Hacker News Reader

Comment by janiceng | Hacker News Reader

Being manterrupt, men repeat your ideas that you just mentioned, men don't look at you during the meeting because they want to listen to your male coworkers more.

If you are interested, you can learn more here: https://leanin.org/podcast-episodes/what-its-like-to-be-the-...

View on HN

Have you considered that the same is happening to everyone? It's just what people that want to be perceived as in power do. It is very normal in any other company outside of IT/engineering (I worked in a building materials company), regardless of gender. I've seen women do it to men, men do it to men, men and women do it to children, etc.

> men don't look at you

More often than not they don't want to be "seen checking you out" (either because of fear of your reaction, or because of their SO's reaction). And many male engineers are simply shy with women.

You are basically saying "All lives matter." I agree that it happen to everyone. But we are talking about common sexist experience that women encounter. Please bring your attention back to "Me too", "Black lives matter" and the problem that I am mentioning above that mostly specially happen to women in tech. That's how you can become a good ally.

I am not saying that "all lives matter" exactly, I fully believe it's not neccessary to say to you, and if I agreed with you on the causality, I wouldn't be saying anything. I wanted to point out that the perceived reason (gender) might not be the actual cause, as I have a lot of experience with women doing it to other women and men (as I worked outside of IT, in a field where women leaders and women contributors are common). IMHO the actual cause is toxic culture - this stuff is even mentioned in stuff like "unethical life tips" as what to do if you want to be seen as expert, and many people do it unconsciously - not based on gender. I don't see any evidence that sexism causes it in IT - I think it's just toxic perception of what to do as managers/toxic habits that people have. I suspect that our way of educating children in a very restrictive environment is the root cause.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2017/03/24/kim...

https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/22/technology/sexism-tech-pipe...

You can google more about sexism in tech, and how many women get sexual harassed at work. I agree with you about toxic culture. And usually people in power (usually male) in organization influence culture.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com