6 ms·
This is Not ok
- TylerE 14y agoThis doesn't really make sense. She's complaining that at an event with 97% of attendance by men (by her own statement), they got, say, 92% of the bathroom facilities, and then throws a fit. Not buying it. If this is the biggest outrage in your life you should consider yourself fortunate.
- davidw 14y agoIf you read the article, she's complaining that there aren't enough women at conferences, not really about the bathroom situation.
- moistgorilla 14y agoI don't think she has a problem with the fact that men got 92% of the bathroom facilities. Especially when it was logically justified. I just think she was disillusioned by the fact that there were so few woman at the conference that a decision like that could be justified.
- pdelgallego 14y agoHonest question, Are people concern because there are not enough afro-americans/hispanics/etc in the software industry?
- moistgorilla 14y agoI know I'm making a generalization here but the software industry isn't racist like it is sexist.
- sha348 14y agoWait, what are you basing this generalization on? If it's purely based on numbers, I've worked with more female programmers than african americans. If the allegation is that the software industry is sexist purely because women don't participate, then the software industry must be even more racist.
- tgrass 14y agoUmm...assuming no bias, institutional or otherwise, you should randomly encounter a woman programmer once for every male programmer. Whereas you'd only encounter an African American one out of eight programmers (12% of the total pop).
- yarrel 14y agoHonest answer, you're derailing.
- JoelMcCracken 14y agoYes, many of us are.
- juridatenshi 14y agoSome certainly are. It's important for us to have diversity in a variety of areas (and intersections of areas), not just women. That being said, this specific article is focused on a woman's experience, so it makes sense that it would focus on gender.
- wilkie 14y agoWhy is this a question. Of course we are. Black computer scientists represent less than one percent: http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/computer-science/cs-peeps.html http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/computer-science/cs-peeps.ht...
- celer 14y agoLow afro-american/hispanic participation can be explained in large part by lack of high quality education, lack of computers, etc. There is some residual, but nothing like the vast disparity that exists for women despite a lack of acceptable reasons.
- bhughes 14y agoDid you actually read the article? She's wasn't upset that there was less bathroom capacity for women, but rather that this illustrated the (in her view) woefully meager representation of women at the conference.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ajanuary 14y agoI think it was more of a trigger for the realisation that 97% of attendants are men. i.e. when you're so male heavy you need to convert bathrooms, there is a real problem.
- incision 14y agoI had the same initial reaction, but I think that the bathroom situation isn't the point at all, just a symbol of the shrinking number of women in the field - which is what she's actually concerned about.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- artumi-richard 14y agoWhen you realised that "this doesn't make sense", that was the time you should have asked "or is it me..." As for women in IT, I can see why IT would want women, but I can't see why women would want IT.
- bglass 14y agoYou can't see why a woman would want to be paid quite handsomely to do work that is mentally challenging, not physically arduous, and -- in many cases -- can have a positive societal effect? So... why do -you- want to work in IT?
- danielweber 14y agoIT might beat ditch digging or hauling garbage (or not, I think those are both honest work), but how does it compare to other avenues, such as business or medicine?
- artumi-richard 14y agoBecause there are plenty of jobs that are mentally challenging and physically arduous that can have a positive societal effect, but come without all the jerks you get in IT. Who said I wanted to work at all...
- raganwald 14y agoLet's compare this to golf, circa 1965. Caving to pressure, a local club opens its memberships to Blacks. One or two tokens with strong business relationships to Whites join, but where are all the other Black businesspeople and professionals? A liberal White member sighs, "I don't understand why the Black people don't want to relax in our luxurious club, play a round on our excellent course, and eat our sumptuous dining fare. What is the problem?" Meanwhile, the Blacks are thinking, "Who needs to join the club and have all these racist assholes resenting the fact that we're in their club and tiptoeing around us in case the N-word slips out in our presence. How fucking uncomfortable." p.s. Did I say 1965? What's the deal with Agusta National and Blacks and/or Women?
