During my PhD work I often accompanied my advisor in presenting her lab's research (not only or even mainly mine) to interested companies and governments. She was an incredibly accomplished, tenured faculty member who had pulled together a massive research team (and budget) at a top research University. I was a 22 year old white guy with a BS. But many many times, I found government and industry types addressing comments, questions, and even follow-up requests almost exclusively to me.
I tried to imagine what it was like to tough out that culture back when she was a grad student or junior faculty, long before this was a even a major topic of discussion. I wussed out of the grind I would have faced as a junior faculty, even sporting all the right aesthetics. To those who have stuck it out against major challenges: you are tough as nails, you are improving the system, and it is noticed by and impacts more people than you think.
I don't like how they buried what I consider the lede.
"For the authors of this article, each negative story is overshadowed by dozens of positive experiences, where someone went out of their way to offer support, provide opportunities, and encourage us."
I think this matters to encouraging both women and men. Yes, jerks exist. Sometimes its good people having bad days, some people are monsters hiding under a veneer (ex Hollywood's Weinstein).
We need to stop dehumanizing each other, and understand all humans have the full expanse of positive and negative emotions.
Most people in technology are not bros, sjws, ceos, and whatever.
They are just people trying to get by.
I just wish that when people talk about these stories, they would highlight the country where they are writing them from.
As someone living in Europe (who lived and worked in one of more country), some of these "cultural" aspects against a certain gender feel so much out of place. In particular, expecting someone who is pregnant to quit the job is just unthinkable. Most engineering work places in Europe expect the person to take paternity/maternity leave and take care of the children but the job will be secured.
I'm not saying that gender descrimination doesn't happen in Europe but I feel that the US have a lot of more of these extreme and ridiculous scenarios.
There are a lot of disturbing things in these stories, but I also see a lot of remarks about situations that have a number of alternative explanations besides sexism.
For instance:
> Noting how if two women are talking to each other at a conference, it becomes highly unlikely any guys will walk up and join us. If three women are talking, forget about it.
Yes, indeed, and there are a number of reasons for this. From my point of view, I would avoid approaching a group of women talking by themselves since I'd be the odd one out.
> My “mentor” told me he had never worked with a woman before and wasn’t sure how to talk to me. I suggested he try talking to me like a person.
Depending on the tone, it may mean something completely different than what you are trying to say.
In fact, to me, it looks to me like he was talking about an insecurity he has, and it's not directly related to you... and you are tagging this as sexism.
Long story short, there is a clear line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, and that is respect. It's clear that this line was crossed in a number of times in these stories, but just because you are in a position where you didn't like something doesn't mean the line was automatically crossed.
As a man, I'm clueless on how to help. I certainly don't make any comments of similar nature or perform actions described in the stories.
However, if I were to observe such an event happening, I'd be frozen. One half of me thinks, the woman is an individual and can stand up for herself. If she's uncomfortable, she'll say or do something. She's of equal standing.
The other half of me, I feel like I should say something. But by doing so, that asserts my male patriarchy views, protecting women from the danger. Women wouldn't be considered an equal in this scenario.
As a man I have no equivalent experience, so it's very difficult to judge. However, being in a mostly male environment the probabilities of encountering a 'dick' are very good. Should all 'dicks' be sent to the gulags? How can we stop them becoming/acting like 'dicks'? Enact tougher 'dick' laws?
I really don't understand how this could ever be resolved. Talking about it seems like a start, but it really makes me feel like I am part of the problem as a man, and I don't feel this is positive tone to this conversation.
Help?
It's depressing that I remember exactly this shit from my time in US academia. Not about me, being a man, but what I saw, and what my woman friends shared with me. I recall a woman who didn't get tenure, because she was the only woman in the department, and had no friends to support her. I recall female grad students who were sexually assaulted by their advisers. Some of whom were on my thesis committee, and were great mentors. It's just so fucking sad that it's still so common, decades later :(
I think there are two broad camps of thinking processes, one that fits people into stereotypes and does system 1 type of thinking. This camp believes in built in traits always lead to certain biases. They perpetuate those biases as well. While its true that exposure in young adulthood to certain things leads to bias to a certain extent, the main driver is YOU, your camp, which created those biases. Remember all those women that dropped out of the Software workforce in the 70's? Someone MADE those conditions happen.
The lack of understanding that those biases can be reversed is what needs to be corrected. This is the other camp, the camp that understands this and proactively fixes things, that needs to be made bigger.
I think, such things start very young. They starts in pre-schools where girls are given a doll and boys are given the lego blocks or children are not sensitized to color of the skin issues.
Many of these experiences are definitely ranging from unfortunate to terrible for women trying to simply have a productive career in a made dominated workplace.
I just wanted to make a simple mathematical point, which the article kind of alludes to: the more X-dominated a field is, the more you would have run-ins with X, and thus more stories of inappropriate behavior by X.
I wonder what stories guys have of joining female-dominated fields. Are they called the token guy? Do women make sexual remarks about them? The degree to which the answer is "yes" will be greatly affected by the imbalance in the first place. The bigger it is, the more likely they are to bump up against something bad in everyday life.
