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This is Not ok

blog.jessitron.com

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91–100 of 165 posts

Re: This is Not ok

#91

Post by arjunnarayan »

Tipzntrix wrote: post #17

I think she forgot Ada Byron when she said there were no important women in computers this millenium. EDIT: No "keynoters, the language designers, the authors of seminal texts" in this millenium. And there was Grace Hopper too. Double edit: Admittedly, anything in 1xxx is technically the "last millenium". My mistake.

Barbara Liskov won the Turing award this decade. Cynthia Dwork won the Djikstra prize this decade. Jennifer Chayes is the head of the new Microsoft Research lab in NYC. They're pretty awesome people, but probably not that highly visible outside academia.

Re: This is Not ok

#92

Post by raganwald »

Meta-question for both men and women. If you were a woman considering a career in IT and you were to read the comments on a thread like this, would you be more likely to join, less likely, or unaffected by reading the thread?

Re: This is Not ok

#93

Post by JasonFruit »

raganwald wrote: post #57
simon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted. It's worse than just females in tech, it's OMG men and women are different! Eeek! I kinda like the difference myself. Not because I don't want women in tech, but because women should be able to pursue whatever they want that makes sense when you consider their differences from men. I assume this makes me a bad person.

Blacks and Whites are different. There's no discrimination, it's just that Blacks are more interested in basketball and driving taxis and making music then getting into Harvard or practising law. We should celebrate these differences instead of trying to tear down barriers that don't exist.

I know you're being sarcastic, but you bring up a point that I wonder about: there's certainly a difference in cultural values that contributes to the racial and gender profile of different occupations. Do we have a responsibility to change those values? Most ways of measuring progress on the problem have the unstated expectation that the difference in values doesn't exist, and you can't meet the measurement goals without eliminating that difference.

Re: This is Not ok

#94

Post by ReadEvalPost »

yason wrote: post #69
Pewpewarrows wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What are the barriers exactly?

The pervading attitude of The heavy use of logic is a masculine trait is a rather good example of at least one barrier. Do you not see how that statement is extremely problematic?

Re: This is Not ok

#95

Post by enraged_camel »

mitjak wrote: post #75
enraged_camel wrote: post #67

People always complain that there aren't enough women in tech fields, yet no one ever complains about there not being enough men in, say, fashion. I've always found this odd.

How many fashion publications and forums do you read a day?

Two. The consensus among fashion industry veterans seems to be that if a guy wants to work in the fashion industry, he must be gay or at least bisexual.

Re: This is Not ok

#96

Post by JasonFruit »

rmc wrote: post #77
sergiotapia wrote: post #6

>That day in the Family Restroom I threw a fit. Hurled my water bottle at the wall and screamed, "This is not OK!" Oh please, calm down. Closed the tab.

You're using the "Tone Argument" derailing technique: http://www.derailingfordummies.com/complete.html#angry Try to see what she's angry about first. Sometimes people are angry at what they think are gross injustices. Maybe she has a point.

Sometimes inappropriate tone can turn people off of a discussion. That's one of the perks of reading; if you don't care to be shouted at, you can stop reading. Presenting what you think in a way that makes people want to keep reading is important, and failing to do that lost her a reader.

Re: This is Not ok

#97

Post by ljf »

nuttendorfer wrote: post #84

If she would have just used the "new" men's room nobody would have cared and she wouldn't have had to write this blog post. People do this all the time if one room is full.

I'm guessing you didn't read the article? It wasn't about the queue (or lack of) it was about the lack of women at these events.

Re: This is Not ok

#98

Post by verroq »

ZoFreX wrote: post #33
verroq wrote: post #3

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.

I don't want to get more women into programming. I want to end the endemic and prolific discrimination against women in programming. The lack is a symptom. I also find it very weird that an entire industry went from being female dominated to male dominated and everyone defends it saying "it's always been this way! Equality isn't about enforcing even ratios!" Well no, it's not, but when you have these situations, wher…

As others have said, it's very hard to discriminate against women since it's is mostly based on problem solving/programming skill. But that is not to say there isn't a general air chauvinism and/or objectification in the tech industry.

I agree that getting more women into tech is a solution, but this always operates under the assumption that women actually want to be in tech.

Re: This is Not ok

#99

Post by verroq »

ReadEvalPost wrote: post #94
yason wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What are the barriers exactly? The pervading attitude of The heavy use of logic is a masculine trait is a rather good example of at least one barrier. Do you not see how that statement is extremely problematic?

What he is saying is that although that's the assumption, programming ability can be quantified such that the assumption becomes irrelevant.

Re: This is Not ok

#100

Post by bryanlarsen »

yason wrote: post #69
Pewpewarrows wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It appears that the traditional male superiority in logic and math can be traced almost completely to two things:

- the tendency of people to assume that boys are better at math, encouraging boys and discouraging girls

- the tendency for people to encourage young boys to play with spatial & logic toys such as Lego and for girls to play with dolls

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