So I started programming (for real) about two years ago. I spent about four months teaching myself coding PHP, JavaScript and CSS. I was able to secure a job after four months. I wasn't really good enough for the position.
My wife is doing the same. She is following my path. She have me, I teach her and she is learning much faster. After a year, she is still looking for a volunteer job! Nobody believes she can do anything.
This is extremely sad. My wife is far more advanced than me when I got my first job. We are immigrants and we are not white, I believe those adds to our problems.
Everyone who says women don't deserve this kind of attention never saw a women struggling get in tech world.
I hear you, friend, it's like it's ok for companies to hire us , men, as a "risky bet", I'm not the best engineer but thankfully my employers have all "seen" something in me to have enough faith to give me the chance to learn the job and then become better. Women seem to not get the same kind of good faith: my partner has two engineering degrees and she's by far a better engineer than I (skill-and-attitude-wise), and yet most companies reject her because of her "lack of experience". I know that that is a problem that befalls recent graduates all over the globe, but the fact that I garnered faith from employers more than once and she hasn't, not a single time, is -IMO- telling of a lack of balance.
Self taught programmers are more discriminated against these days than women, in my opinion. A lot of companies _say_ they don't care if you don't have a degree, but my experience is that the programmer with a degree from Stanford but a blank github account will get the job over a self-taught developer with dozens of shipped projects under their belt.
hm. as a self-taught sysadmin, this hasn't been my experience.
I mean, a degree from Stanford is something that is worth a whole hell of a lot more than your average degree... so yeah, maybe someone from Stanford would have a significant advantage over someone self-taught... but someone from an average university? maybe some advantage, but yeah, I don't think it's as big of a deal as being a woman, or being foreign or what have you.
Of course, if you are self taught and have no experience? sure, you have it really rough. Much more so than a person who has a degree and no experience. You need the experience. but after ten years? (remember, you should have /at least/ 4 years more experience than the kid with the degree, if you are self-taught.) From what I've seen? I can be pretty competitive.
But women? Nobody has ever rejected /me/ from a job with:
"I'm sorry, but we don't have any diversity positions at this time."
The mind reels. I have had a job, before, when I was much younger, where I thought I was hired for altruistic reasons. It was soul-crushing. Imagine that rattling around the back of your head for the rest of your career.
I have never had the slightest indication that anyone actually looked at my Github account listed at the top of the resume, let alone that this ever helped me get any job I've had. So I'm inclined to treat this as an urban legend.
I disagree with everyone saying, "Why create something separate for women? Isn't that further separation?"
For the most part, women don't take up much space in the tech industry. Women look at the big names in tech, and they don't really see people who are "like me." This can be intimidating and disheartening. Creating more spaces for women to connect with other women, and share their experiences and encouragement is much needed. Of course, let's also not forget women of color and trans women, who obviously face additional challenges in finding people like themselves to look up to in tech. I hope that GitHub makes an effort to include a wide range of women with different backgrounds to include in this series.
Also, there's no reason why any women's group should have to admit men to appease the "I promise we're not sexist against men" line of reasoning. I probably shouldn't be surprised that some of the first comments on something oriented towards women is, "But...WHAT ABOUT MEN?!" Get over yourselves! Let this be a reminder that the world does not revolve around you and people like you.
Well segregation is segregation, with positive or negative overtones depending on the context like how we still to this day segregate restrooms by gender norms.
Affirmative action does not necessarily mean segregation either. The NFL's "Rooney Rule" requires a minority candidate to be interviewed for head coaching vacancies but doesn't require one be selected. We'd still call that affirmative action.
Rather it means merely that instead of just stopping the negative action applied against a minority and letting history take its course, that some positive action is taken to repair the damage done to the minority group, in order to actually have a chance at real equality in the future. This could include means such as segregated advocacy groups but encompasses much more.
> Also, there's no reason why any women's group should have to admit men to appease the "I promise we're not sexist against men" line of reasoning.
Is sexism not reason enough in itself? Is this not the very thing we're trying to fight against?
I fully acknowledge and lament that there is a severe lack of women in tech, and were it up to me men and women both would have equal opportunities in all regards, but you only debase your message and dilute your efforts when you try to level the playing field by making an environment that is more hostile towards men rather than one less hostile towards women.
