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I share your frustration, but I've found the landscape to be more complex than most people are willing to give it credit for. For example, my partner and I dis

I share your frustration, but I've found the landscape to be more complex than most people are willing to give it credit for. For example, my partner and I disagree on the value of things like "Girls who Code" or "Women in Computer Science" groups. I (male) tend to think "can't hurt seems like a decent idea, I'm sure there are unique challenges faced by people with two X-chromosomes in computer science that I'm not aware of, I'll take people's claims that it's valuable on face value - if smart people are doing it in reasonably large numbers, and I can't see obvious harm, then I'm certainly not going to go out of my way to disparage it." She, on the other hand, despises those groups. She hates being singled out for her sex, and thinks sex shouldn't even be on the table for discussion. She just wants to work and be respected as an engineer, has never had any problem being respected as an engineer by her peers, and feels insulted every time she's invited to do something "on behalf of people with vaginas," (her words). Interestingly, she also despises overtly feminine genderization and tends to think people who call themselves "girls" and dress/perform in an overtly feminine way are stupid (and acknowledges that this is unfair)... so I don't know. Is the whole thing targeted at the gendering of engineering rather than the physical sex of programmers? I don't really know. I don't think the people participating in it have a very clear view of that either, judging from the conversations I have with people. At the end of the day I just try to take encourage everyone to blind themselves as much as possible when evaluating applications, reviewing code (impossible, generally), or assigning grades. edit: after thinking about this a little more I should specify that we're both pretty standard-issue silver-spoon white Midwestern liberals, and acknowledge that our personal views/experience on sex in computer science might miss a whole chunk of the spectrum of women's experience in communities where gender and sex are a bigger deal. My community expects women to be good at math and science every bit as much as men; that's not everyone's situation.

shawn-furyan 10y ago
I don't want to speak for my wife, but she has been actively involved in Girls Who Code, and seems to have thought that it was worthwhile. As I understand it, it's more about letting girls know that programming is an option, rather than being about segregating female engineers. I think this is necessary because I have personally seen the assumption that men are engineers and women are support people limit the careers of women who were more accomplished and competent than men in more prestigious engineering roles. From my perspective, there's a lot of bullshit mythmaking in programming that plausibly dissuades many, IMO disproportionately women, from approaching the field, and which seems to have a tendency to funnel women to less prestigious/respected roles tangential to engineering. Response to parent's edit: > we're both pretty standard-issue silver-spoon white Midwestern liberals I can see why you would draw that conclusion, but your assumption is pretty wide of the mark in my case. I grew up very poor in the deep South.
- watwut 10y ago
  I agree about programming being full of "bullshit mythmaking". It is one of the things that annoys me the most about our industry.
- mark_element 10y ago
  Response to your response to GP's edit. Pretty sure GP was talking about him and his spouse not him and you.
  - jknoepfler 10y ago
    Correct, apologies for the ambiguous pronoun.
- jknoepfler 10y ago
  Apologies for the ambiguous pronoun, I was referring to myself and my partner.
  - shawn-furyan 10y ago
    Oh, understand. Yes, I misinterpreted the subjects of the statement. [1] edit: oi, changed "understood" to "understand". The former implied that I immediately understood what you were saying. I was trying to say that I didn't initially understand, but do now after the correction... sorry if that caused more confusion.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  Can you elaborate on what you mean by "bullshit mythmaking"? I'm not familiar with that turn of phrase.
  - Terr_ 10y ago
    I'm not sure, but my guess would be stuff like "10x engineers", lionizing certain celebrities, and generally downplaying how much of everything is actually incremental work that is the shared success of a great many different people. I don't think software-development is unique in that respect though, humans tend to want to take a messy reality and make simpler stories with fewer and simpler characters.
watwut 10y ago
On one hand, I dislike the openly "only for girls" activities. It is opposite of integration. On the other hand, programming and tech in general is already gendered in peoples minds. By people I here mean parents, children themselves, teachers and so on and so forth. Parents will refer to technical clubs as boy clubs (even if some girls participate) or mock boys doing dancing (that one surprised me), grandma will be visibly ashamed and kids themselves will argue about those activities being for boys/girls. Kinda like with lego friends - too much pink to the point of being annoying, but the fact is that average grandpa is going to buy that toy to a girl where he would not any other lego cause even those gender neutral are clearly for boys in his mind.
- anothercomment 10y ago
  My niece wanted a Lego Friends set from me for her birthday. It is not just misguided grannies... And dancing boys will probably care more about the reaction of girls their age than about ashamed grandmothers.
  - watwut 10y ago
    The boy in question was 5, at that age he don't care about girls yet. Girls his age don't care about his dancing. Yes, girls want things that belong to girls. But grandma won't buy boy lego even of kid wants it and ask for it. And definitely not randomly for birthsday or something.
    - anothercomment 10y ago
      If grandma won't give things that are explicitly wished for, maybe you should have a talk with grandma, or only wish for money in the future. Your sample size seems to be 1. I must admit I also have mixed feelings about the disapproval of boys doing girlish things. The adults doing so might actually save the boys from embarrassment later on. You might see that as proving your point, but there are different expectations from society to men than to women. The assumption that expectations should be equal is just that, an assumption, because there are differences (wombs, physical strength). So men can not simply opt out without issues, and neither can women. The expectation that men should literally do the heavy lifting makes sense, for example.
adrienne 10y ago
Women are absolutely capable of internalizing and perpetuating misogyny (which is what you're describing your wife doing here). And also, not all women have vaginas, and not all people who have vaginas are women.

