not trying to discount this or my perceived intent of it, but i was wondering if any women could share specific examples when they were being mentored/coached differently than men. i understand that every individual, man or woman, responds to better to different communication styles.
i'm asking because i specifically want to know what unintended biases/habits I may have that i didn't realize.
Except something I read recently said you should not do that either unless they somehow give signs that is something they are interested in. At this point I have just given up. I did ask a woman colleague about this a while ago before I was admonished (via random blog post) and she said she didn't really see the need to tell other women to pursue CS as a profession because those that were interested would gravitate to it like she had. She worries about people doing things just because they pay well or are seen as trendy. Not sure I agree with her viewpoint but there you go...
Perhaps because, beyond a Twitter hashtag and a fairly inexplicable emoticon, it doesn't add anything new or interesting to (what usually amounts to) a rather prickly debate.
Agreed. Somebody's mad, perhaps justifiably so, but there's no clear plan of action here. I'm not saying it's a bad plan. I'm saying it's no plan, and thus nothing to discuss. Maybe when more details come out about what the tableflippers are actually going to do, that will be newsworthy.
Perhaps it should, but every bit of ally advice I've seen is that they should not try to define what that action should be. That's taking leadership away from the women themselves - "white knight" behavior of the worst sort. I'm not saying everyone feels that way, and in fact I have misgivings about it myself, but that seems to be the prevailing view. Instead of trying to guess what women you don't even know need or want, let them explain it to you. I don't get the impression that whoever wrote the OP is shy. If there's a plan, we'll hear about it and then we (men) can perhaps help to implement it ... or not, depending on what that plan is. I very much doubt this was meant as an opportunity for men to fill in the blanks.
Well, hysteric anger like this makes me feel both annoyed and accused for things I have had no influence on. Not the greatest way to make me actively support it. In fact it makes me feel negatively.
You do have influence on the subtle sexism that creeps into your language, like they word "hysteric" just did. Now you know! Not using it again is a specific thing you can do to make the world a better place.
I suspect that the author of the manifesto felt negatively about her experiences as well. Perhaps you should take those negative feelings and go do something productive, like donate money to a women-in-tech charity, or help a female friend who's unhappy in her career find a new job at a healthier company.
Do you take the time to check your behaviors, talk to women (with humility), ask their stories, and see if you have done the wrong things (even accidentally)?
When I read something like this, it doesn't make me feel accused at all.
It makes me feel sympathetic to anyone who'd be compelled to write this.
It also makes me think, "I'm glad I have already gotten over my defensive posturing, because there was a time when I was more ignorant about others' struggles, and would have taken offense at this."
The clear plan of action is in the last sentence, most critically this sentence: "We're incorporating and fundraising and angel investing in other womens' companies."
It's not a detailed plan, of course, but its a manifesto, not a 5-year-plan.
Fair enough, but it still leaves little to discuss. When what appears to be a new angel fund actually gets created, and can explain how they'll do all this without falling afoul of the very same anti-discrimination laws that everyone else must live by, then I hope that will be enough to hang a real discussion on. Until then, "who's the whitest knight" seems to be about it.
> Fair enough, but it still leaves little to discuss.
Its a manifesto, its not really asking for a discussion, except among people -- from the face of it, women, specifically -- that are interested in participating.
In any case, if there's nothing to discuss, you don't need to discuss it.
So you're saying it's just here as an announcement, not for anyone to discuss? That generally seems to be a privilege limited to YC companies (or YC itself). Everything else gets discussed, for all the reasons that discussion is considered beneficial. It's what the platform was written to facilitate. But hey, if it's just an announcement then we're done. I hope it reaches its intended audience, and congratulate you on that shiny armor.
> So you're saying it's just here as an announcement, not for anyone to discuss?
Its here because someone posted it here; I'm saying that the page itself isn't calling for a discussion, its identifying complaints motivating action and a high-level description of the action the author(s) intend to undertake to address the situation identified in the complaints (similar to, e.g., the US Declaration of Independence.)
That it is not calling for a discussion doesn't mean that there is nothing in it to discuss, though it does mean that it is silly to criticize it for your perception that there is nothing in it to discuss. If you find nothing in it to discuss, you could simply not discuss it.
No, it's that you don't need to discuss it. Women in tech reading it will probably have a lot to say. They may even be doing it elsewhere--I'd venture to guess that HN is heavily male-skewed.
