11 ms·

There's sexism in tech, and to address it you have to call it for what it is. I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers, but

by fruzz 9y ago

There's sexism in tech, and to address it you have to call it for what it is. I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers, but other people have, and they need these words and spaces. Take my previous job. Women were objectified on Slack. A woman was groped, though she didn't report it out of concern for the repercussions. In meetings execs, male execs would only address/look at the men, not the women. The company was 91% men, even though 24% of the workforce for those jobs in the area was female. My friends in another high-profile company in the area were sexually harassed, though they felt like they couldn't report it. They simply left the job. I've mentored young women in high school interested in STEM in a program specific for them. The content is the same, but there's value in having these to counter the obstacles specific to women that they'll face. I've never seen men, as a group, encounter the obstacles I've seen many female peers discuss. Not all women encounter these, but as a group, it's undeniable that there's extra obstacles.

iamatworknow 9y ago
I think you're missing the point of the article. It's not that these things don't exist, or didn't exist for her -- of course they do. The point seems, to me at least, to be that in order to attempt to actually solve these problems you can't actively (or passively) try to exclude yourself from the people causing them. It's like politics -- if you separate yourself into "us" versus "them", how are you ever supposed to work together to find a solution?
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Sort of. The point of the article seems to be more along the lines of "Different people are different. Please don't force your labels onto me." I didn't get the sense that she's trying to change anything. She's just trying to be a person.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    It kinda makes me thing of the "Millennials Don't Exist" talk by Adam Conover. He talks about how generational terms are just made up by authors who want to get rich and they're almost always condescending (those entitled baby boomers, those lazy millennials, those gen x-ers) and how people don't liked to be talked down to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ&t=12s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ&t=12s Are millennials attached do their cellphones? Yes .. so are mothers, fathers, grandparents and some dogs. It's literally the most compact and powerful communication and computational device we've ever had. When you break down all the labels, all you really have is people. Talk to them like people.
    - imjlu 9y ago
      It's almost as if segregation adds unnecessary constraints to the lives of the people involved. You'd think people would have figured this out centuries ago, yet we still self-segregate and divide ourselves wherever possible. Shame.
      - Retric 9y ago
        There is utility in being part of an in group be that people from country X, religion Y, or just credential Z. The trade off is worse global performance, but MBA's networking with other MBA's can be good for people with MBA's and eff anyone else. On top of that their are cognitive biases like I got an CS degree so getting a CS degree must be a good idea. Therefore I will give preference to others with a CS degree. PS: Men do face discrimination in female dominated fields, and being white can often hurt your chances for various things. But, while dead weight losses exist the incentives often favor discrimination even if it's called networking.
        TrinaryWorksToo 9y ago
        That is something I also see. All sorts of discrimination gets put under the umbrella of networking. It's a lot harder to apply to a CS job through Indeed, Dice, Monster, et cetera, but my current part time job I got through an industry networking event, which I was only able to go to because I have the luxury of free time to search for a job. I'm curious if anyone has thoughts to what might change this.
- nollbit 9y ago
  The women who report these issues has no obligation to solve the problems, they're simply pointing out that they exist (since for a long time, people wouldn't believe them).
  - iamatworknow 9y ago
    You're right, there is no obligation to help. Likewise there's no obligation for me as a straight, white man in tech to help either. But the more people working along side me who I can collaborate with, the better. That only makes both our jobs easier. It doesn't matter what you label yourself as. If labels are getting in the way of our mutual increased success by arbitrarily keeping you from working with me as an equal, why wouldn't I want to help?
- alistproducer2 9y ago
  But you also can't solve a problem if everyone pretends it doesn't exist.
  - iamatworknow 9y ago
    Right. And I've never said that it didn't.
  - belorn 9y ago
    And others say that you can't solve the problem of exclusion by having exclusivity. You can instead lead by example, which is not the same as pretending that the problem don't exist. Then there are alternatives solutions which don't include either inclusivity nor exclusivity. Instead you address underlying issues that create the unwanted behavior. That too would not be people pretending that the problem don't exist, but rather a indirect way to solve the problem. Different solutions have different drawbacks and benefits. Criticism of one don't mean the denial of the problem.
- bbulkow 9y ago
