Why women in tech are so angry all the time

https://mashable.com/article/women-in-tech-harassment

by ink_13 • 5 years ago

59 74 5 years ago

Bostonian• 5 years ago

If the goal is to have more women in tech, the messaging is wrong. If women in tech are "so angry all the time", that does not encourage a company to hire women, women to enter the field, or parents to encourage their daughters to consider a tech careers.

mthoms8• 5 years ago

What "messaging"? The point the author is making is that the anger is wholly justified.

Would it make you feel better if women pretended everything was okay? How on earth would that help young girls considering tech careers? Should young women entering the workforce also pretend everything is okay? When does it end?

I'm going to assume you didn't mean it, but this comment came across to me as tone-deaf victim blaming. In fact, it sounds exactly like the kind of flippant and dismissive responses the author complained about.

It's no wonder women in tech are angry.

proc04• 5 years ago

Just because men do a bad thing, doesn't mean every single man is responsible for that. Not to mention all men have mothers, and they play a huge part in how their children grow up to treat others.

To solve a problem, the root cause must be found, and the root cause of harassment is NOT other men. Sure men could help, but articles like this seem to demand it, like they're yelling at men, as a group, for the actions of individuals. This doesn't make sense, and it doesn't help either.

bluefirebrand• 5 years ago

The assumption is that somehow every man is complicit. Like we all know about every bad thing that happens to women in our lives and workplace. Not only that, it assumes we have the power to fix things or make changes and we just choose not to.

I don't know about other men but it absolutely alienates me from "the cause". I'm not having anything to do with people who start out by assuming I'm part of their problem.

jm__874• 5 years ago

I find articles like this annoying but this woman doesn't speak for all women in tech. Presumably some women can relate to her experiences, others can't. Some women will agree with her proposed solutions, others won't. Assuming the goal here is just to provide a workplace where women are treated fairly and not subject to harassment, I think that is a fair thing to ask for. I agree that as a man, it shouldn't be my job to police other men. If a woman comes to me and asks me for help with something, I will try to help her, but I'm not going to monitor interactions between my male and female colleagues for improper behavior.

neom• 5 years ago

Good article:

Not all men - how discussing womens issues gets derailed: https://slate.com/technology/2014/05/not-all-men-how-discuss...

mthoms8• 5 years ago

Just because men do a bad thing, doesn't mean every single man is responsible for that.

Where in the heck did you get that from? The author made no such claim. Anywhere.

I also didn't feel like the author was "yelling at men". I felt she was trying to get us to understand her frustration.

Confident, respectful men don't get offended by posts like this. She's not talking about me (generally speaking that is - I know I'll never be perfect). But, I also know that I can help. I can be an ally. I don't mind being reminded of that.

Sheesh, the early comments here tell me that the author could actually be understating the problem.

ekager6• 5 years ago

appreciate you here mthoms

proc04• 5 years ago

The tone of the article is dealing in general terms. For example the closing part:

Next time you go to ask yourself why women in tech are so angry, ask yourself why you’re not angry with them.

Is that for everyone? It sounds to be directed at the party that would not be angry, which is hyperbole for caring, and why would any women not care about this issue? Therefore this sounds like it's directed at men, at least implicitly.

It's an angry article after all, why wouldn't it be pointing fingers. I'm just saying there's no one to blame but the individual culprits of those behaviors / actions.

bitwize• 5 years ago

Women as a class are harassed and worse by men because men as a class allow it. They may not even be aware if it -- male privilege affords them that. Men have the moral obligation to get aware of it, and to take action to ensure that the male culture that allows it is ended. This requires cultivation of difficult skills such as shutting up, not mansplaining, and listening to women speaking their truth. And prioritizing the human rights of women over solidarity with their bros.

jm__874• 5 years ago

Do you believe you have power to change how other women behave towards men? Because I as a guy, have little to no power to change what other guys believe about women or how their beliefs affect their behavior towards women.

proc04• 5 years ago

So you're saying women need men's protection?

sealeck• 5 years ago

This ignores pretty much all evidence to the contrary – attempting to place ideology above realism.

ARandomerDude• 5 years ago

Here's the problem. Not one of these tips is "work hard and try be a the best at what you do." Instead, she leads with tips on how to be a proactive bridge-burner. Death threats, discrimination, etc. are obviously insane, but a lot of this frustration is self-induced.