- rmc 14y agoSometimes it's the little things that can drive home "You Are Different Here" and make one open one's eyes to how something is wrong.
- verroq 14y agoIt is the weekly females in tech industry time again? At the risk of derailing the thread, why do so many people want to get more women into programming? Isn't that just as misguided as trying to get more men into nursing? Just because we strive for gender equality doesn't mean every job has to have exactly the same gender ratios.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- simon 14y agoUpvoted. It's worse than just females in tech, it's OMG men and women are different! Eeek! I kinda like the difference myself. Not because I don't want women in tech, but because women should be able to pursue whatever they want that makes sense when you consider their differences from men. I assume this makes me a bad person.
- raganwald 14y agoBlacks and Whites are different. There's no discrimination, it's just that Blacks are more interested in basketball and driving taxis and making music then getting into Harvard or practising law. We should celebrate these differences instead of trying to tear down barriers that don't exist.
- JasonFruit 14y agoI know you're being sarcastic, but you bring up a point that I wonder about: there's certainly a difference in cultural values that contributes to the racial and gender profile of different occupations. Do we have a responsibility to change those values? Most ways of measuring progress on the problem have the unstated expectation that the difference in values doesn't exist, and you can't meet the measurement goals without eliminating that difference.
- praptak 14y agoIt is sort of a followup to the previous post: http://blog.jessitron.com/2012/09/confessions-of-woman-in-tech.html http://blog.jessitron.com/2012/09/confessions-of-woman-in-te...
- Tichy 14y agoAt first I thought she got angry about an relabeling of the women's room, which would be ridiculous, but I think what she means is that it is not OK that there are only so few women. Could be worded clearer...
- sergiotapia 14y ago>That day in the Family Restroom I threw a fit. Hurled my water bottle at the wall and screamed, "This is not OK!" Oh please, calm down. Closed the tab.
- ljf 14y agoThen you missed the point of the article - she was upset when she realised that they had to convert toilets as there were so few women. Her upset was about the lack of women at the event, not at the toilet arrangements. It could have been more clearly explained, and closer to the start of the article, but if you read the rest of the article you would have seen this.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- __alexs 14y agohttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/27/cameron-calm-down-dear-sexist-put-down http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/27/cameron-... Women (and other humans) are allowed to be angry about both perceived and actual injustice. TFA isn't even an actual emotional outburst. It's a reasoned account of something happened to the author.
- Tichy 14y agoSometimes calming down is an appropriate response to the situation at hand, though.
- nollidge 14y agoThanks for participating in the conversation?
- rmc 14y agoYou're using the "Tone Argument" derailing technique: http://www.derailingfordummies.com/complete.html#angry http://www.derailingfordummies.com/complete.html#angry Try to see what she's angry about first. Sometimes people are angry at what they think are gross injustices. Maybe she has a point.
- djt 14y agoI think she isn't complaining about the toilets, she is saying that she didn't realize how few women were in attendance until that point.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Tipzntrix 14y agoI think she forgot Ada Byron when she said there were no important women in computers this millenium. EDIT: No "keynoters, the language designers, the authors of seminal texts" in this millenium. And there was Grace Hopper too. Double edit: Admittedly, anything in 1xxx is technically the "last millenium". My mistake.
- colomon 14y agoByron and Hopper lived in the previous millenium...
- ehamberg 14y agoErr. Both of them lived and died in the last millennium.
- Tipzntrix 14y agoFair point. I was thinking the last 1000 years as opposed to 1000, 2000, etc. In that state the same could be said about the last century or even the last decade really.
- arjunnarayan 14y agoBarbara Liskov won the Turing award this decade. Cynthia Dwork won the Djikstra prize this decade. Jennifer Chayes is the head of the new Microsoft Research lab in NYC. They're pretty awesome people, but probably not that highly visible outside academia.
- indiecore 14y ago> That day in the Family Restroom I threw a fit. Hurled my water bottle at the wall and screamed, "This is not OK!" What? I can understand being frustrated but that reaction doesn't seem constructive at all.