  I think you're missing the point of the discussion. When you have women who are excluded and hit on and passed over simply because they are women, they come up with all kinds of solutions, including raising awareness that there are great women who are WOMEN and you should listen to "women in tech". The stage of creating women-only and women-focused groups ( and buying into the diminutive labeling the original author hates ), is what happens after you have a bunch of really, really, really shitty interactions. Thus, I think it is likely the author simply hasn't had the kind of really poor interactions & groping & whatnot, and she doesn't mention it in her post. I am passionate about this because my significant other is a woman, and she's in tech. I know plenty of other women in technology. Most of them aren't deeply involved in "women-in-tech" and prefer a low-key evangelizing of the great women that have been in tech, combined with fleeing from companies that employ ... jerks ... who harass and ignore. I was very happy that, in my startup under my leadership, we had a 50% male-female ratio. Subsequently, as CTO without much staff, that ratio has steadily decreased, and we are now down to 0% women in engineering. While that can be sampling error ( we don't have a 1000 member engineering staff ), it does give me pause. The women technologists I know don't specifically slag the "women-in-tech" movement as the author did, I suspect because they do realize the magnitude of the problem is great enough that multiple points of pressure are required. Simply being great isn't enough, and the problem is getting worse not better - but there are likely other reasons.
  - Klockan 9y ago
    Is there any evidence that these movements actually get any results? To me it just seems like tokenism.
    - and0 9y ago
      Did you even try looking before asking this? I can think of a bunch in just the couple months, mainly in regards to Uber and other SV companies taking concrete steps to fix their culture.
      - Klockan 9y ago
        Doubling down on sexual harassment and other abhorrent behavior is very different from having stuff like women-in-tech awards and women only tech meetups. Also we have more initiatives than ever trying to get women into tech yet the numbers are at an all time low, shouldn't we admit that we need to change our approach?
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 9y ago
  Different and opposing groups work together to find a common solution all the time. You can be different and work in a group and it not be antagonistic. This "us v. them" mentality is fostered by people who don't want to contribute with people who are different, they want everyone to assimilate into "their way." Take the "black lives matter" movement. If we followed the OPs advice, they should just protest that "all lives matter" instead, which is precisely what their opposition is doing (e.g. blue lives matter, all lives matter), to diminish their campaign. I understand how it can be annoying to be labeled or be associated with a group, even if you don't want to, but this problem is not going to be solved if it's not identified and that is what is going on. I think she's just reading too much into it.
  - hosh 9y ago
    This is something my friends and I were talking about privately for a while now. One of the things that came out of it was something summed up by one of my friends -- stop founding movements, start founding communities. Modernism (and I'm talking as far back as the early 1900s, and arguably, even earlier than that) has eroded our sense community. Our communication tech has, over the past few centuries, have allowed people to talk to each other at greater physical distance while at the same time, created more emotional distance from each other. While modernism might have produced great advancement in science and technology and challenged traditional dogmas, it also threw out a lot of what we needed from those traditions. Community-building is one of them. Movements that are trying to raise awareness on problems and change don't always have a clear idea on what happens after the fight is over: can you imagine still living, working, and playing with those people after all is said and done? Take "Black Lives Matter", or even "All Lives Matter". People voice their deep concerns, the ugly things get aired out. And after all of that, can you see yourself living next door? Your children playing and going to school together? Going to the pub after a town hall meeting? Barbecue at the park on a summer day? Borrow each other's tools? Asking each other for advice? Taking in one of the kids after school because your neighbor is busy that day? Or do you get a sense of fear, disgust, resentment, contempt, or despair?
    - eeeeeeeeeeeee 9y ago
- agentultra 9y ago
  > It's like politics -- if you separate yourself into "us" versus "them", how are you ever supposed to work together to find a solution? It's not like that at all. Ideologies exist on a spectrum. And there are some on the extreme ends that are so reprehensible that there's no good reason to find a way to include them in any reasonable dialog. I don't care how hurt someone feels if they can't find a safe space to talk about their racist ideas. If you're a little racist on the inside, fine, just be uncomfortable and don't be racist on the outside. We're not here to police how people think but you better watch how you behave. I won't feel sorry for you if someone punches you in the face. The real problem is that centuries of oppression have made sexism normal. It's part of the institution. It's invisible to most people. There isn't a clear label you can apply to people to sort out whose sexist. It's everywhere. How do you fight something like that? I want it to be normal as hell to be a woman/person of colour/queer/etc-in-tech (and the rest of the world). I don't look at programs that give people recognition or assistance as a pity-party or somehow makes them less. I see it as evening the playing field... but it's only treating a symptom. The harder battle is curing the disease.
  - mr_spothawk 9y ago
    > I want it to be normal as hell to be a woman/person of colour/queer/etc-in-tech (and the rest of the world). it seems like diversity and inclusion are at odds. id like to feel okay with my unfasionable identity, too. highlighting how different i am from others helps to discourage inclusion by them-ing my peers.
    - agentultra 9y ago
      The intention of "normal as hell," is not to make us all brothers and sisters. Variety is the spice of life and it takes all kinds to make good software. The spirit is one where we're not living in a system that encourages to sub-consciously bias ourselves against others. I'd like it if my friends didn't have to succeed in spite of all the time whereas I get a (pretty much) free ride.
  - JSONwebtoken 9y ago
