8 ms·

Women, Tech Conferences and the Bullshit Surrounding It

71 points by gamesbrainiac 11y ago

21echoes 11y ago
that's a very long way to say "I don't understand / like affirmative action"
- otheraccount 11y ago
  It's a rationale for not liking affirmative action, from a female author, recalling the story of someone else selected on merit. Asserting that anyone who understands affirmative action must like it is begging the question.
  - 21echoes 11y ago
    I did not assert that anyone who understands affirmative action must like it. I pointed out that the author did not grapple with any arguments for affirmative action in the entire piece, so it is unclear if they are aware of arguments in support of it. This is, like, writing 101 -- show that you understand the arguments against your position, and dismantle them within the piece.
- traverseda 11y ago
  It's a long way of saying "I don't like affirmative action" because they're explaining why they think affirmative action is bad. >I earned my way onto that list. And here is someone telling me people who didn’t should be added simply so I wasn’t the lone female on it? >In three words? That’s some bullshit. It's only a long way to say it if you're already committed to ignoring their arguments. Because in reality their arguments have a bit more nuance then just "I don't like affirmative action".
  - 21echoes 11y ago
    Frankly, I think they make one and only one point with a lot of different examples that make the same point in basically the exact same way: "as a woman in tech who has succeeded despite roadblocks, I feel like any amount of affirmative action will make others doubt the extent of my achievements". I am not committed to ignoring their arguments -- I used to hold similar positions. Then I talked with people who disagreed with me, grappled with their positions, and changed my mind. The author here shows no semblance of any such depth of thought, just repeated invocations of "if I made it, it must be possible! if we help others who are worse than me, then that lessens my achievement!" At its core, it's a selfish argument[1], which is why I changed my mind. [1]: to be clear, there are quite a few non-personally-selfish arguments against affirmative action. "it'll make others doubt how much better i am than most other women" is not one of them.
tothepixel 11y ago
In my opinion we should judge people solely on the relevance and quality of their presentations at conferences. Why should anything else matter? I think everyone agrees with this for the most part. It's just unfortunate that some people feel the need to supply unequal treatment to certain genders/races by creating quotas.
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  I think a lot of people on HN and reddit agrees with your opinion. We should judge people on quality and merit. Unfortunately, studies have shown the people who claim this tend to be even more biased. See bottom of this page. http://managingbias.fb.com/ http://managingbias.fb.com/ It's kind of like when people say "I don't see race."
  - tothepixel 11y ago
    Interesting, thanks for sharing this. That's an odd duality that I wasn't aware existed.
    - JoshTriplett 11y ago
      It's a problem that many people aren't aware of, and it's a very compelling argument. The eventual goal should absolutely be to completely ignore irrelevant factors (gender, race, etc) when evaluating anything (such as a conference proposal), and evaluate only based on merit; the question is over the best way to get to that point, and there's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that attempting to ignore it right now doesn't actually work. The concept of evaluating exclusively merit is completely sensible. Doing so in practice is not trivial. And there are indeed published studies showing that attempting to do so not only fails but produces more bias.
  - traverseda 11y ago
    That's a bit... ad-hominum. Maybe I'm mis-reading it, but for me it parsed more or less as "I'm not saying you're a racist, but people who say what you're saying are racists...." If that interpretation is wrong, please do correct me. I'd like it if arguments could stand on their own, not be dismissed because someone falls into a particular category. >I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. and all that.
kogir 11y ago
Why aren't conference proposals blind anyway? Seems to have worked for orchestras.
- Domenic_S 11y ago
  Because individual speakers draw crowds; individual orchestra members do not. Could you see Linus Torvalds' speaker application getting denied because it was a blind proposal from "some hothead"? Edit: missed the meaning of "blind".
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    I actually could, if only for the fact that Linus Torvalds strikes quite a nerve in many people. Not that I myself consider him anywhere close to the nastiest hothead in free software.
  - kaitai 11y ago
    If applications were blind they wouldn't have gender & race/ethnicity. That's the point of blind orchestra auditions.
    - Domenic_S 11y ago
      Ha, good point. Edited.
  - danharaj 11y ago
    If it were a blind proposal, you wouldn't know it was from "yet another white male". Individual speakers draw crowds, yes. But conferences are also a way for people to share their ideas and establish their names in the first place. A conference that optimizes for crowd draw is enforcing a preexisting hierarchy to the detriment of the community. A solution is to use the keynote address and invited speakers to draw crowds, while taking blind proposals for most of the actual content. "What is the goal of X?" is a good question to ask in any social endeavor.
    - 11y ago
rootedbox 11y ago
When say you chose people solely on relevance and quality, but you only have men as speakers.. Then it's laughable that your system for choosing speakers isn't biased. Percentages shouldn't be the reason why you hire or don't hire someone but they should be a measure of how much bias is in your system for choosing persons of varying classes. If your percent of xyz participants in the majority class is way higher than the distribution in the possible applicants then there is some sort of class bias(economic, race, socio) in either how you choose applicants, or in how you get applicants.
- tothepixel 11y ago
