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I'm not a woman, but I imagine that when you're a woman in a male dominated community it can create a lot of anxiety to participate in the community because women are often harassed or dismissed because of their gender or appearance. The harassers are almost always a small minority, but it only takes one persistent asshole to ruin your day and discourage you from participating. From what I can tell, the goal of this community is just to offer women a place to feel comfortable without being denigrated or receiving harassing or suggestive PMs.

In that case wouldn't it be a better solution to aggressively remove those who harass others about personal things rather than the topic at hand instead of making a site where women specifically are treated as a special/protected class?

Well, I imagine the site was created in-part to afford the creators the freedom to moderate with respect to those goals, there's not really much they can do about the moderation strategies of sites they do not control. Regardless of an individual or community, people are often told "if you don't like it, go create your own community" and so this is what they did. At the end of the day, it's a win-win for everyone; those who may not appreciate a gender-sensitive moderation strategy will get to stay in the communities they enjoy, while those seeking a different approach now have an additional option.

> I'm not a woman, but I imagine

One of the biggest problems with male dominated communities is men imagining what women would say instead of just listening to the women in the community. I'd be interested in hearing responses to parent from actual women.

I don't agree that trying to imagine how women might feel is a problem.

I believe that's called empathy. Otherwise known as "walking a mile in someone else's shoes" and considered a healthy practice in society that might have prevent such systemic problems from developing in the first place.

The rules here are that you respond to the strongest interpretation of what somebody said, not the weakest.

Trying to imagine how women might feel isn't a problem. Posting about what you imagine woman might feel to the extent that it crowds out actual women saying how they feel (e.g. being the top response) is a problem.

> The rules here are that you respond to the strongest interpretation of what somebody said, not the weakest.

Doctor, heal thyself.

> Posting about what you imagine woman might feel to the extent that it crowds out actual women saying how they feel (e.g. being the top response) is a problem.

I don't control where my response sits, so it sounds like you're saying the problem is that I decided to speak at all. I am having a hard time reading the comment any other way than "don't express opinions about how you imagine a woman might feel".

I understand the first reaction of anyone that is excluded (in this case men are actually not excluded) from a group, it feels bad and maybe unfair. But the sad reality in most countries is, that women are treated differently especially in tech. As long as this is the case, we need communities like WomenMake to support and learn from each other. You might know from other examples that it feels good to talk to someone who had to go trough similar stuff as you did, struggles with the same issues. For me, that's why such a platform is useful.

Thanks, thats a great insight!

> That said, is building a community where one class of gender is prioritized over another healthy? How is it better than a MenMake?

The theory is that providing encouragement specifically to women will help women "get their foot in the door".

It's a perfectly plausible theory and it seems to have worked in medicine and law. Will it work in tech? Time will tell -- but you can't blame people for trying.

From the about page:

This community is open, meaning everyone can join (even men), as long as people joining are here to empower women. We believe a change is only possible together.

Yes, I read that, that's why I said: "prioritized".

> is building a community where one class of gender is prioritized over another healthy?

Would you have an issue with a community for people under 5 foot tall, which prioritises their needs and experiences and the unique challenges they face in society and the workplace? If not, why is this different?

This is wonderful

There's an idea that shows itself in many situations that goes like this: I will make some (small, well-intended, etc) change in system X, and none of the other people involved will make any changes as a reaction. In general, this is not true--often people will react, often subtly or sub-rosa.

I've worked for and with a large number of successful women in my career. They all had an attitude of "my being a woman is not a thing and there's no reason at all to take note of it".

>That said, is building a community where one class of gender is prioritized over another healthy?

The issue is that society already prioritizes one gender over another. A community which prioritizes one gender over another is merely attempting to tip the already unbalanced scales of society towards equality.

The reason here is to use a rough filter to ensure women, already discouraged from an ongoing media narrative, don't get discouraged again during their first couple of events by random coder-bros or even "are you here with your boyfriend".

Even the anxiety of knowing someone can decide to show up to use you as target practice for "taking these females down a peg" has been enough that I've watched friends decide to not go to events.

And damn straight, that guy will show up in events if the event runners aren't actively trying to filter bad actors out of the community. From my own experiences running a Meet-up, that guy always shows up, always offers to help the event runners, and immediately uses their status as a blunt object on people they deem unworthy.

It's not perfect, and I look forward to community-standards getting better for organizations so these enclaves are unnecessary. (If anyone has a good way to handle community complaints that have worked under strain, please for the love of the gods PM me. An Ombudsman office is the best I've found, but it tends to have a lot of burnout.)

Right now, we're in the Trump era. The individual health of the members is more important than trying to reach out and make a larger, healthier organization. It's a bad trade off, but there isn't a good, scalable solution yet.

(Adding, am a woman, ran a gaming Meetup.)

+1, totally agree. Our mixed-gender Meetup co-organizer team, after serious deliberation, filtered out such a bad actor once. It became a better Meetup for all.

I understand your sentiment, but from my perspective, I see you saying that because some awful men show up, we must discourage, or deprioritize the participation of all men. I also understand filtering for "bad actors", but then shouldn't your efforts be directed towards filtering those bad actors instead?

As an example of broad gender-based filtering, malls and movie theatres in my country have reserved days that they call "family days". They're essentially days when men, unaccompanied by females, are barred from entry. It's sexist, technically Unconstitutional, and plainly unethical, but on those days, single male parents can't go to the mall alone and male-only friends can't go watch a movie or have to settle for tickets in the male-only section (yes, it's a thing).

In their quest to filter out "bad actors", businesses have filtered out almost all men. As I said before: "I find these to be well-meaning but ultimately sexist policies making it okay to treat people differently based on gender"

There are many communities that are effectively Men*. What percentage of e.g. HN users do you suppose are male?

> What percentage of e.g. HN users do you suppose are male?

I genuinely have no idea, but that's not a great test for MenWork-like community. The community would have to explicitly encourage Men's participation over Women's. The idea of such a community is abhorrent to me.

On the surface your thought might seem valid, but it is not.

The reason a community like WomenMake is valid and important while something like MenMake is not, is because women have and still do face systemic discrimination in society, and in the workplace (and especially tech workplaces). You referenced this yourself (Global Gender Gap Index) so I assume you’d agree with that.

So women have a much harder time breaking into and progressing in the tech community, either systemically or even more explicitly through direct discrimination or abuse. WomenMake provides a valuable place for women to help each other through these issues that are specific to them, support each other in general and try to improve this imbalance. Men do not face these issues (although of course race, ethnicity etc are also issues, so many men face discrimination, but not because they are men, for other reasons).

Once women face no structural societal discrimination in the workplace, then something like MenMake and WomenMake might be equally valid, but until then you are not correct to make this comparison. (And at current rates this won’t be true for a very very long time).

I agree with this although I think you don't even need such strong claims to justify the existence of such a community. All you need is the simple fact that there are a lot less women in tech than men, and that men and women face different challenges or experiences in society. Given these two indisputable facts, it makes a lot of sense to have a space where women can feel welcome and have their needs prioritised.

To give an analogy, I think that a community aimed at people in tech less than 5 feet tall, which prioritises contributions from those people, is equally justified. A community for people over 5 feet tall just... doesn't make sense... it would seem like it was just making fun of or excluding short people.