    Why do these discussions always devolve into talks about punching people or getting punched? I can't get through a day without somebody suggesting violence is the only response to get somebody to think like them. If you don't want these "programs" to exist at the professional level, you have to go all the back to college and high school. You can only continue to treat symptoms through affirmative action, because that is the cycle we're stuck in. That is the disease you are identifying. People who are propped up by outside assistance will naturally continue to depend on those props and leech resources at a disproportionate rate. When these props are removed, the whole thing comes crashing down and we'll be forced to face the reality that these issues can't be fixed from a top down approach. Hiring more women or minorities into tech won't trickle down into incentivizing more women/minorities to major in Computer Science. Accepting more women/minorities into CS programs won't encourage more women/minorities to become interested in nerdy stuff in high school. The real disease is third party intervention. Thinking all the world's problems can be solved as long as it looks like somebody's doing something for a long enough period of time. All that does is allow under-qualified individuals to shit the pool for the demographic that they represent and reinforce negative perspectives until people who pay for productive work can't turn a blind eye and then get punched in the face I suppose.
- and0 9y ago
  I've been in enough of these conversations to know replies like this are just trolling and/or white-noise. Why NOT separate yourselves into an "us" vs "them"? Why should oppressed people try to "work together" with their oppressors? If you're so interested the effectiveness of social movements, why haven't you looked at cases like Susan Fowler's to see how little it accomplishes to "work together", or within the system, "to find a solution"? What rulebook, exactly, should people consult when organizing to stop awful shit from happening? Let us know so we can tell which methods are kosher with you. In the meantime maybe start holding the perpetrators to the same rigorous standard of moral behavior.
  - iamatworknow 9y ago
    We live in a society. If we don't work together to solve our issues then we'll languish and die apart.
    - and0 9y ago
      This is meandering, meaningless point. I have no idea what you actually mean here. How exactly do support groups for women in STEM tear at the fabric of society? How does it do so in such a way that actively excluding them doesn't (via harassment and other boundaries), and why aren't you equally critical of those people?
throwaway170705 9y ago
>I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers, but other people have, and they need these words and spaces. This is what I intended to post; thanks for sharing your experience. I'm a gay Indian male living in Canada. I have never experienced marginalization for being Indian, but at my previous engagement, I experienced quite a bit of harassment and discrimination for being queer. Until that point, I didn't think much of what female colleagues were going through but began to notice a slew of inappropriate remarks (most famously: "Are we sure he's not post-op? I thought only women get migraines." from the CEO) and discriminatory behaviours (boss 'rating' female colleagues with the general response of nervous laughter). I think that you hit the nail on the head - many people have to either directly experience or observe these issues before they become legitimate. The author has been extremely fortunate.
- sremani 9y ago
  It's important not to dismiss her experience as being extremely lucky. The thing is, there are lot of women like her, who were not harassed at their work places or have "grown-up" work environments with decent managers and HR policies.
  - kristineberth 9y ago
    Frankly I'd be surprised if she had never been harassed in some way. I know a grand total of zero women a decade into their careers who have literally never experienced some kind of harassment. Without being able to speak for her, I can surmise that maybe she just doesn't feel it needs to define her.
    - SomeCallMeTim 9y ago
      > Frankly I'd be surprised if she had never been harassed in some way. 1. She grew up in Denmark 2. She works in the UK From what I've heard, both are far more progressive and egalitarian than the US. If the people you know are based in the US, that could be the distinction. I think the problems here are far worse.
escapetech 9y ago
>> I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers, According to whom? Just because one doesn't address or mention the obstacles faced in their personal life doesn't necessarily mean that none were faced. >> I've never seen men, as a group, encounter the obstacles I've seen many female peers discuss. The solution is not to ignore the individual instances of these problems occurring within a group or across other groups that aren't necessarily by gender.
Mz 9y ago
There is zero reason to believe that this piece is suggesting that women who get groped shouldn't call it out. Part of her point is that having awards specifically for women implicitly agrees that women are second rate and can't compete with the guys, so should not bother and should just accept their pink collar ghetto status and stop bothering to try to escape it and actually get taken seriously.
coldtea 9y ago
>There's sexism in tech, and to address it you have to call it for what it is. I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers, but other people have, and they need these words and spaces. Or they just need to learn to speak up for themselves? You are a woman programmer and somebody treats you like a jerk? Do the same that a man programmer would do if somebody picked on them. Why the need for some different behavior, special groups etc? I think they mainly exist so that their leaders have careers, a voice in the media, etc. The boss excuses them? Call the boss on it.
Dove 9y ago
