This article is about why it's great to work in tech, _especially_ as a girl. Be prepared for some "omg why didn't someone tell me earlier....!!!" facts.
"low status" Men who value other's opinions of them over voicing their real feelings.
How many comments in this thread asked the OP "what projects have you worked on", "what have you contributed as a woman?".
Why? Because the larger issue isn't woman. It's "Nice guy" syndrome. Deferring to woman, being "pc", repressing opinions. The book No More Mr. Nice Guy (http://www.amazon.com/No-More-Mr-Nice-Guy/dp/0762415339) is a great read on this.
As for the OP. I don't care about your gender or race. I want to know what you code. I want you to be great. But will not enable my fellow men nor you to be weak prima donnas.
We have a destiny. We owe it to our children not to show such weakness.
"This is a bit of a delicate topic. Quite often I am the only female person in the team and have to be careful not to take advantage of the perks that come with it. Guys are fascinated and scared by girls who roll up their sleeves and take on a job that society labels as “men’s work”. If you’ve ever drilled a hole, skinned a rabbit, or changed a tyre you know what I mean.
As I mentioned earlier, guys will definitely put you to the test and as a girl it will be hard to get their respect. On the other hand, you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky, which is a habit that is so easy to get into. I have to confess I’ve done it myself because if you are surrounded by guys all day you quickly feel powerful. However, with great power comes great responsibility so don’t take (too much, hehe) advantage of the nerds treating you like a princess just because they finally get to work with a girl."
Never experienced this. Sounds like an alternate reality. All the so called nerds I worked with had girlfriends or wives and didn't wear pocket protectors and stutter around females when talking to them.
This sounds alien to me as well. I've been a member of a lot of diverse teams, and led some of them, over the years. While it's true that female tech people are always outnumbered by male ones, what that actually means probably depends a lot on culture. My experiences are almost exclusively in Northern Europe and Asia and generally I didn't perceive that female devs got any special treatment at all (negative or positive).
If Nerdess extracts some sort of empowerment out of this that's great for her, but I imagine crossing the line into a territory where your team mates perceive you as a shallow and malicious manipulator is a real danger here. Any person who bases their work persona exclusively on being a precious snowflake (of any kind) is not someone I'd like to have on my team.
Maybe we have worked in different environments than nerdess. I've had quite a few jobs (at software companies in the US) where most of my colleagues are calm, mature, and act like professionals without regard to gender. I've also encountered the occasional colleague (a bit more often in startup/freelance culture) who acts like females are a new and unfamiliar technology, and doesn't know how to relate in appropriate ways. But I've never felt particularly "powerful" in my workplace, until I started doing most of my work from my home office.
Honestly the whole nerd thing is a completely western (mostly American) thing. I have a very different background and we don't even have a word for "nerd". The absolute closest synonym you can find is "really smart" which is positive, and a negative one would be "bookworm".
And these western stereotypes are absolutely non-existent. If you ask people in the streets to tell you general traits about 'the nerds' they wont be able to tell you a thing. But try that in America, they'll write a book about it.
But even in the western culture we are seeing these stereotypes fading away more and more every day because hey everybody is a nerd these days with their iPhones and iPads and Kindles etc...
All it takes is for computer programming to be brought into the standard school curriculum. Give that a couple of years and every teenager will also be a computer programmer, some better than the other but nonetheless.
By then, being able to program a computer will be too normal for these stereotypes to live.
I don't buy that it's completely western. I was born and raised in Turkey, and the term for nerd there is "inek" which translates to "cow". The idea is that the person spends most of their time with their head buried in books, much like cows spend a lot of time with their heads buried in grass. Definitely not a positive term.
I'd say that "inek" firmly lies within what others would call "bookworm", having been called that. Maybe even implies a lot about schoolwork but not about much else. It implies that you don't have a personal life, because it is spent with schoolwork.
Nerd, on the other hand, conjures up a whole subculture that is quite different. The nerd not only is naturally good at schoolwork, but also has a personal life, but chooses to fill it with abnormal curiosa: Sci-fi, larping, reading, learning, etc.
I have a hunch that part of this is related to the fact that nerdess is German. Or at least, she's based in Germany per the site.
I'm from Denmark (and a guy), and I can say from firsthand experience that attitudes towards women in Europe are still very old-school. Not everywhere, certainly, and Europeans are open-minded liberal socialists etc, but behind the scenes the old attitude of "women and technology don't mix" is very much alive.
For example, many guys in Europe I've spoken to will make jokes about girls not really being fit to work on cars, working with computers, or doing anything "technically hard".
Even some years ago, there was an advertising campaign for a lotto (or something similar) with the tagline "so simple even a woman could understand it". The advertisement featured a pretty blond woman standing in her kitchen, listening to the boys hoot and holler about their winnings next door with a vacant expression on her face. This was plastered all over the main train station in Copenhagen.
So, while I agree it probably seems like an alternate reality in the US (assuming that's where you're from), it's not so far-fetched in other parts of the world. Just my $0.02.
The tag line is "there is a lot of stuff women don't understand", and the format is a womans literal visualization of a sport metaphor. In this case, "giving away a goal". The campaign is still running, and considered one of the most successful advertising campaigns in Denmark.
The company behind it is 80% state owned. and 20% owned by the non-profit sport organizations. It used to have a monopoly on gambling. The profit goes to charity.
I would not generalize the Danish peculiar brand of humor to all of Europe. One of the advices to Danes going abroad is "stay away from humor, foreigners don't understand our brand of humor". Same for visitors, they are told "the Danish jokes are not meant as insulting as they sound".
In our own self image, we are so liberal and open minded that we can safely joke about all kind of stereotypes. E.g. Danish state owned children tv has a running gag about how lazy and incompetent Polish workers (our "Mexicans") are. It is probably also no accident that the Mohammed cartoons were made in Denmark. Although that particular incident taught Danes something about how different humor can be viewed in the rest of the world.
Edit: Two more details. 1) Most high profile ad campaigns in Denmark are based on humor. 2) This is the only one I can think of where women are shown as stupid. The common pattern is that the man is being goofy while the sensible woman is buying the advertisers product.
Interesting - I hadn't known that about Danish humor.
It is probably also no accident that the Mohammed cartoons were made in Denmark.
The thing is, those weren't even offensive or derogatory. The rest of the world overreacted and rolled over because of overblown threats from the Islamic world.
Yes, that was the one! I'm surprised it's still running.
> In our own self image, we are so liberal and open minded that we can safely joke about all kind of stereotypes.
So true - I'd say Danes are pretty blind to their own prejudices and backwards attitudes. I'm sure you remember "Perkerspillet" from some years ago?
"Perkerspillet", which roughly translates to "The Nigger Game", was an online flash game where the player was a stereotypical "gangsta" Turkish immigrant. You drove around the city in a souped-up BMW, trying to pick up Danish women and make money to further enhance your ride. They had to rename it to "The Mujaffa Game" after people stirred up controversy.
IMHO, I feel like the Danes often act like they're entitled to say whatever they want in the name of free speech, as if there'll be no consequences. That's why the Muhammad cartoon incident was such a wake-up call.
I've never experienced it either, but maybe it's regional influence.
I've worked on a lot of teams over the years, often as the only female on a project. Only once have I felt in any way "different" from anyone else on the team, be it in a positive or negative way, and I don't think that was intentional. It was a startup ran by young, single guys, and I was a mid 30's mom. We just had different priorities and interests and the culture wasn't a good fit. But there wasn't anything negative or sexist about it, just differences.
Just wanted to echo this. 99% of the hackers/programmers/whatever I've met, whether in industry or at university have been pretty normal. In fact, the cleverest and most productive ones have tended to be more socially successful, not less. Tech people I've met actually tend to have more enlightened views on women/gender than the population at large.
Where it does start to get weird, in my experience, is when it starts to cross over into the gaming/anime/fandom area, particularly gaming. Some of those people are really maladjusted, but I suppose that's to be expected from a subculture based around endlessly celebrating childrens toys.
There must be some generational/geographical divide here somewhere. For reference I'm in the UK.
More than once I was the only female in a team (including a 20 people team). I think that the initial reaction of most of the team members is not about 'hey, look, it's a girl! what are we suppose to do with it?' like it sounds on the article. When there's a tight knit team and someone a bit different joins there's always worry that it's going to affect the existing culture, it doesn't matter if it's a girl, someone older, someone very young or someone from a different country. Once you play the 'girl' card, you remain different. I'm not saying that you have to start drinking beer all day long and tell StarWars jokes, just be yourself and align with the team (same advice for men as well). You might be liked more when you play the 'girl' card but that's not the right way for a promotion (been there, done that). Other than that, great article, useful and I like the images.
Privilege blindness doesn't just apply to straight white men. The relationship status of the people has nothing to do with it. Men are instinctively predisposed to helping women. Women can and do take advantage of this, and generally don't recognize or acknowledge that they are doing so. You don't see it, because you've lived it your entire life and it is normal.
How many times has a woman put a new water bottle in the water cooler here? I know the exact number, because it is zero. All of the women here are fully capable of doing it, yet they ask men to do it. And how often do men say no? This is very obvious when looking at tasks that are considered stereotypically "men's work" like lifting something, but it applies just as much to anything else.
I've watched my wife get men to do her work for her several times. She simply asks them to do it, and they say yes. When I point it out to her, she insists that they would have done the same for a man, and that had she asked a woman they would have done it for her too. Yet, she never asks another woman to do it, and I know I sure wouldn't do it if a man were asking me. She is taking advantage of being female, and it is so deeply ingrained that it comes naturally and she doesn't recognize that she's doing it.
Why is it that people group IT and software development together? To me, they are two completely different fields.
For example, I see an IT person as a mail server administrator in a large company, and a developer as the person who would write the mail server software.
I'm not saying that an IT professional never writes code, or a developer won't ever touch a Nginx config file. I just mean they are two different types of work.
It's something I have noticed for a while now, not only with your article.
Because people as a general rule abstract anything related to computers or computing into one lump object. This vague, ossified amber of the interwingled nature of computer media causes problems with understanding computers.
That and the sort of person who does development ends up doing some IT and Vice versa.
> Because people as a general rule abstract anything related to computers or computing into one lump object. This vague, ossified amber of the interwingled nature of computer media causes problems with understanding computers.
The same thing happens with every field. If you're at all medical, you're lumped into the 'doctor' category regardless of whether you're a neurosurgeon or a scrub tech, and all doctor-type humanoids know everything about everything from the cingulate gyrus to my granny's chilblains.
Which is still closer to the truth than imagining that everyone who is 'good with computers' can instantly diagnose and fix every single problem that has ever come up for everything that can run software.
It's not like this any more. That's why recently there are so many "software engineers" - you write your Ruby code, install and configure NginX, Passenger etc., even support a cluster of machines (LB, DB, Apps), maybe with a little help for Chef.
At least in university I went, first 2 years was pretty much general engineering, with chemistry and biology etc. included. Even now, most of grantpas and grantmas around, I'm speaking with, if I tell them, that I'm engineer, they trying to ask me to fix their TV/computer/washing machine etc. In most cases, I'm trying...
I just graduated from Uni (in Maths). I had a lot of engineering friends, who didn't mind the CS students going into "engineering" jobs. They got really annoyed with a "telephone engineer" installing their telephone line - they were like "No, you're a technician". The difference in their eyes is that engineers are designing and implementing systems, which we ofc do in software development, whereas technicians solve low-level problems in those systems.
Yes they are different, but they are so close aswell. After all how much job movement is there between IT & development? Lots. Compare that to the job movemement between IT & being lawyer (not that much) etc.
I wish there was more movement between IT and lawyers; then we'd have some developers who understand data protection and copyright principles and some lawyers who understand IT.
