Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

And there is also the problem of women being paid less to do the same job.

To paint a picture that says the current landscape is "normal" is to overlook a lot of broken things.

Because those preferences are mostly the result of sexism.

In 1970, there was no law against women being doctors or lawyers in 1970, yet less than 15% of graduates in those professions were women. Many people said the exact same thing you're saying now: oh, these are just natural preferences and aptitudes. Yet today, women make up 50% of graduates in those professions? Did something change in their genetics? Or did those professions just become less sexist?

What the heck explains 50% of accounting graduates being women, but less than 20% of CS graduates? Some weirdly specific gene?

Don't the petroleum engineers make more money than the average biologist?

It just plays out in ways that you don't expect. Hiring mostly grads from top schools is exactly that.

In my circle are a lot of junior and fresh out of school developers and one guy I know who killed it in his interview was ultimately not hired and told it was because he didn't "look like a developer". He dressed in normal business casual attire. Another friend of mine who is a significantly worse developer interviewed (and struggled through his interview) for the same job and ultimately was hired because he fit in with their hoodie-wearing, ping-pong-playing frat-bro, drink every day at 4pm culture.

There's a fine line between "culture fit" and "cultural homogeny". Fortunately I know that hiring a diverse team is the best way to cultivate a strong team.

When you're approving of driving innocent people out of work because of their chromosomal makeup, maybe you need to step back and reconsider your principles.

I don't have more time to figure out the guy's name but his HN username is mr-hank: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681

"What should have been the best week of Matt Taylor's (Rosetta project scientist) professional life ended with him weeping on TV as he apologized for his alleged crime."

More at:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-goldberg-rosetta-...

A key insight I also saw in a study about gender equality in the teaching profession (done by the Swedish institute for higher education). If you are a male student entering a profession with 80% women, you are naturally going to doubt and question that decision. If you pass that first wave of doubt, you get hit by a second wave as soon the first road bump hits (like a failed exam). Male students (studying to be a teacher) are much more likely to ask: "Should I be doing this?" compared to female students in the same class. Then third wave hits when the person is entering the working profession and has to work in a culture that has integrated gender identity.

The big question should be how we can fix this problem in a general way. Based on Swedish statistics, only about 10% of women and men work in a profession with equal gender distribution, and about similar number for people who work in a profession with a dominated gender of opposite gender. About 80% of the work force, both women and men, work in a profession where their gender is the dominating gender. The trend from the last 30 years has been steadily in the wrong direction, with more gender separation in the work force.

So why has this happened in the veterinary sciences, but not tech? One answer could be that somehow male computer scientists turn out to be horribly sexist compared to male vets. A more plausible explanation could be that with meaningful swathes of societal gender discrimination against women removed they are perfectly capable of moving into and dominating a technical field when that chimes with some aspect of female nature. In the case of veterinary science that synergy would come from the female predilection towards caring and nurturing. I'm not saying every woman cares about things like that, but on average more do than men. The male predilection towards abstract and systematic thinking could in my opinion go a long way to explain their over-representation in the tech industry. I think those are uncontroversial statements, although sadly after 30 years of sub-standard echo chamber research in the social sciences that may not be a popularly held opinion.

The benefit of this way of looking at things is that it doesn't paint women as somehow deficient and needing of special treatment. Rather than bombarding them with negative messaging it recognises that women are perfectly capable of reaching out and taking what they want from society. A more empowering feminist message, no? And indeed neither does it paint an entire industry as systematically sexist - which sounds to me like the sort of oversimplification you take objection to? But there's big social media capital and real world rewards propagating sexism in tech memes.

> We know that women make less than men in most environments ...

> ... it needs to also be the case that women are making equal pay

I'm not sure it's fair to start these sorts of statements with "We know that..." - the most charitable depiction would be to characterise such statements as debatable. In the UK women under 30 now earn more than similarly aged men, in other words they have reversed the pay gap for that age group [2]. Again this suggests to me that until biological imperatives take hold women are more than capable of competing with men in the workplace. What happens post 30 is down to life choices. As a whole women are more likely to value family life and make life choices based on that, whereas men are more likely to devote their energies to their careers. It's not a zero sum game, there are sacrifices on both sides there. And again, that doesn't hold true for every woman and every man, but to claim entrenched massive systematic discrimination seems to me at best tenuous.