> but as a group, it's undeniable that there's extra obstacles I'm not sure you can really say that. It's true, women as a group encounter problems with being treated as sex objects, and there are cultural reasons for that, blah blah blah. So women have a unique experience. BUT! Men experience a pressure to succeed that we as women can hardly fathom. Consequently, they wind up in jobs they need, in a way we never will, which opens them up for a different kind of abuse in the workplace. Men experience such pressure to succeed that they sacrifice their health and well-being, sometimes their life, in the effort to succeed, and that seems pretty terrible. And there are cultural reasons for that and blah blah blah. I really don't think it's useful to try to calculate who has it worse. Workplace abuse is bad. Let's oppose it. Sexual harassment is bad. Let's oppose it. Which is worse? Who cares? They're kind of incomparable anyway. Let's not waste time on that. Let's all agree to oppose these things and help those who suffer! I'm not saying opposing sexual harassment is a waste of time. That's absolutely a good thing to do. And I'm not saying women as a group don't have a specific set of issues and problems it makes sense to address as a set. I think sometimes they do. But I am saying focusing on that and saying, "and therefore WOMEN HAVE PROBLEMS AND MEN DON'T" is a bit myopic, and I don't really think it helps either of us. We've all got problems, some of our own making, some due to family or history, or . . . sometimes we just randomly walk into someone else's problems. People have genetic diseases. People have deformities. People have nutritional problems and religious obligations and sick relatives. And people overcome these things because they're AMAZING! Let us not bother keeping score. Let us be compassionate and kind and support those we see in trouble. Let us expect, without exception, that everyone will be treated well.
- rdiddly 9y ago
  I like how you think - let's just keep it simple and oppose all the things that suck then shall we? I'll add that the best way to oppose something is to promote its opposite. Only because "opposing" has a tendency to backfire. We should therefore promote, for example, sexismlessness. Yes I made up a word.
  - gkya 9y ago
    > sexismlessness If you promote reason and common sense, you (are working in order to) get rid off all these problems plus many more. I'm emotionally refreshed to read the post you reply to, and the OP's writing. More sexism doesn't help in trying to remove sexism, and revenge and positive discrimination bring lots of tension among the sides.
lostPixels 9y ago
You can't attack someone's beliefs because they cited anecdotal experiences, and then go and do the same thing to justify your beliefs.
RealityNow 9y ago
You're not addressing the article at hand. The article is not claiming that sexism doesn't exist. > I've never seen men, as a group, encounter the obstacles I've seen many female peers discuss Though since we're on the topic - I can't speak for your specific anecdotes, but I'll say this: men may not face obstacles to the same extent of women, but they definitely face their own obstacles, and sexism against men even in this industry is a thing. Affirmative action and hiring quotas are reverse discrimination. Being a women in this field gives you a leg up in terms of university admission to competitive CS programs and employment at competitive firms. Recruiters are often female and discriminate in favor of women. (I've experienced this numerous times firsthand). For your friends who were actually sexually harassed, the mere accusation alone is often enough to get co-workers fired and have their reputations ruined (see Adria Richards dongle joke). So yes, females unfortunately face a huge set of obstacles, but they also face a huge set of advantages that shouldn't be overlooked. This victim mentality needs to stop at some point.
- araes 9y ago
  Being an engineering hiring manager for a few years, I will say that if your work environment is semi-pro (ie, no lewd jokes, no groping, ect..) being a woman or minority is a huge advantage. I felt kind of bad for single white males sometimes. Between them and an equally competent black or Hispanic female...no contest. There don't even have to be quotas. Mgr's just love to be able to post a chart with a huge pie slice showing how awesome their minority representation is. Note the "my office is 50/50 male/female" comment from higher up implying that is somehow a measure of workforce quality. Plus there are a Lot of women on the flipside who realize how easy it is to manipulate an all male environment when your one of like 3 females. Those are the clever ones. And men fall for it in droves. Women are great. So are men. So are GLBTQIA and all the other versions of rainbow alphabet soup. As long as when you are at work you Get. Shit. Done. Well, that and keep your knowingly hurtful comments and touching to yourself. This world is hellish enough as is. Lord help us when mind reading tech gets pervasive. "6 of 8, your thoughts are out of compliance with Newspeak, prepare for 'reorientation'." Damn you Orwell. All my nightmares are made manifest.
nnfy 9y ago
It is cherry picking to analyze only obstacles faced by women in tech and then conclude that women face extra challenges without even considering that men spend their lifetimes facing predominantly male-unique problems. The same flawed perspective leads to generalized racism like the now popular opinion that white people should be treated poorly because they all had it easy.
atmosx 9y ago
> I've mentored young women in high school interested in STEM in a program specific for them. The content is the same, but there's value in having these to counter the obstacles specific to women that they'll face. Taking for granted a priori that this group will face obstacles isn't exactly what this post is about?!?
femwarrior 9y ago
Actually since there are so many more men than women in tech, most things you describe happen more often to men than to women. For every women who nobody listens to in a meeting, there are ten men who nobody listens to in meetings. For every woman who doesn't get promoted there are ten men who don't get promoted - and so on (running with your example of 90% men). Maybe sexual harassment is different, because men are less likely to make a move on other men, and if there are fewer women obviously fewer women will make moves on men than vice versa. Unfortunately the scale of sexual harassment is very difficult to gauge as so many different things are being lumped together. For some sexual harassment is "disagreeing with a woman" (as seen in a recent Pando article on YC which will not make it on HN), others have legitimate complaints. Still, why should the tech be worse than other walks of life in that regard, except for the disproportinate gender quotas? (Meaning if more men hit on less women, odds are higher for unpleasant incidents/bad apples than if less men hit on more women).

