To a Future Woman In Tech

by kevinSuttle • 13 years ago

47 71 13 years ago

zekenie2• 13 years ago

This is awesome. Really powerful stuff. I wonder about one line:

"I hope that your initial interactions involve an immediate transfer of trust in your abilities, rather than starting off by always having to prove yourself."

I'm not sure I agree with this 100%. Shouldn't everyone have to prove themselves at first? Does anyone merit immediate transfer of trust in their abilities?

jeremysmyth4• 13 years ago

While I agree with much of this, I find the fact that it's signed "bitchwhocodes" remarkably hypocritical. If gender is so irrelevant, why put it up front in such an aggressive way?

sp332• 13 years ago

Because we don't live in that future yet.

zekenie2• 13 years ago

Agreed. Also what you call yourself is different from what others call you...

jeremysmyth4• 13 years ago

That may be true, but I know of many females on here who use androgynous names to avoid the (unfortunately all too common) sort of prejudice and sexualised conversation described in the post, and of some who use their real names and risk the same sort of unwelcome comments.

While my username might give away the fact that I'm speaking from a position of "male privilege" (and that is a choice I made without having to consider that it was male privilege, which is itself a symptom of my male privilege), I don't think it's helpful for someone to use their username to signal an aggressive viewpoint, at the same time as urging a more moderate approach (honey-badger comment aside).

juridatenshi• 13 years ago

It's her twitter handle and looks like it's one she's been using for a good long while. Pretty sure she's just signing her work.

Your comment reads a lot like a tone argument. That type of discourse is derailing and generally unproductive. :)

jeremysmyth4• 13 years ago

I had no problem with her tone, actually, which was pretty much on the button.

dfxm123• 13 years ago

I didn't read this comment as a tone argument. Baseless accusations are also unproductive. :)

sdoering• 13 years ago

OK, was thinking the same. But got struck by the tone, that seems to radiate from your comment.

Yes, I agree 100% with what the creator wrote. I am really, really sick with women earning less then men, having to fight harder, having to endure sexiest jokes and inappropriate comments.

I really despise inequality.

So, that said, I now have a problem. What ever I could no say, to discuss this issue and the site, might come about as as some kind of relativization.

Because, I got sidelined by the twitter-handle. Whatever I had read to this point got covered in some judgmental-icing. My first emotion was sadness, that such an great site, such great words had been used for satire, as this was my first guess to what the handle meant.

Sad, I know. Wrong, I know. But this was my first reaction.

rayiner• 13 years ago

I don't think the argument is so much that "gender is irrelevant" generally but that it's irrelevant in the specific contexts herein. The holy grail so to speak is being able to identify yourself as a woman an have it not matter.

tedks3• 13 years ago

Gender should be irrelevant, but it is not currently irrelevant. It is highly relevant, and to ignore this is to ignore obvious reality, roughly equivalent to jumping off a cliff because reality is subjective and you believe that you can fly.

I think the choice of that particular moniker has more to do with the fact that women are rarely both liked and respected in any professional field. Competent women are viewed as cold; warm women are viewed as incompetent. For a woman to be competent, she must be a bitch.

This is obviously not the best state of affairs, but it is the way reality is.

dominic_cocch• 13 years ago

Very well put.

rozap• 13 years ago

Really? I wasn't aware. I thought I knew plenty of competent women who weren't "bitches".

I guess I was mistaken.

wilkie4• 13 years ago

It's her chosen name. When you can choose a name, you do so based upon a tradeoff between comfort and identity. Women on the internet can't always afford both, and so choosing such a name seems powerful. It certainly is never hypocritical.

recoiledsnake• 13 years ago

Regardless of gender, a game developer is not a great career unless you're high up in the company ladder. Too much stress, being forced to work crazy hours without extra pay starting months before deadlines, not great pay etc.

Once the novelty wears off, it's a hard crunch. http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

drd2• 13 years ago

It is always about women’s rights and animals’ rights. When somebody is going to talk about men’s rights? All the things she talks about, I have seen happening to male developers too.

dfxm123• 13 years ago

Shouldn't you be pushing for a dialoge around the the more aptly named developers' rights then?

of3• 13 years ago

Men already have rights...