  Wouldn't this only be true if there was a perfect 50/50 split of qualified speakers based on gender? Percentages can be positioned to show that bias exists only when the input doesn't match the result. It is unknown whether the field of applicants had an "acceptable" amount of diversity to begin with.
  - rootedbox 11y ago
    The percent ratio based on class of participants should be in range of the percent ratio of possible people qualified by class. And as I stated.. The failure of not being near this percent is either because how you chose your participants from applicants or how you chose to get people to be applicants.
    - greenmarantz 11y ago
      > how you chose to get people to be applicants Applicants are self-selecting. Your argument attempts to shift responsibility (and agency) away from speakers and practitioners.
      - rootedbox 11y ago
        I'm not shifting anything. How can one have agency if they don't know that there is an opportunity? i.e. If an opportunity is open to all; but is only presented to one class then you are in general only going to get applicants from the class that you presented the opportunity too.
SandersAK 11y ago
This article is kinda insulting. Panels and conferences suck when they're homogenous. They're banal and uninspiring because the perspectives are all too similar. The reality is that they didn't work hard enough to find good quality presenters that represent the actual world we live and work in - one where people approach problem solving in myriad different ways that stem from their own history and experience. tl;dr - if you can't find women, POC for your conference, you didn't look hard enough.
- okasaki 11y ago
  I would be interested in hearing some examples of problem solving that are based on gender or the color of one's skin.
- tyenl 11y ago
  Does diversity of gender/race equate directly to diversity of content? Painting a conference as uninspiring solely based on what percentage of the panel are $demographic seems wrong. Are you suggesting that white males somehow all produce the same content?
  - calibraxis 11y ago
    Bias favoring white males creates a culture of entitlement. Ever went to these mediocre conferences with mediocre talks? What unimaginative blokes organize them? Then take one considered magically good, like Strange Loop. Their excellence translations into excellent diversity work too: (http://bridgetconsulting.com/?p=131 http://bridgetconsulting.com/?p=131)
- Alex3917 11y ago
  > if you can't find women, POC for your conference, you didn't look hard enough. Part of the problem with finding more women and/or POC is that most conference organizers aren't looking for people at all; rather, they're looking for interesting projects/products/businesses. And what happens is they get a representative of that organization on the phone who agrees to send someone to present, but often they don't even know who will actually be getting on stage until much later. This obviously isn't true if you're getting a keynote speaker to talk about their career, but you only get one of those per event.
cgearhart 11y ago
The gender imbalance in tech will remain self-reinforcing unless we actively work to change it. Right now the gender balance is so bad that we're effectively giving up on half the population. How does anyone think that is a good thing? Other high-skill fields like medicine & law aren't anywhere near as imbalanced as tech. Changing the status quo requires outreach and making the culture more inclusive. Most appeals to meritocracy in tech boil down to "but I really like the way things are now".
- beat 11y ago
  The gender situation in IT today is actually worse than it was when I started, twenty-odd years ago. That's sad. And really, I think the problem starts long before college. There are structural issues in the broader culture and the education system. It's even worse for black and latino kids.
- talmand 11y ago
  That change in culture has to start at high school and college levels, if not sooner, in educational terms for any meaningful changes to happen. Plus the culture that needs to work to change isn't necessarily just the tech culture.
  - jazzyk 11y ago
    Exactly. Pop-culture in the US (and high-school/college kids are drowning in it) is very anti-intellectual in general. And getting worse every year (reality shows, etc). But a lot of discrimination comes from female peer-pressure, not males. My daughter kept repeating "math is hard" because her female friends kept saying so, until I had none of it. She ended up being very good in math, but chose chem+biology as her major in college :-)
- kansface 11y ago
  > medicine & law aren't anywhere near as imbalanced as tech It looks like females comprise over 90% of our nurses and about 20% of our surgeons (in the US). For the matter, I understand the trend is going in the wrong direction in Scandinavia.
pnathan 11y ago
For the record, I agree with the points made. But, I've flagged this, as it will (and has started to) produce the usual firestorm.
- contactmatts 11y ago
  Then so be it. We shouldn't _not_ talk about it.
rayiner 11y ago
The lack of representation of women at these sorts of conferences is in and of itself something that turns women off participating in them and ultimately off the profession. It's a self-perpetuating problem. Until you get that essential fact, you just don't get the overall problem. "For all they know, 95% of speaker pitches came from men and thus why they ended up with a 95% male speaker line up once they whittled down the list to the best pitches." Shouldn't the very next thought be: "gee, why would 95% of speaker pitches come from men?" Why might that be the case? To me, the "women just aren't interested in tech" explanation is ridiculous on its face. "Women just don't want to be in a high-profile, financially rewarding career with tons of growth potential, because ____." What goes in the blank? I'm dying to know.
- rhaps0dy 11y ago
  I don't want to be in a high-profile, financially rewarding biotech career. I just like doing something else.
- meesles 11y ago
