Girls geek out over dinner | Hacker News Reader

Girls geek out over dinner

news.bbc.co.uk

18 pointsportfolioexec10 comments

It's not really an "us vs. them" thing, it's looking around the room and noticing that in a meeting of 30 people, I am the only woman. It's comforting to be reminded there are other women in the field during those times.

how is that different? [edit] Just to clarify, how is the different in terms of the psychological perception? I mean disliking a monoculture social environment is a perfectly valid reason, but that doesn't seem like an adequate explanation.

i never understand these articles about "male dominated" tech culture with gender barriers, granted I sort of take the approach of welcoming people who are statistically more likely to be socially functional per unit of intelligence above the mean.

Is the issue at the hear of the matter just that women are more likely to interpret an environment where there are many irrelevant differences with respect to the population in question as being an adversarial "us vs them" dynamic?

I do think that the whole bit about not being able to talk about fashion at the end also detracts from the article as a whole. Any thoughts?

eh, I think the big problem is that nerds, in general, regardless of gender have poor social skills. This is to be expected... I mean, we all have limited time, if you spend more of your time learning about computers than you spend learning about people, your social skills are not going to be as good as if you spent all your time learning about people.

Ok, so we have a group of people with poor social skills. Note, people within this group can relate to oneanother much better than they can relate to people outside this group. Add to that an extremely skewed gender ratio, and you will find a lot of lonely men. Lonesomeness often leads to bitterness and misogyny. I don't imagine it's particularly pleasant to deal with someone who is both attracted to but also has a deep-seated anger towards your gender.

Add to that the usual friction you get when people with poor social skills get together, and I can see how you might have an unpleasant situation.

I've also heard it explained like this: Assume everyone wants to work (or talk about technical stuff) 95% of the time, and flirt 5% of the time. Assuming your company (or LUG) has a 1:10 female:male ratio, and furthermore postulate that all participants are hetrosexual. The women who do show up will be irritated, not because they don't want to flirt, but because they want to do other things as well.

"I've also heard it explained like this: Assume everyone wants to work (or talk about technical stuff) 95% of the time, and flirt 5% of the time. Assuming your company (or LUG) has a 1:10 female:male ratio, and furthermore postulate that all participants are hetrosexual. The women who do show up will be irritated, not because they don't want to flirt, but because they want to do other things as well."

Though humorous, this seems a surprisingly cogent explanation.

The thing is, the tech industry isn't male dominated like traditional industries with their "old boys clubs" and old-fashioned views of senior managers that a woman's place is in the home or whatever. It's male dominated simply because females aren't applying for jobs in it. I'm sorry to be blunt, but less eating dinner together and more showing up for interviews and the problem will sort itself out in no time.

Yeeeeessssss, thank you very much for providing us with a perfect example of precisely why women don't show up for interviews in the tech industry. That condescending tone ("I'm sorry to be blunt" ) - we have to deal with it all day, every day.

Other examples from my recent professional roamings - with 13 years experience as a professional programmer, and 2 years at my current company, I had to justify a line of trace that I had in my code. You know what, I'm a big girl now, and can decide for myself whether or not a line of trace is needed in an app, and I have never seen a male colleague (even those much less experienced than myself) have to justify such minor decisions.

Or what about the guy on my floor that decided that as there were only two women on my floor, that he could share our toilets, after all, "why should you get a toilet all to yourselves".

You see, rubbish like that hits women in the face all of the time in the tech industry. Even those of us that love programming can find all of these little insults to our persons a bit wearing. I mean, I'm on this site precisely because I've had enough of having to justify myself to male colleagues, and have decided that I'm going to head out on my own.

I don't think there was a condescending tone regarding his statement on being blunt, the parent was simply being blunt and apologised in advance to make sure that what was being written wouldn't be misconstrued, a point you have missed.

You don't have to justify yourself as a woman, but as a person. Your comment about a line of trace could've applied to anyone as the context in unclear - I don't get how being asked to justify your code is a bad thing let alone a sex specific thing. A competent programmer would be able to justify it upon request without trouble. Whether or not you can decide for yourself if trace is needed depends on the type of project you're on.

The issue about the toilets I get completely, I had a similar experience with a request for a prayer room on our floor for one muslim employee which was denied. He claimed that we weren't respecting his religious rights and got his prayer room and was the only person to use it. When he left we still couldn't reclaim the space.

I'm sorry to hear you feel so embittered by your relations with fellow colleagues that you feel you must head out on your own but wish you look in your future endeavours - having said that if your actions are as defensive in real life as they are in your previous comment then I suspect you won't do as well as if you let go and focus on getting paid.

"The issue about the toilets I get completely, I had a similar experience with a request for a prayer room on our floor for one muslim employee which was denied. He claimed that we weren't respecting his religious rights and got his prayer room and was the only person to use it. When he left we still couldn't reclaim the space"

OK, now go and ask some women about how they would feel about having to share their bathroom with the men at work. As I live in a foreign country, I actually took the time to survey literally every 'native' woman that I know just to verify that this wasn't just a cultural thing. Every single one said that they would consider the situation unacceptable.

You on the other hand seem to think that my male colleague was being reasonable. This gulf between what women expect, and what men consider to be reasonable is a very large part of the reason that women are not well represented in IT.

Oh, one other thing. When people say things like 'No offense intended, but', or, as in this case 'I'm sorry to be blunt, but', the person saying that isn't actually sorry at all. It's just a passive aggressive communication technique designed to deflect criticism like mine. Try replacing "Sorry to be blunt" by "I'm going to be blunt" in the original post, and you'll see that the meaning of the phrase changes not one little bit. And regardless, the whole idea of 'being blunt' is designed as a condescending swipe at the understanding of the person/s concerned "you're not capable of understanding a refined argument, so I'll be blunt". Again, return to the original post, and remove the "I'm sorry to be blunt, but', and the post would have expressed the poster's intended message, but without the condescension. Which is exactly my point.

Now, I imagine I'll get voted down again for daring to suggest that the comportment of men in this industry is anything less than magnificent.

Well, girls do interest me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com