shawn-furyan 10y ago

I don't want to speak for my wife, but she has been actively involved in Girls Who Code, and seems to have thought that it was worthwhile. As I understand it, it's more about letting girls know that programming is an option, rather than being about segregating female engineers. I think this is necessary because I have personally seen the assumption that men are engineers and women are support people limit the careers of women who were more accomplished and competent than men in more prestigious engineering roles. From my perspective, there's a lot of bullshit mythmaking in programming that plausibly dissuades many, IMO disproportionately women, from approaching the field, and which seems to have a tendency to funnel women to less prestigious/respected roles tangential to engineering. Response to parent's edit: > we're both pretty standard-issue silver-spoon white Midwestern liberals I can see why you would draw that conclusion, but your assumption is pretty wide of the mark in my case. I grew up very poor in the deep South.

watwut 10y ago
I agree about programming being full of "bullshit mythmaking". It is one of the things that annoys me the most about our industry.
mark_element 10y ago
Response to your response to GP's edit. Pretty sure GP was talking about him and his spouse not him and you.
- jknoepfler 10y ago
  Correct, apologies for the ambiguous pronoun.
jknoepfler 10y ago
Apologies for the ambiguous pronoun, I was referring to myself and my partner.
- shawn-furyan 10y ago
  Oh, understand. Yes, I misinterpreted the subjects of the statement. [1] edit: oi, changed "understood" to "understand". The former implied that I immediately understood what you were saying. I was trying to say that I didn't initially understand, but do now after the correction... sorry if that caused more confusion.
cookiecaper 10y ago
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "bullshit mythmaking"? I'm not familiar with that turn of phrase.
- Terr_ 10y ago
  I'm not sure, but my guess would be stuff like "10x engineers", lionizing certain celebrities, and generally downplaying how much of everything is actually incremental work that is the shared success of a great many different people. I don't think software-development is unique in that respect though, humans tend to want to take a messy reality and make simpler stories with fewer and simpler characters.

watwut 10y ago

On one hand, I dislike the openly "only for girls" activities. It is opposite of integration. On the other hand, programming and tech in general is already gendered in peoples minds. By people I here mean parents, children themselves, teachers and so on and so forth. Parents will refer to technical clubs as boy clubs (even if some girls participate) or mock boys doing dancing (that one surprised me), grandma will be visibly ashamed and kids themselves will argue about those activities being for boys/girls. Kinda like with lego friends - too much pink to the point of being annoying, but the fact is that average grandpa is going to buy that toy to a girl where he would not any other lego cause even those gender neutral are clearly for boys in his mind.

anothercomment 10y ago
My niece wanted a Lego Friends set from me for her birthday. It is not just misguided grannies... And dancing boys will probably care more about the reaction of girls their age than about ashamed grandmothers.
- watwut 10y ago
  The boy in question was 5, at that age he don't care about girls yet. Girls his age don't care about his dancing. Yes, girls want things that belong to girls. But grandma won't buy boy lego even of kid wants it and ask for it. And definitely not randomly for birthsday or something.
  - anothercomment 10y ago
    If grandma won't give things that are explicitly wished for, maybe you should have a talk with grandma, or only wish for money in the future. Your sample size seems to be 1. I must admit I also have mixed feelings about the disapproval of boys doing girlish things. The adults doing so might actually save the boys from embarrassment later on. You might see that as proving your point, but there are different expectations from society to men than to women. The assumption that expectations should be equal is just that, an assumption, because there are differences (wombs, physical strength). So men can not simply opt out without issues, and neither can women. The expectation that men should literally do the heavy lifting makes sense, for example.

adrienne 10y ago

Women are absolutely capable of internalizing and perpetuating misogyny (which is what you're describing your wife doing here). And also, not all women have vaginas, and not all people who have vaginas are women.