  Try this one: "Women just don't want to be in a high-profile, financially rewarding career with tons of growth potential, because their parents raised them to be interested in what they thought 'proper ladies' should be interested, e.g. not tech." I think a large part of this problem is generational. As we see female numbers increase every year, eventually it'll reach some sort of equilibrium. It's like asking 20-30 years ago why there weren't more women in business. I think it was just because until it becomes a socially regular thing to see, only the exceptional will try to break through that glass ceiling. Like the article says, forcing inclusion of women who aren't interested or particularly good at the topic won't help anyone.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - talmand 11y ago
      I think you are on a different subject than what the rest of this chain of comments seem to be talking about.
abalone 11y ago
How can one lament the lack of women in a conference panel but make no mention of how lily white it is? Is it just me or do most of these underepresentation conversations seem to focus on gender more than race? How the heck does that make any kind of sense? If anything racial disadvantages have even broader economic consequences than gender. How is race not an intrinsic, automatic part of every conversation on representation in tech alongside gender? Why is it "women in tech" instead of "women and minorities in tech"?
- calibraxis 11y ago
  Yes, it's multiply awful for those on the intersections: particularly women of color. Therefore they're the ones we’d expect a consistently ethical person to be most concerned about. (And helping improve their situations helps others too.)
  - mcphage 11y ago
    > Therefore they’re the ones we’d expect a consistently ethical person to be most concerned about. Why is that? I mean, I think of arguments for it, but I can think of arguments against it as well, enough that I don't think it qualifies as obviously true.
  - exstudent2 11y ago
    It's pretty awful for men who are ethnic as well. I come from a poor hispanic background but I keep getting lectured on my male privilege by upper middle class white people. I'd say it's pretty awful for non-upper middle class white men as well. I think we need to make sure everyone has the opportunities they desire, but repeatedly telling 50% of the population that they're privileged when that's most definitely not the case isn't helping anyone.
    - rrss1122 11y ago
      Coming from similar background, I say just screw 'em, honestly. Look out for yourself, and I know it's easier said than done, but don't give much weight to what other people think.
serge2k 11y ago
> There’s also no African Americans on the Edge Conference’s roster. I don’t see any people of (obvious) Hispanic descent. Why is no one up in arms over that? Because people who care don't get nearly as much press as people who talk about women being excluded. Because the men who work in tech don't care so much about race, but they do care about the obvious lack of women. Because it's easier to go "we have 40% asians and indians" and ignore the issue than to find a way around "we have 95% males".
meira 11y ago
Kids (and people that didn't grow up) will try for a long time to avoid this discussion. But I have to say to you: you lost. You can leave, or you can adapt. But you can't stop it.
tytytytyty 11y ago
Gender. Sexual Preference. Skin Color. Nationality. Disability. Age. Programming Ability. Only one of these is relevant to being a good developer.
contactmatts 11y ago
Brilliant article. Unfortunately, Rae's perspective does not fit the narrative of most HN readers.
SovietDissident 11y ago
Similar to the putative attitude of the organizers of these conferences, colleges have bent over backwards to get more female enrollment (indeed, there are now more females going to college than males). However, "A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse looks at degrees in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) and finds that the share of STEM bachelor’s degrees going to women ticked down over the past decade. The biggest decline was in computer science, where women received 23 percent of bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2004 and just 18 percent in 2014. On the bright side — at least for career prospects — both men and women are slightly more likely to be majoring in STEM fields today than they were in 2004; it’s just that men have shown more growth than women."[0] The opportunities are there for those females who want it. Maybe most of them simply don't want to go into the computer field---individual men and women have different things they want out of life and out of their careers, which is ok! Why should everyone be a computer science major? The world would be a pretty dull place. The author's points are quite valid; I would add that you don't want to push people into a field they have no interest (or aptitude) in. It makes the person miserable and cheapens the degrees of others (a smaller consideration in tech, I'll grant you, since it's more meritocratic than some other fields). The smallest minority is the individual. If 95% of individuals who happened to be men gave the best auditions, they should probably be given the spots. I say "probably" because if it's a private conference, the organizers can do whatever they want, and people need not attend if they don't like the speaker choices. Ultimately, if women are dissatisfied with the "boys club", they can organize their own conference across the street. [0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2015/01/27/women-falling-behind-in-stem-bachelors-degrees/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2015/01/27/wo...
- zzalpha 11y ago
  The opportunities are there for those females who want it. Maybe most of them simply don't want to go into the computer field You seem to take that as a law of nature... as though it's natural for there to be a truly massive gender bias in computing, a gender bias that was far less 20 years ago and has gotten egregiously worse since roughly 2000. The real question should be: why the hell aren't women enrolling into and graduating from CS programs? The answer is probably enormous and systemic, but the current situation should not be seen as acceptable, IMO. Incidentally, the same questions could (and should) be asked of, say, men in nursing. And, again, the answers are certainly enormous and systemic, starting from childhood socialization, running through peer group issues, and on and on.