Whatever you do, don't get into a bikeshed argument with a lawyer-turned-programmer. If they were a good lawyer, they will be an expert in persuasion, and can get you fired for disagreeing with them about Allman-vs-BSD indenting. Not out of malice, but just by following their old habits.
Actually, it makes more business sense to hire the person who fits in best with the current team. If sexual diversity is the goal, kudos for sexism, hire the female.
Where all other qualifications are equal, companies should hire the person who best fits the team strictly on a personality basis. If a man were hired over a woman at a mostly-female company because of diversification policies, I would still consider that sexism.
Too hypothetical anyway. Skill level, or more precisely the interviewers' opinion of it, is never precisely equal between candidates. It includes soft skills besides programming.
I sincerely hope that I've never been a pity/diversity hire. I want to be evaluated on my qualifications as a well-rounded developer and compensated appropriately for my work.
What's even more troublesome than being a diversity/affirmative action hire is when you aren't one and other people assume you were one. When a group is artificially bumped up in the rankings (or is perceived to have been), everyone assumes they are not as skilled as they really are.
It's only sexism if it uses sex as a criteria to disadvantage someone who isn't male, in the same way that it's only racism if it uses race as a criteria to disadvantage someone who isn't caucasian.
You say that as if letting someone's gender affect your decisions is somehow, magically, inherently always ALWAYS wrong. It isn't. Some situations it is. Some situations it is not.
I'd just like to express my astonishment and disgust at the fact that there are people who defend sexism and prejudice in this day and age. People like you make me ashamed to be human.
... who don't know what institutional racism looks like. (One requirement would probably be that the discriminated-against group actually ends up with worse outcomes. Compare to say, Black people in the criminal justice system.)
I mean, seriously, even if you oppose affirmative action, do you really want to say that its advocates are morally equivalent to racial oppressors and make you ashamed of humanity? Martin Luther King, Jr. makes you ashamed of humanity?
Martin Luther King Jr preached that since whites had actively harmed blacks through the practice of slavery, they should do something special to fix it. I agree with that. However, the whites who are coming of age at this point in time have done nothing of the sort - why should they have to apologise for the actions of their predecessors? Why should a young white woman be punished for things that happened before she was even born? Is she responsible for the actions of all the whites who have ever lived just because she is also white? Do you really think that MLK was talking about future generations who are disconnected from those actions or the people who were right in front of him and still actively encouraging prejudice and racism back in those days? My personal opinion is that if someone participated in those practices, they should make good on them, say sorry, and help the person up, which includes paying what's owed and making room for them.
I don't think "here's the dictionary definition" is usually a useful argument, but in any case it's hard for me to see affirmative action as "excluding" white people, since it's generally practiced in fields where they remain dominant.
If the issue is that people are suffering prejudice based on their names then a better solution is to mask the names during the initial screening as opposed to making it a point to hire someone based on race. I'm sure that a study exploring the effects of different "white-sounding" names would see differences too.
Also note that the study does not draw any correlation between racism and the judgement of a name. Given people's tendency to be averse to things they are not familiar with, it's possible that it's a problem of someone not being comfortable with a culture they don't understand and not necessarily a problem with skin color.
Do you really think that people are biased with respect to names, but then forget that bias as soon as the person enters the room?
Also, it's unclear to me why it might be better to be prejudiced against African-American names than against African-American skin tones. Your definition of racism appears to (a) include policies that disadvantage the dominant group (white people), even when motivated by a goal of correcting historical injustice and insufficient to undo their/our dominance, but to (b) exclude actions that disadvantage the historically oppressed group (Black people), even when motivated by prejudice, as long as that prejudice isn't explicitly based on skin color. Do you maybe want to reconsider?
Those people probably don't understand how much of a disadvantage minorities face even in this day and age.
I used to be against affirmative action until I realized how many more opportunities were offered to me simply because of my culture and the expectations of my culture for me.
I'm starting to get tired of responding to gaslighting comments like these.
Do you honestly not understand that males and females are biologically different (and so have preferences for different types of ways to dispose waste), that they have strong emotional reactions when seeing each other nude or partially nude and that they might be embarrassed if a member of the opposite sex heard them taking a shit?
For the record, a lot of countries do have unisex toilets and that works out just fine too.
I honestly understand that quite fine. The GP of my original comment stated "You say that as if letting someone's gender affect your decisions is somehow, magically, inherently always ALWAYS wrong. It isn't." It seems the three of us are in agreement that in the lavatory case letting gender affect decisions (in this case the common decision for one gender only facilities) is not wrong or sexist. Yet you jumped on him/her as a defender of sexism and prejudice when in reality you, and probably everybody else, takes gender into account in many benign or benevolent contexts as well.
Different toilets are accommodating for different physical differences. It's not racism if someone is selling suntan lotion on the beach and only approaching light skinned people.
In the case of poverty, this is not a genetic difference - it's the product of culture. Poverty has no color, anyone can be affected by it. Why then, when the problem is not of skin color but of poverty, are we talking about skin color at all? The way I see it is that there are people who need a hand up because they lack the resources to get up - I don't see a whole race as being disadvantaged because that is extremely presumptuous and inaccurate - there are plenty of rich black people. The simple solution to this is to make things like education free if you earn below a certain amount. This resolves the issue that affirmative action tries to tackle without siding with a particular race. It's just common sense.
My point, and that of the previous commenter, is that taking gender into account when making decisions is not always sexist. And I am disputing your assertion that this view automatically makes one a defender of sexism and prejudice. Separate male/female lavatories is one example of accounting for gender in a non-sexist manner. Someone else mentioned organizing hotel accommodations with same gender persons sharing rooms. Department stores put men's and women's clothing in separate areas.
I don't see how poverty, affirmative action, or race is relevant so I have nothing to say on that.
Tell me, when assigning hotel rooms at a conference, and some people have requested to share a room to economise, and requested to be paired with people of the same sex, would you ignore people's gender and pick room-sharers randomly out of a hat? Trivial example, yes, but a simple way to demonstrate that sometimes deciding on basis of gender is not actually wrong.
When I hire, I think about what each applicant will bring to the team. There are noticeable differences between a team in which every member exhibits stereotypical male behaviour and characteristics, and a team in which some members exhibit stereotypical male behaviour and characteristics whilst some other members exhibit stereotypical female behaviour and characteristics. Sometimes, the second kind of team is better suited for a task than the first, and as a bonus, often the stereotypical males behave better and don't act like children.
The only reliable way I've found to bring stereotypical female behaviour and characteristics to the team is to hire someone who actually has those characteristics, and nine times out of ten that person is female. If I ignored that, it'd be like taking a stance where I ignored things such as someone's employment history, or their education history.
Your comment hardly falls under the "civil" guideline this community aspires to.
Sexism as you have attacked it seems to be "making any decision based on gender," since that's how the grandparent defined it. I can think of countless examples where it's certainly okay to make a decision based on gender. Particularly where gender is the only known variable--there's your decision all wrapped up for you.
An example to make my argument more real-world: Joe works a job where he has to move heavy objects with another employee. His partner quits, and boss has two new recruits from HR--one man, one woman. That's all the boss knows.
If you don't think that women and men statistically fit into different stereotypes (physically, particularly), you should maybe redirect your species-damning shame.
There are several definitions of sexism, one is essentially "taking someone's sex or gender into account when making a decision". This appears to be the definition you're using. It's a very simple, easy to understand, easy to identify definiton. It also means that in many cases (e.g. hiring in an IT company), men can be the victims of sexism.
There's another definition, which is actions that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among sexist. Right now, if modern UK life was a video game, "male" would be an easier difficulty level than "female". There are statistically less problems for the "male" group. Sexist actions are actions that re-enforced that imbalance. This definition is harder for some people to accept because it means that you need to look at yourself and think about what power imbalances you might be benefiting from, and it means you can't just do s/female/male/g and make it just as sexist.
(There are some cases where there's an inbalance in favour of women, any men here ever took up knitting & crochet? Try getting involved in that, you'll see things from the other side)
if modern UK life was a video game, "male" would be an easier difficulty level than "female".
Can you explain this in concrete terms? This meme is repeated often, but few people actually explain what it means.
Taking it literally, it would suggest that monsters receive +20% elemental resistance when women attack them with an ice-infused mace. But that's probably not what you mean.
There are statistically less problems for the "male" group.
If we are discussing statistical incidence of problems, why choose "male" and "female" as your reference classes? Why not simply choose incidence of problems as the variable to slice on?
This definition is harder for some people to accept...
It's not the definition that is hard to accept. If this was a definitional problem, we'd quickly find ourselves here:
Women still make 77 cents to the male dollar. Women have much higher incidences of anxiety and depression disorders. Women are substantially more likely to be the victims of domestic violence, and 1 in 5 are raped. Etc etc. These statistics don't guarantee that every woman is worse off than every man - clearly that's not true - but they do mean that women have, on average, more difficult problems to deal with in their lives.
If we are discussing statistical incidence of problems, why choose "male" and "female" as your reference classes? Why not simply choose incidence of problems as the variable to slice on?
There are statistically significant differences in various problems between men and women, which are correlated, and which we have good reason to believe are causally related - because if you're paying any attention at all, you know that men and women are treated differently in our society. (And if you investigate further, you find you can explain what you see with a historical and social analysis that looks at things like the subordination of women in the family and the social division of labor with the development of class society, the hegemony of oppressive political and cultural ideologies, and so on.)
Usually, if you're trying to fix something, it's worth trying to figure out what the root causes are.
Women still make 77 cents to the male dollar. Women have much higher incidences of anxiety and depression disorders...[etc]
Whereas men have much higher incidences of other personality traits and are more likely to be victims of violent crime in general (particularly homicide). Until you quantify all such traits and trends, you can't conclude one group is (statistically) operating on "easy mode".
In any case, based on what you've said, the "women play life on hard mode" meme is actually misleading. I can't think of a single game in which the difference between easy and hard mode is a 2% vs 1% chance of encountering a Balrog, or a higher proportion of hard-mode players choosing Paladin over Necromancer (analogizing Necromancer to the $1.00 earning profession, Paladin to the $0.77 earning profession).
Usually, if you're trying to fix something, it's worth trying to figure out what the root causes are.
But according to you, the root cause is unkind treatment, depression and violent crime. The reference class {victim of violent crime} is far more likely to be a crime victim than the class {women}.
I'm not going to spend too much time on this because I'm getting the sense that your request for an explanation was disingenuous. But:
actually misleading
There's a difference between "imperfect metaphor" and "misleading".
higher proportion of hard-mode players choosing Paladin over Necromancer
You make it sound as if each woman has individually and arbitrarily chosen to earn less. That's not the way it works, and the fact that women are paid less within the same profession too is only one of the reasons.
I don't know what you mean by "disingenuous" - in what regard do you think I'm attempting to mislead? I asked about the meme because I truly didn't understand what it meant, in spite of hearing it used many times here.
Now that I understand it I have formed an opinion on it (namely that it is misleading). Is there something wrong with this?
You make it sound as if each woman has individually and arbitrarily chosen to earn less.
Yes. For example, women choose web design over programming and HR over trading. Women choose to leave the workforce more than men. Analogously, women choose Paladin over Necromancer.
If you have evidence that women are pervasively paid less within the same profession for the same skill and experience levels, feel free to cite it. Better yet, arb it. But your $0.77/1.00 is a national figure and controls for nothing.
(The section on "Explaining the gender pay gap" answers your later request for evidence quite thoroughly.)
For example, women choose web design over programming and HR over trading. Women choose to leave the workforce more than men.
The fact that women end up in these professions is bad evidence that they prefer them, much less that they naturally prefer them independent of social expectations. A few factors to consider off the top of my head:
* Hiring bias
* Differential tracking by family, teachers, and mentors
* Hostile working environments or a fear of such
* Differences in which related basic skills people are taught (self-confidence, 'nurturing' vs 'making')
False. This statistic is often repeated (and varies from 1 in 3 to 1 in 6 depending on who is repeating it) but is based on deliberately misrepresenting the findings of studies on the subject. http://aspiringeconomist.com/index.php/2009/09/11/rape-stati...
