Hi, I am the author here. I am kind of overwhelmed that my post got onto HN and there are so many comments :)
This post was not meant to be a comprehensive social commentary. The post was triggered in response to a question from one of my friends at a local meetup on how to improve the gender imbalance. So the post tended to be more in tune with how to address that particular issue.
This post is also not meant to decry or judge the women who voice out their opinions and experiences at work. It takes a lot of courage to talk about sexism at work as it can potentially affect the relationships with colleagues and also their future employment. Besides, it is impossible for me judge something based on just news reports.
Women in India too have issues to tackle. The disproportional work for women at home in general which affects their participation outside. The inability to take off from work post-pregnancy for more than the prescribed period even if she wanted to. Cultural restrictions on what a woman can do or cannot do. These need to be addressed. But I believe these are more social issues than issues in tech. I respect the women who speak out regarding these and the men who acknowledge and support them. Without them progress would not be made.
Unfortunately the proportion of the polarity of reports turn out to be more like product reviews. Say 10% of negative issues are reported. Not even 0.1% of the positive aspects are reported. (I am pulling numbers from the air, but I hope you get the picture ;) ) Thats because, when things go right, we often fail to notice. This often results in a skewed negative image. I have mostly been surrounded by men (father, brother, hubby, friends, colleagues, professors, teachers) who were most supportive of what I did and I believe they deserve credit too. Also, there must more such men and women out there in tech, who can/do inspire more girls into this interesting field. I believe as individuals, we can make a difference.
Also, again, my experience is not definitive. Others might have had a different experience.
As the author points out, the path into tech in India is seen as a lot more broadly applicable; it's a pathway into middle-class job like being a doctor. It's also a good base on which you can move overseas to work in the Middle East or Western countries.
An interesting point she brings up is that gender bias in how one looks at STEM subjects is not universal. In many countries there isn't a prevalent idea that girls won't do well in math or programming classes. This helps with the "pipeline" problem because you end up with more educated women with expertise in these subjects.
As someone who's lived both the US and India I also think one shouldn't consider Hacker News or tech blogs as particularly representative of the US software industry either. Narratives of conflict make for juicy reading, whether on Twitter or in the mainstream media but they are not holistic representations of how it is to live in a country or work in an industry.
I think learning to program is good for you in other aspects of life as well. You are able to make more informed and logical decisions due to your knowledge of programming.
There's an NGO I work with that teaches girls in Dharavi (the big slum in Mumbai) to program Android apps. They did a great job.
I think a lot of people in the US don't get that in a lot of ways, the middle class in Mumbai or Hyderabad is really a lot like the middle class in the US (it doesn't help that the diaspora in the US mostly came over in the 60s and 70s, and there's a kind of "frozen in amber" quality of their memories of the old country).
I have an unpopular opinion on the types of people who keep harping on about sexism in tech.
And I'm not in a position to say it doesn't exist- (being a white guy and full of privilege), however it does seem that a lot of girls in tech are making a career of painting all other engineers as being inherently misogynistic, vacuous or malicious.
I mean, I don't believe we should put barriers up for women who want to be in tech, I have a few female colleagues who work in this field and they're brilliant.. but making an entire career out of getting more diversity into the technology is strange to me. If I saw people being exclusionary then this would have merit.. but the females I know are embraced (not especially more than men, admittedly, usually the same).
We're at a strange time where 90% of occasions I find a new engineer/hacker/programmer to follow on twitter, I have to check that they're not total social justice people, and it's overwhelmingly female techs that simply stop posting anything interesting technologically and start posting news articles about how we're all women hating or suppressing feminist views for not turning all characters in games into women immune from taking damage.
(shitty example, I'm ranting, sorry)
I think it's very popular to be a social justice kind of person, who can say no to equality! but maybe people are using it to identify themselves too much.
--- in regards to the author of this piece, I would surmise that India is inherently more sexist than the US (given what my Indian friend says about the crime rate against women in India), therefore the expectations to be treated better than men in STEM fields doesn't exist? Not sure. And I don't really have enough knowledge to explain any disparity between the two.
I cannot reply for whole of India but from where i come(Karnataka) girls usually do very well in exams be it Math or Science. I didn't know the notion that women do not do well in STEM fields until i was exposed to western media. Now whether they can pursue it further is a different topic.
I think people in tech circles in India are compartively liberal and progressive. That said, sexism does exist. And people aren't even remotely as vocal as folks in the US are.
India is complicated and not as individualistic as the West is. It is also corrupted and racist. The thing is, even the victim doesn't realise s/he is a victim of racism or sexism and so on. Ignorance is bliss...