The overarching goal is to be inclusive, of people of all genders, races, and the spectrum of people that fall in between. Yes, celebrate successes, find role models of all types and praise their accomplishments. Bring them forward to share their wisdom and experiences so that everyone can learn and benefit.
Edit: To clarify, I have no issues with an initiative that seeks out role models specifically within a category of minorities, such as by gender or race. My only qualm would be in limiting the audience.
To put it simply, sexism against men does not exist. You can discriminate against men, but let's be clear: sexism is systematic oppression by those in power on the basis of gender.
So...having a series of talks that is for women by women cannot possibly be sexist. You can say it discriminates by not allowing men to be speakers, if you so wish. I can't say I'd find it to interesting to listen to a man tell me what it's like to be a woman in tech, though, so you could also just say that they're just featuring people who are interesting to their audience: women.
Also -- who said anything about hostility? What I meant was, "This is about women...why are you bringing men up at all? Don't they have their own spheres which they already dominate?" I just get tired of all this "reverse sexism" nonsense.
Edit: To be clear, I agree with your last paragraph. I don't think it's limiting the audience to feature women speakers, unless you don't think that men can find women interesting. ;)
The key element is that women are not able to systematically oppress men for being men, as they do not have the social privilege to do so. You need all the elements in order to produce sexism.
A single individual event or person can be sexist. I understand the idea you are describing. That idea is not what the word "sexism" refers to. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sexism
Sexism is an institution, so to speak. A single individual could not "bring sexism into existence". Women do not have enough power, as it stands, to impose a systemic oppression of men. Perhaps in the future, or in some female dominated societies, sexism against men exists...but not in the United States.
> Women do not have enough power, as it stands, to impose a systemic oppression of men.
And men don't have enough power to impose a systemic oppression of women -- for that, they need women to cooperate in their own oppression. Women voluntarily rise to the challenge.
> Perhaps in the future, or in some female dominated societies, sexism against men exists...but not in the United States.
No. You may have meant effective, oppressive sexism, but not sexism per se. There's plenty of sexism directed at men.
"If men knew what women said about them in private, the human race would cease to exist." -- W. H. Auden
I don't think I can buy the victim-blaming argument.
Is a woman who is born into a culture with female genital mutilation, or forced arranged marriage "cooperating in their own oppression"? Both of these acts can occur at young ages.
When female genital mutilation occurs, which is largely a problem in non-Western countries [or at least is perceived to be a non-Western problem, I'm not informed enough to say], white feminists historically attributed that to those people being 'uncivilized', which is obviously racist and white supremacist, rather than it being a result of those women experiencing a different manifestation of oppression in a male-dominated society.
So yeah, that's one way women can contribute to their own oppression. Obviously most forms of women's oppression are not the result of that woman "doing it to herself," but I can definitely see how that line of argumentation can be a slippery slope of victim-blaming.
> I don't think I can buy the victim-blaming argument.
With respect to the topic of women who cooperate in their own oppression, they aren't victims, and no one is blaming them. Would you blame someone for choosing a lifestyle that didn't suit your personal tastes? No? Then we lose the right to "blame" women for making the choices they do. This is what personal freedom means -- the right to make choices others may disapprove of.
> Is a woman who is born into a culture with female genital mutilation ...
Surely you're aware that's not the topic. Such things aren't volunteered for, but the sorts of behavior we see in the West are often chosen by women who have options and rights.
> ... or forced arranged marriage "cooperating in their own oppression"?
Again, not the topic of discussion. Consider the all-too-common example in which a woman, removed from one abusive relationship, promptly seeks out another. How is that "forced"?
Real liberation will come, not when women are given the rights they deserve, but when they accept them.
> Consider the all-too-common example in which a woman, removed from one abusive relationship, promptly seeks out another. How is that "forced"?
That is a really poor example of women being instruments in their own oppression. In cases like that, women are likely suffering from internalized problems that result from patriarchy -- such as a desire to be dominated, to fit into the patriarchal framework, to fill out the role of the victim that they are told is their identity. Sure, some choice is involved, but it's more like Stockholm Syndrome than "I think I fancy having the living daylights beat out of me today."