>you know that men and women are treated differently in our society
And those differences manifest as both benefits and drawbacks, for both men and women. Characterizing that as "women have things harder" is absurd, and is only ever done by people deliberately picking and choosing the downsides and benefits they want to use to push their agenda.
Can you explain this in concrete terms? This meme is repeated often, but few people actually explain what it means.
Basically males often do not have to put with things that women often do. The concrete example is in this article. If you're a male contracter and start in a new IT place, and the other co-workers know nothing else about you beside (a) you're working here and (b) you are male, then they are much less likely to presume you are not a programmer than if you were female. See the OP for more examples of IT.
In general terms, some other examples:
• If a man gets drunk and passes out at a party, he rarely has to worry about more than someone shaving his eyebrows/hair or someone writing on his face with a marker. Women have to worry about being sexually molested or rape.
• If a straight man goes to a bar, and doesn't want to meet a new person, he's much more likely to be left alone and not propositioned than a woman. (i.e. he can have a quite drink with/without friends without being interrupted). If a straight man wants to experience more of what women feel, go to a gay bar.
• A man can walk past a building site (say) with it being unlikely that someone will shout something suggestive at him.
• When it's dark and they've had a beer or two, a man has a wider selection of streets he can walk down to get home. Less hassle, take the direct route! (I know men are often victims of other kinds of attacks & robberies, that doesn't mean they are not less likely to suffer other kinds).
• A straight man is much less likely to be the victim of physical or sexual abuse from his spouse than a straight woman.
etc.
This is what I mean by "men have it easier (in some regards)"
This is not remotely close to what "easy mode" and "hard mode" mean in video games. I'm now convinced this meme should die since it obscures more than it helps. Hard mode is not "elevated chance of Balrog attacks, reduced chance of Death Knight attacks".
And as you correctly note, the statistical reference class of men have it easier (in some regards), and harder in other regards. For example:
"If a straight woman wishes to meet a new person, she merely needs to show up and not be fat. If a straight man wants to meet a new person, he must engage in a great deal of active effort."
"A woman is much less likely to be the victim of homicide by a business associate than a man."
So even if you wanted to make some sort of statistical "easy mode" claim, you'd still need to quantify both the benefits and drawbacks to make such a comparison.
This is not remotely close to what "easy mode" and "hard mode" mean in video games. … Hard mode is not "elevated chance of Balrog attacks, reduced chance of Death Knight attacks".
Yes it is. Some video games have "the enemies are easier on you" and "bad things less likely to happen" as factors that are controlled by easy mode/hard mode. Anyway, it's just an analogy.
And as you correctly note, the statistical reference class of men have it easier (in some regards), and harder in other regards.
The important question is to tot these all up. After all, it's no good if someone sat down 100 years ago and said: "OK men get all the high paying jobs, ability to vote, serve on juries, be a politician, and the women get less work when dating. Fair?".
I question some of your "advantages women have". Many men actually don't want to be hit on all the time. There are cases of men literally murdering, or reacting violently to, a gay man who's come on to them. Some straight men feel uncomfortable in gay bars. I don't think it's an actual advantage. How much of the "victim of homocide from business partner" is due to women not running businesses as much as men? Perhaps, rather than a advantage, it's a disadvantage.
Some video games have "the enemies are easier on you" and "bad things less likely to happen" as factors that are controlled by easy mode/hard mode.
Yes, hard mode also comes with a bit of extra critical hit vulnerability. I can't think of a single game where the law of large numbers doesn't come into play by the end of the level. I.e., it's more difficult for every single person playing hard mode than for every single person playing easy mode.
In contrast, what you are talking about (if correct) is much better described as "women are somewhat more likely to play life in hard mode than men".
The important question is to tot these all up.
So far no one has attempted this for the modern world, at least as far as I've seen.
No, it isn't. Hard mode would be elevated chance of balrog and death knight attacks. Not a trade off where one is more common and the other less common. That doesn't make it harder, merely different.
why choose "male" and "female" as your reference classes?
Because there has been a very long history of lots of people doing that, and the result being that females were often denied lots of things, purely for being female. This procress may or may not have fully stopped by now, definitly continues in various parts of the world in different defrees. We should watch out for it, and be wary.
Someone should write an article about being a black person in tech. Or maybe an Irish person in Tech, we need more of those. It's tough for the Irish in Tech, they get no respect. So many Irish never even consider a career in Tech because it's not a traditional industry for Irish to be employed in. I want to help break down barriers by being an Irish person in Tech.
Breaking News A man doesn't understand why women do/think something that he doesn't, but still has some thoughts about why those women are wrong!
Here's a tip: if someone says "this is hard for me" don't respond with "no it's not." In fact, even if they get a little presumptive and forget to add the "for me," give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are describing the world as it exists for them and not necessarily making an empirical claim.
OK, nobody commented this up to now but I think is important: Among the many posts about this subject I've read on HN recently this was absolutely the best: Not only it approached the matter in a no-nonsense, practical matter without preaching from "the height of an unwritten book" or an axe to grind but it also gives excellent advice to young girls who want to venture into the field.
With posts like this I wish there was a mega-upvote option on HN, e.g. for 500 points of karma you upvote 10 points.
The clearest reason for this, AFAICT, is because she's speaking primarily to women and trying to convince them to come on board. It's not at all about sexism; it merely acknowledges it in passing and hurries on quickly because it's a touchy subject.
While and rather excellent article on why the IT field is a suitable career, good grief, the sexism politics has really entrenched itself into people mindset.
It almost boggles my mind. Here some supposedly sexist snippets from "scenarios you may occasionally find yourself in when working as a girl in tech".
Colleague: “So...you are the new designer?"
(As if "so...you are the new Foobar" would not be said to any new hire. if I got a new boss, my first word might be "so...you the new boss? hi my name is so and so!". How and in what way would that be sexist remark, and does it matter if the new boss would be female or male? would it matter if the position is boss, developer, designer, sysadmin, or sales?)
Useless male developer has written some crappy code that he doesn’t even understand himself anymore. Now he needs to extend it with new features and asks you to do it.
(As if female developers get exclusively dumped with fixing bad code. Especially if its a new hire/consultant/out sourced, how does this surprise anyone? its even a saying that "the new guy gets all the work no one else want". Does it matter if its a female or male?
so for mega-upvote, the article has some issues. Its better than the normal articles we see, but its not 10 times better.
The assumpution behind that question is that women could not be a developer.
To give racist equivalents, it's as if in the USA, imagine you came into the room and there was a latino man there "Are you the new cleaner?"; or in UK, imagine one was introduced to a new eastern european member of staff, "Are you the new cleaner?". These questions are motivated by racist assumptions, and this OP's examples are motivated by sexist assumption.
In those situations the assumptions may, or may not, originate from core racist/sexist beliefs. You need to be careful going around labelling people like that just because they made an assumption.
For better or worse it's just a fact that at the moment a girl working in a software shop is more likely to be a graphic designer than a coder. If I was in a rush looking for the new freelance designer one morning and walked up to an unfamiliar girl sat at a Mac Pro and asked her "Are you the new designer", I'm not being sexist, I'm just making an assumption based on the data I have. Designers and coders, whether male or female, both look the same: they're likely to be intelligent, smart and trendy looking and sat at a workstation.
Now, if in a similar situation I walked up to an intelligent, smart and trendy looking Indian freelancer sat at a MacBook and asked "Are you the new cleaner?", then that's totally different and inexcusable. I had enough data there not to make any assumptions, and it would betray racist core beliefs.
See the difference? Of course every situation is different, but I think the OP's example in this case was weak. We don't need everyone walking around on egg shells, paranoid that people are judging their every stated assumption against some kind of uber harsh politically correct scale.
Maybe I am too young, work at a too small company, or has too much academia in me, but I have a hard time imagine myself ever trying to guess people work based on gender or skin color. It would be like trying to guess peoples future by looking into their hands.
The only person I would suggest being a cleaner, is one with a white apron, a big logo, with large visible name tag, and carrying a mop. That assumption is based on clothing standards at fast food stores, and its still a rather crude assumption.
it's just a fact that at the moment a girl working in a software shop is more likely to be a graphic designer than a coder
Yes, it is accurate to say that "statistically a new female hire in an IT shop is likely to be a designer, not a coder". It is factually accurate to say that, but is it right and moral and nice to say it?
Words can affect people, and set tone and expectations. Is it right for all us men to presume, unless shown otherwise, that the new female hire is not a coder? Will this help or hurt our industry? Every little teeny thing (like presuming this (which is a teeny thing)) can be detrimental and can build up. "Death by a thousand cuts", "Straw that broke the camel's back", our society recognises that sometimes lots of little things can be Too Much™ sometimes.
Would software/the company/society be a better place if we didn't vocalise these presumptions about women, especially if it reinforces negative stereotypes about them?
After all, we all know the mistakes that can come when a female starts getting bigger and we ask "Are you pregnant?". Manners say to be careful here, let's apply some manners, rather than fetishising statically accurate deductions, to presuming women aren't coders.
I think that the point the guy is trying to make is that there is nothing sexist about this. If I saw a new guy at work with a beard, jumbo sized cup of coffee, glasses sitting in front of a dual monitor setup, I would assume that he is a programmer. Does that make me sexist against men? Or prejudiced against people with beards or coffee drinkers?
There's an old saying which appears to have been lost somewhere along the way:
"Offense can only be taken"
Live by it and you will never be offended. It is not the job of everybody around you to constantly walk on eggshells just to keep you happy. You are not at the center of the universe, after all.
There is a difference between "everybody should walk on eggshells" and "there should be standards". It's not black or white, "eggshells" or "f* you I can say what I want", there is (millions of) middle ground(s). HN has rules and guidelines about how to reply to people ( http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). Does that mean "everyone has to walk on eggshells around here"? No, there are rules, but it's not mad. Hence the existence of rules does not mean "everyone has to walk on eggshells".
Actually, yes, people do have to walk on eggshells around here. I am walking on eggshells right now for I can not express myself freely in a forum like this without suffering from social manipulation (downvoting, hellbanning). And this is while adhering to practices such as "no personal insults". In a place like this, you get banned for disagreeing, let alone speaking in an "unapproved" way. This place is hardly an example of civility.
I agree that there is a middle ground - when someone's quality of life is seriously suffering because, for example, someone is shouting abuse at them all day then something must be done. However, taking serious offence at people's ignorant opinions or ways of expression is unwise and in itself ignorant.
I'm anticipating prejudice so I shall address it pre-emptively - I am, in fact, a minority. In many places on this planet, I risk serious injury just for being what I am. People have expressed extremely ignorant opinions about the group I fall under in workplaces. I initially took offence upon hearing what I heard but then I moved past that stage and accepted that one cannot understand something they haven't dealt with directly. They were not trying to be mean, they merely did not understand because of their limited experience. How can I take offence when this is the case?
"I am walking on eggshells right now for I can not express myself freely in a forum like this without suffering from social manipulation (downvoting, hellbanning)"
That's certainly a good sign that social sanctions for sexism, racism, etc work. People ~should~ think before they speak, much more than they do in most sites and blogs.
Sexist comments? I have no idea what sort of comments you're self-censoring, but people should certainly think before they speak more often, I don't see that as a negative.
I disagree, I think this is sexist -> just as if I knew that I lived in an area where a certain race commits more crime, it would be racist of me to cross the street if I saw a person of that race coming. If you assume a woman in your office is a secretary or a designer rather than a coder, that is a sexist assumption regardless of your fine knowledge of statistics.
just as if I knew that I lived in an area where a certain race commits more crime, it would be racist of me to cross the street if I saw a person of that race coming
Suppose through a sequence of unfortunate events you find yourself needing to walk through a bad section of town. You have your choice of two roads. Down one road you see a group of 5 young men of a race that commits crimes significantly higher than average. Down the other road there's a group of 5 middle-aged women of a race that commits crimes less than average. Is it acceptable to be racist, sexist, and ageist in this scenario?