"To be white, or straight, or male, or middle class is to be simultaneously ubiquitious and invisible. You’re everywhere you look, you’re the standard against which everyone else is measured. You’re like water, like air. People will tell you they went to see a “woman doctor” or they will say they went to see “the doctor.” People will tell you they have a “gay colleague” or they’ll tell you about a colleague. A white person will be happy to tell you about a “Black friend,” but when that same person simply mentions a “friend,” everyone will assume the person is white. Any college course that doesn’t have the word “woman” or “gay” or “minority” in its title is a course about men, heterosexuals, and white people. But we call those courses “literature,” “history” or “political science.”" -- Michael S. Kimmel, in the introduction to the book, “Privilege: A Reader”

jbattle• 13 years ago

Read the first sentence of the ea spouse letter - the author's spouse, who is later identified as a man, is the one who's plight/mistreatment is being discussed. This letter has been generating tons of discussion for close to a decade now. It's not focused on the rights of men as men, but is talking about issues affecting developers in one particular industry (of any/all gender)

kayoone• 13 years ago

Furthermore, working for a big game developer/publisher is probably not the dream of doing game development people have when they start.

Of course you could go indie, but being successfull there isnt easy either.

Peroni5• 13 years ago

Has anyone applied the reverse argument to nursing?

I'm getting sick of the gender argument to be honest. Sure, women in tech are a minority. Sure we'd all like to see more of a gender balance. However I have yet to see someone actively retarding that balance.

mimiflynn3• 13 years ago

> Has anyone applied the reverse argument to nursing?

Can you explain this further?

Peroni5• 13 years ago

Sure. The general complaint is that tech is dominated by males. Conferences & meet-ups are sausage fests and the speaker line-up often all male. Female devs are considered a novelty and the term female dev is considered to be frustrating due to the term dev being appended by 'female'.

Nursing is dominated by females. Male nurses are considered a novelty and men in the industry are almost always described as male nurses. Nursing is an insanely demanding career and requires tons of skill and training. Why aren't men posting in outrage about the gender disparity in nursing?

Why can't it simply be accepted that programming is simply a career that tends to appeal to men more than women in the same way that nursing appeals to women more than men?

There are arguments that women get paid less in tech. My direct experience with women in tech (and I have plenty) is that if anything, they tend to be better paid due to the fact that female devs are in high demand and I've yet to see proof, even anecdotal, proving otherwise. I've also yet to come across a single, official complaint of sexism in the workplace within the tech industry.

jeremysmyth4• 13 years ago

It's a bigger problem than that, unfortunately.

There are, for better or for worse, traditionally male roles, and traditionally female roles. The argument (as you suggest) seems to go in one direction only - why aren't there more female (developers|CEOs|politicians)?

The problems are more complex:

1) One problem is related to the fact that society values male roles more than female. A traditional skilled "female" role earns considerably less than a similarly qualified "male" role. While this isn't immediately relevant to the current conversation, it crops up along with the "glass ceiling" argument about CEOs and other high-status traditionally male roles.

2) Another, and the one typified in the OP, is the mockery or prejudice that applies from men to those who take jobs in roles more typical of the opposite gender. You know the jokes about male hairdressers, and male nurses also have to overcome such jokes. The jokes that females in typically male roles have to overcome are similarly well known, and even less palatable.

Personally, I don't care about gender balance, numerically at least: I don't think the world needs more male nurses or hairdressers, or female developers or construction workers (more power to them if they want to do it though). I do think the world needs to accept (without orthogonal prejudice) when they make the choice and try as hard as I did when I started out in this career.

leovingi3• 13 years ago

I have always found that the argument of pay inequality doesn't really make any economical sense. If a woman is as qualified as a man, yet is ready to work for less pay, wouldn't that be an incentive to hire loads of women? And if someone, regardless of gender, is OK with the salary they are being offered, why should anyone else care if a separate group of people, who have also accepted the salaries they got offered, are earning more?

dfxm123• 13 years ago

The world does need men & women to be making the same amount of money for doing the same job. It also needs to shatter the idea of gendered roles. I thought we already had...

papsosouid5• 13 years ago

>One problem is related to the fact that society values male roles more than female.