My much less dramatic example is a woman who claims that she doesn't enjoy the company of other women, finds them to be too catty or bitchy, would rather hang out with men, etc. Commonly, this woman is seeking the approval of her male peers at the expense of...basically all women ever. She wants to come off as a "pretty tomboy" -- 'cool' enough to be one of the guys, but also conforming to sexist expectations about her appearance. This is obviously a stereotype, but I personally encounter it a lot. How can anyone truly respect women when their own kind are debasing them left and right?
> Real liberation will come, not when women are given the rights they deserve, but when they accept them.
I don't think I even need to explain how absurd this statement is. I'll agree that women are part of the problem in fighting for women's rights, but frankly I see and experience sexism far too often to be so dismissive.
I totally agree with you. Many women participate in the oppression of other women. White women have historically done this to women of color, but it can happen within the same race/class/etc.
Isn't sexism, by its nature, oppression? So what is sexism without oppression? I choose to call that discrimination or prejudice based on gender. You can call it "sexism minus x/y/z." I think the difference is that I see those other components as necessary for something or someone to be sexist, and you do not.
Frankly, I disagree with the wikipedia article and definition. As I've said -- these are controversial topics, something like the dictionary or wikipedia can't just be taken as sources of definitive truth in my opinion.
There is such a thing as institutional sexism, but that is not the only kind. I have already linked to the definition if sexism. There are many possible manifestations if it, and you are only describing one of them.
I must vehemently disagree with your argument that discrimination against men on the basis of gender is not sexism, and I take offense at the notion that it is "nonsense", however that is only a pedantic tangent in the context of this discussion. To avoid further pedantry, going forward I will simply refer to it as discrimination.
Whatever your definition of that word, discrimination of any sort is morally and ethically wrong, and I must persist my argument that introducing more discrimination into an already discriminatory environment will only further escalate hostile feelings.
Regarding your point that this series is about women and therefore "[...] why are you bringing men up at all? Don't they have their own spheres which they already dominate?" I did not think that was the goal of Passion Projects. Are you trying to say that you would prefer a separate industry of women's technology and men's technology? The ultimate success of this project and others like it, I had assumed, was integration of all peoples into a cohesive community free from discrimination. To that end, I celebrate GitHub's initiative and hope that it is as successful as it can be.
Why is it necessarily hostile towards men to have a series of talks oriented towards women in tech? I don't imagine they're going to spend their time talking about how terrible men are, how we should undermine them at every turn, and do our best to tip the scales of systemic oppression in their favor. It seems to me to be about inspiration and encouragement, which can be a benefit to anyone, regardless of gender.
It is about creating an integrated community. But women need to come together and find the collective voice that most individuals currently do not possess. Sometimes the presence or involvement of men can be detrimental to that progress. Not all men, not all the time, but sometimes. So why bring up the "what about men?" argument when this is just not about men?
I am sorry you disagree with my definition of sexism. To my knowledge, that is an accepted academic definition.
You misunderstand my point. I happily support talks that feature and target women in tech, as I believe I have stated several times, I only worry about such initiatives excluding men from the audience or other means of participation. To achieve integration and inclusion, everyone must get involved to show their support and to learn about the issues at hand.
As to the definition of sexism, I would implore you to closely read any available dictionary entry of the word. The core definition is "discrimination or devaluation based on a person's sex". It is unfortunate that this definition, in some dictionaries, will also include such lines as "typically against women", but that does not negate the possibility that sexism against men may occur. I would hardly refute that in a large number of cases sexism targets women, but by no means are men free from its effects.
My perspective is this: people write the dictionary just like people write any other book. It's not the end-all-be-all of any word. There are probably many sources on sexism that agree with me, and many that do not. It goes without saying, such is the nature of a controversial subject. I am not trying to be sarcastic here: Have you read any books on sexism or feminism? Because realistically, I think it's hard to grok those subjects with only a dictionary entry at your disposal.
I agree that sexism affects men negatively, as well. While men benefit the most from patriarchy, they also suffer. In order to reap its benefits, they have to play into the system. Most guys don't want to do that, and are appalled by people who do. But a future in which men and women overcome sexism is quite uncertain, and it is far easier to passively support male domination rather than to fight it. So yes, while I agree that men are negatively affected by sexism, I would disagree that men are negatively affected by sexism in the way that women are.