The whole idea that it's a bad part of town is already an assumption that you're playing to make this decision. Like it or not, you're right that these judgments do happen all the time.
I agree with the sentiment, but the the appropriateness of a question that relies on 'statistical' data depends on whether the conclusions drawn are perceived in a negative way.
Asking a new employee from an 'ethnic minority' if he or she is the new cleaner is bad because being a cleaner is not perceived to be a 'good' job.
Asking a new female employee if she's a designer isn't so bad because, as far as I can tell, being a designer is no 'worse' than being a programmer.
Both examples could be considered something-ism, but I'd say the former is worth caring about, and the latter is a case of oversensitivity (potentially from both sides).
I generally try to err on the side of caution to keep from offending people, but I'm quite allergic to people that get offended too quickly.
(A special place in hell is reserved for people who get offended on behalf of other people.)
> You need to be careful going around labelling people like that just because they made an assumption.
1) Actually, I think you want to be a lot more careful about labelling people as "must be X" because of their gender than about labelling them as "made a sexist comment" because they maybe made a sexist comment. It is actually still worse to be a victim of sexism than to be called a sexist.
2) Having core sexist beliefs isn't a prerequisite for making a sexist comment. You can have a momentary sexist thought without consciously believing that women are inferior to men or anything like that - in fact, momentary sexist thoughts are almost inevitable if you're in a culture where sexism is pervasive, no matter who you are. Moreover, a comment can be sexist even if it is made with completely innocent intentions, if it predictably has the effect of (re)enforcing hierarchical gender roles. Sexism is not an ideology, it's a social structure.
You can do "s/sexism/racism/g" for all of the above as well.
It is actually still worse to be a victim of sexism than to be called a sexist.
Having core sexist beliefs isn't a prerequisite for making a sexist comment.
Exactly, many people think "I'm not a sexist" and then say lots of things, presuming then that everything they say cannot be sexist. I take care to say "sexist talk/action". Tends to get people's backs up less.
You can do "s/sexism/racism/g" for all of the above as well.
Exactly. I've made this same post several times, only doing a bare minimum of s/race/sex/g
Of course one can assume a sexist intention behind the remark. My question is why? Is it simply because she is a woman and thus we should assume that anything anyone say to her is sexist?
Are we really that far gone, and if so, how are we ever going to get work to become a gender neutral environment? Assuming bad faith is not a road to take.
Are you asking if it's factually accurate to conclude that, or if we should act & talk presuming that? I addressed that in previous comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4732145
(tl;dr: It's almost certainly an accurate deduction, but acting on it might make society/culture/company worse off, so let's not do it)
But the comment does not say "you must not be a developer". If the context had included a "the guy in front of me, also a new hire, was greeted as "so...you the new developer", then yes we would have something that might be sexism here.
But we do not have that kind of context. We only have a assumed intention on what the person meant by it. If we do such assumptions, we assume bad faith.
It could be that they hired a new web developer, also called web designers by many, or designers as short. If a back-end or sysadmin meet someone who is working on the front end, or even on a API structure, its fully plausible to call them "designers", be them male, female, or alien.
Simply put, the comment without any additional context to vilify the speaker, is not sexism. With some context, it might be, but in many others, it is not. Assuming good faith is to default at those context that do not mean sexism.
Hang on, that's a little unfair. If you work in an office, and you know they have hired one person, and that is a cleaner / designer, walking unto the new face in the office and saying hi you must be the new cleaner / designer is not a prejudicial assumption. Especially if they are sitting in front of Blender / a mop.
No-one mentioned "seeing an eastern european with a mop". To expand on my analogy, if you met an eastern european/etc. at the company Christmas party, asking "so are you a cleaner?" is presuming negative stereotypes based on race/ethnicity.
It is a negative stereotype to presume that women cannot be a developer, or do a "hard" subject like programming and instead must be doing a "soft" subject like art.
My point is that implicit in your statement is the claim that programmers are superior to designers. I think this belief is both more commonly held and voiced on HN and itself worse than the stereotype that women are more likely to be designers; one is a statement of superiority of a group of people and the other is (without the first assumption) a nonjudgemental statistically reasonable assumption.
Is it really a negative stereotype that women and men are equally capable but that a woman is more likely to be interested in an equally respectable artistic career over a technical one?
It seems that people on HN hold this developer superiority belief so strongly that if someone asks "are you a designer?" they think that is actually an offensive statement. How dare you think I am a plebe designer and not a developer god that I am?
Interesting how pointing out or getting worked up over 'isms' often betrays and uncovers a whole set of other 'isms'. And in some cases these other isms could be considered worse.
I don't mean criticizing anyone in particular in this thread, I just suddenly realize that this has often been the case in my personal behavior and in that of people around me.
To give racist equivalents, it's as if in the USA, imagine you came into the room and there was a latino man there "Are you the new cleaner?"; or in UK, imagine one was introduced to a new eastern european member of staff, "Are you the new cleaner?".
In this case, there are other cues that a person can use.
e.g. if the person's wearing a cleaners' uniform, it's not racist to ask them that. If they are wearing a suit, it's at a minimum socially clueless, and at worst bigoted to ask them that.
Do we really need to coin the phrase "hacker privilege?"
Look, I know it sucked in school, being ostracized for having technical interests, but now you're grown-up and loaded. As part of a larger social agenda, I can see some harm in perpetuating these geek stereotypes, but on a personal level, you are not being exploited, so quit whining.
If it is not clear: "nobody cares about yet another.." here means "nobody (among people that stereotype might be applied to) cares (finds it offensive) about yet another..". That is the meaning is the opposite to your interpretation. I agree the initial comment might have sounded ambiguously.
I'd feel offended if presented with this sort of nonsense at a tech talk. The implication of the picture, given the structure and history of our society, is that women are there to be pretty and submissive and men are there to control women with money. That and it makes absolutely no sense as an analogy for MVC, it's just a cheap shot in an attempt to titillate an assumed audience of sexist men. So yes, women in an audience presented with that sort of image are probably going to feel alienated and offended, and no that is not some special sensitivity or empathy for other women, it's because of all the assumptions which come with using a picture like that (women are not my audience, pretty women are controlled by men with money, women are there to be looked at by men, etc).
PS When referring to losers, use the correct spelling
Thanks for the correction. Sorry. Not native speaker. Spellchecker didn't kick in.
Maybe I'm desensitized to gender issues because I never disrespected a woman for being a woman, and never noticed any adult during my childhood who did that even jokingly but I can imagine conference room of techy women with female presenter showing this picture and all laughing partly exactly because it has nothing to do with MVC and absurd humor is always funny and also because the girl in the picture is obviously inferior to the women in the room even though she could be better off if she learned useful stuff properly like they did and led independent life like they do. I am aware that this probably won't happen anywhere in another 50 years or so.
Personally I hate inappropriate jokes in public appearances because they make presenter look silly and in some twisted form of empathy I feel the shame that presenter should feel.
This joke made me laugh probably because I'm in front of the computer following anonymous link not in the room full of people seeing some boring poor chap desperately trying to lighten the mood. I was mostly amused by the View part, then the Model, not at all at the Controller. I'm so indoorsy (and living in non english speaking country) that when I'm thinking of View the thing that you can see on holidays is one of the last things that come to my mind. I don't own a TV and don't follow celebrity gossip and/or fashion so the connection between what I know as Model and being a model as occupation was also hard for me to make. Controller was I think the easiest (so already least funny) because money is a mean to control a lot (your life for example) also controlling people of opposite gender with money brings "eww.." factor that spoils the joke. 2 out of 3 ... so somewhat funny.
But the person in the picture is specifically labeled a model: a profession which - by definition - means they are there to be pretty and "submissive" (in the sense that any employee is "submissive" to their employer).
This image is implying that women are objects to be bought and sold and "controlled". Thus the currency. That's why it's offensive. Women are not "objects" to be controlled or bought. It has nothing to do with solidarity.
Also, your example talks about "making fun of" someone. The image in the OOP example is reducing a woman's personhood to nothing but that of an object. It is intended to mock her existence and imply that she has no personal agency beyond what a man would choose to control her with.
It's offensive because it's lazy. There are better analogies and ways of conveying these concepts that don't objectify 50% of the population.
If I'm one of the only girls in the room, and that is how a point is being made in a presentation by someone that supposedly has enough clout in the industry to go up in front of hundreds of people and talk, it doesn't make me feel good about my future or the people I will report to down the line, nor does it make me feel comfortable knowing that this type of humor is acceptable and welcomed by the amount of laughs it gets.
There's also going to be a few people in the audience that look at this image and then look at me to see what my reaction is, and I'm there to learn, not stand out.
If women were really so motivated by money, there would be more of us in tech.
On a more serious note, sometimes I just don't get other women. Yeah, working in fashion, food, or publishing sounds fun, but they aren't getting paid hardly anything and most of them are working as low-level grunts just to be in the industry that sounds fun to them with a small glimmer of hope they might move to the very tiny upper tier in those jobs. To contrast, I have a well-paying job that pays well and after 5, I can actually enjoy food, fashion, and writing for fun. And on the food/fashion front I can afford much higher quality things.
I (100% female) work as a web developer and are not sure if the lack of female colleagues bothers me or not. Political correctness dictates that it should
Political correctness isn't really about groupthink or how you should feel. It's about not making other people feel shitty because you're too lazy to use inclusive language. It's simply an extension of 'manners', and gets demonised when it shouldn't be.
There's a fine line between someone feeling "shitty" and groupthink / often naive & distant.
A friend of mine says that anytime a person refers to him as "African-American" he sees them as totally distant and that "they usually don't talk to black people" - so I can see this working both ways.
Political correctness (what the 'polis' sees as correct) isn't always what those who may 'feel shitty' think is correct - so I share her feelings.
Political Correctness is about hypersensitivity to possible insult to the point that using direct and clear communication is frowned upon in the public discourse.
Political Correctness is an extraordinarily sad advance of style over substance that has attempted to address the language used to describe problems in our society over actually addressing the problems themselves.
Ultimately, Political Correctness is yet another societal/political power grab in an attempt to control the very words that come out of everyones' mouths. Free speech is just too much individual power for many Utopians in society, but they've had so much trouble trying to legislate against the First Amendment[or other country's free speech protection]. Political Correctness is the next best thing for them, I guess.
Your assumption that "direct and clear communication" requires that you use offensive and exclusive phrasings is false, and your complaints about your inability to exert "power" over others are unmoving.
"they've had so much trouble trying to legislate against the First Amendment"
If you believe proper behavior has anything to do with the First Amendment it would do you better to read the US Constitution.
your complaints about your inability to exert "power" over others are unmoving
Huh? Were you trying to reply to someone else's post? That's the OPPOSITE of what I said and your other two "points" are straw men at best.
Ironic that you'd attempt to defend control of speech to prevent giving offense by offensively misrepresenting my position. Ranks right up there with the grandfather poster's accusation that those committing the sin of Political Incorrectness are "lazy".
>Your assumption that "direct and clear communication" requires that you use offensive and exclusive phrasings is false
Offense is taken, not given. I am offended by your post, are you going to delete it and apologize? I would hope not, because that is absurd. You don't have the right to use a meaningless word like "offended" to control other people's speech.
Articles like this are what are going to get girls into computing. They need to know that there are other normal girls, just like them, that do this for a living.
I got my ex-girlfriend into software development. She comes off as a very stereotypical girly girl. She likes clothes, shopping, and top 40 pop music. I convinced her to take an intro programming class her sophomore year of college. Now she's a software engineer at Amazon.