[1] https://www.avma.org/News/JAVMANews/Pages/100215g.aspx

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/29/women-in-20s-e...

From what I've gathered from being around different women and talking to them, I think all this talk about being "disadvantaged" is missing the real root causes. They actually are disadvantaged, but the problem isn't the workforce, fellow college students, etc., nearly as much as it is their own upbringing, and their very own parents.

If you really want to fix the problem with women in tech, you need to take all female children away from their parents and raise them in state-run facilities where they're taught that they actually can do math and play with toys that aren't dolls and pursue careers in these fields. Somehow, I doubt this suggestion will be seriously considered....

In short, our very own culture is to blame here. That's not something that's easy to change, because now you're advocating having the state usurp the power of the parents to parent their children.

This is preposterous. The field of law was exclusively male not long ago, and is around parity now. Same with medicine. You think the first women in law school and med school were welcomed and supported? Do you think female doctors and lawyers a generation ago encountered less sexism than women in tech today?

Furthermore the REASON why I pointed out that it is a spectrum is that it isn't all or nothing. If you're truly stuck feeling like a victim a lot of the time and can't change it, you're still better off than you would be otherwise. Better off does not mean well off - discrimination is real. It just means better.

However experience suggests that you are likely to wind up around people who are quick to explain all failures as discrimination. Because they do this for themselves, they are unlikely to be successful. If you adopt this attitude, your odds of success are also hurt.

But that isn't a reason to deny people help, deny people the chance to say "hey, look I'm feeling really alone right now". I wouldn't be as "tough" as I am now if it weren't for a few people who gave me a hand when I truly needed it. I wouldn't be where I am without reading a ton of blogposts by other marginalized people who feel the same way as I did.

There are, no doubt, people who like to wallow in their insecurities, but they aren't any worse than the people who say the marginalized should just suck it up and work harder, or that people who feel marginalized should shut up.

The phrase, "To the extent that you can..." was meant to convey the fact that the perfect ideal is not feasible. I also tried to make it clear that the attempt is worthwhile because even if your best is only an occasional success, you'll still wind up better off than you would otherwise.

On the question of toxic organizations, I'd like to point out that recognizing that the organization is toxic and choosing to be elsewhere was under your control. I commend you for making that choice. There will always be toxic people and toxic organizations. Some, like the police, we have little choice about dealing with. But there is no need to put up with ones that we can avoid. And by avoiding them, we make our lives better.

If you have a minority that has every disadvantage but believes that they CAN succeed by their own effort, that minority will succeed and it will reduce bigotry against them. Indeed the history of the USA supports this - we have had wave after wave of disadvantaged immigrants. They have nothing, have trouble with the language, and are widely discriminated against. But a generation or two later you have seen Italians, Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian Jews, Afghans, and many other minorities integrate into the mainstream and do well.

But get a victim culture established in a minority, and things won't improve for them. They are unlikely to actually face more discrimination than, say, Cambodians did when they arrived here penniless and not speaking the language about 40 years ago. But they will have a worse future.

Look at it a different way. If you're from a disadvantaged minority, you've likely got a strike against you for having a bad background, and another for current discrimination. Add a victim mentality, and you're out. It doesn't matter how good the evidence is that you're an actual victim, it is the mentality that you can't afford.

We all have such realities, and typically few if any other people realise what's going on. Just be kind. To everyone (note to self: be better at this).

It's not specific to any particular group (though: apparently short men have it quite a bit worse than other "protected" groups: http://www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/height_discrimi... )

With regards to having the right to fire people you've previously hired, I think that's justified. In places like Italy, where they make it hard to fire someone once hired, youth unemployment is abnormally high, because it's quite natural to shy away from entering into a contract you can't get out of.

The fundamental problem is believing every thought that pops into your mind. We do that when we're not conscious of thought. Whether a compulsive thought concerns "internal characteristics of a person" or "external factors of a situation" is not relevant.