Books written by women for women examined at female studies classes at Universities which host Women's Centers? See what's wrong with this picture? It's very one sided.
Egalitarianism would benefit greatly from having the male point of view in these gender-based studies. You will however find a very small percentage of men compared to women in these courses.
If you actually want such an informed view, and you actually want to get closer to knowing what sexism really is, men should be much more involved in these courses and thing's shouldn't be so one-sided.
It is a fallacy to say that you cannot say that just because a woman wrote a book about women that it is inherently going to be incorrect. What about every other class at the university? Books written by men for men examined in classes about men. Historically, every other subject has been that one-sided.
Personally, I know just as many male feminists as I do female feminists, and several of the former are Gender and Women's Studies (GWS) majors or minors.
I'd love it if all students were required to take a GWS class. I'd love it if more male voices were engaged in the feminist discourse. We need more male voices in the feminist discourse. But frankly, it is easier to stick with the straw man argument "feminism is about hating men, going against nature, or being a lesbian!" rather than reading a wide range of literature that discusses its true goal: ending sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. Should be something we can all get behind...
I said books written by women for women, not just ABOUT women. These books examine relations between the two sexes and society in general. If you have primarily 50% of the population writing these books to examine society then yes, it is a fallacy and it is a distortion of reality.
This very much differs from subjects like physics or math or biology, written primarily by men. It doesn't matter who writes these books, they are science based, based on logic and facts.
This differs entirely from gender relation based books, which are based on observations. Again, if you primarily have one sex leading the discussion and writing books about observations (NOT science) then it is a distortion of reality.
As such, you now believe that sexism can only be done by men, and other ignorant statements. The problem is now that you TRULY in your heart believe this, because you were told over and over that all the problems which face you are a result of patriarchy and that women can't possibly be sexist against men! This goes against what has been ingrained in your brain, and you've never had any opposition to this naive idea until now, so it will be difficult for you to accept.
Yes, there are many male feminists which actually believe some of the things which you say, but why wouldn't there be? Feminism is a now long-established and UNCHALLENGED institution. Of course there will be men who will be feminists.
All students should definitely not be required to take any GWS classes. First off the problem is in the name already, Gender and Women's Studies. Already biased. Gender implies that women are a part of that gender. Make it simply Gender Studies or call it Gender and Women's and Men's studies.
Until there is a shift in attitudes and Gender Studies actually moves closer to reality, no one should be required to take such classes. There should be simple encouragement for men, however, to attend these classes to dispel decades of myth and ignorance.
Exactly. It is rather ridiculous that people like mlent spew their own definitions for sexism and feel that women cannot be sexist. It destroys any sort of reasonable discourse by being so ignorant.
No one is trying to make the overall industry more hostile to men. Some people are trying to make certain spaces that feel safe and encouraging to women, which often means minimizing the maleness of the space.
Most don't fully exclude men, but they have legitimate reasons to want to make it feel like a female space, and if that means taking measures that prevent some men who would like to attend from attending, that's not necessarily a problem.
I say this as a male who has attended campus women in CS dinners and talks. These events are open to all, but aimed at giving women interested in computer science a community, role models, etc. When I go, I am always prepared to leave if I feel that my presence is hurting the overall atmosphere, because I realize that the events are a powerful force against inequalities in society, and the least I can do is stay out of the way. And when you ask the organizers if men can come, they say yes, but they do mention that it's important for it to feel like a female space, and that if it got to the point that so many men attended that this compromised that feeling, they would start discouraging men from attending.
Not every event needs to serve everyone in the industry. There are probably some language-focused meetups where you wouldn't feel especially comfortable or welcome because you don't know the language, or maybe even actively hate it. I understand that you feel it is different because you'd at least be allowed to attend a meetup for a language you don't know, but it still illustrates that not all events in the industry have to cater to you. When they're catering toward a disadvantaged group, they deserve even more leeway to make sure they achieve their goals. As long as the network of women-focused events doesn't become so large and meaningful that it is systematically disadvantaging men, I don't see any problem with some events excluding men in various ways.