All it took her was a little convincing that she could do it, and that normal people (I suppose I seemed normal to her) do it too.
> All it took her was a little convincing that she could do it
I don't know if it's society or what, but it seems a lot of girls suffer from this (conscious or not) line of thinking.
I'm versed in science (esp. math and physics) and like to talk about such subjects so I've been regularly asked for help, and every single time I helped a girl the cause of their demise was lack of confidence. Contrary to guys (which seem to have confidence in excess but need some form of support), telling them upfront is useless because it's so ingrained that I have to take a more subtle route. I explain her something complex, and keep going deeper until (usually takes about ten minutes) there's a a-ha, not about the subject at hand but about herself, a moment where she realizes that at every step she got everything I said, and now she gets a glimpse something so complex that ten minutes ago she thought it would forever be unfathomable to her, when I did not actually explain so much as pragmatically but subtly demonstrate that yes, she can do it. Subsequent results at school, even in unrelated disciplines and without more training, are off the charts.
It seems the "mens do the real stuff" society thing is so pervasive that it permeates through and makes them lose the confidence required, and they just need to be bootstrapped out of it so that they can finally say "This is within my reach".
For real. This girl is obviously being honest and sounds really level-headed/normal. Everything in this article is exactly what I would tell my little sister.
my article isn't about gender issues....the intention is merely to show the perks of working in IT to a normal average girl that might not be sure about what career path to choose.
however, my writing style is indeed rather bold but i have no interest of watering it down with some political correctness filter. sorry, no chance :D
> my article isn't about gender issues....the intention is merely to show the perks of working in IT to a normal average girl that might not be sure about what career path to choose.
I'm trying to comprehend how that isn't about gender issues in the IT business, but let's just say that whatever the appropriate semantic expression was for what it is I was referring to, it includes your work.
>however, my writing style is indeed rather bold but i have no interest of watering it down with some political correctness filter. sorry, no chance :D
Sorry, I wasn't intending to imply you should filter your writing. My comment wasn't really meant to be a criticism of your writing in particular... actually, it wasn't even really a criticism of writing at all. It's more just... I doubt there are other industries where EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE like this would have a reference to porn (well, except for the porn industry ;-).
I don't think it necessarily speaks poorly of the people engaging in the discussion; it reflects where the industry is.
I'd love to use this opportunity to do a little promotion. My sister and I just launched a site to connect women in industry with girls taking math and science called Girls Love Math (http://www.glmclub.org).
It would make my day if women like nerdess became mentors. I have a feeling that lots of girls are looking up to them.
"This is a bit of a delicate topic. Quite often I am the only female person in the team and have to be careful not to take advantage of the perks that come with it."
"you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky, which is a habit that is so easy to get into. I have to confess I’ve done it myself because if you are surrounded by guys all day you quickly feel powerful."
"Technical directors are really keen to hire girls because we boost the morale."
"If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job."
How is all this not sexist? Or is sexism against males not sexism anymore? This is sexist, and shouldn't be upvoted.
It is cool that Sacha maintained it, volunteering is awesome.
I am pointing this correction out because Sacha's primary career is as a self-promotion specialist (http://sachachua.com/blog/), so I have to be skeptical of how her name gets attached to technical work, more so than someone who doesn't pursue celebrity for profit.
People shouldn't think that it's so easy to be famous and a technical contributor. The larger contributors (like John Wiegley in this case) tend to be less famous.
Example:
Sure, Linus Torvalds is a celebrity and massive contrbutor, but there are dozens (hundreds?) of other massive Linux kernel contributors who are less famous than, say, Jeff Atwood.
"Guys are fascinated and scared by girls who roll up their sleeves and take on a job that society labels as “men’s work”"
I always opined that, "women have a lot of emotional strength". You can just imagine how difficult it is to take care of, and raise a toddler. It is so hard. But, somehow women are naturally good at this, and I am just as fascinated by this fact.
I don't think women are naturally better (than men) at raising kids. That's what a lot of people thinks and single dads are automatically diminished. Not good.
"This is a bit of a delicate topic. Quite often I am the only female person in the team and have to be careful not to take advantage of the perks that come with it."
"you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky, which is a habit that is so easy to get into. I have to confess I’ve done it myself because if you are surrounded by guys all day you quickly feel powerful."
"Technical directors are really keen to hire girls because we boost the morale."
"If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job."
These are all very sexist remarks. If the equivalent has been written from a male's perspective it would have been an outrage.
I think from a harm minimization perspective, it makes sense to treat complaints of sexism from the minority faction more seriously than complaints of sexism from the majority faction.
Also, I disagree that people would complain if the same stuff was written by a guy working in nursing.
When I started as a developer in the UK I earned a bit less than £30k a year
and wondered: How can whole families live of this? How can anyone save money
for a mortgage?
[...]
It might sound arrogant but since I am an IT contractor I don’t have to think
twice about that Halston Heritage dress I fell in love with the other day, I
just buy it.
An in return, I'm always slightly shocked by this kind of attitude. Just because I write code for a living doesn't mean that I had to forget how to do everything remotely practical first. If I'm confronted by a job that requires manual labour, I don't just stand there saying "oh I'm an IT person, I can't possibly do this".
It's the reverse. I can't carry a bottle of chemicals without spilling it on myself, or take apart an machine without dropping a few pieces in the sewer, so I stick to the virtual world where my poor hand-eye coordination won't get me killed.
"Computer languages and “real” languages are actually very similar."
I really couldn't disagree with that more. Sure, some languages' syntax borrow English words (Python, Pascal, VB, etc), but that's such a minor similarity. Those words are completely arbitrary and the syntax could have been in Klingon for all the difference it would make to the compiler.
Computer languages are a maths language; albeit a very very dumbed down dialect of maths, but maths all the same.
I think the trap many web developers fall in is that PHP teaches some terrible programming practices (no variable declarations nor types, etc) and ANSI SQL isn't Turing complete, so feel that all other languages by extension are equally easy to grasp. However if you look at a number of other languages -particularly the ones with C-derived syntax- then it becomes painfully obvious that any similarities to human languages are just skin deep (which is lucky for me as I majorly suck at writing yet can code proficiently in around a dozen different computer languages).
Don't know why you felt it was necessary to take a dig at PHP, as if PHP is the cause of all bad web programming practices. Nowadays, PHP is very much evolved, and the abundance of mature frameworks have completely removed the most of the inconsistency issues.There are in fact variable declarations and types in PHP, there's even type-hinting to enforce types.
The fact of the matter is that many web developers fall into bad practices via laziness, copy & paste syndrome, regardless of whether the language they're using has strict types or not.
While I agree that a bad programmer will write bad code in any language -and visa versa- my point was that PHP doesn't enforce good practices thus allowing many less experienced developers to accidentally fall into easily avoided pitfalls (lets be honest, having to === to force type matching is just plain dumb). So by the time you've properly hardened your code, it's anything but pseudo-English - which was my point (ie programming languages are not similar to human languages).
Natural-language likeness, with all its weirdness and power, was an explicit design goal of Larry Wall's perl, a language which was instrumental in creating the WWW as we know it.
That may have been true for it's original goals, but as a UNIX developer who's primary language is Perl, I can assure you that the modern day implementation (read Perl 5.8+) is anything but pseudo-English.
After reading all of this again, it strikes me that she works with a LOT of sexually frustrated nerds. She says she has to be careful not using her appearant super power of girlyness too much to manipulate the nerds and such stuff.
Is this seriously the reality somewhere, that coders are 99% sexually frustrated super nerds? I always considered that to be a old stereotype :P
yeah well of course it's wrong to get a job just because of the gender. though if HR departments and CTO's want to hire us girls so badly then wohoooo.........i would be stupid to not use this to my advantage :D
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 178 ms ] threadEDIT: That was supposed to be a subtle compliment; I want more.
How many comments in this thread asked the OP "what projects have you worked on", "what have you contributed as a woman?".
Why? Because the larger issue isn't woman. It's "Nice guy" syndrome. Deferring to woman, being "pc", repressing opinions. The book No More Mr. Nice Guy (http://www.amazon.com/No-More-Mr-Nice-Guy/dp/0762415339) is a great read on this.
As for the OP. I don't care about your gender or race. I want to know what you code. I want you to be great. But will not enable my fellow men nor you to be weak prima donnas.
We have a destiny. We owe it to our children not to show such weakness.
As I mentioned earlier, guys will definitely put you to the test and as a girl it will be hard to get their respect. On the other hand, you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky, which is a habit that is so easy to get into. I have to confess I’ve done it myself because if you are surrounded by guys all day you quickly feel powerful. However, with great power comes great responsibility so don’t take (too much, hehe) advantage of the nerds treating you like a princess just because they finally get to work with a girl."
Never experienced this. Sounds like an alternate reality. All the so called nerds I worked with had girlfriends or wives and didn't wear pocket protectors and stutter around females when talking to them.
If Nerdess extracts some sort of empowerment out of this that's great for her, but I imagine crossing the line into a territory where your team mates perceive you as a shallow and malicious manipulator is a real danger here. Any person who bases their work persona exclusively on being a precious snowflake (of any kind) is not someone I'd like to have on my team.
And these western stereotypes are absolutely non-existent. If you ask people in the streets to tell you general traits about 'the nerds' they wont be able to tell you a thing. But try that in America, they'll write a book about it.
But even in the western culture we are seeing these stereotypes fading away more and more every day because hey everybody is a nerd these days with their iPhones and iPads and Kindles etc...
All it takes is for computer programming to be brought into the standard school curriculum. Give that a couple of years and every teenager will also be a computer programmer, some better than the other but nonetheless.
By then, being able to program a computer will be too normal for these stereotypes to live.
Nerd, on the other hand, conjures up a whole subculture that is quite different. The nerd not only is naturally good at schoolwork, but also has a personal life, but chooses to fill it with abnormal curiosa: Sci-fi, larping, reading, learning, etc.
I have a hunch that part of this is related to the fact that nerdess is German. Or at least, she's based in Germany per the site.
I'm from Denmark (and a guy), and I can say from firsthand experience that attitudes towards women in Europe are still very old-school. Not everywhere, certainly, and Europeans are open-minded liberal socialists etc, but behind the scenes the old attitude of "women and technology don't mix" is very much alive.
For example, many guys in Europe I've spoken to will make jokes about girls not really being fit to work on cars, working with computers, or doing anything "technically hard".
Even some years ago, there was an advertising campaign for a lotto (or something similar) with the tagline "so simple even a woman could understand it". The advertisement featured a pretty blond woman standing in her kitchen, listening to the boys hoot and holler about their winnings next door with a vacant expression on her face. This was plastered all over the main train station in Copenhagen.
So, while I agree it probably seems like an alternate reality in the US (assuming that's where you're from), it's not so far-fetched in other parts of the world. Just my $0.02.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxsMWnK1X7k
The tag line is "there is a lot of stuff women don't understand", and the format is a womans literal visualization of a sport metaphor. In this case, "giving away a goal". The campaign is still running, and considered one of the most successful advertising campaigns in Denmark.
The company behind it is 80% state owned. and 20% owned by the non-profit sport organizations. It used to have a monopoly on gambling. The profit goes to charity.
I would not generalize the Danish peculiar brand of humor to all of Europe. One of the advices to Danes going abroad is "stay away from humor, foreigners don't understand our brand of humor". Same for visitors, they are told "the Danish jokes are not meant as insulting as they sound".
In our own self image, we are so liberal and open minded that we can safely joke about all kind of stereotypes. E.g. Danish state owned children tv has a running gag about how lazy and incompetent Polish workers (our "Mexicans") are. It is probably also no accident that the Mohammed cartoons were made in Denmark. Although that particular incident taught Danes something about how different humor can be viewed in the rest of the world.
Edit: Two more details. 1) Most high profile ad campaigns in Denmark are based on humor. 2) This is the only one I can think of where women are shown as stupid. The common pattern is that the man is being goofy while the sensible woman is buying the advertisers product.