71 points by gamesbrainiac 11y ago

21echoes 11y ago

that's a very long way to say "I don't understand / like affirmative action"

otheraccount 11y ago
It's a rationale for not liking affirmative action, from a female author, recalling the story of someone else selected on merit. Asserting that anyone who understands affirmative action must like it is begging the question.
- 21echoes 11y ago
  I did not assert that anyone who understands affirmative action must like it. I pointed out that the author did not grapple with any arguments for affirmative action in the entire piece, so it is unclear if they are aware of arguments in support of it. This is, like, writing 101 -- show that you understand the arguments against your position, and dismantle them within the piece.
traverseda 11y ago
It's a long way of saying "I don't like affirmative action" because they're explaining why they think affirmative action is bad. >I earned my way onto that list. And here is someone telling me people who didn’t should be added simply so I wasn’t the lone female on it? >In three words? That’s some bullshit. It's only a long way to say it if you're already committed to ignoring their arguments. Because in reality their arguments have a bit more nuance then just "I don't like affirmative action".
- 21echoes 11y ago
  Frankly, I think they make one and only one point with a lot of different examples that make the same point in basically the exact same way: "as a woman in tech who has succeeded despite roadblocks, I feel like any amount of affirmative action will make others doubt the extent of my achievements". I am not committed to ignoring their arguments -- I used to hold similar positions. Then I talked with people who disagreed with me, grappled with their positions, and changed my mind. The author here shows no semblance of any such depth of thought, just repeated invocations of "if I made it, it must be possible! if we help others who are worse than me, then that lessens my achievement!" At its core, it's a selfish argument[1], which is why I changed my mind. [1]: to be clear, there are quite a few non-personally-selfish arguments against affirmative action. "it'll make others doubt how much better i am than most other women" is not one of them.

tothepixel 11y ago

In my opinion we should judge people solely on the relevance and quality of their presentations at conferences. Why should anything else matter? I think everyone agrees with this for the most part. It's just unfortunate that some people feel the need to supply unequal treatment to certain genders/races by creating quotas.