You're concerned about sexism in the small--in this one event. Others are more concerned with sexism in the large--the pervasive social environment that systematically discourages women from entering an extremely rewarding and lucrative industry. Both are suboptimal. In the ideal world, there wouldn't be any women-only tech events. But in the ideal world, there wouldn't be any cultural problems in the industry that make women feel less welcome and free to speak at an event with significant male attendance than at an event that is all or nearly all women. Understand that if organizers choose to, say, split the tickets so that at most 25% of tickets may go to men, they're not doing it because they want to discriminate against men, but because they worry that allowing too many men to attend will make their event less effective at correcting an injustice that we all believe is worth fixing.
> Also, there's no reason why any women's group should have to admit men to appease the "I promise we're not sexist against men" line of reasoning.
I doubt it would go very well if someone hosted a men-only event and said "I promise we're not sexist against women."
I don't think anyone is against having women-focused groups any more than having other interest-based groups. Women exclusive groups, though, do send a very conflicting message that it's okay to exclude a gender.
> Women exclusive groups, though, do send a very
> conflicting message that it's okay to exclude a gender.
Please clarify... You're saying that the currently enfranchised group (males) will get further encouragement for their exclusionary behaviors because the disenfranchised group (women) exclude males from some of their activities? Does't this completely ignore the current power imbalance between the two groups?
The thing is, when women's groups are formed, they aren't to "keep men out". The point is that women aren't even thinking about men, they are thinking about other women. So no, I don't think it sends that message.
All this line of thinking does is shift attention towards men, thus reinforcing a male-centered culture.
As a female developer, I would intuitively feel glad when seeing this kind of events/groups being formed, but thinking about it I am not sure why. I don't even think I feel like going to them for any other reason than, well, I am female and they're also female so I should probably check it out.
After reading the reasons Github wrote, I find it hard to relate. For me picking up coding has nothing to do with seeing some other women do it, but perhaps seeing some human beings do it. And I don't think seeing female developers would inspire me further more than male developers. But I could be completely false and it might be that turns out I don't know what I really feel...
Perhaps it's because I have not yet noticed any serious injustice around where I've been, could be that I just didn't realised what they were or I haven't spend enough time in the tech industry. The most unfair thing in tech I've ever encountered was interviewing at a company where there is no ladies restroom...
Anyhoo. I don't personally know any other female developer and I've been coding since 11, that's 10+ years, I guess that's ought to be wrong. And since there are no samples around me, I don't really know what inspired other female developer to learn how to code. Is there anyone here who cares to share her experience?
Thanks Github, it's great to have your weight behind making tech more friendly to women, and spotlighting female role models so that more of the young might pursue a career in the field.
I think this is an excellent initiative by GitHub. It's well-acknowledged that there is a lack of women in tech, for what I'm sure is a wide variety of reasons, and celebrating the successes of women in that field is a noble endeavor.
Personally I believe that these women are capable of being a role model to both men and women, as they presumably have achieved their successes through their own merits and not by virtue of their gender, so I'm sure the wisdom they have to share at these meetups would benefit everyone. To that end I would be disappointed to hear if, while the meetups may encourage or advertise to a female audience, they chose to exclude men.
To those saying that "this is discrimination is it is morally wrong" (and I don't think this event constitutes discrimination, but here goes):
1. Should we then do away with gender segregated sports teams?
2. Should other minorities (e.g. LBGTQ groups) no longer have support groups that focus on issues relevant to them?
Having groups that cater to certain minorities feels to me both necessary and useful. We are not all identical. You probably don't want to live in a world without exceptional and different people in it; it would be boring.
That means there are times when some of those people who are like-minded want to get together and support each other. In some cases, that means other groups need to be discouraged (because that minority would otherwise be overwhelmed, drowned out in a sea of majority voices).
Why are so many voices in our industry constantly fighting events like this?
When will "enough be enough"? When will we have no more need for these separate groups? Instead of actually choosing the best candidates based on their best abilities, we now resort to purposely choosing people based on their sex or race. That is wrong.
There are much more women than men who attend college now. Women score better than men in reading and other subjects. The wage gap IS a myth. More money is focused on women's health issues.
Do you see that any area where women don't already represent at least 50% of the workforce, there will be loud voices decrying sexism at this?
On the other hand, there are 0 efforts on raising standards for boys, or trying to get them into X field. Nothing. As seen in history, once a group starts to gain power and privileges, it will continue in that direction no matter the actual circumstances.
