3 ms·

I'd say less than 1% of all programmers I've met/seen have been female. About 50% of the project managers I've known have been female. In about 90%+ of the case

I'd say less than 1% of all programmers I've met/seen have been female. About 50% of the project managers I've known have been female. In about 90%+ of the cases where I've been in a meeting at work with programmers and a project manager, IF there were only 1 female in the room she was the project manager, not a programmer. So, extrapolating... assuming enough other males have experienced approximately the same thing in life, that could account for why they tend to expect any unknown new female they encounter in that situation to be, well, not a programmer, and very probably a manager or project assistant of some kind. That said, yes, obviously there are female programmers, and yes it sucks if a man assumes a woman can't program solely because of a gender. But from my reading of the OA, I don't think that the particular female programmer in question was necessarily having that particular experience. Instead, she may have just been on the wrong side of statistics. Some of those men may literally have never encountered a female programmer before, period. So for them, it would be like, oh say, walking into a Great Clips to have your hair cut, and you sit down at the hair cutting chair and suddenly a man comes up and starts cutting hair. It would be shocking for me if that happened, at least initially, because based on my own experience 100% of hair cutters at the Great Clips franchise are women, no exceptions so far. But it wouldn't mean that I was discriminating against him, or oppressing or persecuting him in anyway. Summary: She may have just found herself on the wrong side of statistics. Part of life, move on. (note: Great Clips is a chain of hair cutting salons in the USA midwest)

skybrian 16y ago
Since we weren't there and don't know the person, all sorts of interpretations are plausible, including that the person telling the story got it right. Why do you choose to assume they got it wrong? Sounds like the just-world fallacy to me: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world-fallacy/ http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world-fallac...
- mkramlich 16y ago
  Neither of us knows exactly what happened, that's true. My comments are based on direct experiences I've had in life, personally, over a large number of years, and from that I'm guessing as to what kinds of factors might be at play here, since we all live in approximately the same world. I also often put a higher trust level in the findings from my own direct experience, than in what I read in an article on the web somewhere, where it's second-hand and possibly hearsay and probably had a lot of data and nuance filtered out or distorted along the path to being written up. I don't even know if the main woman talked about is even a real person, for example (probably, but who knows) whereas I know I'm real and not bullshitting, so... Thanks for the link on Just World Fallacy! Yep, heard of that.
MartinCron 16y ago
The article also mentioned her manager suggesting that she play up her feminine side and not let the men think she was smarter than them. That's not being on the wrong side of statistics, that's being on the wrong side of a sexist asshole.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  Good point. But I'd say maybe. Not necessarily. Maybe he thought he was being helpful or practical. None of us was there so context and nuance are lost. Many programmers/engineers/geeks, especially when younger, tend to be defensive about being Smart (tm). For some, it's part of their personal sense of virility as a man. That may be what the manager was thinking about when he said that. But agreed, sexism is bad.
silencio 16y ago
But surely you encounter women outside of Great Clips. Maybe there's even one or more living in the same household as you. The context is changed, but the women are still women. Why should the context dictate how sexist someone should be to someone else? (And I say someone rather than 'a woman' because men face the same thing in other industries that women feel in CS/IT.) A reasonable reaction is being surprised/shocked that a man is cutting your hair at Great Clips. That is not discrimination. Unreasonable and discriminatory is to then start to say derogatory things about him and his work in the context of his working in a majority female workplace and then tip him like shit afterwards. It's pretty fair to say the woman in question was encountering some of this at work. My pull-out-of-my-arse statistics: there are lots of men in CS and IT that I've talked to, met in person, drank with, worked with, and even slept with some. Most men I know are really nice and reasonable, and in a good way (read: good friends!). A few of them are awkward, but again, in a good-to-acceptable way (making wrong assumptions or stepping on toes, but learning). But it's the few that I can count on my fingers that I will remember as treating me like complete shit that will be the reason why I'd want to switch careers altogether if I were to work with them regularly. Some of these can be explained away by culture differences, age differences and more. But you know what. When you're sitting in a room with 5 other people and only one is female and she's the developer working on what all six of you met to discuss...and you outright ignore her when she's trying to talk to you...that's sexism, that's bullshit, and no amount of culture clash explains that away. And that and more is what I put up with once in a while, and most of that related to this industry even though programming is maybe half of what I do on a regular basis. I've even got a story about a dev at one office that wasn't even an acquaintance that stared at my tits all day long and tried to grope me. :P Him I'd have to categorize as a general creep more than geeks-gone-stupid though, it doesn't happen often and it was probably just coincidence. Anyway....it may be part of life, but it doesn't mean I have to put up with it more than necessary. It's pretty funny people explicitly mention other fields like bio-anything being women friendly and women heavy...chem and BME are some of my other interests, and I sure don't get that crap there. It's very tempting to go specialize/switch to something where I get less of this discriminatory behavior from others.

