5 ms·

They are definitely a group worth talking to as they can speak first-hand to the difficulties they had getting/staying in the field despite having a strong desi

by blihp 8y ago

They are definitely a group worth talking to as they can speak first-hand to the difficulties they had getting/staying in the field despite having a strong desire to be there/here. Understanding at least some of what they felt they were up against should make clear the most obvious obstacles that need to be cleared.

Someguywhatever 8y ago
>to the difficulties they had getting/staying in the field despite having a strong desire to be there/here Why isn't it ok that they just aren't interested in it? Women have agency and intelligence and if they want to do something then they can and will do it. I find this whole obsession with "Women in X" to be suspicious because nobody is interested in gender disparities in other fields and starting up "Men in X". So it's not a generic effort to understand a gender disparity, it is a specific directed effort to force women (who have agency and freedom) to go into a field that they don't really seem that interested in. Blaming men for women not taking CS degrees either directly or indirectly IMO denies womens agency and is totally unnecessary. I think women are doing what they want to do, and they largely don't want to take CS it seems. Maybe if society stopped nagging them about it the situation might change organically.
- blihp 8y ago
  It's perfectly fine for women not to be interested in CS or any other field. There's probably a nature/nurture argument to be made for some of the disparity but that doesn't explain all of it. For example, one of the women in the article referenced a boss commenting about her breasts, another talked about being encouraged to drop out so a more deserving man could take her place... that's not lack of interest, that's actively discouraging those who want to be here. Can any men here seriously recall in a professional context a boss referring to their 'package'? Or that they should leave the field so that some more deserving woman could take their place? To me, that's a problem. If a woman doesn't want to be in a field, sure that's their choice. If they're actively discouraged from it, that's a problem. I've been in more than one professional situation where I was made uncomfortable with how a co-worker or manager was referring to female candidates/co-workers. I'm not talking about good-natured joking around on the job or even flirting, but rather something that in retrospect I can honestly say was discrimination. I also recall that in those situations, I was in no position to do anything about it so it's not like speaking up would have helped... more likely I would have been shortly out of a gig myself.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Can any men here seriously recall in a professional context a boss referring to their 'package'? I can recall someone who did that before he became my manager. Or that they should leave the field so that some more deserving woman could take their place? I know a man who was told almost exactly that by a professor. (Minus the woman specifier.)
    - skj 8y ago
      > Minus the woman specifier. So, "you should leave this field so someone more deserving can have a place"? When you take out the gender qualifier it doesn't seem so ominous.
      - weberc2 8y ago
        Right. Was she asked to leave so someone more deserving (who happened to be a man) could take her place, or was she asked to leave so a man (who happened to be more deserving) could take her place? It seems like someone went out of their way to make the phrasing unusually ambiguous, as though they wanted to make an accusation of sexism but with plausible deniability in case they get called out (motte & bailey fallacy?).
        stcredzero 8y ago
        Are you referring to my comment? My comment involves a man being told that.
        weberc2 8y ago
        No, I was referring to the original comment or comments of this form generally.
  - Someguywhatever 8y ago
    >one of the women in the article referenced a boss commenting about her breasts This is not a problem that's unique to STEM or CS or anything like that though. >another talked about being encouraged to drop out so a more deserving man could take her place... that's not lack of interest, that's actively discouraging those who want to be here Again, I don't see that as a problem thats particularly tied to CS or programming or STEM or whatever. I'm not saying its not a problem but thats simply a general problem. I mean a woman could literally name any field and state those reasons and it would have the same impact, and be equally as bad, but those aren't problems specific to the field of STEM or CS or programming or whatever. >I've been in more than one professional situation where I was made uncomfortable with how a co-worker or manager was referring to female candidates/co-workers I've literally been in the room when my boss made weird sexual comments to a female coworker. We looked at each other wide-eyed