Only when we put blinders on and look at the top end of the spectrum. Male roles like CEOs and politicians are attractive, so we only look at them, and decide men must be getting advantages women aren't. Look down, there's other male roles too. Like prisoners, the homeless, the people committing suicide, the people taking dangerous jobs and dying. 97% of work related deaths are men, and obviously nobody is pushing to fix that imbalance.

lindseybieda2• 13 years ago

There's a lot of factors retarding the balance. There's been a number of studies on it.

There's the stereotype threat and the common notion that women are bad a math. There's been a number of sexist comments and incidents within the field (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents). There's even a study the correlates geek culture with keeping women out.

There's this thing called the patriarchy, you mighta heard of it. It's not something as clear as the things above, esp. if you have become comfortable within the system. However, it is there. There's subtle unconscious biases from both men and women inside the field (as observed in this study http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract).

Is that enough to convince you? Or do you need more, because there really is an abundance of data to support this.

tedks3• 13 years ago

If you actually read the article, you can see how some of the statements might apply to nursing (there might be short lines for the men's room at nursing conferences), but many clearly don't. Some examples:

* Male nurses will not be told "good for you" by someone finding out their profession.

* Male nurses are not assumed to be secretaries in meetings.

* Male nurses won't be judged by their body over their skill -- and as a result, they won't face cognitive impairments because of internalized objectification[1][2][3][4][5].

* Male nurses will not be perceived as "bitches" if they are competent at their job -- and they will not be perceived as incompetent if they attempt to be likable[6].

* Male nurses are not paid less, on average, than female nurses[7].

By ignoring these very tangible and well-demonstrated barriers to entry for women in a wide variety of careers (any of the above arguments apply to women attempting to be lawyers, doctors, or executives in addition to being "in tech" as you put it), you are minimizing women's lived experiences of these effects, and you are retarding the balance.

[1] http://pwq.sagepub.com/content/30/1/59.short

[2] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11199-006-9140-x...

[3] That swimsuit becomes you: sex differences in self-objectification, restrained eating, and math performance. Journal of personality and social psychology [0022-3514] Fredrickson yr:1998 vol:75 iss:1 pg:269

[4] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FB%3ASERS.00000323...

[5] http://www.sanchezlab.com/pdfs/FredricksonRoberts.pdf

[6] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0022-4537.2004....

[7] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-4932.2009....

Peroni5• 13 years ago

1. I did read the article. Twice actually because I know this is a contentious issue and I wanted to ensure I wasn't missing the point.

2. Your source for #7 is ridiculous. There is absolutely zero proof that female programmers are paid less than males. My career is dedicated to helping programmers find work (both male and female) and my own direct experience with the thousands of people and companies I've worked with points to the fact that female programmers are paid more than average simply because companies are willing to shell out a bit more for a female dev in order to avoid the label of having a male dominated workplace.

ry0ohki• 13 years ago

There are a whole other set of stereotypes males in traditionally female roles have to overcome. They don't match your set, but they exist. For example male flight attendants and hair stylists are assumed to be homosexual, and male nurses are taught to be embarrassed of their profession (male nurses often say they are "RNs" or "medical professionals" out of this stigma).

artursapek• 13 years ago

What ever happened to "speak softly and carry a big stick?"

leovingi3• 13 years ago

While I find the general idea of the text acceptable, I do not agree with the sentiment that somehow if you're a woman in the workplace, you just need to be accepted for what you are and you should be provided with an "immediate transfer of trust in your abilities." My experience is anecdotal and someone else's will, of course, differ, but at our workplace, if you do a good job and you are a team player, you will be accepted. No one, man or woman, somehow has the right to be trusted until proving themselves.

nollidge• 13 years ago

That's not the sentiment she's expressing, though. You generally give people some amount of trust to begin with, right? That's all she's talking about.

leovingi3• 13 years ago

I can see your point and you are probably right :) But then again, it depends on the field as well. In any technological field, you would get hired because someone trusts in you. But once you start interacting with your team members, you still have to prove yourself to them.

guywhointernets• 13 years ago

Sheesh, tone down the vibrant colors. Looking at this article is painful.

