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Comment by mortice | Hacker News Reader

I'm not too impressed with this article. If we replaced women in this article with any other underrepresented group in the software business and asked that group to conform to a stereotype to get ahead, it would be considered offensive and rightly so.

Dave Thomas's keynote from Rubyconf comes to mind. http://confreaks.net/videos/368-rubyconf2010-keynote

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Did you not like the post or the research in the article it's linking? The article is a link-bait with a title that tries to grab attention. This is typical, even The Economist does it.

However, I find the basic idea that "women may be perceived as competent but unlikable or as likable but incompetent" in the workplace to be completely true. This idea does not carry over to other underrepresented groups, I think. For example, would you say there is a similar double whammy for black people?

I'm objecting to the article rather than the research, and I agree that the 'double-bind' described does ring true. What I'm objecting to is the conclusion that women should conform to a stereotype in order to be accepted in the workplace.

I'm not saying that the situation is the same for every underrepresented group; I'm saying that if the article were to advise any other underrepresented group in a similar way it would be denounced as discriminatory.

EDIT: I have no idea why parent is being downvoted. He/she raises valid questions.

I'm OK with comment up/downvoting to reflect agreement. What I find immature is to downvote without raising a counterpoint. Look at the first comment for this post, it just labels the post as "shitty" without telling why. Same hasty approach.

As a black person (and a woman, ha!), I can say there is a similar double whammy for us. In addition to the competence double whammy, there's the one about being too assertive (for women)--the infamous "angry black woman."

I agree about the "angry black woman" prototype, it was leveled against Michelle Obama, too, among others.

My point was that I think the issues with women in technical workplace are somewhat different from those relating to minorities. You, of course are getting hit by both!

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