Ask HN: Women of HN, tell us about yourself and your journey in tech so far? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Women of HN, tell us about yourself and your journey in tech so far?

43 pointsshradha40815 comments

I almost never come across women on HN in the comments section or anywhere else. I am interested in knowing about women in tech and their journey, stories and challenges.

Feel free to share anything you like.

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Is this thread like Stephen Hawkings party for time travellers? :)

Serious question though, how do you know when you come across women in the HN comments?

you don't, but when unspecified with "as a woman.." I'm guessing people in the tech community are generally just assumed to be men since that's the majority

As a woman...

we have a secret: a lot of us also choose to "hide" behind gender-neutral usernames. It's a thing that makes life easier on the internet.

I agree! Although I have my real first name in my user name, no one will know if I am a women as this is an Indian name and most of the world doesn't know if it's a male or a female name.

I always suspected so :) Really hope that some day it won't be necessary anymore.

Well shit. As a man, I have to admit that I do this more than I'd like to admit. My assumption still tends to be that a comment is by a man. I'm not sure if that's statistically likely to be true, but I have to admit that I do.

EDIT: and that's coming from someone who is actively trying to be more sensitive in these matters.

> Serious question though, how do you know when you come across women in the HN comments?

We're all suspecting that the real answer is that OP has always assumed everyone here who comments is a guy and women just read and don't comment.

I know because of the user names. They are either male or gender neutral.

There's a game called Valhalla, in which there is a fictional version of the internet where everyone online is assumed to be female and where women didn't have to hide their gender in online communities to avoid biases. The game's take on internet culture feels absurdist, but the satire really hits home when you see threads like this that highlights how invisible women are in our IRL internet culture.

In an ideal world, women don't have to call out their gender in comments (as another user suggests). Instead, we shouldn't assume all posters are male by default.

I always find myself assuming the person writing the comment I'm reading to be a middle-aged white male, and I feel dumb and ashamed when I realize that's not it. FWIW I'm a white male living in a western country so I'm deeply privileged/prejudiced. It's good to have my biases put in check, but I wished I didn't have them in the first place.

Edit: typo it didn't->I didn't

> I'm a white male living in a western country so I'm deeply privileged/prejudiced.

so is everyone else anywhere in the world. I've lived in India and Brazil.

> I wished it didn't have them in the first place.

How is this even possible :|. insn't our brain a pattern matching machine.

This! This is why I asked this question. Most of the people have this assumption. It's important to feel the presence of female developers and techies on HN.

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