I've seen this emoticon before, it's someone flipping a table. Here's a Clojure macro to let you flip and catch tables: https://github.com/jstepien/flip
When you see "[flagged]" on a post it means either that users flagged it or that it was moderated automatically by software (usually because of restrictions on noob accounts). We review and unflag the latter category of posts when they aren't spam or trolling. Soon everyone will be able to participate in the unflagging, but that isn't rolled out yet.
I think this is really important. It would be very wrong to dismiss it with tone policing or other superficial commentary. The underlying point is that there are a lot of women in the technology industry who believe - rightly - that they are being mistreated.
That's not necessarily to say that the rest of us are doing it deliberately (although some undoubtedly are). But it's important to grow our own awareness and build more inclusive cultures at our startups, and continue to be aware, work on improving ourselves, and, more than anything else, listen.
I'm down with Uber for cats though. Maybe with VR and drones?
> It's not proposing anything other than taking your ball and leaving, which just makes it worse for the women who choose to stay.
I don't see how it makes thing worse for the women who choose to stay in existing environments. If the strategy of setting up organizations on the model proposed works, how concretely will it make things worse for women who choose to remain in other firms?
> Awareness is important, but this is an unproductive way to spread it.
I don't think this is an effort to spread awareness. I think this is an expression that spreading awareness has, from its author's (or authors') perspective, been done but that awareness hasn't translated into adequate improvements in substantive conditions, and that the way to improve substantive conditions is to build organizations that from day one lack the features that have produced the bad conditions that awareness has failed to cure.
I think that's more than fair, and I don't understand why anyone would have any problem with building better organizations. The response to "women are having a shitty time in the tech industry" should be "let's fix this and its root causes, because it will make our companies better," not a lot of the sexist knee-jerk reactions we've seen.
Go for both. Some people will be more motivated by doing the right thing, some will be more motivated by making more money. The two are compatible.
Yes, it would be nice if (all, or at least enough) people were motivated by "doing the right thing" to fix things. Human beings being what they are, though, money as a motivator works pretty well.
I strongly agree with you on a personal level, but I also think there's something to be said for a non-ideological brass tacks bottom line approach (particularly in a community like HN). I genuinely wish that the ideological reason played well everywhere, but I'm not sure it does.
Please. I'd be happy to hear what steps you believe are more productive.
I'm kind of sick hearing men dismiss anything women (and other men!) are trying to do to raise awareness to these inequalities, as if they have nothing to do with it.
We (men) need to actively work to resolve gender inequalities in our workplaces and in any place, and the least we can do is be supportive allies. [1][2][3][4]
Lots of anger, name calling, blaming, and posturing directed at nobody in particular with no discernible next steps toward resolution. Nothing good will come from this. There's no need to wage war, pick out enemies, and blast people toward a more fair world. If you try to pick a fight you'll get one because that's definitely something we can all do well.
Quite explicit? Let me see if I can recount those steps then: follow brave women, talk, organize, share stories about creeps and cowards, incorporate, fundraise, invest, and stop giving fucks.
Great plan maybe if we have time we can include memes.
I'd guess that, in reply to your statement "if you try to pick a fight...", a woman in tech might reasonably reply, the fight started years ago, women are just now starting to stand up for themselves.
And to the extent that such a statement is used to empower people to take action, I support it. Still, imho, it's not helpful to further entrench the gender binary with a narrative about men keeping women from their potential and women having to fend for themselves to get what their due.
It may be that, while you're telling women to drop this aggressive narrative and play nice, they may reply by telling you that being nice hasn't worked out so well so far, so it's time to try a different approach.
See, what it sounds like is, you're calling it a narrative when, for women in tech, it's reality.
Narratives can, of course, be changed pretty easily--"let's tell a new story"--while reality is a great deal more resistant. Conflating the two does a disservice to the people for whom it's reality, by suggesting that all they need to do is tell a new story.
Just because it's a narrative doesn't mean it's not also a reality. Story telling is how we make sense of collective societal changes. The presence of a narrative simply means society is trying to work out the problem. Conflating reality and narratives would be to believe that men and women are actually fighting when the reality is there are more than two genders with allies on all sides.
> Still, imho, it's not helpful to further entrench the gender binary with a narrative about men keeping women from their potential and women having to fend for themselves to get what their due.
I suspect that the degree to which one believes that reinforcing the narrative described is helpful correlates pretty strongly with the degree to which one believes that the narrative described is accurate.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 61.3 ms ] threadi'm asking because i specifically want to know what unintended biases/habits I may have that i didn't realize.
thanks!