by fruzz 9y ago

iamatworknow 9y ago

I think you're missing the point of the article. It's not that these things don't exist, or didn't exist for her -- of course they do. The point seems, to me at least, to be that in order to attempt to actually solve these problems you can't actively (or passively) try to exclude yourself from the people causing them. It's like politics -- if you separate yourself into "us" versus "them", how are you ever supposed to work together to find a solution?

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Sort of. The point of the article seems to be more along the lines of "Different people are different. Please don't force your labels onto me." I didn't get the sense that she's trying to change anything. She's just trying to be a person.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- djsumdog 9y ago
  It kinda makes me thing of the "Millennials Don't Exist" talk by Adam Conover. He talks about how generational terms are just made up by authors who want to get rich and they're almost always condescending (those entitled baby boomers, those lazy millennials, those gen x-ers) and how people don't liked to be talked down to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ&t=12s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ&t=12s Are millennials attached do their cellphones? Yes .. so are mothers, fathers, grandparents and some dogs. It's literally the most compact and powerful communication and computational device we've ever had. When you break down all the labels, all you really have is people. Talk to them like people.
  - imjlu 9y ago
    It's almost as if segregation adds unnecessary constraints to the lives of the people involved. You'd think people would have figured this out centuries ago, yet we still self-segregate and divide ourselves wherever possible. Shame.
    - Retric 9y ago
      There is utility in being part of an in group be that people from country X, religion Y, or just credential Z. The trade off is worse global performance, but MBA's networking with other MBA's can be good for people with MBA's and eff anyone else. On top of that their are cognitive biases like I got an CS degree so getting a CS degree must be a good idea. Therefore I will give preference to others with a CS degree. PS: Men do face discrimination in female dominated fields, and being white can often hurt your chances for various things. But, while dead weight losses exist the incentives often favor discrimination even if it's called networking.
      - TrinaryWorksToo 9y ago
        That is something I also see. All sorts of discrimination gets put under the umbrella of networking. It's a lot harder to apply to a CS job through Indeed, Dice, Monster, et cetera, but my current part time job I got through an industry networking event, which I was only able to go to because I have the luxury of free time to search for a job. I'm curious if anyone has thoughts to what might change this.
nollbit 9y ago
The women who report these issues has no obligation to solve the problems, they're simply pointing out that they exist (since for a long time, people wouldn't believe them).
- iamatworknow 9y ago
  You're right, there is no obligation to help. Likewise there's no obligation for me as a straight, white man in tech to help either. But the more people working along side me who I can collaborate with, the better. That only makes both our jobs easier. It doesn't matter what you label yourself as. If labels are getting in the way of our mutual increased success by arbitrarily keeping you from working with me as an equal, why wouldn't I want to help?
alistproducer2 9y ago
But you also can't solve a problem if everyone pretends it doesn't exist.
- iamatworknow 9y ago
  Right. And I've never said that it didn't.
- belorn 9y ago
  And others say that you can't solve the problem of exclusion by having exclusivity. You can instead lead by example, which is not the same as pretending that the problem don't exist. Then there are alternatives solutions which don't include either inclusivity nor exclusivity. Instead you address underlying issues that create the unwanted behavior. That too would not be people pretending that the problem don't exist, but rather a indirect way to solve the problem. Different solutions have different drawbacks and benefits. Criticism of one don't mean the denial of the problem.
bbulkow 9y ago
I think you're missing the point of the discussion. When you have women who are excluded and hit on and passed over simply because they are women, they come up with all kinds of solutions, including raising awareness that there are great women who are WOMEN and you should listen to "women in tech". The stage of creating women-only and women-focused groups ( and buying into the diminutive labeling the original author hates ), is what happens after you have a bunch of really, really, really shitty interactions. Thus, I think it is likely the author simply hasn't had the kind of really poor interactions & groping & whatnot, and she doesn't mention it in her post. I am passionate about this because my significant other is a woman, and she's in tech. I know plenty of other women in technology. Most of them aren't deeply involved in "women-in-tech" and prefer a low-key evangelizing of the great women that have been in tech, combined with fleeing from companies that employ ... jerks ... who harass and ignore. I was very happy that, in my startup under my leadership, we had a 50% male-female ratio. Subsequently, as CTO without much staff, that ratio has steadily decreased, and we are now down to 0% women in engineering. While that can be sampling error ( we don't have a 1000 member engineering staff ), it does give me pause. The women technologists I know don't specifically slag the "women-in-tech" movement as the author did, I suspect because they do realize the magnitude of the problem is great enough that multiple points of pressure are required. Simply being great isn't enough, and the problem is getting worse not better - but there are likely other reasons.
- Klockan 9y ago
  Is there any evidence that these movements actually get any results? To me it just seems like tokenism.
  - and0 9y ago
    Did you even try looking before asking this? I can think of a bunch in just the couple months, mainly in regards to Uber and other SV companies taking concrete steps to fix their culture.
    - Klockan 9y ago
      Doubling down on sexual harassment and other abhorrent behavior is very different from having stuff like women-in-tech awards and women only tech meetups. Also we have more initiatives than ever trying to get women into tech yet the numbers are at an all time low, shouldn't we admit that we need to change our approach?
eeeeeeeeeeeee 9y ago