like neither of us could believe this was really happening, and it was like something out of a training video it was so stereotypical. She thought it was weird but it didn't really phase her, she just let it pass and didn't call him out on it. I think he was just socially weird and didn't realize how his comment would be received until he saw our faces. Nobody said anything and we just carried on with our meeting. She seemed to just take it as "this happens occasionally" almost like encountering road rage on the highway, like I'm not going to give up driving because some people are annoying. I think she took this type of attitude. These things happen and the level of behavior control/policing that would be required to eliminate such occurrences would be onerous. The cure would be worse than the disease in my opinion. Particularly heinous harrasment can already be dealt with in the legal sphere. I don't want to hand wave it away but, I don't think it can be eliminated in a practical way TBH.
- majormajor 8y ago
  > I find this whole obsession with "Women in X" to be suspicious because nobody is interested in gender disparities in other fields and starting up "Men in X". A quick google search turns up groups for and mainstream media discussion of men in nursing and men in teaching. Is it "suspicious" that one that you as an engineer see the most of is the one that (a) involves your own field and (b) involves a currently-extremely-prominent-in-media-overall field (fake news, election meddling, self-driving cars, Uber, etc)?
  - Someguywhatever 8y ago
    I don't think you can honestly argue that there is as significant an effort to get men into Nursing as there is to get women into programming.
    - weberc2 8y ago
      Hey, there are dozens of us! Dozens!
    - majormajor 8y ago
      I think anyone who reads HN or other tech media is incredibly disproportionately overexposed to the tech gender conversation compared to the general public. It just isn't a thing that registers much for the non-engineering people I know. I have no idea how much I'd see discussion about men in nursing if I was a nurse. I know a few (women) nurse, it's something they've mentioned occasionally, same with teachers. But in both cases, you see much less of anything about those fields in the news right now.
      - weberc2 8y ago
        The fact that major media publications carry stories on gender in tech but not in nursing, teaching, etc (or at least very infrequently) is a pretty good indication that the issue in tech gets more promotion. And this shouldn't surprise anyone; women's issues in general enjoy quite a lot more promotion than men's issues (e.g., "wage gap" vs workplace fatality gap, breast cancer vs prostate cancer, sexual assault vs literally every other kind of assault, etc).
- dnautics 8y ago
  conversely no one is asking why there aren't more women in oil drilling.
naasking 8y ago
> Understanding at least some of what they felt they were up against should make clear the most obvious obstacles that need to be cleared. That doesn't follow. The obstacles the women who succeeded in CS perceive aren't necessarily the same obstacles that drive women who don't succeed in or who don't pursue CS. Sometimes these will overlap, but not necessarily. Clearly the obstacles faced by women who succeeded were insufficient to deter them, so we need to know what obstacles were successful deterrents.
- komali2 8y ago
  The obstacles faced by women who succeeded may only have been insufficient to deter them due to a singular factor, that they may be aware of, and can speak towards. For example, my mother had me at 18, and managed to struggle through college anyway. The reason she was even able to go to school is she had 2 sisters that could take turns babysitting me. If she had 1 sister, it wouldn't have been tenable. If she didn't have a family, same. So she's very much aware of how difficult it was to get through college, and she readily says "if it weren't for your aunts, I would never have a degree."
- blihp 8y ago
  It won't provide a complete picture, only the picture of the common obstacles that were insufficient to stop them. Read the article and count how many things that you can say 'as a man, I never had to face this and would have considered it inappropriate had it happened to me'. To me those are candidates for obvious obstacles to try to clear. They are the sorts of things that numerous women probably were deterred by.
  - naasking 8y ago
    > To me those are candidates for obvious obstacles to try to clear. They are the sorts of things that numerous women probably were deterred by. I'm skeptical of this sort of claim. The sexism barriers in medicine and law were much higher, yet women persevered and achieved gender parity despite them. I don't think women are so easily deterred as you seem to imply. That said, of course it's still worthwhile to eliminate overt sexism of the sorts described in the article, but I don't think for a second it will change the gender ratios by very much. The sort of sexism described is unfortunately everywhere.