"Instead of actually choosing the best candidates based on their best abilities, we now resort to purposely choosing people based on their sex or race."
I call bulltwang. Please provide evidence of this supposed systematic selection of 'minority' candidates, because I'm sure as heck not seeing it where I am.
You assert that the wage gap is myth. Please also provide evidence for this statement, because everything I've read suggests that it remains a problem across the board - and for the record we're talking about IT specifically here, and we're not talking about the wage gap, we're talking about the abysmally low rates of entry into this sector by half the population as defined by gender identification.
It's all well and good to say "NO ENOUGH IS ENOUGH MERITOCRACY NAO PLZ", but who decides what is meritorious? The entrenched majority? This is why that term was coined in derision.
I say, enough will be enough when there's no longer a problem (c.f. uptake of science/engineering/tech by women). Until then, we have a problem, and we need to do things to fix that problem.
To give some perspective to you, I come from the humanities field and have switched to IT. In the humanities field (from college majors to actual employment), men are underrepresented. Women hold majority positions in many places (and in related fields, HR, communications etc.).
Even still, when looking at job applications many times will be a blurb such as: "Qualified female candidates are especially encouraged to apply."
The issue I have with all of this, is that there is a sole focus on bringing in women into science and engineering, which is of course a GOOD thing.
However, there is zero effort to increase reading rates for boys, and to push boys and men into the communications and humanities fields, ZERO. Boys lag behind girls in many places when it comes to education, and nothing is done about that.
I've actually worked at a place where this was verbally justified. I am not lying when I heard a female senior management official state: "Women are better communicators than men, so it is only natural that they be placed in greater leadership and communication roles."
Why is there ZERO effort in getting men out of dangerous positions, such as mining and logging and hundreds of other fields and instead actually focus on THEIR education? Men die at a much, much higher rate than women in the workforce, but this is ignored.
So that is coming from my perspective.
If you are insulated in the IT field and that is what you have experienced, then I cannot blame you for thinking "Wow, there are so few women in this field! We need more!"
However, please note there are many fields where women are the majority of undergraduate and graduate students.
When you in fact compare individual jobs to one another there is no wage gap. Plus we have laws (at least here in the US, not sure where you are) that if you find out you are getting paid less because of your sex, you can bring this to court.
And for the record, yes I love meritocracy. I believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Educate more women in the sciences, educate more men in communications/humanities/social work/education and get them out of dangerous positions. That is fair.
I totally agree with you that there are many problems here. I have also seen the research on male literacy and numeracy rates, and agree with you that there's a problem there that needs to be tackled.
That does not invalidate this problem.
And back to my original point: even if the problem of women in tech were solved, I still don't see the beef with having events held for particular subgroups of people. There's no cost here. Nobody is disadvantaged if we have a Geek Girls night, or a Gay Coder Hackathon, or the Left Handed Sysadmin Support Group.
Equality of opportunity is one thing, forcing everybody into the same cookie-cutter mould and insisting we all do the same things with the same people? Ick.
Here is a question: as one of two engineers at a 6-person seed-round startup, what could we be doing to contribute to the ecosystem of people who support women in technology? We don't have the office space - much less the money - to find or sponsor a monthly talk. So within the context of running our business, what can we do?
Sometimes I fear that, until we have a successful and profitable company (with spare conference rooms, clout to find people who would like to give lectures here, or an otherwise large audience), there isn't much we can do to contribute.
What can smaller companies or even individuals within organizations do?
I'm not as familiar with this problem as I'd like to be, so please take this with a grain of salt, but maybe you could invite female CS majors from nearby universities to come see your offices? Or better yet, to see what it's like to work with you for a day.
After all, one of the major issues seems to be that women don't see role models working in tech companies. If you have female students come and work with you, then they should be able to imagine themselves working at your company, or another small startup.
You could contribute resources to Women in CS organizations at universities. I'm part of one, and we'd love to have engineers come in and give tech talks, especially about web development. You also could donate a bit to sponsor events (we hold events like "Interview Workshop sponsored by Google") or even offer internships. Every bit helps.
This is how you get more women involved in tech, by actually taking action. I hope that we see more initiatives like this rather than hateful articles, which we've seen so many of recently.