kelukelugames 11y ago
I think a lot of people on HN and reddit agrees with your opinion. We should judge people on quality and merit. Unfortunately, studies have shown the people who claim this tend to be even more biased. See bottom of this page. http://managingbias.fb.com/ http://managingbias.fb.com/ It's kind of like when people say "I don't see race."
- tothepixel 11y ago
  Interesting, thanks for sharing this. That's an odd duality that I wasn't aware existed.
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    It's a problem that many people aren't aware of, and it's a very compelling argument. The eventual goal should absolutely be to completely ignore irrelevant factors (gender, race, etc) when evaluating anything (such as a conference proposal), and evaluate only based on merit; the question is over the best way to get to that point, and there's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that attempting to ignore it right now doesn't actually work. The concept of evaluating exclusively merit is completely sensible. Doing so in practice is not trivial. And there are indeed published studies showing that attempting to do so not only fails but produces more bias.
- traverseda 11y ago
  That's a bit... ad-hominum. Maybe I'm mis-reading it, but for me it parsed more or less as "I'm not saying you're a racist, but people who say what you're saying are racists...." If that interpretation is wrong, please do correct me. I'd like it if arguments could stand on their own, not be dismissed because someone falls into a particular category. >I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. and all that.

kogir 11y ago

Why aren't conference proposals blind anyway? Seems to have worked for orchestras.

Domenic_S 11y ago
Because individual speakers draw crowds; individual orchestra members do not. Could you see Linus Torvalds' speaker application getting denied because it was a blind proposal from "some hothead"? Edit: missed the meaning of "blind".
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  I actually could, if only for the fact that Linus Torvalds strikes quite a nerve in many people. Not that I myself consider him anywhere close to the nastiest hothead in free software.
- kaitai 11y ago
  If applications were blind they wouldn't have gender & race/ethnicity. That's the point of blind orchestra auditions.
  - Domenic_S 11y ago
    Ha, good point. Edited.
- danharaj 11y ago
  If it were a blind proposal, you wouldn't know it was from "yet another white male". Individual speakers draw crowds, yes. But conferences are also a way for people to share their ideas and establish their names in the first place. A conference that optimizes for crowd draw is enforcing a preexisting hierarchy to the detriment of the community. A solution is to use the keynote address and invited speakers to draw crowds, while taking blind proposals for most of the actual content. "What is the goal of X?" is a good question to ask in any social endeavor.
  - 11y ago

rootedbox 11y ago

When say you chose people solely on relevance and quality, but you only have men as speakers.. Then it's laughable that your system for choosing speakers isn't biased. Percentages shouldn't be the reason why you hire or don't hire someone but they should be a measure of how much bias is in your system for choosing persons of varying classes. If your percent of xyz participants in the majority class is way higher than the distribution in the possible applicants then there is some sort of class bias(economic, race, socio) in either how you choose applicants, or in how you get applicants.

tothepixel 11y ago
Wouldn't this only be true if there was a perfect 50/50 split of qualified speakers based on gender? Percentages can be positioned to show that bias exists only when the input doesn't match the result. It is unknown whether the field of applicants had an "acceptable" amount of diversity to begin with.
- rootedbox 11y ago
  The percent ratio based on class of participants should be in range of the percent ratio of possible people qualified by class. And as I stated.. The failure of not being near this percent is either because how you chose your participants from applicants or how you chose to get people to be applicants.
  - greenmarantz 11y ago
    > how you chose to get people to be applicants Applicants are self-selecting. Your argument attempts to shift responsibility (and agency) away from speakers and practitioners.
    - rootedbox 11y ago
      I'm not shifting anything. How can one have agency if they don't know that there is an opportunity? i.e. If an opportunity is open to all; but is only presented to one class then you are in general only going to get applicants from the class that you presented the opportunity too.