It is probably also no accident that the Mohammed cartoons were made in Denmark.
The thing is, those weren't even offensive or derogatory. The rest of the world overreacted and rolled over because of overblown threats from the Islamic world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptions_of_the_Jyllands-Po...
If I understand correctly, the reaction was to the mere fact of Mohammed being rendered in drawing, not about the content of those drawings.
> In our own self image, we are so liberal and open minded that we can safely joke about all kind of stereotypes.
So true - I'd say Danes are pretty blind to their own prejudices and backwards attitudes. I'm sure you remember "Perkerspillet" from some years ago?
"Perkerspillet", which roughly translates to "The Nigger Game", was an online flash game where the player was a stereotypical "gangsta" Turkish immigrant. You drove around the city in a souped-up BMW, trying to pick up Danish women and make money to further enhance your ride. They had to rename it to "The Mujaffa Game" after people stirred up controversy.
IMHO, I feel like the Danes often act like they're entitled to say whatever they want in the name of free speech, as if there'll be no consequences. That's why the Muhammad cartoon incident was such a wake-up call.
http://www.dr.dk/spil/mujaffa/
The old name is still referred in the title page.
I've worked on a lot of teams over the years, often as the only female on a project. Only once have I felt in any way "different" from anyone else on the team, be it in a positive or negative way, and I don't think that was intentional. It was a startup ran by young, single guys, and I was a mid 30's mom. We just had different priorities and interests and the culture wasn't a good fit. But there wasn't anything negative or sexist about it, just differences.
Where it does start to get weird, in my experience, is when it starts to cross over into the gaming/anime/fandom area, particularly gaming. Some of those people are really maladjusted, but I suppose that's to be expected from a subculture based around endlessly celebrating childrens toys.
There must be some generational/geographical divide here somewhere. For reference I'm in the UK.
I guess there always has to be a group of people for others to look down upon.
Sure. Lacking social skills certainly doesn't help you in tech; it just hurts you less than in most other fields.
Privilege blindness doesn't just apply to straight white men. The relationship status of the people has nothing to do with it. Men are instinctively predisposed to helping women. Women can and do take advantage of this, and generally don't recognize or acknowledge that they are doing so. You don't see it, because you've lived it your entire life and it is normal.
How many times has a woman put a new water bottle in the water cooler here? I know the exact number, because it is zero. All of the women here are fully capable of doing it, yet they ask men to do it. And how often do men say no? This is very obvious when looking at tasks that are considered stereotypically "men's work" like lifting something, but it applies just as much to anything else.
I've watched my wife get men to do her work for her several times. She simply asks them to do it, and they say yes. When I point it out to her, she insists that they would have done the same for a man, and that had she asked a woman they would have done it for her too. Yet, she never asks another woman to do it, and I know I sure wouldn't do it if a man were asking me. She is taking advantage of being female, and it is so deeply ingrained that it comes naturally and she doesn't recognize that she's doing it.
In fact, the world hasn't changed. It's just that the extra consideration they got because of their looks goes away as they grow old.
In contrast men often spend their early years not being taken very seriously. They often have to fight to get noticed.
For example, I see an IT person as a mail server administrator in a large company, and a developer as the person who would write the mail server software.
I'm not saying that an IT professional never writes code, or a developer won't ever touch a Nginx config file. I just mean they are two different types of work.
It's something I have noticed for a while now, not only with your article.
That and the sort of person who does development ends up doing some IT and Vice versa.
The same thing happens with every field. If you're at all medical, you're lumped into the 'doctor' category regardless of whether you're a neurosurgeon or a scrub tech, and all doctor-type humanoids know everything about everything from the cingulate gyrus to my granny's chilblains.
Which is still closer to the truth than imagining that everyone who is 'good with computers' can instantly diagnose and fix every single problem that has ever come up for everything that can run software.
It seems like such a general label that can apply to anyone from a chemical engineer to a CS major, it all depends on the context.
That looks like sexism to me.
Where all other qualifications are equal, companies should hire the person who best fits the team strictly on a personality basis. If a man were hired over a woman at a mostly-female company because of diversification policies, I would still consider that sexism.
That's reality.
Being reality doesn't make it right, and doesn't mean it should be tolerated.
It might take a little while to perform that experiment...
After all, "No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs". That's racist for 2 reasons.
You say that as if letting someone's gender affect your decisions is somehow, magically, inherently always ALWAYS wrong. It isn't. Some situations it is. Some situations it is not.
... who don't know what institutional racism looks like. (One requirement would probably be that the discriminated-against group actually ends up with worse outcomes. Compare to say, Black people in the criminal justice system.)
I mean, seriously, even if you oppose affirmative action, do you really want to say that its advocates are morally equivalent to racial oppressors and make you ashamed of humanity? Martin Luther King, Jr. makes you ashamed of humanity?
>Accepted social arrangements that exclude on the basis of race.
Source: http://dictionary.babylon.com/institutional_racism/
As such, affirmative action fits the bill.
Martin Luther King Jr preached that since whites had actively harmed blacks through the practice of slavery, they should do something special to fix it. I agree with that. However, the whites who are coming of age at this point in time have done nothing of the sort - why should they have to apologise for the actions of their predecessors? Why should a young white woman be punished for things that happened before she was even born? Is she responsible for the actions of all the whites who have ever lived just because she is also white? Do you really think that MLK was talking about future generations who are disconnected from those actions or the people who were right in front of him and still actively encouraging prejudice and racism back in those days? My personal opinion is that if someone participated in those practices, they should make good on them, say sorry, and help the person up, which includes paying what's owed and making room for them.
I agree that in a world where racial discrimination is a thing of the distant past, affirmative action wouldn't make sense. But that's not our world. See for example: http://scholar.harvard.edu/mullainathan/files/emilygreg.pdf
Also note that the study does not draw any correlation between racism and the judgement of a name. Given people's tendency to be averse to things they are not familiar with, it's possible that it's a problem of someone not being comfortable with a culture they don't understand and not necessarily a problem with skin color.
Also, it's unclear to me why it might be better to be prejudiced against African-American names than against African-American skin tones. Your definition of racism appears to (a) include policies that disadvantage the dominant group (white people), even when motivated by a goal of correcting historical injustice and insufficient to undo their/our dominance, but to (b) exclude actions that disadvantage the historically oppressed group (Black people), even when motivated by prejudice, as long as that prejudice isn't explicitly based on skin color. Do you maybe want to reconsider?
I used to be against affirmative action until I realized how many more opportunities were offered to me simply because of my culture and the expectations of my culture for me.
Do you honestly not understand that males and females are biologically different (and so have preferences for different types of ways to dispose waste), that they have strong emotional reactions when seeing each other nude or partially nude and that they might be embarrassed if a member of the opposite sex heard them taking a shit?
For the record, a lot of countries do have unisex toilets and that works out just fine too.
In the case of poverty, this is not a genetic difference - it's the product of culture. Poverty has no color, anyone can be affected by it. Why then, when the problem is not of skin color but of poverty, are we talking about skin color at all? The way I see it is that there are people who need a hand up because they lack the resources to get up - I don't see a whole race as being disadvantaged because that is extremely presumptuous and inaccurate - there are plenty of rich black people. The simple solution to this is to make things like education free if you earn below a certain amount. This resolves the issue that affirmative action tries to tackle without siding with a particular race. It's just common sense.
I don't see how poverty, affirmative action, or race is relevant so I have nothing to say on that.
When I hire, I think about what each applicant will bring to the team. There are noticeable differences between a team in which every member exhibits stereotypical male behaviour and characteristics, and a team in which some members exhibit stereotypical male behaviour and characteristics whilst some other members exhibit stereotypical female behaviour and characteristics. Sometimes, the second kind of team is better suited for a task than the first, and as a bonus, often the stereotypical males behave better and don't act like children.
The only reliable way I've found to bring stereotypical female behaviour and characteristics to the team is to hire someone who actually has those characteristics, and nine times out of ten that person is female. If I ignored that, it'd be like taking a stance where I ignored things such as someone's employment history, or their education history.
Sexism as you have attacked it seems to be "making any decision based on gender," since that's how the grandparent defined it. I can think of countless examples where it's certainly okay to make a decision based on gender. Particularly where gender is the only known variable--there's your decision all wrapped up for you.
An example to make my argument more real-world: Joe works a job where he has to move heavy objects with another employee. His partner quits, and boss has two new recruits from HR--one man, one woman. That's all the boss knows.
If you don't think that women and men statistically fit into different stereotypes (physically, particularly), you should maybe redirect your species-damning shame.
There's another definition, which is actions that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among sexist. Right now, if modern UK life was a video game, "male" would be an easier difficulty level than "female". There are statistically less problems for the "male" group. Sexist actions are actions that re-enforced that imbalance. This definition is harder for some people to accept because it means that you need to look at yourself and think about what power imbalances you might be benefiting from, and it means you can't just do s/female/male/g and make it just as sexist.
(There are some cases where there's an inbalance in favour of women, any men here ever took up knitting & crochet? Try getting involved in that, you'll see things from the other side)
Can you explain this in concrete terms? This meme is repeated often, but few people actually explain what it means.
Taking it literally, it would suggest that monsters receive +20% elemental resistance when women attack them with an ice-infused mace. But that's probably not what you mean.
There are statistically less problems for the "male" group.
If we are discussing statistical incidence of problems, why choose "male" and "female" as your reference classes? Why not simply choose incidence of problems as the variable to slice on?
This definition is harder for some people to accept...
It's not the definition that is hard to accept. If this was a definitional problem, we'd quickly find ourselves here:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/np/disputing_definitions/
Your "definition" contains implicit claims about the world which you haven't justified (i.e., it's a definition + assertions).
Women still make 77 cents to the male dollar. Women have much higher incidences of anxiety and depression disorders. Women are substantially more likely to be the victims of domestic violence, and 1 in 5 are raped. Etc etc. These statistics don't guarantee that every woman is worse off than every man - clearly that's not true - but they do mean that women have, on average, more difficult problems to deal with in their lives.
If we are discussing statistical incidence of problems, why choose "male" and "female" as your reference classes? Why not simply choose incidence of problems as the variable to slice on?
There are statistically significant differences in various problems between men and women, which are correlated, and which we have good reason to believe are causally related - because if you're paying any attention at all, you know that men and women are treated differently in our society. (And if you investigate further, you find you can explain what you see with a historical and social analysis that looks at things like the subordination of women in the family and the social division of labor with the development of class society, the hegemony of oppressive political and cultural ideologies, and so on.)
Usually, if you're trying to fix something, it's worth trying to figure out what the root causes are.
Whereas men have much higher incidences of other personality traits and are more likely to be victims of violent crime in general (particularly homicide). Until you quantify all such traits and trends, you can't conclude one group is (statistically) operating on "easy mode".
In any case, based on what you've said, the "women play life on hard mode" meme is actually misleading. I can't think of a single game in which the difference between easy and hard mode is a 2% vs 1% chance of encountering a Balrog, or a higher proportion of hard-mode players choosing Paladin over Necromancer (analogizing Necromancer to the $1.00 earning profession, Paladin to the $0.77 earning profession).
Usually, if you're trying to fix something, it's worth trying to figure out what the root causes are.
But according to you, the root cause is unkind treatment, depression and violent crime. The reference class {victim of violent crime} is far more likely to be a crime victim than the class {women}.
actually misleading
There's a difference between "imperfect metaphor" and "misleading".
higher proportion of hard-mode players choosing Paladin over Necromancer
You make it sound as if each woman has individually and arbitrarily chosen to earn less. That's not the way it works, and the fact that women are paid less within the same profession too is only one of the reasons.
Related: http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/alabama-mat...
the root cause is unkind treatment, depression and violent crime
That's not what I said at all.