Allowing people to be sexist jerks (let's not dress it up as "boorish") doesn't just let them "embarrass" themselves, it creates an effect within a subculture that gives that activity preferential status because few people want to use their limited public credibility to counteract it--thereby over time letting sexist behavior become the expected norm of that subculture. That's not OK, and speaking up directly confronts the issue and prevents it from becoming a social norm, or becoming further entrenched because we live in a profoundly sexist society to begin with, in that subculture.

You are debating my counterpoint as I can see this issue from the perspectives of other people

As a guy who does this, and is out and proud about it to his other male friends I have to say the reaction I get has been only positive. Then again I'm also the one you call to help move or fix something with a soldering iron or a power tool.

A sewing machine is a dangerous power tool and not to be approached in a casual way.

Sewing is a lot more forgiving than wood assuming your working with fabric. It is a lot less forgiving if your working with plastics or leather (holes are forever).

Even if people do believe you, you're heaped with shame. Who wants to make an "international headline" out of something so painful and personal?

Raise your hand if you're a man and you've been sexually harassed at work!

raises hand

I worked somewhere where I was the only man and was constantly harassed and my work belittled by my bosses and coworkers. I was outperforming my coworkers but put under extra scrutiny and was groped by my colleagues on several occasions.

At another job where I was in a minority of males, my coworkers were excessively flirtatious to the detriment of my performance at work.

I worked somewhere else where my male boss made me stay several hours late to help him with his work while he would praise me while trying to rub my leg and tell me how good looking I was.

Heck, I've worked at other places where because I wasn't macho enough for the rest of my coworkers, I was called a pussy and my sexual orientation was called into question constantly and they thought it was an okay running gag. That's sexual harassment too!

I'm sorry but sexual harassment at work isn't a gender-exclusive thing. Not by a long shot.

Aside: I'm kind of glad that I got fat and this all stopped happening. I'm somewhat more inclined to think that this is something that happens pretty universally to any reasonably-attractive people. I see these same things playing out with good-looking male coworkers constantly. I'm also totally ashamed of myself for letting these happen because I'm generally a very passive person. My choice in my personality and demeanor allowed other people to hurt me.

In your example, the accused was found guilty and sentenced. The victim was not fired from her job, nor her identity revealed. Also, the accused was not found guilty of rape nor battery, as you allude to. Read your own link:

"Turner was a student athlete at Stanford University on January 18, 2015, when he sexually penetrated an intoxicated and unconscious 22-year-old[1][2][3] woman (later called "Emily Doe"[4]) with his fingers. [...]

He was arraigned on February 2, 2015, pleading not guilty on all five charges.[13] On October 7, 2015, after reviewing the results of DNA tests, the two rape charges were dropped by prosecutors.[7][12][14][15] The trial began on March 14, 2016,[16] and concluded on March 30, 2016, with Turner's conviction on the three remaining charges of felony sexual assault.[17][18] The convictions carried a potential sentence of 14 years in prison. Prosecutors recommended six years in prison while probation officials recommended a "moderate" county jail sentence.[19] On June 2, 2016, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Turner to six months confinement in the Santa Clara County jail to be followed by three years of probation. He must also register as a sex offender for the rest of his life[20] and participate in a sex offender rehabilitation program.[18]"

It seems there are some members of HN who really want to return to the days of witch burnings and mob rule, where an accusation of guilt is immediately acted upon and the accused is executed for the alleged crimes.

Interesting times indeed...

http://www.aauw.org/files/2016/02/Fig-5_spring-2016.jpg

The median salary of younger women, ages 16-34, is 90-92% that of their male peers, a smaller but still significant gap compared to the median salary of older women, ages 35 and up, which is between 76% and 81% that of their male peers.

My assertion is that everyone is a mixture, which is true. People exist on a continuum of race without discrete borders[2].

1. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-c...

2. http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html

If your test can accurately group "Hispanics" which no-one actually claims is a race, then it doesn't prove that any other grouping it finds is a "race", however that is defined.