Different and opposing groups work together to find a common solution all the time. You can be different and work in a group and it not be antagonistic. This "us v. them" mentality is fostered by people who don't want to contribute with people who are different, they want everyone to assimilate into "their way." Take the "black lives matter" movement. If we followed the OPs advice, they should just protest that "all lives matter" instead, which is precisely what their opposition is doing (e.g. blue lives matter, all lives matter), to diminish their campaign. I understand how it can be annoying to be labeled or be associated with a group, even if you don't want to, but this problem is not going to be solved if it's not identified and that is what is going on. I think she's just reading too much into it.
- hosh 9y ago
  This is something my friends and I were talking about privately for a while now. One of the things that came out of it was something summed up by one of my friends -- stop founding movements, start founding communities. Modernism (and I'm talking as far back as the early 1900s, and arguably, even earlier than that) has eroded our sense community. Our communication tech has, over the past few centuries, have allowed people to talk to each other at greater physical distance while at the same time, created more emotional distance from each other. While modernism might have produced great advancement in science and technology and challenged traditional dogmas, it also threw out a lot of what we needed from those traditions. Community-building is one of them. Movements that are trying to raise awareness on problems and change don't always have a clear idea on what happens after the fight is over: can you imagine still living, working, and playing with those people after all is said and done? Take "Black Lives Matter", or even "All Lives Matter". People voice their deep concerns, the ugly things get aired out. And after all of that, can you see yourself living next door? Your children playing and going to school together? Going to the pub after a town hall meeting? Barbecue at the park on a summer day? Borrow each other's tools? Asking each other for advice? Taking in one of the kids after school because your neighbor is busy that day? Or do you get a sense of fear, disgust, resentment, contempt, or despair?
  - eeeeeeeeeeeee 9y ago
agentultra 9y ago
> It's like politics -- if you separate yourself into "us" versus "them", how are you ever supposed to work together to find a solution? It's not like that at all. Ideologies exist on a spectrum. And there are some on the extreme ends that are so reprehensible that there's no good reason to find a way to include them in any reasonable dialog. I don't care how hurt someone feels if they can't find a safe space to talk about their racist ideas. If you're a little racist on the inside, fine, just be uncomfortable and don't be racist on the outside. We're not here to police how people think but you better watch how you behave. I won't feel sorry for you if someone punches you in the face. The real problem is that centuries of oppression have made sexism normal. It's part of the institution. It's invisible to most people. There isn't a clear label you can apply to people to sort out whose sexist. It's everywhere. How do you fight something like that? I want it to be normal as hell to be a woman/person of colour/queer/etc-in-tech (and the rest of the world). I don't look at programs that give people recognition or assistance as a pity-party or somehow makes them less. I see it as evening the playing field... but it's only treating a symptom. The harder battle is curing the disease.
- mr_spothawk 9y ago
  > I want it to be normal as hell to be a woman/person of colour/queer/etc-in-tech (and the rest of the world). it seems like diversity and inclusion are at odds. id like to feel okay with my unfasionable identity, too. highlighting how different i am from others helps to discourage inclusion by them-ing my peers.
  - agentultra 9y ago
    The intention of "normal as hell," is not to make us all brothers and sisters. Variety is the spice of life and it takes all kinds to make good software. The spirit is one where we're not living in a system that encourages to sub-consciously bias ourselves against others. I'd like it if my friends didn't have to succeed in spite of all the time whereas I get a (pretty much) free ride.
- JSONwebtoken 9y ago
  Why do these discussions always devolve into talks about punching people or getting punched? I can't get through a day without somebody suggesting violence is the only response to get somebody to think like them. If you don't want these "programs" to exist at the professional level, you have to go all the back to college and high school. You can only continue to treat symptoms through affirmative action, because that is the cycle we're stuck in. That is the disease you are identifying. People who are propped up by outside assistance will naturally continue to depend on those props and leech resources at a disproportionate rate. When these props are removed, the whole thing comes crashing down and we'll be forced to face the reality that these issues can't be fixed from a top down approach. Hiring more women or minorities into tech won't trickle down into incentivizing more women/minorities to major in Computer Science. Accepting more women/minorities into CS programs won't encourage more women/minorities to become interested in nerdy stuff in high school. The real disease is third party intervention. Thinking all the world's problems can be solved as long as it looks like somebody's doing something for a long enough period of time. All that does is allow under-qualified individuals to shit the pool for the demographic that they represent and reinforce negative perspectives until people who pay for productive work can't turn a blind eye and then get punched in the face I suppose.
and0 9y ago
I've been in enough of these conversations to know replies like this are just trolling and/or white-noise. Why NOT separate yourselves into an "us" vs "them"? Why should oppressed people try to "work together" with their oppressors? If you're so interested the effectiveness of social movements, why haven't you looked at cases like Susan Fowler's to see how little it accomplishes to "work together", or within the system, "to find a solution"? What rulebook, exactly, should people consult when organizing to stop awful shit from happening? Let us know so we can tell which methods are kosher with you. In the meantime maybe start holding the perpetrators to the same rigorous standard of moral behavior.
- iamatworknow 9y ago
  We live in a society. If we don't work together to solve our issues then we'll languish and die apart.
  - and0 9y ago
    This is meandering, meaningless point. I have no idea what you actually mean here. How exactly do support groups for women in STEM tear at the fabric of society? How does it do so in such a way that actively excluding them doesn't (via harassment and other boundaries), and why aren't you equally critical of those people?