Now that I understand it I have formed an opinion on it (namely that it is misleading). Is there something wrong with this?
You make it sound as if each woman has individually and arbitrarily chosen to earn less.
Yes. For example, women choose web design over programming and HR over trading. Women choose to leave the workforce more than men. Analogously, women choose Paladin over Necromancer.
If you have evidence that women are pervasively paid less within the same profession for the same skill and experience levels, feel free to cite it. Better yet, arb it. But your $0.77/1.00 is a national figure and controls for nothing.
You've moved the goalposts from explaining a metaphor to "quantify[ing] all such traits and trends." I can Google to find sources for statistics, but so can you. Here's a starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male%E2%80%93female_income_disp...
(The section on "Explaining the gender pay gap" answers your later request for evidence quite thoroughly.)
For example, women choose web design over programming and HR over trading. Women choose to leave the workforce more than men.
The fact that women end up in these professions is bad evidence that they prefer them, much less that they naturally prefer them independent of social expectations. A few factors to consider off the top of my head: * Hiring bias * Differential tracking by family, teachers, and mentors * Hostile working environments or a fear of such * Differences in which related basic skills people are taught (self-confidence, 'nurturing' vs 'making')
False. Women get paid equally for the same work and the same hours. Averaging all women vs all men is dishonest. http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20...
>Women have much higher incidences of anxiety and depression disorder
Women have higher incidences of being diagnosed with depression. Men have much higher incidences of suicide. What does that tell you?
>Women are substantially more likely to be the victims of domestic violence
False. Repeated studies have indicated that domestic violence is equally likely to be perpetrated by men and women, and equally likely to happen to men and women: http://brainblogger.com/2008/06/08/woman-comparable-to-men-i...
>1 in 5 are raped
False. This statistic is often repeated (and varies from 1 in 3 to 1 in 6 depending on who is repeating it) but is based on deliberately misrepresenting the findings of studies on the subject. http://aspiringeconomist.com/index.php/2009/09/11/rape-stati...
>you know that men and women are treated differently in our society
And those differences manifest as both benefits and drawbacks, for both men and women. Characterizing that as "women have things harder" is absurd, and is only ever done by people deliberately picking and choosing the downsides and benefits they want to use to push their agenda.
Basically males often do not have to put with things that women often do. The concrete example is in this article. If you're a male contracter and start in a new IT place, and the other co-workers know nothing else about you beside (a) you're working here and (b) you are male, then they are much less likely to presume you are not a programmer than if you were female. See the OP for more examples of IT.
In general terms, some other examples:
• If a man gets drunk and passes out at a party, he rarely has to worry about more than someone shaving his eyebrows/hair or someone writing on his face with a marker. Women have to worry about being sexually molested or rape.
• If a straight man goes to a bar, and doesn't want to meet a new person, he's much more likely to be left alone and not propositioned than a woman. (i.e. he can have a quite drink with/without friends without being interrupted). If a straight man wants to experience more of what women feel, go to a gay bar.
• A man can walk past a building site (say) with it being unlikely that someone will shout something suggestive at him.
• When it's dark and they've had a beer or two, a man has a wider selection of streets he can walk down to get home. Less hassle, take the direct route! (I know men are often victims of other kinds of attacks & robberies, that doesn't mean they are not less likely to suffer other kinds).
• A straight man is much less likely to be the victim of physical or sexual abuse from his spouse than a straight woman.
etc.
This is what I mean by "men have it easier (in some regards)"
And as you correctly note, the statistical reference class of men have it easier (in some regards), and harder in other regards. For example:
"If a straight woman wishes to meet a new person, she merely needs to show up and not be fat. If a straight man wants to meet a new person, he must engage in a great deal of active effort."
"A woman is much less likely to be the victim of homicide by a business associate than a man."
So even if you wanted to make some sort of statistical "easy mode" claim, you'd still need to quantify both the benefits and drawbacks to make such a comparison.
Yes it is. Some video games have "the enemies are easier on you" and "bad things less likely to happen" as factors that are controlled by easy mode/hard mode. Anyway, it's just an analogy.
And as you correctly note, the statistical reference class of men have it easier (in some regards), and harder in other regards.
The important question is to tot these all up. After all, it's no good if someone sat down 100 years ago and said: "OK men get all the high paying jobs, ability to vote, serve on juries, be a politician, and the women get less work when dating. Fair?".
I question some of your "advantages women have". Many men actually don't want to be hit on all the time. There are cases of men literally murdering, or reacting violently to, a gay man who's come on to them. Some straight men feel uncomfortable in gay bars. I don't think it's an actual advantage. How much of the "victim of homocide from business partner" is due to women not running businesses as much as men? Perhaps, rather than a advantage, it's a disadvantage.
Yes, hard mode also comes with a bit of extra critical hit vulnerability. I can't think of a single game where the law of large numbers doesn't come into play by the end of the level. I.e., it's more difficult for every single person playing hard mode than for every single person playing easy mode.
In contrast, what you are talking about (if correct) is much better described as "women are somewhat more likely to play life in hard mode than men".
The important question is to tot these all up.
So far no one has attempted this for the modern world, at least as far as I've seen.
No, it isn't. Hard mode would be elevated chance of balrog and death knight attacks. Not a trade off where one is more common and the other less common. That doesn't make it harder, merely different.
Because there has been a very long history of lots of people doing that, and the result being that females were often denied lots of things, purely for being female. This procress may or may not have fully stopped by now, definitly continues in various parts of the world in different defrees. We should watch out for it, and be wary.
Here's a tip: if someone says "this is hard for me" don't respond with "no it's not." In fact, even if they get a little presumptive and forget to add the "for me," give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are describing the world as it exists for them and not necessarily making an empirical claim.
With posts like this I wish there was a mega-upvote option on HN, e.g. for 500 points of karma you upvote 10 points.
It almost boggles my mind. Here some supposedly sexist snippets from "scenarios you may occasionally find yourself in when working as a girl in tech".
Colleague: “So...you are the new designer?" (As if "so...you are the new Foobar" would not be said to any new hire. if I got a new boss, my first word might be "so...you the new boss? hi my name is so and so!". How and in what way would that be sexist remark, and does it matter if the new boss would be female or male? would it matter if the position is boss, developer, designer, sysadmin, or sales?)
Useless male developer has written some crappy code that he doesn’t even understand himself anymore. Now he needs to extend it with new features and asks you to do it. (As if female developers get exclusively dumped with fixing bad code. Especially if its a new hire/consultant/out sourced, how does this surprise anyone? its even a saying that "the new guy gets all the work no one else want". Does it matter if its a female or male?
so for mega-upvote, the article has some issues. Its better than the normal articles we see, but its not 10 times better.
The assumpution behind that question is that women could not be a developer.
To give racist equivalents, it's as if in the USA, imagine you came into the room and there was a latino man there "Are you the new cleaner?"; or in UK, imagine one was introduced to a new eastern european member of staff, "Are you the new cleaner?". These questions are motivated by racist assumptions, and this OP's examples are motivated by sexist assumption.
For better or worse it's just a fact that at the moment a girl working in a software shop is more likely to be a graphic designer than a coder. If I was in a rush looking for the new freelance designer one morning and walked up to an unfamiliar girl sat at a Mac Pro and asked her "Are you the new designer", I'm not being sexist, I'm just making an assumption based on the data I have. Designers and coders, whether male or female, both look the same: they're likely to be intelligent, smart and trendy looking and sat at a workstation.
Now, if in a similar situation I walked up to an intelligent, smart and trendy looking Indian freelancer sat at a MacBook and asked "Are you the new cleaner?", then that's totally different and inexcusable. I had enough data there not to make any assumptions, and it would betray racist core beliefs.
See the difference? Of course every situation is different, but I think the OP's example in this case was weak. We don't need everyone walking around on egg shells, paranoid that people are judging their every stated assumption against some kind of uber harsh politically correct scale.
The only person I would suggest being a cleaner, is one with a white apron, a big logo, with large visible name tag, and carrying a mop. That assumption is based on clothing standards at fast food stores, and its still a rather crude assumption.
Yes, it is accurate to say that "statistically a new female hire in an IT shop is likely to be a designer, not a coder". It is factually accurate to say that, but is it right and moral and nice to say it?
Words can affect people, and set tone and expectations. Is it right for all us men to presume, unless shown otherwise, that the new female hire is not a coder? Will this help or hurt our industry? Every little teeny thing (like presuming this (which is a teeny thing)) can be detrimental and can build up. "Death by a thousand cuts", "Straw that broke the camel's back", our society recognises that sometimes lots of little things can be Too Much™ sometimes.
Would software/the company/society be a better place if we didn't vocalise these presumptions about women, especially if it reinforces negative stereotypes about them?
After all, we all know the mistakes that can come when a female starts getting bigger and we ask "Are you pregnant?". Manners say to be careful here, let's apply some manners, rather than fetishising statically accurate deductions, to presuming women aren't coders.
There's an old saying which appears to have been lost somewhere along the way:
"Offense can only be taken"
Live by it and you will never be offended. It is not the job of everybody around you to constantly walk on eggshells just to keep you happy. You are not at the center of the universe, after all.
I agree that there is a middle ground - when someone's quality of life is seriously suffering because, for example, someone is shouting abuse at them all day then something must be done. However, taking serious offence at people's ignorant opinions or ways of expression is unwise and in itself ignorant.
I'm anticipating prejudice so I shall address it pre-emptively - I am, in fact, a minority. In many places on this planet, I risk serious injury just for being what I am. People have expressed extremely ignorant opinions about the group I fall under in workplaces. I initially took offence upon hearing what I heard but then I moved past that stage and accepted that one cannot understand something they haven't dealt with directly. They were not trying to be mean, they merely did not understand because of their limited experience. How can I take offence when this is the case?
That's certainly a good sign that social sanctions for sexism, racism, etc work. People ~should~ think before they speak, much more than they do in most sites and blogs.
Suppose through a sequence of unfortunate events you find yourself needing to walk through a bad section of town. You have your choice of two roads. Down one road you see a group of 5 young men of a race that commits crimes significantly higher than average. Down the other road there's a group of 5 middle-aged women of a race that commits crimes less than average. Is it acceptable to be racist, sexist, and ageist in this scenario?
Asking a new employee from an 'ethnic minority' if he or she is the new cleaner is bad because being a cleaner is not perceived to be a 'good' job.
Asking a new female employee if she's a designer isn't so bad because, as far as I can tell, being a designer is no 'worse' than being a programmer.
Both examples could be considered something-ism, but I'd say the former is worth caring about, and the latter is a case of oversensitivity (potentially from both sides).
I generally try to err on the side of caution to keep from offending people, but I'm quite allergic to people that get offended too quickly.
(A special place in hell is reserved for people who get offended on behalf of other people.)
1) Actually, I think you want to be a lot more careful about labelling people as "must be X" because of their gender than about labelling them as "made a sexist comment" because they maybe made a sexist comment. It is actually still worse to be a victim of sexism than to be called a sexist.
2) Having core sexist beliefs isn't a prerequisite for making a sexist comment. You can have a momentary sexist thought without consciously believing that women are inferior to men or anything like that - in fact, momentary sexist thoughts are almost inevitable if you're in a culture where sexism is pervasive, no matter who you are. Moreover, a comment can be sexist even if it is made with completely innocent intentions, if it predictably has the effect of (re)enforcing hierarchical gender roles. Sexism is not an ideology, it's a social structure.
You can do "s/sexism/racism/g" for all of the above as well.
Having core sexist beliefs isn't a prerequisite for making a sexist comment.
Exactly, many people think "I'm not a sexist" and then say lots of things, presuming then that everything they say cannot be sexist. I take care to say "sexist talk/action". Tends to get people's backs up less.
You can do "s/sexism/racism/g" for all of the above as well.