Like the author said... You're reading viewpoint of exactly one woman in tech in India.
Why is America representative of the west? It's a sample point. I have many European colleagues who have similar values as Indians. Collective mentality is prevalent in many western societies too. Reason Americans are individualistic is because of foundations of American democracy which glorifies individualism. It's not necessarily bad.
>It is also corrupted and racist. The thing is, even the victim doesn't realise s/he is a victim of racism or sexism and so on.
This is rather a naive statement. Victims definitely would realize if something is sexist/racist. They might not be in a position to fix it. India has pretty significant legislation (Prevention of Atrocities Act) protecting minorities. Problem is enforcement.
>Like the author said... You're reading viewpoint of exactly one woman in tech in India.
I could argue the same about the opposite viewpoint derived on a society by reading isolated rape cases or corruption cases in India. I don't want to trivialize the problem of rape or corruption but I think it is unreasonable to think that every woman will be raped if she walks alone in India which is what the western media mostly portrays. My undergraduate class in India where I studied engineering had 40% women students. Most laboratory work was in mixed groups. My advisor was a woman. There were 40% woman lecturers. So I am definitely used to seeing women in Engineering. My mother is one too. If you will, this is an observation of society I grew up in.
> ...it does seem that a lot of girls in tech are making a career of painting
> all other engineers as being inherently misogynistic, vacuous or malicious.
Be very wary of hyperbole on topics like this. It's deeply divisive. If you can't make your point without exaggerating then maybe rethink?
> I think it's very popular to be a social justice kind of person...
So you're saying that people are promoting an equitable tech industry because they think it's cool?
> So you're saying that people are promoting an equitable
> tech industry because they think it's cool?
It is not cool, it is just easy. No effort to understand a problem even less effort to understand is there really a problem, just band your keyboard and rant how offended you are by this or by that.
I think this is a result of responsibility collapse—by that I mean that some topics have become so knee-jerky, so when even some words are taboo the concepts behind them are inaccessible so people are not able to think about them. This results in people not really understanding what racism is (so any mention of color of the skin is regarded racist, religion get mixed with race, the whole notion that "black people cannot be racist", etc.) The same goes for sexism and other -isms.
When you no longer know if something is a problem you just react to trigger words and take a SJW stance—I guess it somehow assures that you are not *ist of some kind. A lot like homophobes are vocal against gay people so god forbid someone will thin they are gay themselves. And of course if one does indeed has some tendencies the volume of their vocality increases just to drown that quiet voice of doubt.
It is not cool, it is just easy. No effort to understand a problem even less
effort to understand is there really a problem...
So people who talk on this topic aren't thoughtful? Sure some aren't, but that's the same for any topic. You're cherry picking there, it doesn't stick.
I'm currently working in an organisation that specialises in behavioural science, we have the actual data on this. If you look at the studies there's overwhelming evidence to support an opinion that these problems are real. Women and different ethnic groups are treated in different ways with regard to things like hiring, performance reviews, etc. and there's a significant enough difference that the system could be defined as racist and sexist, even though no individual feels that they themselves are racist or sexist.
If you want citations... here are some just relating to the field of gender and employment...
Female job applicants with children considered less warm, likeable and committed than male applicants with children. Successful mothers penalized for promotion, hire, and salary (Benard and Correll, 2010). Women expressing anger more penalised than men (Brescoll & Uhlmann, 2008). People in gender-incongruent roles penalised more heavily for mistakes (Brescoll, Dawson, & Uhlmann, 2010). Voluble women perceived as less competent and less suitable leaders, inverse true for men (Brescoll, 2011). Men who work for women in stereotypically male dominated fields accorded less status and lower salaries (Brescoll et al, 2012). Women who succeed in male-dominated fields percieved as not likeable (Heilman et al, 2004). Students question the competence of female teachers who evaluate them negatively, less so than male teachers (Sinclair & Kunda 2000). Female students seen as less competent than identical male students, offered lower starting salaries (Moss-Racusin et al, 2012)
... even some words are taboo the concepts behind them are inaccessible
so people are not able to think about them. This results in people not
really understanding what racism is...
This point is broadly right (you have cause and effect inverted), but it doesn't just apply to "SJWs" as you're implying. People in general don't have a vocabulary to talk about racism and sexism. People don't typically identify as racists. They think "racists are 'bad people' and I'm a 'good person' so I can't be one", but in fact race is a more complex beast in the 21st century so we need a more complex vocabulary to describe it without triggering defensiveness.
