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The number of comments on this thread stating sexism exists in all areas and seemly dismiss this as an issue that needs to be addressed in our industry is very
by stevenameyer 14y ago
The number of comments on this thread stating sexism exists in all areas and seemly dismiss this as an issue that needs to be addressed in our industry is very surprising to me.
Just because the problem is not specific to the tech industry doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to solve it. If women feel uncomfortable working or contributing to the industry because of their gender then we are missing out on possible contributions from a massive section of the population.
Will cases of sexism always exist? Probably, their will always be a bad apple or two. But we need to work to make these these cases the exception to how the industry works. We need people to feel safe contributing regardless of who they are. If you have something to contribute you should be able to, that is one of the things I personally love about this industry. Just because we can never fully solve a problem doesn't mean we shouldn't try to minimize it.
- onemorepassword 14y agoIt's not that it shouldn't be addressed in our industry, but it shouldn't be addressed as "sexism in tech", because that is an entirely separate issue. The kind of sexism that is described here occurs just as much in industries that are 50% women. It's not the cause of the under-representation of women in tech, and addressing it is unlikely to solve that issue. On the one hand, the industry should make an additional effort to address the general social sexism on order to not further alienate women, but the suggestion that tech is more sexist than other areas is blatantly false, and leads to a automatic defensive response because it suggests a certain causality. It is simply not very constructive to conflate the two issues, no matter how closely related they are. Sexism in general is too sensitive an issue for that, and not just for women.