It is brilliant to see a move forward to recognising that there are women in technology and they provide as good a contribution as everybody else,
BUT,
Is creating a specific, segregated, event/group really the way forward or is it just creating a greater divide in the tech community along gender lines? What would really need to be done is look properly into why there is a disproportionate number of men versus women who go into technology, rather than introduce yet more segregation.
I do not believe that there is an event/group out there currently that would place any sort of restriction, intentional or otherwise, on female entry.
> What would really need to be done is look properly into why there is a disproportionate number of men versus women who go into technology, rather than introduce yet more segregation.
This isn't some big mystery. At least one reason that women don't enter technology fields is a lack of female role-models. Another is societal pressure that dictates that women are bad at technology.
Technology conferences focusing on women aren't just for the participants, they help counteract these two forces by giving visibility to notable women in tech.
What role models did Grace Hopper have? And I can only speak for myself but I was never drawn to 'technology' out of having famous neckbeards or Jobs or Gates and so forth as role models.
You have to ask why women are more under represented in this particular field than others which used to be just as male dominated in the past. But people don't like to think about such deep large hairy societal problems.
None of this is to say that what's described in the OP is a bad thing.
>And I can only speak for myself but I was never drawn to 'technology' out of having famous neckbeards or Jobs or Gates and so forth as role models.
You may not have been drawn to it because of Jobs or Gates, but you never once looked at the field of technology and thought "People who look at me don't do this". That is, you never felt deterred because of the people who dominated the field.
Scott Hanselman recently hosted Kyla McMullen (first black female Ph.D out of UMichigan) on his podcast where she shed some perspective on how difficult it feels to break into tech when no one looks like you and it feels like you don't belong. I enjoyed it a lot, and maybe you might too. http://hanselminutes.com/357/dr-kyla-mcmullen-on-diversity-i...
> but you never once looked at the field of technology and thought "People who look at me don't do this". That is, you never felt deterred because of the people who dominated the field.
That's a rather huge assumption on your part.
> That's nice, but I don't see how your personal motivations are relevant on an industry-wide scale.
I don't think my personal motivations are relevant on an industry-wide scale, that was my point to begin with.
Like I said, the OP is hardly a bad thing, by all means, try. I hope it helps somebody. In my opinion it is treating the symptoms and not the disease.
I think their "Why" section addresses this pretty well: they believe one of the underlying reasons there aren't more women in tech is the lack of visibility for women already there: young women see a male dominated field and feel like they're not welcome, and so perpetuate the problem. By highlighting the existing women in tech, more young women will feel welcome there.
Yes it is a way forward, as explained in the blog post under the section "Why?". And there is clearly unintentional restriction, otherwise we wouldn't need this in the first place.
A "passion project", in my mind, is simply a project that you're excited about (notably one that is likely outside the bounds of your normal, day-to-day job). I distinguish them from "side projects", which tend to be something you're interested in, but not something you're necessarily defined by. That's the reason the program's called passion projects — hopefully we'll have a ton of talks on really interesting things that our speakers are really, well, passionate about.
I don't view "passion" as a word that is exclusive to women, in other words — we could just as easily pull in men for the same talk series.
Most definitely. We share the same meaning of the concept of a passion project. I was probably just over thinking it, I am just suspicious of the way such highly emotive language has been used and it just happens to be for an interview series with women.
I'll admit I had not read the link before I posted that comment, but looking at it now I still believe that the language used is overly emotional and I think that it has been used just because this is a series on women.
A definition of the word passion involves, among other things "strong and barely controllable emotion" and I think this may be an obvious case where a gendered stereotype has been blatantly applied.
Some sentences taken from the link:
"celebrate the work of some of the most passionate women in our industry."
"share one of their nearest and dearest passion projects with our community."
"to hear about some positive experiences from other women in our industry doing what they love."
There is obviously no problem with hearing about these things. I am focussing on the language used which could be seen to feminise the people taking part in the series when in fact we know nothing about them other than they are women and that they are in tech. I doubt you could find any other tech series which uses language as seen in the link.
Really, I am focussing on the mundane ways in which "women = feminine = emotional" has been portrayed in the few words that were written on the new series.
It is a text by Judith Butler, probably one of the most influential living social theorists who writes on gender and focuses on 'the mundane', meaning language, acts etc
Anyway, I am excited to watch these. So, if you were involved - thanks.
