Ask HN: How often women read HN? Participate?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12673344

by sushirain • 10 years ago

21 24 10 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Every day.

marak830• 10 years ago

My wife reads it quite a bit. She isn't a tech, but she likes seeing what we all say about stories so we can talk about it later

pmoriarty3• 10 years ago

I expect that not very many women will out themselves in response to your question, considering how much negative attention such an outing often results in.

RandyRanderson2• 10 years ago

What are you talking about? Can you cite an example?

cheriot• 10 years ago

I suspect he means on the internet in general. If you find it hard to believe I'd point you toward #3 at http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/30/5-facts-abou...

pmoriarty3• 10 years ago

Quick example from [1]:

"After sifting through near to three million pull requests submitted on GitHub, they found – against their expectations – that code written by women was approved at a slightly higher rate than that composed by men, 78.6 percent to 74.6 percent, respectively. That’s roughly an extra 120,000 pieces of code.

"Nevertheless, there was a depressing caveat: this rule only applied if their gender was unidentified. If female coders’ gender was known, their overall pull request acceptance rate fell from 78.6 percent to 62.5 percent. This appears to suggest that women may in fact be better coders, but are automatically discriminated against simply because of their gender."

Apart from that, there are endless examples of women being harassed, stalked, assaulted, and even killed because of their gender. Is it any wonder that many might prefer not to reveal their gender and enjoy the benefits of relative equality when they have the ability to do so, such as in an online forum like HN?

Really, you'd have to be living in a cave not to be aware of the existence of sexual harassment. Just on HN, articles about it float to the front page at least one or twice a month, which is why I really have to wonder if you are just trolling by asking that question.

[1] http://www.iflscience.com/technology/women-are-seen-better-c...

djcapelis2• 10 years ago

Yep. Bringing up your gender on the Internet, even just matter of factly to correct someone's assumption is a quick way to find yourself and whatever point you were making derailed.

I don't hide, but I also don't bring it up much and my name being pretty gender neutral probably avoids a lot of frustrating moments.

noobermin2• 10 years ago

Even for an "Ask HN" question that explicitly asks if they are female? In that case, negative attention makes even less sense as it is the point of the discussion.

esyechka• 10 years ago

daily

lalaithion• 10 years ago

Maybe someone should set up a comprehensive census for HN?

Note: I do not mean someone should set up a page long google form that asks for age and gender. I mean someone who has at least a small amount of experience with census' should set up a detailed and lengthy census which asks questions with nuance. I don't think I have the capability to do this, or I would.

steanne• 10 years ago

how often do people read hn? that is how often women do.

noobermin2• 10 years ago

A poorly posed question. I assume the OP meant to ask how much of HN readers are women.

TsukiZombina• 10 years ago

I read it every day but I had not commented until now

djcapelis2• 10 years ago

I read it pretty often and have a comment history going back a number of years. Most of the time my gender isn't something that comes up. I wish I could say this place has improved in terms of how it feels to be women identified here, but I personally don't really feel like it has. It hasn't gotten worse, which is a credit to the community given how many other ways HN feels like it passed eternal September a long time ago.

I will note that some of the work I've done under nyms has hit the front page here and it was disheartening to see across hundreds of comments how many people just assumed whoever was behind the project was a guy. It was rare for anyone to be gender neutral and that was as radical as it got. No one assumed the author of that project was a woman.

Oh well.

webwanderings• 10 years ago

It is a product/platform/community's failure if you even have to ask such a question. Remember the days when "a/s/l" used to be common like "lols" or "IMHOs" of today? Well, nobody cares about gender, age or location. But these attributes make all the difference in how one communicates, and how communities (authentic communities) are formed anywhere.

nadezhda18• 10 years ago

I read it every day and comment once in a while.

I also post links sometimes, not often.

For Russians - m Russian - it's clear from my name that I'm a girl. not sure about non Russians.

ridemyjock• 10 years ago

Who in the actual fuck cares if it is a man or woman reading and participating?

Ask HN: How often women read HN? Participate?

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