by blihp 8y ago

Someguywhatever 8y ago

>to the difficulties they had getting/staying in the field despite having a strong desire to be there/here Why isn't it ok that they just aren't interested in it? Women have agency and intelligence and if they want to do something then they can and will do it. I find this whole obsession with "Women in X" to be suspicious because nobody is interested in gender disparities in other fields and starting up "Men in X". So it's not a generic effort to understand a gender disparity, it is a specific directed effort to force women (who have agency and freedom) to go into a field that they don't really seem that interested in. Blaming men for women not taking CS degrees either directly or indirectly IMO denies womens agency and is totally unnecessary. I think women are doing what they want to do, and they largely don't want to take CS it seems. Maybe if society stopped nagging them about it the situation might change organically.

blihp 8y ago
It's perfectly fine for women not to be interested in CS or any other field. There's probably a nature/nurture argument to be made for some of the disparity but that doesn't explain all of it. For example, one of the women in the article referenced a boss commenting about her breasts, another talked about being encouraged to drop out so a more deserving man could take her place... that's not lack of interest, that's actively discouraging those who want to be here. Can any men here seriously recall in a professional context a boss referring to their 'package'? Or that they should leave the field so that some more deserving woman could take their place? To me, that's a problem. If a woman doesn't want to be in a field, sure that's their choice. If they're actively discouraged from it, that's a problem. I've been in more than one professional situation where I was made uncomfortable with how a co-worker or manager was referring to female candidates/co-workers. I'm not talking about good-natured joking around on the job or even flirting, but rather something that in retrospect I can honestly say was discrimination. I also recall that in those situations, I was in no position to do anything about it so it's not like speaking up would have helped... more likely I would have been shortly out of a gig myself.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Can any men here seriously recall in a professional context a boss referring to their 'package'? I can recall someone who did that before he became my manager. Or that they should leave the field so that some more deserving woman could take their place? I know a man who was told almost exactly that by a professor. (Minus the woman specifier.)
  - skj 8y ago
    > Minus the woman specifier. So, "you should leave this field so someone more deserving can have a place"? When you take out the gender qualifier it doesn't seem so ominous.
    - weberc2 8y ago
      Right. Was she asked to leave so someone more deserving (who happened to be a man) could take her place, or was she asked to leave so a man (who happened to be more deserving) could take her place? It seems like someone went out of their way to make the phrasing unusually ambiguous, as though they wanted to make an accusation of sexism but with plausible deniability in case they get called out (motte & bailey fallacy?).
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        Are you referring to my comment? My comment involves a man being told that.
        weberc2 8y ago
        No, I was referring to the original comment or comments of this form generally.
- Someguywhatever 8y ago
  >one of the women in the article referenced a boss commenting about her breasts This is not a problem that's unique to STEM or CS or anything like that though. >another talked about being encouraged to drop out so a more deserving man could take her place... that's not lack of interest, that's actively discouraging those who want to be here Again, I don't see that as a problem thats particularly tied to CS or programming or STEM or whatever. I'm not saying its not a problem but thats simply a general problem. I mean a woman could literally name any field and state those reasons and it would have the same impact, and be equally as bad, but those aren't problems specific to the field of STEM or CS or programming or whatever. >I've been in more than one professional situation where I was made uncomfortable with how a co-worker or manager was referring to female candidates/co-workers I've literally been in the room when my boss made weird sexual comments to a female coworker. We looked at each other wide-eyed like neither of us could believe this was really happening, and it was like something out of a training video it was so stereotypical. She thought it was weird but it didn't really phase her, she just let it pass and didn't call him out on it. I think he was just socially weird and didn't realize how his comment would be received until he saw our faces. Nobody said anything and we just carried on with our meeting. She seemed to just take it as "this happens occasionally" almost like encountering road rage on the highway, like I'm not going to give up driving because some people are annoying. I think she took this type of attitude. These things happen and the level of behavior control/policing that would be required to eliminate such occurrences would be onerous. The cure would be worse than the disease in my opinion. Particularly heinous harrasment can already be dealt with in the legal sphere. I don't want to hand wave it away but, I don't think it can be eliminated in a practical way TBH.
majormajor 8y ago
> I find this whole obsession with "Women in X" to be suspicious because nobody is interested in gender disparities in other fields and starting up "Men in X". A quick google search turns up groups for and mainstream media discussion of men in nursing and men in teaching. Is it "suspicious" that one that you as an engineer see the most of is the one that (a) involves your own field and (b) involves a currently-extremely-prominent-in-media-overall field (fake news, election meddling, self-driving cars, Uber, etc)?
- Someguywhatever 8y ago
  I don't think you can honestly argue that there is as significant an effort to get men into Nursing as there is to get women into programming.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    Hey, there are dozens of us! Dozens!
  - majormajor 8y ago
    I think anyone who reads HN or other tech media is incredibly disproportionately overexposed to the tech gender conversation compared to the general public. It just isn't a thing that registers much for the non-engineering people I know. I have no idea how much I'd see discussion about men in nursing if I was a nurse. I know a few (women) nurse, it's something they've mentioned occasionally, same with teachers. But in both cases, you see much less of anything about those fields in the news right now.
    - weberc2 8y ago
      The fact that major media publications carry stories on gender in tech but not in nursing, teaching, etc (or at least very infrequently) is a pretty good indication that the issue in tech gets more promotion. And this shouldn't surprise anyone; women's issues in general enjoy quite a lot more promotion than men's issues (e.g., "wage gap" vs workplace fatality gap, breast cancer vs prostate cancer, sexual assault vs literally every other kind of assault, etc).
dnautics 8y ago
conversely no one is asking why there aren't more women in oil drilling.

naasking 8y ago

> Understanding at least some of what they felt they were up against should make clear the most obvious obstacles that need to be cleared. That doesn't follow. The obstacles the women who succeeded in CS perceive aren't necessarily the same obstacles that drive women who don't succeed in or who don't pursue CS. Sometimes these will overlap, but not necessarily. Clearly the obstacles faced by women who succeeded were insufficient to deter them, so we need to know what obstacles were successful deterrents.

komali2 8y ago
The obstacles faced by women who succeeded may only have been insufficient to deter them due to a singular factor, that they may be aware of, and can speak towards. For example, my mother had me at 18, and managed to struggle through college anyway. The reason she was even able to go to school is she had 2 sisters that could take turns babysitting me. If she had 1 sister, it wouldn't have been tenable. If she didn't have a family, same. So she's very much aware of how difficult it was to get through college, and she readily says "if it weren't for your aunts, I would never have a degree."
blihp 8y ago
It won't provide a complete picture, only the picture of the common obstacles that were insufficient to stop them. Read the article and count how many things that you can say 'as a man, I never had to face this and would have considered it inappropriate had it happened to me'. To me those are candidates for obvious obstacles to try to clear. They are the sorts of things that numerous women probably were deterred by.
- naasking 8y ago
  > To me those are candidates for obvious obstacles to try to clear. They are the sorts of things that numerous women probably were deterred by. I'm skeptical of this sort of claim. The sexism barriers in medicine and law were much higher, yet women persevered and achieved gender parity despite them. I don't think women are so easily deterred as you seem to imply. That said, of course it's still worthwhile to eliminate overt sexism of the sorts described in the article, but I don't think for a second it will change the gender ratios by very much. The sort of sexism described is unfortunately everywhere.