- simonh 14y agoIt was constructive because she then to do something constructive about it. Compare and contrast to the story about John Orwant throwing his mug at a wall at a Perl conference - and single handedly inspiring the start of the Perl 6 project. But then that's ok. He's a guy.
- indiecore 14y ago>But then that's ok. He's a guy. Yeah that was obviously the implication. A guy tossing a fit in the bathroom would be just as randomly nonconstructive.
- rheide 14y agoIt's not ok that only 3% of people present liked peanut butter! I'm going to make it my mission to get more people that like peanut butter into conferences.
- mertd 14y agoIt is actually pretty interesting that so many commenters here short circuited into thinking she was complaining about the bathroom situation.
- deelowe 14y agoIt really comes across that way at first. My first reaction was to close the tab at the "throw my water bottle" statement, but after reading the comments here, I read on and saw the author had more to say than just "someone move my bathroom." It's just poorly written, that's all.
- benatkin 14y agoNope, the level of reader comprehension here is too low. She said that there was no line at the family restroom before she said she threw her water bottle. If that isn't enough to clue readers in about the real source of her anguish as opposed to the thing that first tipped her off, there's the whole rest of the article.
- dpark 14y agoIt's also poor writing. It was a third of the way through the article before she clued us in about what she was actually mad about. It very much read as if she were angry about the restroom situation. However, this isn't especially relevant to the real point of the article.
- Ntrails 14y agoNot really, the anecdote was described poorly and the exit to her main point messy. I am also slightly bored of people finding things they wish to change and then simply publicising the observation. I was actually hoping that somewhere near the bottom she would offer some insight and/or offer solutions. It might be "Not OK" - but please take a few extra steps and suggest what you think could be done?
- rmc 14y agoIt's an easier point to address that than talk about endemic sexism in tech.
- hnriot 14y ago"That day in the Family Restroom I threw a fit. Hurled my water bottle at the wall and screamed, "This is not OK!"" How exactly after this do you expect anyone to take you seriously? Gender equality isn't about having just as many women programmers, and it certainly isn't well servered by having tantrums over the bathroom arrangements.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoShe had a tantrum in private, which is the correct place to throw a fit. After you've calmed down, then you can do something about the problem, which she's doing.
- hack_edu 14y agoFor what its worth, that line is clearly hyperbole.
- rmc 14y agoYou have just used the "Tone Argument" which derails the argument. It's a common response (it's in Derailing for Dummies http://www.derailingfordummies.com/complete.html#angry http://www.derailingfordummies.com/complete.html#angry ). Please try to stay on topic.
- Locke1689 14y agoYou're right, but for the wrong reasons. There's no such thing as a "tone" argument. Recall your freshman year Greek rhetoric course -- what are the three main elements of argumentation? Logos (logic), pathos (appeal to emotion), and ethos (morality or "greatness" of character). If you start yelling at someone, chances are you're going to destroy your pathos and ethos. Being persuasive involves more than just logos, it involves convincing your audience that you are on the right side. This, by the way, is why many technical people are awful at arguing. They don't understand that argumentation is about convincing people, not having a bullet point list that you haughtily defend to the last. The real reason you're right is that the author was clearly adding a bit of dramatization and flair to the piece, rather than blowing up and insulting their opponent.
- rbellio 14y agoShe isn't upset by the fact that the ladies room was relabeled as a mens room, she was frustrated by the fact that she didn't find as many female peers at the conference. She felt encouraged around other women to discuss technology and wants to encourage other women to become excited about the field. I have some insight into this. I'm engaged to a mechanical engineer who works in a largely male dominated industry. To this point, I've never heard her discuss another female engineer at her company. We've discussed the issues of women in engineering and how interesting the dynamics are for a woman and I can agree that it would be an enjoyable ideal if there were more women in her field. At the same time, she wants nothing to do with women in her field that are simply there to prove that women can do the same jobs as men. I have to agree with her on this point. Every time I see ads for computer schools encouraging people with no experience to get a degree and flood the market, I shake my head. Why should I want someone with no passion, who simply wants a job, to enter my market and drive down the price of labor? So, I understand where the author is coming from here. She enjoys the company of her sex and would like to have a larger network of her peers be female. I have no problem with that. I would say, though, to be careful about what you wish for. You want women who are passionate to join the workforce, not just any old gal.