Not saying we just have to accept this. Just saying we have to understand that no matter how much we all personally make an effort to act better, these stories will continue. So don't beat yourself up over it and continue to treat everyone as a fellow human being. And don't take it as a criticism of all men.
The same phenomenon happens if you turn on the news and see crimes and murders all the time. That doesn't mean the city is overrun by crime but rather that the stories merited special attention. It doesn't mean YOU necessarily have to constantly keep in mind not to rob or murder someone.
Kathryn McKinley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_S._McKinley?wprov=sfla...
Sounds like excluding people who get offended at every little comment is a better way of dealing with things.
A man I thought was a trusted colleague thought my first conference was the right place to make an agressive pass.
Who tf are these people?
The comment section on this one is both depressing, and utterly predictable. The brigading, the “but’s” and the use of the article as a flimsy ideological springboard to make really asinine points. It’s good to see people expressing their dismay and surprise too, and hopefully over time those voices will become louder.
We’re still a ways from an article like this being met with something more constructive than the usual deflections, excuses, and ideological fights. We’re still stuck with arguments that wouldn’t have been out of place during various civil rights and suffragette movements.
It’s coming though, and I for one can’t wait. It’s just sad that we’re missing out on the talents of many women who make a rational choice to avoid STEM and it’s frequn toxic culture of asocial/antisocial asses. It’s sad that a site full of bright, educated poeple can still so frequtmly come off as a pack of deflecting, equivocating, terrified boys. Everyone involved deserves better than this.
So speak up, take a risk, and most of all act like and be someone that other people know would stand up for them. Be the kind of person who an absuive prick would never think of saying or doing what’s described in this article, around. Talk to and listen to your coworkers, and try to have some ideals beyond personal advancement.
A forlorn goodbye from me to HN.
I’m sad at the deterioration of the HN community into a place where reasonable and inoffensive comments are flagged and downvoted simply because people disagree on a political level.
I’ve found myself spending less time on HN due to this behaviour in the comments section.
Other discussion communities are more inclusive and more diverse - and by that I mean the only meaningful flavour of diversity - diversity of opinion.
> Are you the token woman? Are you qualified?”
> a manager at Microsoft told me I was only hired because I was a woman.
> “You must have had a lot of offers because you are black.”
I’m not in any way condoning this sexist/racist behaviour.
But statements like these reflect the fact that “affirmative action,” “positive discrimination,” quotas etc are HURTING women, by creating prejudice against them.
Some want to solve tech gender disparity by “engineering” an equality of outcome.
The harm done by these social engineers will last for generations.
Can we please just bury the folks out there doing treating their peers this way?
Throw them all out like the trash they are. It is so fucking stupid how we human beings have to insert our stupid thoughts and desires into everything. You'll never get rid of aggressive behavior because once people start intuitively judging people, especially over those they think are below them, it is impossible to get them to stop.
And jesus has nobody learned to not shit where you eat? Save it for Tinder.
I don't think the tech industry can really change unless it makes gender balance a priority.
How many tech CEOs will stand up and say: "I have an 80% (or 90% or a 100%) male tech team because there are not enough qualified women to achieve gender balance."
No CEO will be caught dead saying that explicitly but they are saying it implicitly every single day with how they are staffing their companies.
From reading HN it seems like a large percentage of people here believe that the gender gap is due to a qualifications gap and they might dump on people like James Damore for being dumb enough to say it in public but most of them believe it and the way they act shows it.
The bottom line is that if you are not achieving gender balance on your teams what you are telling women and what you are telling the world is that you believe men are superior to women and that women are not qualified for these jobs.
Actions speak louder than words and as long as the actions of companies and individuals reflect this attitude no amount of words is going to change anything.
Achieving gender balance in tech is possible and is only a matter of choice.
There are more than enough qualified women to fill tech jobs in roughly equal proportion with men.
It doesn't happen because (among other reasons):
1) The people doing the hiring are overwhelmingly men and set rules and standards for hiring that discriminate against women
2) Companies believe that young men are more profitable employees and so they do nothing to seriously discourage discrimination
Unless this changes the experience of women in tech will be a negative one.
All a woman has to do to know that she is undervalued and seen as an inferior is walk into a company that has a overwhelmingly male tech team and that is most of them.
These stories upset me deeply. But as much as they upset me, they surprise me. And that's because until it was just recently, after 20+ years in the computer industry, that I discovered how pervasive such behavior is.
I'm not happy that such stories take place. But I am happy that a growing number of women are telling their stories, shocking those of us who were able to be blissfully ignorant of what was going on, and forcing us to realize just how poorly our female colleagues are sometimes being treated.
Let's even assume that 90% of the time, things are great for women in high tech. How many women are willing to put up with even 10% (or even 1%) of their time dealing with such behavior? I'm not sure if I would. And then we wonder why so many women aren't interested in technology careers, or leave after a short period of time.
I hope that these stories eventually end. But in order for them to end, we need to hear more of them, to realize just how bad things are, and to make it completely unacceptable, in every way, for things to continue as they currently are.