Luckily I can just strip the css from your site, but for an average user...?

elptacek4• 13 years ago

So I am glad to not be the first comment on this post, because I almost was. Instead, I took a while to compose my thoughts and I'm going to take a whack at writing them down. To start, I just deactivated my facebook account to get away from exactly this type of rhetoric. Why? When I look back over my career, it is striking that I have received no career enrichment from any of my female peers or co-workers. Absolutely none. All of the help I've ever gotten has come from men. Do I take a dump on that kindness by punishing them for another person's bad behavior, or by assuming these guys only wanted to get into my pants? I can't live like that.

A few years ago, I was pulling into my garage and because of whatever circumstance I have forgotten, my mind was grinding on the idea of prejudice. Specifically how the act of judging another person consumes resources in my mind that I am hesitant to commit, as I'd very much like to use as much of my mind as I can coordinate for more interesting things. This sounds arrogant, but I'm fine with that label and so let's move on. The way I think is the product of constantly having to not take on other people's drama in order to raise my standard of living. That's not the most elegant way of saying what I mean to say, but I'm a bit frustrated right now. The habit of not engaging makes me acutely aware that when I do engage, it is important to choose one's words carefully. I rarely get that right.

This is a blatant attempt to engage other people in a negative way. I fail to see the benefits such finger-pointing, but I am willing to learn that there might be some. It seems that if there were no perceived benefit to the actor for the act, but from here it just looks like fighting fire with fire.

As a woman in technology, I've seen some things. Mostly I just let it go. I don't think of it as having a thick skin (anyone who knows me will tell you, this is not a character attribute of mine). Rather I think of it as not letting other people's drama own any part of me. And that is what I think when anyone complains of anything, be it gender bias or racial bias or religious/political disagreement: nothing can own you unless you let it. Maybe this is what having a thick skin is supposed to mean. As I have said to my kids countless times, your anger hurts you the most. I can't find a clear source for this quote, but it goes something like, "Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."

This is not how you teach kids to deal with bullies.

emily372• 13 years ago

Well said. If I had read something like this when I was eight years old, I probably would have almost immediately backtracked and started looking for something else to do with my life. The author could instead tell her niece that being a game developer sounds like fun, and then help her deal with any discrimination as it comes up, if it comes up at all. But to start off a person's career with the message that she is going to be discriminated against, that she is going to be at a disadvantage, that she should watch out for all those people trying to drag her down... that's just sabotage.

elptacek4• 13 years ago

Sabotage is the right word. Also, it's a syllogistic fallacy, right?

If you asked 100 people if they perceived some disadvantage about themselves that impedes progress to their life goals, you would get 100 answers. And yet somehow there are 7bn of us, we build skyscrapers and send robots to Mars. Personally, I've had my fill of "if it bleeds, it leads."

flurie• 13 years ago

This letter was not written for an eight-year-old. The real eight-year-old is used as an angle to garner sympathy from us, the intended audience, but the hypothetical eight-year-old is a MacGuffin.

danso• 13 years ago

I think this is a reasonable attitude to have, but I think it presents the situation as a false dichotomy. It's not a choice between pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps or live-in-anger-and-finger-pointing. The discussions on this too often devolve into slippery slopes: if -this- is sexism, then how long until we're so PC and whiny that no one is ever judged on their merits?

Like every complex situation in life, things aren't slippery slopes, it's always you're-either-with-us-or-against-us...but I think the sincere frustration that both sides have on this is that there doesn't seem any perfect solution...OK, but there's still room to improve. And I've been someone who tends not to complain, but I've come to be more appreciative of those who do play the part of the squeaky wheel. Not everyone can wait for society to slowly evolve.