They would be the people to ask.
Google has been doing a bunch of research on this lately.
Edit: I am not certain this is how HN actually works, so it's just a guess.
You do have influence on the subtle sexism that creeps into your language, like they word "hysteric" just did. Now you know! Not using it again is a specific thing you can do to make the world a better place.
I suspect that the author of the manifesto felt negatively about her experiences as well. Perhaps you should take those negative feelings and go do something productive, like donate money to a women-in-tech charity, or help a female friend who's unhappy in her career find a new job at a healthier company.
You missed my point about the negativity. It makes me not wanting to do anything, that's the problem.
Why does this make you feel annoyed and accused?
Do you take the time to check your behaviors, talk to women (with humility), ask their stories, and see if you have done the wrong things (even accidentally)?
When I read something like this, it doesn't make me feel accused at all.
It makes me feel sympathetic to anyone who'd be compelled to write this.
It also makes me think, "I'm glad I have already gotten over my defensive posturing, because there was a time when I was more ignorant about others' struggles, and would have taken offense at this."
The clear plan of action is in the last sentence, most critically this sentence: "We're incorporating and fundraising and angel investing in other womens' companies."
It's not a detailed plan, of course, but its a manifesto, not a 5-year-plan.
Its a manifesto, its not really asking for a discussion, except among people -- from the face of it, women, specifically -- that are interested in participating.
In any case, if there's nothing to discuss, you don't need to discuss it.
Its here because someone posted it here; I'm saying that the page itself isn't calling for a discussion, its identifying complaints motivating action and a high-level description of the action the author(s) intend to undertake to address the situation identified in the complaints (similar to, e.g., the US Declaration of Independence.)
That it is not calling for a discussion doesn't mean that there is nothing in it to discuss, though it does mean that it is silly to criticize it for your perception that there is nothing in it to discuss. If you find nothing in it to discuss, you could simply not discuss it.
When you see "[flagged]" on a post it means either that users flagged it or that it was moderated automatically by software (usually because of restrictions on noob accounts). We review and unflag the latter category of posts when they aren't spam or trolling. Soon everyone will be able to participate in the unflagging, but that isn't rolled out yet.
> Uber for cats
Isn't Uber the Uber for cats? http://blog.uber.com/KITTENS
> You rule.
That's not necessarily to say that the rest of us are doing it deliberately (although some undoubtedly are). But it's important to grow our own awareness and build more inclusive cultures at our startups, and continue to be aware, work on improving ourselves, and, more than anything else, listen.
I'm down with Uber for cats though. Maybe with VR and drones?
I don't see how it makes thing worse for the women who choose to stay in existing environments. If the strategy of setting up organizations on the model proposed works, how concretely will it make things worse for women who choose to remain in other firms?
> Awareness is important, but this is an unproductive way to spread it.
I don't think this is an effort to spread awareness. I think this is an expression that spreading awareness has, from its author's (or authors') perspective, been done but that awareness hasn't translated into adequate improvements in substantive conditions, and that the way to improve substantive conditions is to build organizations that from day one lack the features that have produced the bad conditions that awareness has failed to cure.
Yes, it would be nice if (all, or at least enough) people were motivated by "doing the right thing" to fix things. Human beings being what they are, though, money as a motivator works pretty well.
As another commenter has said: both are good.
I'm kind of sick hearing men dismiss anything women (and other men!) are trying to do to raise awareness to these inequalities, as if they have nothing to do with it.
We (men) need to actively work to resolve gender inequalities in our workplaces and in any place, and the least we can do is be supportive allies. [1][2][3][4]
[1] - http://www.scn.org/friends/ally.html
[2] - http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/11/things-allies-need-to-kn....
[3] - http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Allies
[4] - http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Resources_for_allies
The next steps (expressed as fact statements rather than calls to action) are quite explicit in the last paragraph.
> There's no need to wage war, pick out enemies, and blast people toward a more fair world.
I don't see any war-waging, just an explanation for the motivations for a well-identified new strategy.
Great plan maybe if we have time we can include memes.
Narratives can, of course, be changed pretty easily--"let's tell a new story"--while reality is a great deal more resistant. Conflating the two does a disservice to the people for whom it's reality, by suggesting that all they need to do is tell a new story.
I suspect that the degree to which one believes that reinforcing the narrative described is helpful correlates pretty strongly with the degree to which one believes that the narrative described is accurate.
the grass is always greener on the other side of fence. everyone believes everyone else must have it easier.