Call out bad behavior you see or hear about, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Help to report offenders.
Give credit to and call out great work you see from the women you work with.
Offer to share your compensation packages to help your women-in-tech peers know their worth.
Advocate in your own teams for debiasing the interview/promotion process.
Advocate for events you're attending or organizing to include a more diverse set of voices and refer underrepresented experts you know for opportunities.
Don't rely on marginalized groups to educate you.
Listen to and believe women.

lochlainn• 5 years ago

This feels like a non-solution; implying that working harder solves mistreatment simply glosses over the work that women do, and could implicitly associate harassment with "poor performance".

mc324• 5 years ago

The issue here is it's asking women to be activists. Few companies want activists. Most companies want to achieve fairness and equal opportunity, but they also do not like agitators (because one can never have control over agitators, you never can know their next target, so to be safe, most companies tend to not want them around).

It's the same conundrum with double agents. You agree with them helping your intelligence org, but you can never fully trust them. You cannot control their motivations (unless you hold their family hostage like they did in the USSR, etc.)

From that standpoint, this is not good advice. Leadership is key. You have to schmooze leadership and convince them it's the right thing, but not via these activist methods.

mthoms8• 5 years ago

Substitute race for gender and this argument totally falls apart.

If you see a black colleague being treated unfairly and do nothing because you don't want to be seen as an "agitator" or "activist" then you are part of the problem. Full stop.

The same goes for women.

lkrubner2• 5 years ago

I hire teams and I absolutely encourage everyone to snitch if they see bad behavior. I will not tolerate abuse on a team I manage. Anyone who works for me is well aware they should snitch if they see bad behavior. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

readflaggedcomm• 5 years ago

Next time you go to ask yourself why women in tech are so angry, ask yourself why you’re not angry with them.

I'm not angry with you, I'm saddened. You've told them they've gotten to you deeply, and provided a blueprint on how to go further.

Want to be angry? Keep feeding the trolls. Is that the plan? Why?

Edit: I don't understand this response and silence. You all want this?

dabockster4• 5 years ago

At some point you have to document it and take the risk. Otherwise, it keeps being a he-said-she-said game restricted to internal HR reports and nothing improves.

tootahe45• 5 years ago

Does anybody find it strange how there's never a single post by man in female dominated industry? Yet i see headlines about 'women in tech', almost every day.

And please can we call it IT, not 'tech'. As a dev, 'tech' always sounded as though you were doing things much harder than IT.

ekager6• 5 years ago

ink_13• 5 years ago

Does anybody find it strange how there's never a single post by man in female dominated industry?

I don't know what point you're trying to communicate here. Which female dominated industries do you regularly see discussed on Hacker News?

And please call it IT, not 'tech'

Why should anyone do this? I have worked in tech for 20 years and refer to it as such.

klyrs3• 5 years ago

Weird take on a news site focused on tech. Posts about other industries are often met with 'why is this here?'

But anyway, is there a female-dominated industry that promises upward mobility that men are clamoring for acceptance in and failing to get it?

And, speak for yourself, I only did IT when I was in high school and now I work in cutting edge technolgy.

takoid• 5 years ago

The cutting edge technology you work in wouldn’t happen to be information related, would it?

erik_seaberg• 5 years ago

Network admins and software developers have different goals, and pretty much every company bigger than three had us in different sections of the org chart. Calling it all “IT” will be misunderstood.

herschel6664• 5 years ago

Can you name a "female dominated industry"? I can only come up with industries, where the labor force is dominated by women. But the executive positions are still mostly owned by men.

jessedhillon3• 5 years ago

Edit: removed. I should take my own advice.

ekager6• 5 years ago

Women discussing their personal experiences is "controversial"? And we "should expect" trolling and harassment and worse? That's exactly the problem. You think that that's normal and acceptable.

jessedhillon3• 5 years ago

For the record, I didn't say any of this. It's not controversial to talk about your experience. It's certainly controversial to generalize your experience across an entire industry, or sex. And it's not acceptable to be harassed, but yes it's normal and not specific to women.

zug_zug• 5 years ago

Sure. I'll give you that it seems a bit cherry-picked. In fact, "Angry all the time" is the last phrase that comes to mind for most of my female colleagues. That said, when I look at the list of asks, they are actually quite tame, they mostly go without saying in my opinion (e.g. "report bad behavior").

But when I read all the comments on this thread I think "Wow. If this set of innocuous requests is generating this response, then that speaks volumes. Who am I to say this type of pent-up bitterness doesn't affect her career?"

Blizz-Blizz2• 5 years ago

This is what I was thinking.

The list of asks amounts to "be a decent person and stick up for folk". This is stuff that should, like you say, go without saying.

bArray7• 5 years ago

Every comment so far has been downvoted, I have some internet points to spend.