Exactly. I've made this same post several times, only doing a bare minimum of s/race/sex/g
Are we really that far gone, and if so, how are we ever going to get work to become a gender neutral environment? Assuming bad faith is not a road to take.
I.e., suppose a new girl shows up at your office. Someone is offering even money that she is a developer. Do you take the bet?
(tl;dr: It's almost certainly an accurate deduction, but acting on it might make society/culture/company worse off, so let's not do it)
But we do not have that kind of context. We only have a assumed intention on what the person meant by it. If we do such assumptions, we assume bad faith.
It could be that they hired a new web developer, also called web designers by many, or designers as short. If a back-end or sysadmin meet someone who is working on the front end, or even on a API structure, its fully plausible to call them "designers", be them male, female, or alien.
Simply put, the comment without any additional context to vilify the speaker, is not sexism. With some context, it might be, but in many others, it is not. Assuming good faith is to default at those context that do not mean sexism.
Ceteris paribus: without Blender or a mop, and without knowing anything about new hires, the assumption is that the new girl is a designer.
It's prejudice precisely because you don't have any other information.
Is it really a negative stereotype that women and men are equally capable but that a woman is more likely to be interested in an equally respectable artistic career over a technical one?
It seems that people on HN hold this developer superiority belief so strongly that if someone asks "are you a designer?" they think that is actually an offensive statement. How dare you think I am a plebe designer and not a developer god that I am?
I don't mean criticizing anyone in particular in this thread, I just suddenly realize that this has often been the case in my personal behavior and in that of people around me.
In this case, there are other cues that a person can use.
e.g. if the person's wearing a cleaners' uniform, it's not racist to ask them that. If they are wearing a suit, it's at a minimum socially clueless, and at worst bigoted to ask them that.
This happened in a talk at a programming/web/tech event two weeks ago: http://i.imgur.com/4hL6X.jpg
This sort of stuff seems more a part of "brogrammer" culture. The idea that you need to make a name for yourself by being edgy/offensive.
Do you think that the author of the article sees all programmers through the lenses of the stereotype?
The picture that you've linked is in bad taste but it won't change the popularity of the stereotype behind it in any way.
Do you think that the author of the presentation sees all models through the lenses of the stereotype?
Look, I know it sucked in school, being ostracized for having technical interests, but now you're grown-up and loaded. As part of a larger social agenda, I can see some harm in perpetuating these geek stereotypes, but on a personal level, you are not being exploited, so quit whining.
Your comment could be less patronizing.
When guy sees some looser made fun of on some picture he thinks: "Hehe. What a looser!" as he sees almost no resemblance between him and the looser.
Does women feel more strongly connected to other women because of shared gender than men?
PS When referring to losers, use the correct spelling
Maybe I'm desensitized to gender issues because I never disrespected a woman for being a woman, and never noticed any adult during my childhood who did that even jokingly but I can imagine conference room of techy women with female presenter showing this picture and all laughing partly exactly because it has nothing to do with MVC and absurd humor is always funny and also because the girl in the picture is obviously inferior to the women in the room even though she could be better off if she learned useful stuff properly like they did and led independent life like they do. I am aware that this probably won't happen anywhere in another 50 years or so.
Personally I hate inappropriate jokes in public appearances because they make presenter look silly and in some twisted form of empathy I feel the shame that presenter should feel.
This joke made me laugh probably because I'm in front of the computer following anonymous link not in the room full of people seeing some boring poor chap desperately trying to lighten the mood. I was mostly amused by the View part, then the Model, not at all at the Controller. I'm so indoorsy (and living in non english speaking country) that when I'm thinking of View the thing that you can see on holidays is one of the last things that come to my mind. I don't own a TV and don't follow celebrity gossip and/or fashion so the connection between what I know as Model and being a model as occupation was also hard for me to make. Controller was I think the easiest (so already least funny) because money is a mean to control a lot (your life for example) also controlling people of opposite gender with money brings "eww.." factor that spoils the joke. 2 out of 3 ... so somewhat funny.
Sorry for trolling you with insensitive question.
Would it be better if it were a male model?
Also, your example talks about "making fun of" someone. The image in the OOP example is reducing a woman's personhood to nothing but that of an object. It is intended to mock her existence and imply that she has no personal agency beyond what a man would choose to control her with.
If I'm one of the only girls in the room, and that is how a point is being made in a presentation by someone that supposedly has enough clout in the industry to go up in front of hundreds of people and talk, it doesn't make me feel good about my future or the people I will report to down the line, nor does it make me feel comfortable knowing that this type of humor is acceptable and welcomed by the amount of laughs it gets.
There's also going to be a few people in the audience that look at this image and then look at me to see what my reaction is, and I'm there to learn, not stand out.
On a more serious note, sometimes I just don't get other women. Yeah, working in fashion, food, or publishing sounds fun, but they aren't getting paid hardly anything and most of them are working as low-level grunts just to be in the industry that sounds fun to them with a small glimmer of hope they might move to the very tiny upper tier in those jobs. To contrast, I have a well-paying job that pays well and after 5, I can actually enjoy food, fashion, and writing for fun. And on the food/fashion front I can afford much higher quality things.
Political correctness isn't really about groupthink or how you should feel. It's about not making other people feel shitty because you're too lazy to use inclusive language. It's simply an extension of 'manners', and gets demonised when it shouldn't be.
A friend of mine says that anytime a person refers to him as "African-American" he sees them as totally distant and that "they usually don't talk to black people" - so I can see this working both ways.
Political correctness (what the 'polis' sees as correct) isn't always what those who may 'feel shitty' think is correct - so I share her feelings.
Political Correctness is an extraordinarily sad advance of style over substance that has attempted to address the language used to describe problems in our society over actually addressing the problems themselves.
Ultimately, Political Correctness is yet another societal/political power grab in an attempt to control the very words that come out of everyones' mouths. Free speech is just too much individual power for many Utopians in society, but they've had so much trouble trying to legislate against the First Amendment[or other country's free speech protection]. Political Correctness is the next best thing for them, I guess.
"they've had so much trouble trying to legislate against the First Amendment"
If you believe proper behavior has anything to do with the First Amendment it would do you better to read the US Constitution.
Huh? Were you trying to reply to someone else's post? That's the OPPOSITE of what I said and your other two "points" are straw men at best.
Ironic that you'd attempt to defend control of speech to prevent giving offense by offensively misrepresenting my position. Ranks right up there with the grandfather poster's accusation that those committing the sin of Political Incorrectness are "lazy".
Offense is taken, not given. I am offended by your post, are you going to delete it and apologize? I would hope not, because that is absurd. You don't have the right to use a meaningless word like "offended" to control other people's speech.
I got my ex-girlfriend into software development. She comes off as a very stereotypical girly girl. She likes clothes, shopping, and top 40 pop music. I convinced her to take an intro programming class her sophomore year of college. Now she's a software engineer at Amazon.
All it took her was a little convincing that she could do it, and that normal people (I suppose I seemed normal to her) do it too.
I don't know if it's society or what, but it seems a lot of girls suffer from this (conscious or not) line of thinking.
I'm versed in science (esp. math and physics) and like to talk about such subjects so I've been regularly asked for help, and every single time I helped a girl the cause of their demise was lack of confidence. Contrary to guys (which seem to have confidence in excess but need some form of support), telling them upfront is useless because it's so ingrained that I have to take a more subtle route. I explain her something complex, and keep going deeper until (usually takes about ten minutes) there's a a-ha, not about the subject at hand but about herself, a moment where she realizes that at every step she got everything I said, and now she gets a glimpse something so complex that ten minutes ago she thought it would forever be unfathomable to her, when I did not actually explain so much as pragmatically but subtly demonstrate that yes, she can do it. Subsequent results at school, even in unrelated disciplines and without more training, are off the charts.
It seems the "mens do the real stuff" society thing is so pervasive that it permeates through and makes them lose the confidence required, and they just need to be bootstrapped out of it so that they can finally say "This is within my reach".
however, my writing style is indeed rather bold but i have no interest of watering it down with some political correctness filter. sorry, no chance :D
I'm trying to comprehend how that isn't about gender issues in the IT business, but let's just say that whatever the appropriate semantic expression was for what it is I was referring to, it includes your work.
>however, my writing style is indeed rather bold but i have no interest of watering it down with some political correctness filter. sorry, no chance :D
Sorry, I wasn't intending to imply you should filter your writing. My comment wasn't really meant to be a criticism of your writing in particular... actually, it wasn't even really a criticism of writing at all. It's more just... I doubt there are other industries where EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE like this would have a reference to porn (well, except for the porn industry ;-).
I don't think it necessarily speaks poorly of the people engaging in the discussion; it reflects where the industry is.
It would make my day if women like nerdess became mentors. I have a feeling that lots of girls are looking up to them.
"you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky, which is a habit that is so easy to get into. I have to confess I’ve done it myself because if you are surrounded by guys all day you quickly feel powerful."
"Technical directors are really keen to hire girls because we boost the morale."
"If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job."
How is all this not sexist? Or is sexism against males not sexism anymore? This is sexist, and shouldn't be upvoted.
http://sachachua.com/blog/
She wrote org-mode for Emacs. Now she is at IBM Research.
http://www.emacswiki.org/PlannerMode
It is cool that Sacha maintained it, volunteering is awesome.
I am pointing this correction out because Sacha's primary career is as a self-promotion specialist (http://sachachua.com/blog/), so I have to be skeptical of how her name gets attached to technical work, more so than someone who doesn't pursue celebrity for profit.
People shouldn't think that it's so easy to be famous and a technical contributor. The larger contributors (like John Wiegley in this case) tend to be less famous.
Example: Sure, Linus Torvalds is a celebrity and massive contrbutor, but there are dozens (hundreds?) of other massive Linux kernel contributors who are less famous than, say, Jeff Atwood.
I always opined that, "women have a lot of emotional strength". You can just imagine how difficult it is to take care of, and raise a toddler. It is so hard. But, somehow women are naturally good at this, and I am just as fascinated by this fact.
Have you never interacted with a single father?
"you can get away with a lot of things just by fluttering your eyelashes and being a bit cheeky, which is a habit that is so easy to get into. I have to confess I’ve done it myself because if you are surrounded by guys all day you quickly feel powerful."
"Technical directors are really keen to hire girls because we boost the morale."
"If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job."
These are all very sexist remarks. If the equivalent has been written from a male's perspective it would have been an outrage.
Also, I disagree that people would complain if the same stuff was written by a guy working in nursing.
Actually, I'm fascinated and scared by all IT people who roll up their sleeves and do manual labour.
I really couldn't disagree with that more. Sure, some languages' syntax borrow English words (Python, Pascal, VB, etc), but that's such a minor similarity. Those words are completely arbitrary and the syntax could have been in Klingon for all the difference it would make to the compiler.
Computer languages are a maths language; albeit a very very dumbed down dialect of maths, but maths all the same.
I think the trap many web developers fall in is that PHP teaches some terrible programming practices (no variable declarations nor types, etc) and ANSI SQL isn't Turing complete, so feel that all other languages by extension are equally easy to grasp. However if you look at a number of other languages -particularly the ones with C-derived syntax- then it becomes painfully obvious that any similarities to human languages are just skin deep (which is lucky for me as I majorly suck at writing yet can code proficiently in around a dozen different computer languages).
The fact of the matter is that many web developers fall into bad practices via laziness, copy & paste syndrome, regardless of whether the language they're using has strict types or not.
"If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job."
This is a problem.
Is this seriously the reality somewhere, that coders are 99% sexually frustrated super nerds? I always considered that to be a old stereotype :P
I've had bugs sent to me for another woman's code, time and again, without formal bug reports for them.
Double edged sword: they know I can fix it, and generally quickly, but it looks like performance is being swept under the rug.
And I do put in bug reports for them once they get to me. Damned if I'm going to have the work unaccounted for.
edit: should probably mention that when she was hired, I was told she would look good at conferences.