SandersAK 11y ago

This article is kinda insulting. Panels and conferences suck when they're homogenous. They're banal and uninspiring because the perspectives are all too similar. The reality is that they didn't work hard enough to find good quality presenters that represent the actual world we live and work in - one where people approach problem solving in myriad different ways that stem from their own history and experience. tl;dr - if you can't find women, POC for your conference, you didn't look hard enough.

okasaki 11y ago
I would be interested in hearing some examples of problem solving that are based on gender or the color of one's skin.
tyenl 11y ago
Does diversity of gender/race equate directly to diversity of content? Painting a conference as uninspiring solely based on what percentage of the panel are $demographic seems wrong. Are you suggesting that white males somehow all produce the same content?
- calibraxis 11y ago
  Bias favoring white males creates a culture of entitlement. Ever went to these mediocre conferences with mediocre talks? What unimaginative blokes organize them? Then take one considered magically good, like Strange Loop. Their excellence translations into excellent diversity work too: (http://bridgetconsulting.com/?p=131 http://bridgetconsulting.com/?p=131)
Alex3917 11y ago
> if you can't find women, POC for your conference, you didn't look hard enough. Part of the problem with finding more women and/or POC is that most conference organizers aren't looking for people at all; rather, they're looking for interesting projects/products/businesses. And what happens is they get a representative of that organization on the phone who agrees to send someone to present, but often they don't even know who will actually be getting on stage until much later. This obviously isn't true if you're getting a keynote speaker to talk about their career, but you only get one of those per event.

cgearhart 11y ago

The gender imbalance in tech will remain self-reinforcing unless we actively work to change it. Right now the gender balance is so bad that we're effectively giving up on half the population. How does anyone think that is a good thing? Other high-skill fields like medicine & law aren't anywhere near as imbalanced as tech. Changing the status quo requires outreach and making the culture more inclusive. Most appeals to meritocracy in tech boil down to "but I really like the way things are now".

beat 11y ago
The gender situation in IT today is actually worse than it was when I started, twenty-odd years ago. That's sad. And really, I think the problem starts long before college. There are structural issues in the broader culture and the education system. It's even worse for black and latino kids.
talmand 11y ago
That change in culture has to start at high school and college levels, if not sooner, in educational terms for any meaningful changes to happen. Plus the culture that needs to work to change isn't necessarily just the tech culture.
- jazzyk 11y ago
  Exactly. Pop-culture in the US (and high-school/college kids are drowning in it) is very anti-intellectual in general. And getting worse every year (reality shows, etc). But a lot of discrimination comes from female peer-pressure, not males. My daughter kept repeating "math is hard" because her female friends kept saying so, until I had none of it. She ended up being very good in math, but chose chem+biology as her major in college :-)
kansface 11y ago
> medicine & law aren't anywhere near as imbalanced as tech It looks like females comprise over 90% of our nurses and about 20% of our surgeons (in the US). For the matter, I understand the trend is going in the wrong direction in Scandinavia.

pnathan 11y ago

For the record, I agree with the points made. But, I've flagged this, as it will (and has started to) produce the usual firestorm.

contactmatts 11y ago
Then so be it. We shouldn't _not_ talk about it.

rayiner 11y ago

The lack of representation of women at these sorts of conferences is in and of itself something that turns women off participating in them and ultimately off the profession. It's a self-perpetuating problem. Until you get that essential fact, you just don't get the overall problem. "For all they know, 95% of speaker pitches came from men and thus why they ended up with a 95% male speaker line up once they whittled down the list to the best pitches." Shouldn't the very next thought be: "gee, why would 95% of speaker pitches come from men?" Why might that be the case? To me, the "women just aren't interested in tech" explanation is ridiculous on its face. "Women just don't want to be in a high-profile, financially rewarding career with tons of growth potential, because ____." What goes in the blank? I'm dying to know.

rhaps0dy 11y ago
I don't want to be in a high-profile, financially rewarding biotech career. I just like doing something else.
meesles 11y ago
Try this one: "Women just don't want to be in a high-profile, financially rewarding career with tons of growth potential, because their parents raised them to be interested in what they thought 'proper ladies' should be interested, e.g. not tech." I think a large part of this problem is generational. As we see female numbers increase every year, eventually it'll reach some sort of equilibrium. It's like asking 20-30 years ago why there weren't more women in business. I think it was just because until it becomes a socially regular thing to see, only the exceptional will try to break through that glass ceiling. Like the article says, forcing inclusion of women who aren't interested or particularly good at the topic won't help anyone.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - talmand 11y ago
    I think you are on a different subject than what the rest of this chain of comments seem to be talking about.