My first thought was someone had mailed me anthrax.

That's your first thought? The harassment later described sounds insane - if you are receiving death threats call the police, open a case. It'll strengthen your position if you later need to go to court. What you don't do is post about it online, to let your attacker know they were successful.

Also, don't doxx your own address. If you need to receive mail and post an address online, there are forwarding services - some even offer to search the mail.

I somewhat find the claim incredible though - if you honestly believe you are in immediate danger, most people do something about it.

Most of us, however, experience constant microaggressions.

The term 'microaggression' doesn't make sense to me, if it's aggression then call it out as such. If it's not meaningful enough to be called out, then you need a better coping mechanism.

[..] it truly feels like the cancerous misogynistic tumors in our industry in particular run so deep that we may never be able to bisect them all.

Either Silicon Valley produces the worst work culture out there (and homelessness), or I would suggest that you find yourself in a bubble. I think as a general rule, if you believe <some group> to have almost entirely evil intent, then you don't understand them or have some internal bias. People generally don't try or believe themselves to be the villains of their own stories.

Listen to and believe women.

You go from wanting equality to special treatment. I treat all people with scepticism, but they are innocent until proven guilty. That's how justice works.

In general I feel sad for the author. Anything you try hard enough to find, you will eventually find. I hope instead of trying to find sexism in tech industry, the author tries to find happiness.

herschel6664• 5 years ago

Looks like you're the prototype of the spoiled brat that populates the male part of the tech industry. You think when you're able to solve a technical problem, you're able to solve every problem. That's the common combination of arrogance & ignorance so many other dudes are sporting.

It got boring long ago.

bArray7• 5 years ago

Looks like you're the prototype of the spoiled brat that populates the male part of the tech industry.

If you claim it to be true, it must be. There's no possible way your world view could be wrong.

You think when you're able to solve a technical problem, you're able to solve every problem.

Are there any other thoughts you can tell me I hold? There's no need for me to actually express an opinion given you already know how I think.

That's the common combination of arrogance & ignorance so many other dudes are sporting.

Arrogance would perhaps be assuming you can determine who I am by hearing just one opinion I hold. As somebody once said: 'It got boring long ago.'

ekager6• 5 years ago

How do you think it would go showing anonymous death threats to the police? I can tell you because we’ve tried! Not well. They laugh you out of the station.

You think giving advice to “not doxx yourself” is useful advice? It is not. We are hyper aware of our safety and still have to be afraid of unknown creeps - anonymous trolls who we can’t “do something about”.

“I hope instead of trying to find sexism in tech industry”

You can’t go 1 week without hearing about sexism in our industry. Being in denial about it because it doesn’t impact you personally is a predictable and weak move.

bArray7• 5 years ago

How do you think it would go showing anonymous death threats to the police? I can tell you because we’ve tried! Not well. They laugh you out of the station.

There's several reasons for reporting anonymous death threats (even if I find it weird that police would openly laugh in your face):

1. If you need to make a case in the future you have documented evidence. You can bring a police report to court.

2. When statistics are being crunched on such things, having the reports on record help identify a problem.

You think giving advice to “not doxx yourself” is useful advice? It is not. We are hyper aware of our safety and still have to be afraid of unknown creeps - anonymous trolls who we can’t “do something about”.

She is publishing under her real name - if death threats are a serious threat, use a pseudo name. I understand the "she shouldn't have to" argument, and in a perfect society no crimes would ever be committed - but unfortunately humans are not perfect and we must compromise our ideology in favour of realism.

You can’t go 1 week without hearing about sexism in our industry.

You can't go a day without hearing about murder either, but I don't go hunting it out in the news or writing about it. I pick and choose my battles for my own mental health.

I'm not denying sexism in the workplace is a real problem, I'm just suggesting that the author has over burdened herself with a large problem she has little control over, and it's made her unhappy. She sounds as if she genuinely believes somebody will send her anthrax through the post - do you really believe that is a real possibility or do you think her battle with sexism in the workplace has gone slightly off the rails?

Being in denial about it because it doesn’t impact you personally is a predictable and weak move.

I'm not denying it's a problem and I haven't suggested that it doesn't impact me personally - you just made these assumptions. It's also not denial to not stress about every problem that impacts you personally.

st3fan4• 5 years ago

This response is 100% victim blaming. There is not a single recognition. No single question. No empathy. It is 100% "it is your fault" and "it is because of your own choices and actions".

bArray - you are the problem here.

bArray7• 5 years ago

This response is 100% victim blaming.

