Infantilization of women in tech, by women in tech | Hacker News Reader

Infantilization of women in tech, by women in tech

9 pointsseaknoll12 comments

Is anyone else bothered by the prevalence of infantilizing activities that are being labeled as pro-woman-in-tech activism?

I just received an invitation to something called FairyGodBoss, which had not crossed my radar but seems relatively well established.

I've also seen women's groups that are ostensibly about helping to increase gender diversity that host activities involving legos and arts & crafts.

Am I the only woman that finds this infantilization incredibly obnoxious? I have a visceral aversion to it.

Or maybe this isn't related to gender, but is a generational thing? As someone in their 30s am I just too old to "get it"?

It bothers me because I feel like it's an important issue that's being dumbed down. Or at least repelling people who would prefer to take it more seriously.

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Diversity and inclusion are really hard to do well. This is pretty much a chronic problem for this kind of stuff.

It's generally better to remove barriers and let people fill the gaps organically who desire to be there, but that tends to be slow, non-obvious and not very satisfying for SJW types who are often leading the way.

There can be exceptions, but it's just a challenging area.

I am not a woman and I have a visceral aversion to it too.

It seems infantilizing or at least as nudging you into a artificial naive mindset that is hard or in my opinion impossible to reconcile with common corporate culture. While it might often seem more "open", I don't really buy into it.

I actually think women were in a better place in male dominated spaces before "women in tech" was popularized by the press, which aside from very few exceptions has been a pretty bad ambassador, if one is even needed.

I doubt my company would ever force employees to attend anything. It is understood that it is the current thing to signal to keep the kids happy. Or in this case the press and people active on social media.

Aside from that there is an understanding to be reasonably accommodating regardless of gender, race or disability, but this is seen as completely distinct to what is discussed on the topic of women in tech.

We are constantly looking for engineers and women apply just like men.

Our advertising department, consisting entirely of women, actually got into trouble with the advertising standards authority (Germany) because an ad was allegedly sexist (it was a bit tongue in cheek, but nothing that could shock todays teenagers at all, it doesn't even reach average tv shows). They certainly get teased for that since it is understood that the renewed zeal of the ad authority tries to target men because they read about problems in the press.

You find legos and arts & crafts infantilizing? I would be all over that, but I'm a 24 year old man so maybe we can't compare so much.

It's definitely a bummer if you're only seeing these kinds of events, but I also think these should be welcomed and encouraged as well. These activities bring kids of all types together and get the creative juices flowing. Why should it not be so for adults? There is countless evidence of controlled experiments demonstrating improved mental health and social connection in participants through these activities.

I recently worked for an educational NGO in India that runs social and emotional learning sessions primarily for underprivileged children but also for many adult clients in industry and public education. Countless documented success stories around self-empowerment in the face of much adversity, including representational. The vehicle that has facilitated this growth? Activities just like this. It just has to be done right to avoid distraction. Passive engagement doesn't do anything. Of course, these sessions were complemented by focus groups and more direct discussion, but in no way was any of this dumbed down by the visual arts.

Have you attended any yet? If not, you might want to give it a chance. Your aversion may just be ignorance. Legos and arts & crafts are not just for kids.

> Of course, these sessions were complemented by focus groups and more direct discussion, but in no way was any of this dumbed down by the visual arts.

What's your basis for concluding that the visual arts component provided the benefit, rather than the focus groups and direct discussion?

I also think you're missing the whole point: your activities were for children, and for people who work with children. Why are we treating women like children?

If a non-gender-activist group wanted to host arts & crafts for mental health & community building, I have no problem with that.

I have attended a few and found that there was too much "staring at the problem". We'd start with an agenda and leave off without any action items.

So, if I don't like it why don't I try to change it? At the time I was just starting out and felt that being involved in these groups was not a good use of time as they were a) a distraction, and b) put me at risk of being taken less seriously by my colleagues. A few years later and I've found that I get a lot more satisfaction by having 1:1s or small group discussions with women on my team, who are changing careers, and the leadership in my current company, than I did in a group setting.

I could just live & let live, but the point of this post was to get a feeler out for whether other people feel the same way. Thanks for the data point! :)

> What's your basis for concluding that the visual arts component provided the benefit, rather than the focus groups and direct discussion?

These conclusions were based on semantic analysis of required feedback forms from program participants. Those with higher performance on program metrics tended to speak higher of these sessions and their importance to them. Otherwise there was nothing to determine causality. But it was sufficient for leadership to say that they were helpful.

> I also think you're missing the whole point: your activities were for children, and for people who work with children. Why are we treating women like children?

The tens of thousands of educators we put through our programs were primarily women ages 30 - 55. But as I said, we also ran workshops for male-dominated teams in tech in Delhi and Bangalore (educational software), which was the basis for my representational comment, but that didn't amount to more than 100 people. That's the basis for comparison, not directly with children. Their line of work or location could certainly be complicating factors in extrapolating conclusions. Simply providing some interesting research to consider. Not treating women like children here.

I personally find more intimate groups to be much more conducive to actionable discussion. In that way I totally feel where you're coming from. I'm glad you found that satisfaction eventually. I can't empathize with your experience with these specific groups unfortunately since I haven't taken part and am also very new to the field, but it's saddening to hear that colleagues would take you less seriously for looking for support :'(

If you don't think lego in an adult workplace is infantilizing then you should look up the definition of infantilizing.

I don't see how this comment is helpful. My whole point is that legos are not just for children, so to argue that they are necessarily infantilizing is to take a deliberately ignorant stance on them. I think you should do some research on legos.

I see what you're trying to say, but try to look at it from a normal person's point of view, rather than that of a lego advocate (even one with a point!): most people would consider it really quite hard to come up with a clearer example of workplace infantilization than introducing lego into a working session. Lego (if we are talking about the same thing) is fundamentally something created for children, much as we might wish that society recognize the profound benefits that can come from adult interaction with said plastic building blocks and little people with fixed hats.

Lego is a product primarily marketed to children, yeah, and because of that, many people are only exposed to it in childhood. It makes sense that people would feel infantilized by the introduction of legos if their memories of them are only from childhood. None of this changes the fact that legos are more than capable of stimulating an adult mind on par with their more advanced mental faculties. This is what it means to not be infantilizing. I think there is an issue of harkening to childhood being conflated with infantilization. There is also possibly an issue with how legos are advertised and employed in working sessions, such as in these women-in-tech groups. Putting adults in a room with a bunch of legos without communicated direction or purpose is arguably infantilization. Using legos as a simulation or problem-solving tool with a framed question instead would certainly be effective. Other tools definitely exist which are accessible to adults in the workplace. I suspect legos are chosen out of cheap abundance and to mitigate stress with the nostalgia factor, but this decision is seemingly backfiring in this case. It's quite possible that these thoughts did not motivate the selection, in which case I would definitely agree with the OP that this is all infantilizing. And that's because the legos are not incorporated with purpose, not because legos are somehow childish.

I’ve seen and have been forced to participate in infantile team-building exercises and “company culture” indoctrination. They often seem rooted in feel-good New Age beliefs, conducted by people who have found a niche making adults pretend to be children.

I’m not sure it’s a gender thing, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find women in tech subjected to this kind of thing even more than men.

Tech workplaces in general often seen juvenile and infantilized to be, but I’m an old man.

I could definitely believe that it's the corporate-ness that makes these groups so vapid.

As long as I can keep my mouth shut about stuff like this and focus on work at work, that's good enough for me.

I don't want to bring my whole self to work, and I'm not particularly interested in my colleagues doing that either. That's what people seem to have decided is best, I completely disagree, but if I can just do my job without all that then fine.

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