abalone 11y ago

How can one lament the lack of women in a conference panel but make no mention of how lily white it is? Is it just me or do most of these underepresentation conversations seem to focus on gender more than race? How the heck does that make any kind of sense? If anything racial disadvantages have even broader economic consequences than gender. How is race not an intrinsic, automatic part of every conversation on representation in tech alongside gender? Why is it "women in tech" instead of "women and minorities in tech"?

calibraxis 11y ago
Yes, it's multiply awful for those on the intersections: particularly women of color. Therefore they're the ones we’d expect a consistently ethical person to be most concerned about. (And helping improve their situations helps others too.)
- mcphage 11y ago
  > Therefore they’re the ones we’d expect a consistently ethical person to be most concerned about. Why is that? I mean, I think of arguments for it, but I can think of arguments against it as well, enough that I don't think it qualifies as obviously true.
- exstudent2 11y ago
  It's pretty awful for men who are ethnic as well. I come from a poor hispanic background but I keep getting lectured on my male privilege by upper middle class white people. I'd say it's pretty awful for non-upper middle class white men as well. I think we need to make sure everyone has the opportunities they desire, but repeatedly telling 50% of the population that they're privileged when that's most definitely not the case isn't helping anyone.
  - rrss1122 11y ago
    Coming from similar background, I say just screw 'em, honestly. Look out for yourself, and I know it's easier said than done, but don't give much weight to what other people think.

serge2k 11y ago

> There’s also no African Americans on the Edge Conference’s roster. I don’t see any people of (obvious) Hispanic descent. Why is no one up in arms over that? Because people who care don't get nearly as much press as people who talk about women being excluded. Because the men who work in tech don't care so much about race, but they do care about the obvious lack of women. Because it's easier to go "we have 40% asians and indians" and ignore the issue than to find a way around "we have 95% males".

meira 11y ago

Kids (and people that didn't grow up) will try for a long time to avoid this discussion. But I have to say to you: you lost. You can leave, or you can adapt. But you can't stop it.

tytytytyty 11y ago

Gender. Sexual Preference. Skin Color. Nationality. Disability. Age. Programming Ability. Only one of these is relevant to being a good developer.

contactmatts 11y ago

Brilliant article. Unfortunately, Rae's perspective does not fit the narrative of most HN readers.

SovietDissident 11y ago

Similar to the putative attitude of the organizers of these conferences, colleges have bent over backwards to get more female enrollment (indeed, there are now more females going to college than males). However, "A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse looks at degrees in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) and finds that the share of STEM bachelor’s degrees going to women ticked down over the past decade. The biggest decline was in computer science, where women received 23 percent of bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2004 and just 18 percent in 2014. On the bright side — at least for career prospects — both men and women are slightly more likely to be majoring in STEM fields today than they were in 2004; it’s just that men have shown more growth than women."[0] The opportunities are there for those females who want it. Maybe most of them simply don't want to go into the computer field---individual men and women have different things they want out of life and out of their careers, which is ok! Why should everyone be a computer science major? The world would be a pretty dull place. The author's points are quite valid; I would add that you don't want to push people into a field they have no interest (or aptitude) in. It makes the person miserable and cheapens the degrees of others (a smaller consideration in tech, I'll grant you, since it's more meritocratic than some other fields). The smallest minority is the individual. If 95% of individuals who happened to be men gave the best auditions, they should probably be given the spots. I say "probably" because if it's a private conference, the organizers can do whatever they want, and people need not attend if they don't like the speaker choices. Ultimately, if women are dissatisfied with the "boys club", they can organize their own conference across the street. [0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2015/01/27/women-falling-behind-in-stem-bachelors-degrees/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2015/01/27/wo...

zzalpha 11y ago
The opportunities are there for those females who want it. Maybe most of them simply don't want to go into the computer field You seem to take that as a law of nature... as though it's natural for there to be a truly massive gender bias in computing, a gender bias that was far less 20 years ago and has gotten egregiously worse since roughly 2000. The real question should be: why the hell aren't women enrolling into and graduating from CS programs? The answer is probably enormous and systemic, but the current situation should not be seen as acceptable, IMO. Incidentally, the same questions could (and should) be asked of, say, men in nursing. And, again, the answers are certainly enormous and systemic, starting from childhood socialization, running through peer group issues, and on and on.