I lock my front door at night and I imagine you do too. In an ideal society no crime occurs, and we can all leave our doors unlocked at night. In reality - if we can make small changes to our lifestyle to limit our exposure to risk, we tend to do them.

But that all rides on the assumption that I accept the designation of 'victim' - I already argued against 'Listen to and believe women'. The author speaks of feeling a very feel threat of an anthrax attack, one that is likely inflated. Based on that, it's not unreasonable to believe that other claims in the article may also be inflated.

bArray - you are the problem here.

I do enjoy the classic "if you're not with me, you're against me" argument. It's not at all possible for us both to agree that sexism in the workplace is bad, but have different opinions about how to solve it.

herschel6664• 5 years ago

So now this post got flagged, because some men are even too weak to bear another person's opinion. slow clap

andreskytt• 5 years ago

I do apologize. People, including me, don’t go spend their lives talking to computers because they are great at talking to people. I’m bad at reading social context, probably on the autism spectrum and many of my colleagues over the last 30 years have been like me. There’s a high chance I’ve expressed what’s called a microagression in the post without intending to so. I can’t tell. I often can’t even tell I offended someone completely unintentionally. I’m a difficult person to be around, there many others like me. And I can’t get better although I have learned to keep myself away from people and be very careful about any interaction, I’m not remotely “normal”.

So maybe it just helps talking to people? There appear to be many jerks around, sure. But I’m willing to bet many of these microagressions are simply a result of social ineptitude. If someone told me I stepped on their toes (some have), I can be more careful around them and assure them of no bad intentions.

st3fan4• 5 years ago

Please read the following for more viewpoints on this topic

https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Autism_is_to_blame

I'd like to add that I am really disappointed that this "So maybe it just helps talking to people?" comment is at the top of the comments here. It is incredibly tone deaf and borderline victim blaming.

It is such an easy explanation that many people here will accept. Yet it is a fallacy, out of touch with reality.

Does anyone really think that the "on the spectum" workforce is the reason for the systemic issues in the tech industry?!

dabockster4• 5 years ago

Diagnosed autistic person here. I do not use my medical condition as an excuse to create microagressions of any sort. In fact, I consider using autism as an "out" in this case to be selfish to both the person being offended as well as everyone out there with diagnosed autism.

If you're able to go to work everyday and function in society without any extra assistance, then you do not get a pass to insult others needlessly. Go home and rethink your life.

skinkestek2• 5 years ago

Let me start by saying that I've seen some really horrible and disgusting treatment of women compared to men. At one place. Out of 10.

At least around here I also see that if two persons, one woman and one man, apply for the same position, and they are seen as exactly equally qualified, the woman gets hired first.

Why? Because amount of women in the department is a KPI.

I also see men walking circles around these issues, taking quite a lot more stupidity from a girl than from a man. I tried to wait a few weeks with one particular know-it-all that was a master in my field (or so she behaved) after 18 months of work.

There are many brilliant women in tech, and then there is those that get paid as dev evangelist and get people booted from PyCon after listening in to someone elses conversation for something far less insulting then whatever she herself had posted publicly on Twitter short time before.

I think the actual women in tech would do well to stand up to these who abuse it.

And if you live in the Nordics at least and experience actual discrimination, look for a new job.

st3fan4• 5 years ago

At least around here I also see that if two persons, one woman and one man, apply for the same position, and they are seen as exactly equally qualified, the woman gets hired first. Why? Because amount of women in the department is a KPI.

Explain why this is a problem? You say these two candidates are equally great. Should the man have been picked?

skinkestek2• 5 years ago

No, absolutely not.

I'm just pointing out that at least around here, and in the companies I want to work in, women has an advantage from before they are hired.

I don't think this is necessarily true in USA and many other places.

But together with the PyCon story and others where men are massively disadvantaged while everyone pretend it is always easy for all men it might explain a bit of the feelings you sometimes see.

zozbot234• 5 years ago

This "women are so angry" stuff is just a damaging, sexist stereotype. Men are far more aggressive than women, and nobody's calling them "angry" as a result. What an awful, clickbait article.

spicyusername• 5 years ago

The experiences you describe are such a bummer. I've both witnessed similar situations and, as a man, unintentionally participated over the years while still growing up and maturing my professional "self".

Keep seeing something and saying something with articles like these. The culture is changing, even if it doesn't feel like it some days, and talking about it in the open is part of what fuels that change.

Why women in tech are so angry all the time

Related Stories