Using 'social justice warrior' as a snarl-word is a sign that you feel defensive and uncomfortable. But that discomfort doesn't mean the 'SJWs' are wrong, it just means we as a species don't have a good set of verbal tools to communicate with each other about what's happening.
> Women and different ethnic groups are treated in different ways with regard to things like hiring, performance reviews, etc. and there's a significant enough difference that the system could be defined as racist and sexist, even though no individual feels that they themselves are racist or sexist.
I think the issue here is that the difference in treatment is only an issue for a subset of races and genders in certain industries.
How would one account for differences in reporting rates? The book you cite seems completely unrelated to this claim. I.e., citation needed.
Anecdotally, this seems insane to me. In 2 years in India I observed more violent eve teasing than in 30 years in the US. Just talking to women, you get wildly different stories in both places - in the US it's "someone unattractive asked me out and I felt uncomfortable, almost like a rape", whereas in India it's "meh, he just grabbed my ass and walked off, no biggie".
Now it could be the case that upper class Indians (the main folks I dealt with) are just far more violent than middle class Americans, and that the masses of poor Indians are vastly more peaceful than their upper class compatriots. But that does seem a bit unlikely to me.
Further anecdote: in the US, reporters have a hard time finding rape poster girls who aren't blatantly making stuff up (e.g. mattress girl, duke stripper or rolling stone girl). In India, most of the rape poster girls are dead or badly injured.
"whereas in India it's "meh, he just grabbed my ass and walked off, no biggie". Seriously that is only upper class and only happen in upper class places. Believe me if that happens in an area where middle class is there the guy who did that will get public merciless beating. Any of my know circles will surely slap the guy in the same place. I think in India domestic violence is the huge thing for girls. Still not even in educated families we overrule women just like that and we hide behind the name of culture.
I'm not sure how plausible I find this. The (admittedly self-serving) perception within Delhi is that most of the bad stuff happening there is done by villagers from Bihar and UP, not by native Delhiites.
Most of the big city cases that I've read about (e.g., Uber rape case, 2012 gang rape) do fit that perception. So it would surprise me if things were somehow better in Bihar than in Delhi.
You're right. It seems that jsudhams is exhibiting a kind if ingroup bias. People of lower classes can believe that the upper classes use their wealth to strongarm people, and people of upper classes can believe that the lower class people have less to lose, and have easy links to gangs, so they can get away with criminal behaviour. Of course, it's all bull until it gets backed by data.
jsudhams wrote "Any of my know circles will surely slap the guy in the same place." But you know, this is true across all sectors of Indian society. Indians are generally rather prone to violence.
I'm not American. Actually, my experience with crime rates is that where crime is common it goes unreported.
I come from a city in Britain which has a very strong crime culture, but it's never reported. I imagine if you get raped by your uncle, and so does your friend, and your friend has reported it before and nothing happened- you'd be dissuaded from reporting it too.
but I digress.
I don't have a particularly objective opinion on India honestly, I have a sum total of 3 friends who openly talk about culture their (and only 1 who still lives there), while on the other hand I'm bathed in American culture- I read their books, stories, blogs, consume their movies. Not to mention the countless friends I have who still live there and openly talk about society.
I can only talk about the US, I'm not qualified to understand everything about India unfortunately. Please take everything I said on the last line with a pinch of salt.
> I come from a city in Britain which has a very strong crime culture, but it's never reported.
Britain uses two types of crime statistics. There are officially reported crime statistics and there is the "crime survey" which polls people to find out whether they've been a victim of crime.
Now it's very crime-addled.
However almost all of it goes unreported.
it's only after leaving a culture like that you realise it's so strange.
Edit:
Hm, I got downvoted.
Lets see if I can break down a summary of my life for people who don't think Coventry is bad (news articles in google seem to say it's not bad anymore).
but, stats: I've been mugged 17 times in 20 years, my home has been burgularised 4 times. 26 bikes have been stolen (locked and chained), I've been stabbed, I've been beaten in the streets by gangs of men.
I've been threatened with peeling (by asian boys in school).
Coventry is not safe, the city center is made safe by excessive policing, but "Hillfields" (drug and prostitute capital of the midlands at least) and "Wood End" (which isn't even POLICED anymore because it's so dangerous) make coventry an unsafe place to be if not just visiting.
most people mind their own business, but if you look like you have money, those people are pirahna.
Also, we hold the world record for fastest time to strip a car of it's interior if left unlocked. (or we did when I last checked).