- shadowfiend 14y ago“Why should I want someone with no passion, who simply wants a job, to enter my market and drive down the price of labor?” Because for every 10 people with no passion who simply want a job, you get one who is incredibly passionate but simply wanted a job. One who didn't realize that hey, this is actually pretty cool stuff, and maybe it's more than just a job, it can be a passion and a career. I am of course making up the numbers. But discarding someone because they don't care before they've even learned a subject is even sillier than assuming that women don't want to be in tech because they're not interested in tech, rather than simply because they never took to looking into it because of all of the stereotypes (many of them true) about the male dominance of the industry.
- rbellio 14y agoI may not have made it clear enough, but I'm not saying we shouldn't encourage women or non-technical people to pursue technical experience and/or education. I personally prefer to work in a diverse workforce and enjoy sharing my workday with people of different sexes, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. I'm not sure what stereotypes you're referring to, either, as I personally have worked across a multitude of domains and have not seen any difference in the approach of the professional development world to that of the rest of the market (my last software company was co-founded by a woman in fact). I'm saying that simply wanting women or any other sociological division of people to be more prevalent for the sake of presence is a mistake. In your example, you say that out of 10 people that are encouraged/trained, you might get one very passionate developer. I know the math is made up, but if you look at this in the other direction, you now have 9 developers that are bad at their job, dislike/don't care about their job or possibly both. This would mean that 90% of the workforce is now comprised of people who are hindering the other 10%. That 90% of the code written is probably poorly executed. I think that the career of being a developer is attractive enough that anyone interested in pursuing it would see it as a viable option. Segregating encouragement along the line of sex I think does more harm then good though.
- k2xl 14y agoAt first I thought she was complaining about the fact they took away the girl's bathroom... But I think the article evolved into a critic of the lack of women in the field in general - saying it's Not OK that so few women are in the industry... She probably could have been more clear of what she was not okay with. But a decline in women in the tech field is a deep and complicated topic, and the solutions weren't probed in this article. This article was more of how things are today - and we all already know that there's an extremely small percentage of women in the field. What would have been more provoking of an article would have been discussions of the root causes and reasons of why there are so few women in the industry, and why their career paths tend to differ than their male counterparts. Contributions to this topic by someone like her would be enlightening for sure.
- JulianMorrison 14y agoEveryone who rushed in here to say "calm down, dear" in a patronisingly male tone of voice, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. Stop being sexist.
- steele 14y agoHow does one type in a patronizingly male tone of voice? I hope you don't mean "calm down, dear" is characteristically male.
- JulianMorrison 14y agoYes, I absolutely do. The concept of women as "emotional" AKA "hysterical" is an old, untrue, patronizing and dismissive stereotype, with a long history of being used to oppress women (sometimes in the most horrific of ways). "Calm down dear" and its close paraphrases are a way of asserting male privilege to ignore a woman's reasoned argument, because she got angry.
- steele 14y ago"calm down dear" has been said frequently to men, women, and children by both men and women. Also, there is nothing uniquely male about using that phrase in a patronizing tone.
- masterponomo 14y agoI had a similar experience when I (a gent) took my grown daughter to a NKOTB reunion concert as a nostalgia trip. The audience was at least 95% female, and the arena restrooms were re-purposed accordingly. I asked an usher and he told me it was common practice to adapt to the gender mix of the audience. I observed many groups of women noting this reallocation with loud triumphant braying laughter. I doubt the Strange Loop men had a triumphal reaction to the bathroom allotment.