In terms of the OP, I think it's a good sincere effort to raise awareness. However, as this is a complex issue, I just think that mantras are of limited value and tend to polarize something that isn't helped by polarization. Also, too many colors.

elptacek4• 13 years ago

Very true. I had a choice to respond or rise above and ignore it. I chose to respond. Not to wave my own flag, but to squeak back. Again, it boils down to choice of words. Some words are inherently polarizing. Sister, you might want to check -- I think your fly might be open.

michaelochurch2• 13 years ago

I can't find a clear source for this quote, but it goes something like, "Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."

It's from the Buddha: "Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned."

wilkie4• 13 years ago

I disagree that this type of article is merely an attempt to introduce negative engagement. Highlighting the problem so that we have this discussion is always important.

You may "let it go," as you say. That's fine. However, why do you expect others to also let it go? The point of this post to me is that if we don't take action or responsibility, the daughters of today will grow to write these posts themselves someday. It won't change unless we are honest and we put forth the effort to understand the environment and circumstance that leads us to write these articles. And we have, what, one of these posts a month? Can we really ignore them... and keep ignoring them?

As a teacher, I admit that I don't share your ability to let others' circumstances not own any part of me. I do notice how these issues affect the women who chose to take my intro to programming course, or affect the lack, as it were. You just have to be active and look and ask for their experiences. When they come into office hours and ask questions they could have asked in class; I ask them why they didn't and more than one has answered "because I am shy."

Could they all be shy? That's certainly an explanation. I could look the other way from then on and comment how odd it is that women are so shy. Can I rely on this being a biological answer? Are women, as opposed to men, then just not interested in tech? Can I be satisfied? Maybe most are good stopping right there. But the anecdote alone fails to placate my understanding. And yet, if I look, I find evidence of something... more... problematic.

So, studies were done. Are women worse than men at math keeping them out of tech? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080724192258.ht... No. Are they less interested? Well, Sapna Cheryan's study of the stereotype threat in computer science is profound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYwI-qM20x4 So, their interest is very likely to be prejudiced. So, it seems the correlation is weak. Is there a systemic bias that goes against women? http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract Apparently, yes. And I have a handful more that show this. Which is why I anonymize the homework I grade and why conference/journal review should be blind (http://blog.davewilkinsonii.com/posts/conference_diversity).

Attempting to explain the drop in participation of women since the 80s is very necessary. The fact that 13% of undergraduate CS degrees earned by women in 2010 (http://www.cra.org/resources/taulbee) is an increase is both terrible and a tad optimistic. Yet, before we get excited and say the problem is solved, here's the entire graph: http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/spring07a.pdf In 2011, 57% of the entire workforce are women, 25% of computing workforce are women, around 9% of programmers are women. (http://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/legacy/pdf/BytheNum..., http://archive.aneventapart.com/alasurvey2011/01.html) So, we should be paying more attention, there is something wrong, and writing like the original post is part of that discussion and valuable.

Also, please don't tell your kids that they should "ignore them and they will go away." That's not how you deal with bullies... that's how you become invisible.

elptacek4• 13 years ago

Specifically, what I tell them is, "Would you give this person a $20 bill? Then don't give them anything more valuable, either." Note that I never once stated my opinion that there are or are not enough women|minorities|gays in technology. If you think that was my point, then my words flew past my meaning and landed in your begonias (this being my Greek tutor's euphemism for that thing that sometimes happens in translations). The original article is horribly polarizing and, I think, creates a hostile environment for the rest of us who aren't dressed for battle.

We have two children. The eldest is male, the youngest is female. It is either the case that the teachers complain more about my daughter's stubbornness than my son's or that I bridle more at it. Either way, it does appear to me that she is being made to feel more shame for her innate mettle than my son ever has. Not all of the bullies she deals with are peers; some of them are teachers, school staff and other adults. As we all well know, a certain amount of subtlety is required in handling bullies in positions of authority. Often in the very least subtle way of "sit down and shut up and obey" -- effecting the least dire consequence, given the circumstance. I, too, have read studies that show women become more "shy" as they advance through secondary school, as a consequence of social pressure. Less of that pressure comes from peers than from adults.