I'm not saying there isn't worse places in the world.. the government has done a _lot_ to reinvest in coventry.
But it's a very dangerous place to live.
You got downvoted for making an extreme claim (crime riddled; extremely dangerous place to live) that just isn't supported by stats, and then claiming that the stats are wrong.
Assuming for the moment that the police stats are wrong we'd still see increased insurance costs for people living in Coventry, and we don't.
Insurance costs are taken from crime statistics and insurance claims. Nobody I know has insurance.
the problem is that this data is completely off-radar. The Coventry people are incredibly insular and untrusting. The idea is that you are either alone, or with your community- if you're community rejects you because you don't like their kids putting rotting fish in your letter box (for example) then you're on your own.
People don't get insurance because they think that by declaring their assets they invite people who work in the insurance firms to sell that information to burglars. (which does happen occasionally).
Crime goes mostly unreported because the police are untrusted, even if they had extremely noble intentions the people in coventry are a black box in terms of information- nobody will "snitch" on anybody else.
if someone was caught snitching then that person becomes one of the "rare" cases of a stabbing or extreme coersion to leave the city. (punctured tires, cutting brake lines, random people coming to kick your door in late at night and leaving without coming in, etc)
Your statistics lie about coventry, which is my point entirely.. the problem can't be fixed because there is no statistics on the problem to begin with. Although those in the West Midlands tend to avoid Coventry except for a shopping visit.
As much as it's anecdotal, I can think of a LOT of people I know who had to leave Coventry, I should show you a cross section of the people I went to school with- Crime is a way of life there, it's not even seen as "Crime" it's just.. it just is, you know it's a crime and the police become your enemies, but they were never your friends to begin with.
Anyway, I've been on the wrong side of the law, but as soon as my environment changed I was -able- to become an upstanding person.
Your stats are lying, and I'm not trying to upset or offend you but there are places like Coventry all over the world.. unquantifiable by normal statistics.
You keep saying that Coventry is riddled with crime, but you have nothing but feels to support you.
It's not persuasive, especially in the face of reported police stats; of the British Crime Survey; of insirance prices; of house prices; of murder rates; there's nothing anywhere that supports your outlandish claim.
what you're saying is "I want stats that prove that that statistics of Coventry is going unreported". what kinda non-anecdotal proof would you like? the OP's point is that the the stats are a lie, cause most crime is unreported.
OP isn't just saying that crime is unreported. Because if all crime everywhere is unreported we can still compare Coventry with other towns, and when we do that we see that coventry has a lower than average crime rate. OP is claiming that Coventry is unique in having under reported crime and that everywhere else is accurate.
But not only that. There are other statistics - the british crime survey - (and these are robust statistics) that do not rely on crime reported to police. And OP is again claiming that Coventry is unique in reporting very low rates of crime while everywhere else reports accurate rates of crime.
But even if we assume that's true - that Coventry is unique in reporting and surveying low rates of crime while everywhere else is accurate - there are other indicators of crime. We'd expect to see higher rates for car insurace, and we don't. We'd expect to see higher rates of home contents insurance, and we don't.
OP is subject to a pretty obvious confirmation bias. "I had my bicycles stolen, and this i know Coventry is high in crime", and now they reject anything that points the other way. When you ask OP about the evidence they just come back with anecdote, when you show OP anything that contradicts that they say it's wrong (not just wrong, but wrong in very particular ways).
Britain has a higher rate than the US. My argument still holds.
Actually, my experience with crime rates is that where crime is common it goes unreported.
Given nominal reporting rates of 50% for D.C (which is being far too kind), and 10% (which is far too harsh) for Delhi, still leaves it twice as safe (and thrice as safe as London). It takes an hour to dig up the data online.
> I can only talk about the US, I'm not qualified to understand everything about India unfortunately. Please take everything I said on the last line with a pinch of salt.
... precisely my point. The propaganda has worked very well I can see. Again, don't trust the self-hating hindu unless they give you numbers.
Parent post has at least posted a link to support their argument; where's yours? I know that you're wrong, and when you tell me what data you're using I'll be able to tell you why you're wrong. (The UK has extensive and robust crime statistics from police reports but also a crime survey. India doesn't.)
In what way should this be considered a crime? If a woman is being forced to abort, then that is a crime against her. But unless abortion itself is to be considered a crime (namely unless someone takes a stance somewhere on the pro-life side of the spectrum), how is selective consensual abortions a crime against anyone?
It's needed because some societies strongly select for male children. Women who give birth to daughters are murdered; those daughters are murdered; doctors are bribed to break laws about giving information about the sex of an unborn child; etc.
