3 ms·

>we need more [...] people that are good in de-escalating arguments in bug trackers and mailing lists, people that take care of documentations, people that make

by jasode 9y ago

>we need more [...] people that are good in de-escalating arguments in bug trackers and mailing lists, people that take care of documentations, people that make software work in new cultural contexts (localization, globalization, internationalization, etc.), people that care about user experience etc If you're a male, you have to be careful writing out suggestions like that because to females such as my mother with a career in electronics, it is patronizing. Women can also be a "strong engineers" and they shouldn't be relegated to "open source housekeeping duties" as a dangling carrot to attract them. Yes, Armin Ronacher means no harm but I think men often fall into the trap of thinking they are championing women's causes when they are actually insulting their intelligence.

tptacek 9y ago
I agree. We ran into something similar when we were working on Starfighter, where Erin and I were repeatedly told that CTFs were intrinsically male-oriented because women disfavored zero-sum competition (which was surprising for Erin, a roller derby skater, to hear). It also doesn't (at least in my opinion) help the cause of balancing the industry to be telling engineers that the only way to do so is to emphasize soft skills and deemphasize competition (and subtextually with it technical excellence).
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago
  > CTFs were intrinsically male-oriented because women disfavored zero-sum competition (which was surprising for Erin, a roller derby skater, to hear) Surely you and Erin both recognize that it's possible that both (a) women, generally (compared to men), 'disfavor zero-sum competition'; and (b) Erin favors 'zero-zum competition'. [I'm not claiming that it's true or even that there's significant evidence that women 'disfavor zero-sum competition', absolutely or relative to men.]
- belorn 9y ago
  I have seen very small variation on how people emphasis things to have extreme effect on the demographic of participants. To take a different topic than IT, a public bath house in the city have a goal that visitors should be 50% women and 50% men. When they first had special a sauna evening called "Relax" with a emphasis on adventure (ie, a few events had names like Everest), they had full booked for men but only about 1/3 ticked sold for the remaining 50% that was dedicated for women. A month later they held a second evening, this time called "Wellness", they also renamed the events. Everest was now called ice sauna, salt sauna was renamed to scrubbing, but other than the name they the exact same events. This time all the tickets for women was sold after just a day but only 2 tickets for men sold in total. A complete reverse. Later events has shown similar pattern where more "adventure"-styled marketing leads to more men and less women, and self-improvement styled marketing leads to more women and less men. A small leap I will make is that people of both genders look towards gendered emphasis to validate their choice. If its for their gender then it is a safe choice, and if its not then doubt arise. The effect being a small bias that depending on what one is doing can have a rather extreme results.
  - wolf550e 9y ago
    Yeah, that happens with TV shows. I (male) can enjoy women-oriented TV shows if I happen to watch them, but I often choose to not watch a TV show because I guess it's aimed at women.
- dionidium 9y ago
  "(which was surprising for Erin, a roller derby skater, to hear)." When someone says "men prefer X" or "women prefer Y" they are quite obviously speaking statistically.
the_mitsuhiko 9y ago
As the author I want to clarify something: the word "gender" appears once in the article as an example of diversity. The enumeration you gave is more an example of lack of diversity in roles and behavior than it is gender.
- jasode 9y ago
  >the word "gender" appears once in the article But people reading it will see the following words that are all in the same semantic space as "gender": >"men", "woman", "women", "male", "someone" (implied female) As used in sentences: >When your team is 4 men, the first woman which joins will make a significant impact. >When your team is already 20 men you need to get a lot more women on board to have the same impact. >Tech for recent historical reasons is very male heavy but society is not. >We don't need more [...] more strong alpha males but people that are good in de-escalating arguments >So when someone cancels a conference because the speaker lineup after a blind selection was 100% male it just shows how bad the imbalance Therefore, it is not unreasonable to get the impression that the article is heavy on gender imbalance and not so much on skin color. (No explicit mention of "white", "black", "African American", etc.)
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  Simply counting that up seems a bit disingenuous... The word "gender" appears once, yes. But literally all the specific examples given are gender - adding a woman to a team of 4 versus 20, the gender imbalance of tech, not needing more "strong alpha males", and having 100% male conference lineups. The line under discussion directly contrasts "males" with role diversity. It doesn't explicitly label the other roles as feminine, but it was certainly the impression I got when reading "not more strong alpha males but people that are good in de-escalating arguments". None of this contradicts your understanding of what you meant with your writing, obviously. And the Unicode point is a good example of how a shortage of how other developer diversity (e.g. in languages spoken) can motivate more useful products. But for whatever it's worth, I had to read this comment to find out that you weren't writing the entire piece with gender in mind, and writing that diversity of roles line specifically to state what women would bring to the table.