throwaway170705 9y ago

>I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers, but other people have, and they need these words and spaces. This is what I intended to post; thanks for sharing your experience. I'm a gay Indian male living in Canada. I have never experienced marginalization for being Indian, but at my previous engagement, I experienced quite a bit of harassment and discrimination for being queer. Until that point, I didn't think much of what female colleagues were going through but began to notice a slew of inappropriate remarks (most famously: "Are we sure he's not post-op? I thought only women get migraines." from the CEO) and discriminatory behaviours (boss 'rating' female colleagues with the general response of nervous laughter). I think that you hit the nail on the head - many people have to either directly experience or observe these issues before they become legitimate. The author has been extremely fortunate.

sremani 9y ago
It's important not to dismiss her experience as being extremely lucky. The thing is, there are lot of women like her, who were not harassed at their work places or have "grown-up" work environments with decent managers and HR policies.
- kristineberth 9y ago
  Frankly I'd be surprised if she had never been harassed in some way. I know a grand total of zero women a decade into their careers who have literally never experienced some kind of harassment. Without being able to speak for her, I can surmise that maybe she just doesn't feel it needs to define her.
  - SomeCallMeTim 9y ago
    > Frankly I'd be surprised if she had never been harassed in some way. 1. She grew up in Denmark 2. She works in the UK From what I've heard, both are far more progressive and egalitarian than the US. If the people you know are based in the US, that could be the distinction. I think the problems here are far worse.

escapetech 9y ago

>> I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers, According to whom? Just because one doesn't address or mention the obstacles faced in their personal life doesn't necessarily mean that none were faced. >> I've never seen men, as a group, encounter the obstacles I've seen many female peers discuss. The solution is not to ignore the individual instances of these problems occurring within a group or across other groups that aren't necessarily by gender.

Mz 9y ago

There is zero reason to believe that this piece is suggesting that women who get groped shouldn't call it out. Part of her point is that having awards specifically for women implicitly agrees that women are second rate and can't compete with the guys, so should not bother and should just accept their pink collar ghetto status and stop bothering to try to escape it and actually get taken seriously.

coldtea 9y ago

>There's sexism in tech, and to address it you have to call it for what it is. I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers, but other people have, and they need these words and spaces. Or they just need to learn to speak up for themselves? You are a woman programmer and somebody treats you like a jerk? Do the same that a man programmer would do if somebody picked on them. Why the need for some different behavior, special groups etc? I think they mainly exist so that their leaders have careers, a voice in the media, etc. The boss excuses them? Call the boss on it.

Dove 9y ago

> but as a group, it's undeniable that there's extra obstacles I'm not sure you can really say that. It's true, women as a group encounter problems with being treated as sex objects, and there are cultural reasons for that, blah blah blah. So women have a unique experience. BUT! Men experience a pressure to succeed that we as women can hardly fathom. Consequently, they wind up in jobs they need, in a way we never will, which opens them up for a different kind of abuse in the workplace. Men experience such pressure to succeed that they sacrifice their health and well-being, sometimes their life, in the effort to succeed, and that seems pretty terrible. And there are cultural reasons for that and blah blah blah. I really don't think it's useful to try to calculate who has it worse. Workplace abuse is bad. Let's oppose it. Sexual harassment is bad. Let's oppose it. Which is worse? Who cares? They're kind of incomparable anyway. Let's not waste time on that. Let's all agree to oppose these things and help those who suffer! I'm not saying opposing sexual harassment is a waste of time. That's absolutely a good thing to do. And I'm not saying women as a group don't have a specific set of issues and problems it makes sense to address as a set. I think sometimes they do. But I am saying focusing on that and saying, "and therefore WOMEN HAVE PROBLEMS AND MEN DON'T" is a bit myopic, and I don't really think it helps either of us. We've all got problems, some of our own making, some due to family or history, or . . . sometimes we just randomly walk into someone else's problems. People have genetic diseases. People have deformities. People have nutritional problems and religious obligations and sick relatives. And people overcome these things because they're AMAZING! Let us not bother keeping score. Let us be compassionate and kind and support those we see in trouble. Let us expect, without exception, that everyone will be treated well.