At some point a society has to pass a bunch of law to drive change, to signal that some things are no longer considered to be acceptable. They tried persuassion and it didn't work.
> doctors are bribed to break laws about giving information about the sex of an unborn child
I have written on HN several times about corruption in India, but this is one of the kinds of corruption I have never seen. I have several friends who have children, and come from families who would never abort a fetus based on its sex. But still, their family doctors, who have known them all their lives would not divulge this bit of information.
The article that you linked to reports instances, and I believe the personal stories to be true. However, when I reconcile my own experience with the stories in the article, I must conclude that it happens very rarely. So rarely that it cannot account for the large trends in the sex ratios. Getting a doctor to perform the abortion is easy though.
> They tried persuassion and it didn't work.
Indians are already getting choked with well-meaning but counterproductive laws. IMO, adding more laws wont help. They haven't tried general education. Among the poorer sectors of society, education seems to be as bad as it ever was. Don't go by India's published literacy figures; they are meaningless [1].
>Women who give birth to daughters are murdered; those daughters are murdered;
That would be your crimes against women. Not the abortions themselves.
>doctors are bribed to break laws about giving information about the sex of an unborn child
Doctors should give the patient full information to make an informed medical choice, including for an abortion. In this case, the law is the problem.
>At some point a society has to pass a bunch of law to drive change, to signal that some things are no longer considered to be acceptable. They tried persuassion and it didn't work.
Yet sex selective abortions aren't a problem in much of the world. In China's case, sex selective abortions are a result of the laws.
Change the culture so that people don't feel pressured into a choice. Change the laws so that forcing people to make a choice is illegal. But don't remove that choice.
Wow, so one anecdote nullifies everything that happens in the country? Are you blind or deaf ? So you're saying sexism in India is less than that in USA ? I don't see women in USA fearing quitting their jobs if they earn more than husbands. Nor are they forced to stay at home to cook/housework essentially killing their dreams of having a career. Step out of your bubble buddy and ask the women around you what they feel when they travel on our public transport, then ask some people who traveled on public transport abroad.
And your comment is doing what exactly?
India is a huge country with a huge population. It is also very VERY diverse. With a billion+ people, yes some bad things do happen. But so do a lot of good things. Not every Indian man is so insecure that he forces wife to quit jobs if they earn more. And forced to stay home and cook? How many Indian women have you see doing that. We are a family oriented society and most women chose to do that and I am very proud of those Indian women. I can discuss this on and on but obviously you are inside your own bubble where USA is the greatest and "going out of the house and working for a company" is the greatest feat anyone can achieve and that's the only mark of liberation of women. And public transport? Hey read about Indian railways. It carried millions and millions of women around everyday and they are doing just fine.
Breed lots of stupid people and we get people like who are oblivious to the realities of the world they live in. Pedophilia and nun rapes are decried the world over and everyone talks about them so much so that pedo jokes are a routine comedy lines in american stand up. They acknowledge their problems willingly and try to solve them, not indulge in what aboutism and deflection like you do.
This post was not meant to be a comprehensive social commentary. The post was triggered in response to a question from one of my friends at a local meetup on how to improve the gender imbalance. So the post tended to be more in tune with how to address that particular issue.
This post is also not meant to decry or judge the women who voice out their opinions and experiences at work. It takes a lot of courage to talk about sexism at work as it can potentially affect the relationships with colleagues and also their future employment. Besides, it is impossible for me judge something based on just news reports.
Women in India too have issues to tackle. The disproportional work for women at home in general which affects their participation outside. The inability to take off from work post-pregnancy for more than the prescribed period even if she wanted to. Cultural restrictions on what a woman can do or cannot do. These need to be addressed. But I believe these are more social issues than issues in tech. I respect the women who speak out regarding these and the men who acknowledge and support them. Without them progress would not be made.
Unfortunately the proportion of the polarity of reports turn out to be more like product reviews. Say 10% of negative issues are reported. Not even 0.1% of the positive aspects are reported. (I am pulling numbers from the air, but I hope you get the picture ;) ) Thats because, when things go right, we often fail to notice. This often results in a skewed negative image. I have mostly been surrounded by men (father, brother, hubby, friends, colleagues, professors, teachers) who were most supportive of what I did and I believe they deserve credit too. Also, there must more such men and women out there in tech, who can/do inspire more girls into this interesting field. I believe as individuals, we can make a difference.
Also, again, my experience is not definitive. Others might have had a different experience.