- crntaylor 14y agoThat is not a similar experience at all. Even if we ignore that you completely missed the point of the article (she's not complaining about the bathroom situation at all, as seventy trillion other commenters have already pointed out - presumably you didn't read them either?) we still have: First, you wouldn't have gone to a NKOTB (New Kids on the Block) concert if you weren't going with your daughter. You didn't actively want to be there. The author of the article was going to a programming conference of her own will. Second, I don't think that NKOTB are important enough that it matters what the gender composition of their audiences are. Programming, on the other hand, is very important, and will only get more important in the future. Such a huge gender imbalance at the most important PL conference will be problematic for women in the future (and for men as well, if you can believe it). Third, you "doubt" that there was a similar reaction at the PL conference. I presume you weren't actually there, then? I wasn't there either, so I wouldn't even begin to think about making up random suppositions and using them to support my argument.
- masterponomo 14y agoAre you being ironic by using all random suppositions to refute my random suppositions?
- kamaal 14y agoNo he is right. The issue is something like this. Most people have a tough time realizing that 99% of the times their net condition on any day is result of their own doing. You see the problem manifest here. 1. Notice non equal participation of women. 2. Blame men. 3. Shift the onus of change on men not women. 4. Wash your hands off the situation, and claim high moral high ground. Now notice what women did when there was a non equal participation of men. They treat it as it is supposed to be. Which is that men didn't take the initiative to be there and hence laughter. The first step to change the world is basically start by changing oneself first. Now if you do all this and still get limited by the environment around you, then you can start by blaming the other things. But even before starting, trying and doing something. You have 100 people to blame you are not likely to see any improvement soon.
- bking 14y agoI definitely agree with your view that there aren't enough women in the field, but starting an article, where most of your readers are going to be men, by saying you threw a temper tantrum because a venue swapped the bathrooms to benefit men is inviting readers to disagree with you before you even started making your point. I read the first part and immediately thought how immature you were, then I read more, and being more open-minded I read over your point, swallowed my previous thought and agree. Not everyone will do that. I agree we need more women representation, I disagree with the manner the article was written.
- bking 14y agoI definitely agree with your view that there aren't enough women in the field, but starting an article, where most of your readers are going to be men, by saying you threw a temper tantrum because a venue swapped the bathrooms to benefit men is inviting readers to disagree with you before you even started making your point. I read the first part and immediately thought how immature you were, then I read more, and being more open-minded I read over your point, swallowed my previous thought and agreed. Not everyone will do that. I agree we need more women representation, I disagree with the manner the article was written.
- rmc 14y agoEven without the "temper tantrum" sentances, people would find something else to disagree with. These debates are often not logical or rational.
- bking 14y agoI definitely agree with your view that there aren't enough women in the field, but starting an article, where most of your readers are going to be men, by saying you threw a temper tantrum because a venue swapped the bathrooms to benefit men is inviting readers to disagree with you before you even started making your point. I read the first part and immediately thought how immature you were, then I read more, and being more open-minded I read over your point, swallowed my previous thought and agreed. Not everyone will do that. I agree we need more women representation, I disagree with the manner the article was written.
- bking 14y agoI definitely agree with your view that there aren't enough women in the field, but starting an article, where most of your readers are going to be men, by saying you threw a temper tantrum because a venue swapped the bathrooms to benefit men is inviting readers to disagree with you before you even started making your point. I read the first part and immediately thought how immature you were, then I read more, and being more open-minded I read over your point, swallowed my previous thought and agreed. Not everyone will do that. I agree we need more women representation, I disagree with the manner the article was written.
- yason 14y agoIn short, it comes down to that she wants more women in the industry. Maybe she seemed a bit lonely among so many men, or maybe something else—I don't know and she didn't tell. All right. Now what?
- moistgorilla 14y agoI'm kind of disappointed by the comments here. Not just by the fact that people couldn't read the entire article before making judgments but more that I would have thought the people of this website would understand why it's important to bring women into tech. Women aren't biologically inclined to not like STEM fields (which I sadly see is a popular sentiment). The reason women don't go into these fields is because of the misogynistic culture. The stereotype of a computer whiz is a man. Ask yourself why you never considered becoming a nurse (if you are a man) and you will understand why women reject the idea of working in the tech industry.