rdiddly 9y ago
I like how you think - let's just keep it simple and oppose all the things that suck then shall we? I'll add that the best way to oppose something is to promote its opposite. Only because "opposing" has a tendency to backfire. We should therefore promote, for example, sexismlessness. Yes I made up a word.
- gkya 9y ago
  > sexismlessness If you promote reason and common sense, you (are working in order to) get rid off all these problems plus many more. I'm emotionally refreshed to read the post you reply to, and the OP's writing. More sexism doesn't help in trying to remove sexism, and revenge and positive discrimination bring lots of tension among the sides.

lostPixels 9y ago

You can't attack someone's beliefs because they cited anecdotal experiences, and then go and do the same thing to justify your beliefs.

RealityNow 9y ago

You're not addressing the article at hand. The article is not claiming that sexism doesn't exist. > I've never seen men, as a group, encounter the obstacles I've seen many female peers discuss Though since we're on the topic - I can't speak for your specific anecdotes, but I'll say this: men may not face obstacles to the same extent of women, but they definitely face their own obstacles, and sexism against men even in this industry is a thing. Affirmative action and hiring quotas are reverse discrimination. Being a women in this field gives you a leg up in terms of university admission to competitive CS programs and employment at competitive firms. Recruiters are often female and discriminate in favor of women. (I've experienced this numerous times firsthand). For your friends who were actually sexually harassed, the mere accusation alone is often enough to get co-workers fired and have their reputations ruined (see Adria Richards dongle joke). So yes, females unfortunately face a huge set of obstacles, but they also face a huge set of advantages that shouldn't be overlooked. This victim mentality needs to stop at some point.

araes 9y ago
Being an engineering hiring manager for a few years, I will say that if your work environment is semi-pro (ie, no lewd jokes, no groping, ect..) being a woman or minority is a huge advantage. I felt kind of bad for single white males sometimes. Between them and an equally competent black or Hispanic female...no contest. There don't even have to be quotas. Mgr's just love to be able to post a chart with a huge pie slice showing how awesome their minority representation is. Note the "my office is 50/50 male/female" comment from higher up implying that is somehow a measure of workforce quality. Plus there are a Lot of women on the flipside who realize how easy it is to manipulate an all male environment when your one of like 3 females. Those are the clever ones. And men fall for it in droves. Women are great. So are men. So are GLBTQIA and all the other versions of rainbow alphabet soup. As long as when you are at work you Get. Shit. Done. Well, that and keep your knowingly hurtful comments and touching to yourself. This world is hellish enough as is. Lord help us when mind reading tech gets pervasive. "6 of 8, your thoughts are out of compliance with Newspeak, prepare for 'reorientation'." Damn you Orwell. All my nightmares are made manifest.

nnfy 9y ago

It is cherry picking to analyze only obstacles faced by women in tech and then conclude that women face extra challenges without even considering that men spend their lifetimes facing predominantly male-unique problems. The same flawed perspective leads to generalized racism like the now popular opinion that white people should be treated poorly because they all had it easy.

atmosx 9y ago

> I've mentored young women in high school interested in STEM in a program specific for them. The content is the same, but there's value in having these to counter the obstacles specific to women that they'll face. Taking for granted a priori that this group will face obstacles isn't exactly what this post is about?!?

femwarrior 9y ago

Actually since there are so many more men than women in tech, most things you describe happen more often to men than to women. For every women who nobody listens to in a meeting, there are ten men who nobody listens to in meetings. For every woman who doesn't get promoted there are ten men who don't get promoted - and so on (running with your example of 90% men). Maybe sexual harassment is different, because men are less likely to make a move on other men, and if there are fewer women obviously fewer women will make moves on men than vice versa. Unfortunately the scale of sexual harassment is very difficult to gauge as so many different things are being lumped together. For some sexual harassment is "disagreeing with a woman" (as seen in a recent Pando article on YC which will not make it on HN), others have legitimate complaints. Still, why should the tech be worse than other walks of life in that regard, except for the disproportinate gender quotas? (Meaning if more men hit on less women, odds are higher for unpleasant incidents/bad apples than if less men hit on more women).