by jasode 9y ago

tptacek 9y ago

I agree. We ran into something similar when we were working on Starfighter, where Erin and I were repeatedly told that CTFs were intrinsically male-oriented because women disfavored zero-sum competition (which was surprising for Erin, a roller derby skater, to hear). It also doesn't (at least in my opinion) help the cause of balancing the industry to be telling engineers that the only way to do so is to emphasize soft skills and deemphasize competition (and subtextually with it technical excellence).

aeorgnoieang 9y ago
> CTFs were intrinsically male-oriented because women disfavored zero-sum competition (which was surprising for Erin, a roller derby skater, to hear) Surely you and Erin both recognize that it's possible that both (a) women, generally (compared to men), 'disfavor zero-sum competition'; and (b) Erin favors 'zero-zum competition'. [I'm not claiming that it's true or even that there's significant evidence that women 'disfavor zero-sum competition', absolutely or relative to men.]
belorn 9y ago
I have seen very small variation on how people emphasis things to have extreme effect on the demographic of participants. To take a different topic than IT, a public bath house in the city have a goal that visitors should be 50% women and 50% men. When they first had special a sauna evening called "Relax" with a emphasis on adventure (ie, a few events had names like Everest), they had full booked for men but only about 1/3 ticked sold for the remaining 50% that was dedicated for women. A month later they held a second evening, this time called "Wellness", they also renamed the events. Everest was now called ice sauna, salt sauna was renamed to scrubbing, but other than the name they the exact same events. This time all the tickets for women was sold after just a day but only 2 tickets for men sold in total. A complete reverse. Later events has shown similar pattern where more "adventure"-styled marketing leads to more men and less women, and self-improvement styled marketing leads to more women and less men. A small leap I will make is that people of both genders look towards gendered emphasis to validate their choice. If its for their gender then it is a safe choice, and if its not then doubt arise. The effect being a small bias that depending on what one is doing can have a rather extreme results.
- wolf550e 9y ago
  Yeah, that happens with TV shows. I (male) can enjoy women-oriented TV shows if I happen to watch them, but I often choose to not watch a TV show because I guess it's aimed at women.
dionidium 9y ago
"(which was surprising for Erin, a roller derby skater, to hear)." When someone says "men prefer X" or "women prefer Y" they are quite obviously speaking statistically.

the_mitsuhiko 9y ago

As the author I want to clarify something: the word "gender" appears once in the article as an example of diversity. The enumeration you gave is more an example of lack of diversity in roles and behavior than it is gender.

jasode 9y ago
>the word "gender" appears once in the article But people reading it will see the following words that are all in the same semantic space as "gender": >"men", "woman", "women", "male", "someone" (implied female) As used in sentences: >When your team is 4 men, the first woman which joins will make a significant impact. >When your team is already 20 men you need to get a lot more women on board to have the same impact. >Tech for recent historical reasons is very male heavy but society is not. >We don't need more [...] more strong alpha males but people that are good in de-escalating arguments >So when someone cancels a conference because the speaker lineup after a blind selection was 100% male it just shows how bad the imbalance Therefore, it is not unreasonable to get the impression that the article is heavy on gender imbalance and not so much on skin color. (No explicit mention of "white", "black", "African American", etc.)
Bartweiss 9y ago
Simply counting that up seems a bit disingenuous... The word "gender" appears once, yes. But literally all the specific examples given are gender - adding a woman to a team of 4 versus 20, the gender imbalance of tech, not needing more "strong alpha males", and having 100% male conference lineups. The line under discussion directly contrasts "males" with role diversity. It doesn't explicitly label the other roles as feminine, but it was certainly the impression I got when reading "not more strong alpha males but people that are good in de-escalating arguments". None of this contradicts your understanding of what you meant with your writing, obviously. And the Unicode point is a good example of how a shortage of how other developer diversity (e.g. in languages spoken) can motivate more useful products. But for whatever it's worth, I had to read this comment to find out that you weren't writing the entire piece with gender in mind, and writing that diversity of roles line specifically to state what women would bring to the table.