- Ntrails 14y agoI don't really see why a dislike of hospitals, excrement, and old people would hold women back from working in the tech industry?
- jeremyarussell 14y agoI think you missed the point on that by a bit. See the point was men don't generally become nurses as often as women, because of the social stigma that it's a woman's job. The way I figure there is no biological reason why a girl wouldn't want to expand her mental capacities via technology and programming. It's strictly because it's seen as a nerdy guy stuck in basement thing, then the brogrammers came out and people realized it's also a guy-that-views-women-as-objects field. Yeah, those brogrammers really helped the cause. Went off on a bit of a tangent there. Sorry.
- Ntrails 14y agoActually, I was intentionally pointing out the absurdity of the blanket statement being made, whilst attempting to apply humour. I did consider being a nurse, when training to help with a family members illness the nurse teaching me suggested I would be good at it. I was not interested, in large part for the exact reasons I listed above. I would also like to point out that the gender imbalance in nursing is not blamed on the nurses - you yourself describe it as a social stigma. Fixing societal attitudes needs something rather more than an introspection on the tech industry and why we are full of terrible people. It needs parents and schools to encourage girls to study the relevant areas, it needs schools to get all of their pupils trying out basic programming in a rewarding, exciting and gender neutral environment. I could be wrong - but to my mind this is a problem in all of STEM and fixing it needs a broad response to treat it as a single issue. N.B. Women not going to conferences because they are home to a host of manchildren who spend half their time drunk is a separate issue and one deserving of serious attention. EDIT: I have no idea why some of this seems to be in italics. Sorry :(
- enraged_camel 14y agoPeople always complain that there aren't enough women in tech fields, yet no one ever complains about there not being enough men in, say, fashion. I've always found this odd.
- mitjak 14y agoHow many fashion publications and forums do you read a day?
- enraged_camel 14y agoTwo. The consensus among fashion industry veterans seems to be that if a guy wants to work in the fashion industry, he must be gay or at least bisexual.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoOr affect being gay. I understand that's quite commonplace.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoI've heard complaints about the lack of men in nursing, education and day care. In education & day care, the complaint usually centers around the lack of role models for children. In nursing, it's usually related to the anecdotal observation that male nurses are almost always good nurses. As for fashion, males seem to be quite prominent already.
- nuttendorfer 14y agoIf she would have just used the "new" men's room nobody would have cared and she wouldn't have had to write this blog post. People do this all the time if one room is full.
- ljf 14y agoI'm guessing you didn't read the article? It wasn't about the queue (or lack of) it was about the lack of women at these events.
- raganwald 14y agoMeta-question for both men and women. If you were a woman considering a career in IT and you were to read the comments on a thread like this, would you be more likely to join, less likely, or unaffected by reading the thread?
- klaut 14y agoIf i was reading a thread like this, it would mean that I am already interested in tech and there was NO WAY that a thread like this would put me off continuing doing what i am interested in.
- raganwald 14y agoNot necessarily. What if you are following @raganwald because you know him from mountain biking and he tweets about this thread? More importantly, I think it's valid for you to have a very binary perspective on tech, either you aren't interested or you're so interested that "To hell with the torpedos, full speed ahead." I know of at least one such woman with the same perspective: http://raganwald.posterous.com/a-womans-story http://raganwald.posterous.com/a-womans-story Of course, that doesn't mean everyone will have the same reaction. Some might be more inclined to join, perhaps some less. I'm not a woman, and I don't want to be patronizing and try to suggest that there's going to be one overwhelmingly consistent reaction. I was just trying to point out that our discussions about gender are as much a part of our culture as the culture we're allegedly discussing.