Not too far off topic: I worked for a good tech company for most of the years between 1973 and 1996. The only major negative thing about the company was a 'glass ceiling' for women engineers (we did have some very high profile women on our board of directors though). I found that situation embarrassing.
So, yes, special events featuring women engineers are a good thing.
BTW, my granddaughter can program fairly well using the Scratch game platform :-)
However, segregation isn't the way forward, IMHO. I'm always sad to see gender-focussed events and groups. I'd much rather see women and men -integrate- than congregate within their own gender.
And just to pre-empt, please don't give me the disingenuous "men are welcome too" line. This is, by definition, a women-focussed group.
Women are underrepresented in technology. This event is to help promote the potential as well as accomplishments of women in technology.
I fail to see how this is segregation, they make no claim that this series is to be representing everyone, just highlighting women. It is an event focused on women's roles in technology and available to the community.
By the self-centered logic of the OP, even if a minority group has only 0.1% representation, they should have no events targeting specifically them and their causes -- the 99.9% majority should be able to attend, and presumably contribute to the conversation with no ability of the event's organizers to moderate the dialog or direct the focus to the minority's experiences. Anything less than that is segregation.
It doesn't occur to the OP, apparently, that they are trying to create something that is decidedly different from the ordinary tech experience -- a conversation dominated by awkward-to-arrogant, entitled males who think that their very important opinions need to be heard everywhere and at all times.
I wonder if the OP (presumably male) insists on attending (female) rape survivor meetups, or if he could understand why attendees thereof would not feel totally comfortable with his attendance.
I see, women are going to share their traumatic experience in tech.
BTW, this discussion is just silly because there are millions of meet Ups in tech filled with only men, but in the other hand meet ups of rape survivors not accepting men would be just evil, men are a minority in that group, it would be like a tech company not accepting any women.
Ok. Good luck trying to convince them to let you in, I'm sure your unassailable logic misses nothing obvious. Make sure you let them know that it's evil for you not to be allowed in.
What? Fortunately I wasn't talking about me, just men victims of rape. And doesn't matter if they follow my logic or not, we are discussing what's right, not the logic of the organizers of such meetings.
If you can't take your knowledge of "what's right" and actually change objective reality with it in a useful way, then it's dubious as to whether what you know is actually true. And IMO you would not be able to convince a female survivors group to let you in with logic, so again, I doubt strongly that it actually corresponds to truth.
I assumed that you would take ownership of the argument you're forwarding, and at least monetarily, you could put yourself in the position of someone who would try to employ your logic. To do otherwise would be arguing in bad faith. And whether or not you are the person employing the logic, the point remains: a person couldn't take your argument and do something useful, like convince a group that he should be allowe in, and so I really have to wonder in what sense you think this argument is true. Presumably because it exhibits logical consistency, which by itself is irrelevant (cf bounded rationality)
> a person couldn't take your argument and do something useful, like convince a group that he should be allowe in
Have you heard about civil war? That was one group trying to convince another that some people should be allowed in.
And anyway; I wasn't making an abstraction but the very evil segregation such as rape victims meetups excluding men. Unsurprisingly these meetups don't exist in reality; there are some about violence or abusive relationships in general.
It's not as hominem to say that you do not have facts. Moreover, I already said that being logically correct is not my aim. Your argument lacks relevance or informedness, so you can make as many valid points as you want, your words simply have no correlation to reality.
Correlation with reality? If I wanted to speak the news I would become an anchorman. Most people here is discussing how things _should_ be and how that could become a reality.
And say what you want, Im pretty sure white female rape-victims is not a valid meet up.
As you obviously know nothing of rape, and probably not much of women either, I really have to question why you're still typing. You seem to be woefully unqualified to be participating in any conversation about what _should_ be, even supposing, as you have, that such a conversation doesn't need to be informed with facts.
My wife is doing the same. She is following my path. She have me, I teach her and she is learning much faster. After a year, she is still looking for a volunteer job! Nobody believes she can do anything.
This is extremely sad. My wife is far more advanced than me when I got my first job. We are immigrants and we are not white, I believe those adds to our problems.
Everyone who says women don't deserve this kind of attention never saw a women struggling get in tech world.