Reducing what I was trying to express to "ignore them and they will go away" has put the ball in the bleachers. Casting what I said into that ends the play. Nope. Very specifically, I'm trying to teach them the art of assessing the situation and deciding if there is any value at all in engaging versus walking away. But before I can do that, I have to teach them how to walk away, because their natural inclination seems to be to engage.

My kids are growing up in a bubble that I did not grow up in. There's something about this bubble that slaps erroneous labels on problems. Some of the problems aren't even problems. This is where emily37's observation resonates: it's sabotage. We can't go through life saying, "I'm not welcome here because of attributes that are beyond my control."

ultramundane8• 13 years ago

I'd be a little worried about introducing the term "sausage party" to my eight year old anything who clearly has a working knowledge of electronics. It seems like it'd be a very dangerous thing to search.

michaelochurch2• 13 years ago

Plenty of these problems are garden-variety nastiness that men face as well. I'll take this one, which doesn't strike me as gendered:

I hope that your initial interactions involve an immediate transfer of trust in your abilities, rather than starting off by always having to prove yourself.

That's not gender-specific. It's an outgrowth of the fact that there are a lot of arrogant, narcissistic assholes in our industry who automatically assume superiority over other people. It's annoying to deal with someone who thinks he could do your job, better than you, in half the time... but men deal with those shitheads as well. They get on everyone's nerves. It's not gendered.

That said, I think the rarity of women in the software industry is symptomatic of an unhealthy environment. For a variety of reasons, women tend to be less tolerant of bullshit in order to protect an ego.

I would like to see more women in technology, but I don't think the major battle, at this point, is dirty jokes or overt sexism. The guy who calls a woman a bitch because she won't get him coffee gets reprimanded and possibly fired (and he should, because that's just unacceptable). The current-day battle is the generally unhealthy environment of long hours, backstabbing, and low autonomy for the people actually doing the work... and all of those issues are genderless.

You do, for example, need a "thick skin" to survive in the software industry-- regardless of gender. You'll be called an idiot by a manager whose IQ is the square root of yours, over a mistake made at the end of a 12-hour day. You'll get rejected for jobs because you couldn't explain how to sort a doubly-linked list in a 30-minute phone interview. You'll have to debug code that throws a profanity-laden exception name disparaging a colleague of yours (or possibly you). When you take a set of very smart but mostly socially retarded people (engineers) and make them answer to less smart but devious and nasty people (executives) this is the culture you get. Male or female, none of this stuff is easy to deal with, and no one should have to deal with it at all... but, right now, it's the price of admission.

Gender is one weapon that people use in overall corporate nastiness, but one of the less potent ones by this point. It's not only focused toward women, for that matter. I've seen men get hit hard with gender-specific smears as well.

What keeps working in technology worth all the nonsense is the possibility for change. Change is what we do, and most engineers (male and female) are good people. We dislike cultures of authority and abuse. Left to our own devices (rather than put into a pissing contest by executives) we will almost always try for positive-sum, inclusive outcomes. Besides, programming itself is pretty neat.

of3• 13 years ago

Even if the problem isn't gendered, like the one you pointed out, it becomes gendered when encountered by a woman because of male privilege.

commanda• 13 years ago

"I hope that skill will always be held in higher esteem than your gender - if you had no skill, you would not be part of the discussion, and your gender is simply a modifier."

This is the point that really rang true for me. I guess I will never know if people praise my ability because they're surprised that a woman's code can be so good, or if my code is truly good. I would love to be confident in the fact that I'm highly regarded and asked to speak at conferences because of my skill and not because I can be the token woman.

papsosouid5• 13 years ago

>"I hope that your initial interactions involve an immediate transfer of trust in your abilities, rather than starting off by always having to prove yourself."

I suspect her experiencing this has more to do with being a web developer than being a women. Web development has always been regarded as trivial work, and not "real programming". And unfortunately a huge number of web developers have embraced that idea and decided "we ain't need no fancy book learnin". It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming anyone who says they are a web developer is probably incompetent.

To a Future Woman In Tech

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