- klaut 14y agoLove the story! Very inspiring and i think this quote sums up what my belief is, too: “...The computer didn’t care that I was a woman or that I was black..." It is the same with any other passion one might have - you will always come across brick walls and jerks and what not. Perhaps I was lucky or unbeknownst to me, ignored all the obstacles that commenters here are stating, but i never had people stopping me to pursue programming and tech. Or looking down at me. I am in the field not because I want to make a difference and rise up the female % .. actually i do not even notice the ratios at all. To me, we are all just people that share a common interest - tech. And, frankly, I am a bit annoyed with all the winning that is becoming common. It really feels like people complain just for the sake of complaining.
- shadowfiend 14y agoEmpathy, noun: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. I think this is our[1] problem. Or a generalization of it: the ability to share another's viewpoint. To step into their perspective and say “oh. I see.” And to accept that maybe, just maybe, their viewpoint is valid. This isn't always true, by the way. But it is sometimes true, even often true. And even if it is valid, you may not agree with it. But here's the thing. There's this idea that maybe women aren't in tech because they aren't interested. That's cool. I'm not interested in nursing, right? Well it turns out, I've never done nursing. I haven't even looked into it. I haven't talked to anyone about it. Because I just assumed hey, I'm a guy, nurses aren't guys. Not even worth thinking about. That's the mindset. It's not that you know you're not interested, it's that you don't even give it a second thought! [2] The funny thing is, people here have generally found their passion—be it startups or tech. And when you have your passion and it fell into your lap, it's easy to say “well these people who aren't interested shouldn't be doing this anyway, because they're not passionate”. Even if they had no chance to develop that passion? Even if there was no exposure? Maybe we're being a tad too dismissive here, no? Perhaps we should give people a chance to explore a subject before assuming they'll never be passionate about it. Just a though. What about those who did reach that passion? Those who entered the tech world, found a minefield of sexism (of which that's-what-she-said jokes are just the very very tip of the iceberg, but more on that in a second), and said “screw it, I'm out of here”.[3] Usually those stories lead to another set of excuses, because the first set of excuses just weren't effective enough to deal with the full scope of the people being shut out of technology, willingly or not. Let's talk about that's-what-she-said jokes. There are men who say “psh, seriously? Come on, it's just a joke! Why would you have a problem with that?” And there are women who say “well, I can take them. Not only that, I dish them out! Why would you have a problem with that?” Why would you have a problem with that? The trouble with that question is it's so often rhetorical. Not only do you not reaaally want to hear the answer to it, but you don't stop to think about the answer before asking. That kind of question should lead to more understanding. So I propose, without further ado, that instead of trying to understand why something (anything!) is a problem from your point of view, you consider trying to understand why it's a problem from the other person's point of view, and if, with a little effort, you still can't figure it out, then you ask and look for a real answer. And read the answer. And try to understand then. Because I see far more effort devoted in most of these threads to defending one's own point of view than to understanding the other person's. And these questions, the question of women in tech, the question of social awkwardness, the question of sexism in tech, they are not math problems. There is not necessarily a single correct answer. One person being right doesn't mean the other person is wrong. And right vs wrong is not always immediately obvious. [1] - when I say our, I mean the tech industry. [2] - I can't speak to whether or not this is considered a problem in the nursing industry. It's irrelevant to the point at hand. [3] - http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/ http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/
- protomyth 14y agoFirst, I didn't read it as she was mad about the bathrooms other than what that implied about the ratio of attendance between men and women[1]. I'm not real fond of the ratio, mainly because lack of female programmers means we get a lack of female managers with programming experience. Women who came up through the ranks and get the gig. I have encountered too many men and women who have no clue how to manage technical projects. I should point out that at least female programmers are not subjected to the crap that happens to male ECE (early childhood education) instructors. Many places will say to an applicant's face that, because of potential lawsuits, they will not hire males. [1] There are actually a lot of facilities that have sliding partitions that allow the number of stalls to be changed between events. I cannot find it right now, but there is a video explaining research done into average time using the stalls - male vs female and percentage of people doing #1 vs #2.