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The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer

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Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer

#91

Post by binarysoul »

rdrimmie wrote: post #58
charlesju wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or worse, 90%+ of elementary school teachers are woman.

I absolutely think it's a problem that the vast majority of elementary school teachers are women. I don't think it's inherently terrible to have fields that are dominated by one gender or another but I do think that in the case of school teachers men are being pushed away by social forces and it's detrimental to all children to be taught only by women.

I'm interested to know why you think this is a problem?

I, for one, didn't become a teacher because the pay is terrible, I make more annually my first year out of school (programmer) than most highschool teachers make anually.

It had nothing to do with gender, more to do with money.

Also, my mom is a highly advanced math teacher (teaches AP courses, grades AP tests etc), so I think she provides a good rolemodel for women and men who want to be good at math.

Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer

#92

Post by FeministHacker »

khafra wrote: post #84
yummyfajitas wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which fields is #1 true for? Regardless, I'll assume you are right. Points 1-3 are irrelevant for the conversation we are having here (about women in tech), so I'll keep reading. 4) is a matter of whether you personally adopt a collectivist viewpoint or not. If women disproportionately adopt collectivist viewpoints, why is that anyone's fault besides their own? 5) is probably on point. 6) may be true in general, but…

On 14, the failure mode is called "not carving reality at the joints." Because .00001% of men wield large amounts of political power, whereas even fewer women (at least, visibly) do so, political power is a male privilege. There are certainly reference classes for "likely to wield political power" that change the likelihood ratio by far more than "male."

You're missing the point.

The issue is not the raw numbers, but the pychological problem - that people like you are not in power, or not as equally holding power. That you are not of the type of people who have power.

And yes, there are other privileges, like White privilege, middle/upper-class privilege, straight privilege, cis privilege, not-abused privilege, and so on. These intersect to cause more issues again.

Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer

#93

Post by khafra »

FeministHacker wrote: post #92
khafra wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On 14, the failure mode is called "not carving reality at the joints." Because .00001% of men wield large amounts of political power, whereas even fewer women (at least, visibly) do so, political power is a male privilege. There are certainly reference classes for "likely to wield political power" that change the likelihood ratio by far more than "male."

You're missing the point. The issue is not the raw numbers, but the pychological problem - that people like you are not in power, or not as equally holding power. That you are not of the type of people who have power. And yes, there are other privileges, like White privilege, middle/upper-class privilege, straight privilege, cis privilege, not-abused privilege, and so on. These intersect to cause more issues again.

The assertion that people in privileged positions can never see their own privilege is refutation-proof; but when you start creating negative categories like "not-abused" to privilege, it's hard to claim with a straight face that anybody except the people actually in power are all that privileged.

Unless, of course, you're privileging gender privilege far above other types of privilege.

...and I just hit semantic satiation.

Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer

#94

Post by yummyfajitas »

bane wrote: post #72

Until recently, I've found that claims of sexism in software were strange (I'll share a story below to explain). If anything, I've generally found that men tend to be thrilled at having women working with them, and not for the seedy sort of ways that might be expected. Most of the male software engineers I've known honestly wonder why their field has so few women in it -- known that women are full and well as smart a…

Honestly, your story sounds like a typical corporate power struggle which happened to affect a department which was (by some fluke) full of women.

If you read about HP under Fiorina, you hear a similar story. Techies were pushed aside and replaced by Fiorina's cronies (mostly marketers), and the company suffered horribly. Such stories don't always end in disaster - a certain investment bank recently brought on a new IT chief who is well known for destroying a broken department and rebuilding a highly efficient one in it's place.

The process also involves firing many managers and replacing them with people loyal to him, pushing out lots of insiders, huge numbers of formerly comfortable people quitting in disgust, etc.

The only unusual element in your story ("her staff placed under new male supervisors") sounds like reversion to the mean - as you noted, "in another technical department there were none [women]". Perhaps there are other elements to the story that you haven't mentioned, but your description just sounds like normal corporate politics.

Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer

#95

Post by khafra »

jarin wrote: post #87
JanezStupar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I confirm this experience and the anecdotal evidence I gathered is quite similar. Edit: Almost forgot - I also had a female boss I would work for in a beat. I must mention that she was more of a tomboy - but still what a woman: pragmatic, ambitious, decisive, tough but fair. All the general qualities one would expect from a man, but with added softness of female persuasion and communication skills.

