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Comment by blablablame | Hacker News Reader

Not in Oakland or a woman (but a swift developer, 1 out of 3 ;)) but if she is learning to code, and wants to chat with other people, won't it be ok for her to just join regular swift groups? (I know there are a few around that general area).

Again, man here, so don't want you to take this the wrong way (might be because my wife actually gets along better with men then women) but won't limiting the meetup to a gender limit the talk and experience options you might get if you host this meetup?

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Interesting.

I assumed that this

> chatting with other women about coding in Swift.

meant that it wasn't just a matter of learning Swift (I honestly don't know why anyone would learn a language via a meetup rather than using one of the many great resources online ) but developing relationships with women who share her interest.

A related concern could be that it's often difficult to talk about the side projects you're engaging in if they're focused on more stereotypically female concerns when men are about. The vast majority of time when I discuss my side projects, guys are downright rude about them because their target market isn't male and that often marks the idea as silly or insipid to a fair amount of people right out of the gate.

Add in that it's the rare guy who can interact with women without treating them differently which for many women automatically makes them ACT differently (for me, I go into a social, people pleasing mode) and I can see why limiting the group might be beneficial.

Limiting the gender is probably expressly intended to limit the talk in a particular way as one of its central motivations. (It may limit it in other ways as a side effect, which may either be something the organizers haven't considered or a price they are willing to pay.)

I sorta kinda understand that, but where I live (southern europe) I always had different experiences. As soon as any talk/workshop/whatever is 'segregated', there is a lot more gender issues talked than when it is mixed. Over the top example, but as as soon as men (even in professional settings) gather only as men, sex related bits show up in talks/etc, and when it is a group of women (according to my wife) it usually degenerates into a feelings kinda talk over objective talks. When it is mixed, I never felt there were objectifying of women or female speakers focused to much on 'womens topics'

(and sorry if I seem insensitive, and I'm sure there are women (and men, and gays, and blacks, etc) that have been victimized, but for the last few years, I've found that the 'segregated' events end up being more and vile than the mixed ones)

I don't understand this. I'm a ham and there are a lot of women who are in the hobby (although there isn't a large participation from this group) and I'd say that most hams don't give a crap about talking about anything other then radio-related topics. It's a side effect of truly loving what you're working on. If you're finding people showing up to meetups just to hook up with women then they're not really in love with the topic, they are in love with the crowed.

Removing men doesn't fix this problem as there will still be women coming to the even who don't love the topic but again love the crowd.

I'd say just keep the technical discussion at levels that exclude those who don't care about the topic. Those who are actually really interested will stick around and ask questions, those who are there for an image or for hooking up wont be bothered.

Works great in the ham communities (speaking from a just learning perspective). I usually only understand 10-30% of what all the gray haired individuals around me are talking about, but whenever I ask a question I always get a great answer and explanation. People who don't care to ask and just care to show up and look cool don't last too long. It's basically them opting in to sit in on a Fields lecture.

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