Comment by bbulkow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bbulkow | Hacker News Reader

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I think you're missing the point of the discussion. When you have women who are excluded and hit on and passed over simply because they are women, they come up with all kinds of solutions, including raising awareness that there are great women who are WOMEN and you should listen to "women in tech".

The stage of creating women-only and women-focused groups ( and buying into the diminutive labeling the original author hates ), is what happens after you have a bunch of really, really, really shitty interactions.

Thus, I think it is likely the author simply hasn't had the kind of really poor interactions & groping & whatnot, and she doesn't mention it in her post.

I am passionate about this because my significant other is a woman, and she's in tech. I know plenty of other women in technology. Most of them aren't deeply involved in "women-in-tech" and prefer a low-key evangelizing of the great women that have been in tech, combined with fleeing from companies that employ ... jerks ... who harass and ignore.

I was very happy that, in my startup under my leadership, we had a 50% male-female ratio. Subsequently, as CTO without much staff, that ratio has steadily decreased, and we are now down to 0% women in engineering. While that can be sampling error ( we don't have a 1000 member engineering staff ), it does give me pause.

The women technologists I know don't specifically slag the "women-in-tech" movement as the author did, I suspect because they do realize the magnitude of the problem is great enough that multiple points of pressure are required. Simply being great isn't enough, and the problem is getting worse not better - but there are likely other reasons.

Is there any evidence that these movements actually get any results? To me it just seems like tokenism.

Depends how you define results. As a "woman in tech," I don't actively participate in these movements that much, but I certainly benefit from the extra visibility they give to women who are succeeding in this industry. I often think one of the biggest hurdles is finding relatable role models that can serve as a template for your own success and career path. When I first started out, there were a couple of obvious examples, but it was hard for me to picture what a female 'leader' should look like, aside from the old stereotype of a ball-busting corporate woman who acts like a man. That has meaningfully changed in the last few years. I now know -- and see -- a lot more examples of women who I can relate to, who are finding lots of success in this field. I realize this is anecdotal but in terms of my own career development, it feels significant. I tend to think it will benefit other women as well, and perhaps serve to normalize the idea of women succeeding in what was traditionally a male-dominated field, thereby attracting more young women to the field.

That said, I definitely recoil at the idea of being selected for any role or being treated differently simply because I'm female, since I would put my own abilities up against my male peers without hesitation. Special treatment feels condescending.

Did you even try looking before asking this? I can think of a bunch in just the couple months, mainly in regards to Uber and other SV companies taking concrete steps to fix their culture.

Doubling down on sexual harassment and other abhorrent behavior is very different from having stuff like women-in-tech awards and women only tech meetups.

Also we have more initiatives than ever trying to get women into tech yet the numbers are at an all time low, shouldn't we admit that we need to change our approach?

Men-only clubs were broadly a problem because (at the time they were prevalent) men and their clubs held a significant portion of the money and power in society. Exclusion was an extreme sanction.

Why do women-only tech events bother you? Do you think women are meeting up to exert power over you?

They don't bother me, it is just that I think they might hurt women more than they help. If they helped we should have seen it in the statistics a long time ago. Instead I think that they just redistribute the women who already are in tech to different schools/companies.

You could say that doing something is better than doing nothing even if it is worthless, but I don't agree. Celebrating tokenism just means that companies will pat themselves on their backs for implement these token measures and then forget about their diversity problem.

> They don't bother me, it is just that I think they might hurt women more than they help.

Perhaps you can see why being told by you (presumably a man) that they shouldn't do the thing that they want to do because you know what's best for them might not go down well? Be my guest :)

You'll find that people make choices for reasons other than industry statistics. Many people feel more comfortable at those events because mainstream events can have conduct issues and bias issues.

Of course exclusive events are far from an ideal, but labelling them as "worthless" misunderstands why people do them.

Some men

The gender war has nothing compared to the class war. A rich black girl has more privilege than a white trailer park boy.

Huge difference in network and in knowledge of what is available for education and financial investment.

And guess what part of the working world has given the most opportunities to get out of the gutter the last 3 decades? Tech. So when trust-fund people start complaining on behalf of women, it can feel like class warfare.

They bother me on a fundamental fairness level. It you change the pronouns and suddenly its unacceptable to you, then clearly it is also unacceptable as is.

For example, if mens only clubs and events are wrong, then so too are women only events.

How do other issues bother you on a "fundamental fairness level"? Such as the incidents of workplace harassment in STEM fields that have been coming out in the last year? Or income inequality / options available to people by class they were born in?

I notice a lot of people saying what you're saying, that safe spaces or clubs for certain types of people are the "reverse" of whatever ___ism they're trying to address.

Certainly you realize there are systemic issues that are causing much greater offenses to the idea of "fundamental fairness" yet you seem to concentrate specifically on minor conceptual issues with the methods of the people trying to address it. That's pretty telling.

Don't put words into my mouth.

Fundamental fairness is that we should treat each other equally. I think we should treat each other equally, regardless of skin colour, religion, or gender. I abhor sexual harassment and believe that people should get equal pay for equal work.

I also think like the author of this blog post that splitting people into smaller tribes creates an us vs them environment and makes everyone worse off.

I didn't focus on this 'one aspect' the person above asked how people thought about it and I responded why I didn't like those things.

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