It's funny how good female bosses are often described as "tomboyish". I'm starting to think "tomboy" is just a synonym for "assertive but likeable woman"

I always thought "tomboyish" meant "willing to climb a tree," with possible overtones of "hair shorter than shoulder length."

Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer

#96

Post by yummyfajitas »

FeministHacker wrote: post #92
khafra wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On 14, the failure mode is called "not carving reality at the joints." Because .00001% of men wield large amounts of political power, whereas even fewer women (at least, visibly) do so, political power is a male privilege. There are certainly reference classes for "likely to wield political power" that change the likelihood ratio by far more than "male."

You're missing the point. The issue is not the raw numbers, but the pychological problem - that people like you are not in power, or not as equally holding power. That you are not of the type of people who have power. And yes, there are other privileges, like White privilege, middle/upper-class privilege, straight privilege, cis privilege, not-abused privilege, and so on. These intersect to cause more issues again.

You are missing the point. You are choosing to slice reality at the joint of gender, assuming that people with breasts are "like you" but people without are "different". Of course, in a discussion of political power, this is not a very useful way to slice. Male predicts very little. Insider status (e.g., child of politician) predicts a lot more.

You are also implicitly assuming that the category of "like you" matters at all. But that's a choice you are making. I can choose to view Peter Thiel as "not like me" because he is gay. I can also choose to view him as being "like me" because I aspire to be awesome in the same ways that he is.

If women are less likely to make this choice, that's not privilege. That's simply the choices of individuals holding them back.

Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer

#97

Post by selenamarie »

edanm wrote: post #21

"You also get the added bonus of seeing people's confused reactions when they ask you if you're in marketing, and you tell them that you are a developer." This sentence really surprised me. How often does this happen? Female engineers are a minority, but I wouldn't have imagined it would be that big a deal to run into a female engineer.

Happens mostly at conferences for me, sometimes at networking events. Especially if I'm at an open source software booth. I don't look like "a hacker", so prevailing stereotypes apply. Last year it happened at least once at each of 3 conferences I attended and staffed a booth at last year.

Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer

#98

Post by sarajo »

yuvadam wrote: post #20

Sorry, I can't hear about gender in engineering jobs anymore. The likelihood that you will see a blog post about the "benefits of being a male software engineer" is exactly the same as the likelihood to see a blog post about the "benefits of being a male social worker". We do not need to artificially try to bring in more engineers of a certain gender just because the numbers don't make sense. And we do not need more…

The internet is the largest record of human history in existence. If you don't see the problem with it being created and curated by white and asian males the issue lies with you.

Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer

#99

Post by bryanlarsen »

FeministHacker wrote: post #73
bryanlarsen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm concerned this is a problem worse than the "no female engineers" problem. Little boys need role models and examples to grow into men. Even those with a good dad need them. And I bet that other teachers appreciate there being a man around, just as I have found that a workplace that includes women engineers is a much nicer place to work than one that doesn't.

It's not worse. It's not better. It's a different aspect of the same issue. We only really develop a proper understanding of gender around the age of 7, but influences before then set up the mindstates to come, and help to drill everyone (including parents and teachers) in appropriate gender roles. Kids see male doctors and female nurses. They have female teachers at school. When shopping for toys, the girls get pink…

But it's more than that. There are lots of boys out there that never interact with men. There are lots of boys who become convinced that school is for girls and who tune out and subsequently become shut out of the entire modern economy, not just segments of it.

Re: The Benefits of Being a Female Software Engineer

#100

Post by vinbrown2 »

sarajo wrote: post #98
yuvadam wrote: post #20

Sorry, I can't hear about gender in engineering jobs anymore. The likelihood that you will see a blog post about the "benefits of being a male software engineer" is exactly the same as the likelihood to see a blog post about the "benefits of being a male social worker". We do not need to artificially try to bring in more engineers of a certain gender just because the numbers don't make sense. And we do not need more…

The internet is the largest record of human history in existence. If you don't see the problem with it being created and curated by white and asian males the issue lies with you.

I'll offer this. At what time was any recorded account of history not skewed by some prevailing perspective?
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