nothing will really change in the way boys work, and you will see the same late night, whole night, full weekend culture among them. Girl's classes will see a far little attendance totally detached from culture in the other part of world. Soon the rewards will dry out and move towards crazy…

I think you missed the description of my organization - we're not doing professional development. We're training kids on how to better access technology, and quite frankly people on HN don't really understand what our atmosphere is like. Girls and the parents of girls really appreciate our all-girls classes and events, they have excellent attendance and the girls really come together as a community.

I honestly couldn't care less about idealistic principles when the all-girls classes have been working great for us and have boosted the number of enrolled female students.

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