skybrian 16y ago

Since we weren't there and don't know the person, all sorts of interpretations are plausible, including that the person telling the story got it right. Why do you choose to assume they got it wrong? Sounds like the just-world fallacy to me: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world-fallacy/ http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world-fallac...

mkramlich 16y ago
Neither of us knows exactly what happened, that's true. My comments are based on direct experiences I've had in life, personally, over a large number of years, and from that I'm guessing as to what kinds of factors might be at play here, since we all live in approximately the same world. I also often put a higher trust level in the findings from my own direct experience, than in what I read in an article on the web somewhere, where it's second-hand and possibly hearsay and probably had a lot of data and nuance filtered out or distorted along the path to being written up. I don't even know if the main woman talked about is even a real person, for example (probably, but who knows) whereas I know I'm real and not bullshitting, so... Thanks for the link on Just World Fallacy! Yep, heard of that.

MartinCron 16y ago

The article also mentioned her manager suggesting that she play up her feminine side and not let the men think she was smarter than them. That's not being on the wrong side of statistics, that's being on the wrong side of a sexist asshole.

mkramlich 16y ago
Good point. But I'd say maybe. Not necessarily. Maybe he thought he was being helpful or practical. None of us was there so context and nuance are lost. Many programmers/engineers/geeks, especially when younger, tend to be defensive about being Smart (tm). For some, it's part of their personal sense of virility as a man. That may be what the manager was thinking about when he said that. But agreed, sexism is bad.

silencio 16y ago

But surely you encounter women outside of Great Clips. Maybe there's even one or more living in the same household as you. The context is changed, but the women are still women. Why should the context dictate how sexist someone should be to someone else? (And I say someone rather than 'a woman' because men face the same thing in other industries that women feel in CS/IT.) A reasonable reaction is being surprised/shocked that a man is cutting your hair at Great Clips. That is not discrimination. Unreasonable and discriminatory is to then start to say derogatory things about him and his work in the context of his working in a majority female workplace and then tip him like shit afterwards. It's pretty fair to say the woman in question was encountering some of this at work. My pull-out-of-my-arse statistics: there are lots of men in CS and IT that I've talked to, met in person, drank with, worked with, and even slept with some. Most men I know are really nice and reasonable, and in a good way (read: good friends!). A few of them are awkward, but again, in a good-to-acceptable way (making wrong assumptions or stepping on toes, but learning). But it's the few that I can count on my fingers that I will remember as treating me like complete shit that will be the reason why I'd want to switch careers altogether if I were to work with them regularly. Some of these can be explained away by culture differences, age differences and more. But you know what. When you're sitting in a room with 5 other people and only one is female and she's the developer working on what all six of you met to discuss...and you outright ignore her when she's trying to talk to you...that's sexism, that's bullshit, and no amount of culture clash explains that away. And that and more is what I put up with once in a while, and most of that related to this industry even though programming is maybe half of what I do on a regular basis. I've even got a story about a dev at one office that wasn't even an acquaintance that stared at my tits all day long and tried to grope me. :P Him I'd have to categorize as a general creep more than geeks-gone-stupid though, it doesn't happen often and it was probably just coincidence. Anyway....it may be part of life, but it doesn't mean I have to put up with it more than necessary. It's pretty funny people explicitly mention other fields like bio-anything being women friendly and women heavy...chem and BME are some of my other interests, and I sure don't get that crap there. It's very tempting to go specialize/switch to something where I get less of this discriminatory behavior from others.