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Comment by mekoka | Hacker News Reader

Avery Swartz, a mentor at another table, works as a freelance website designer. “A lot of my clients are women. They don’t necessarily want to work with a man because they are afraid of the intimidation factor, the tech speak, the ‘jargon’. I want women to feel empowered, to know that they can take an active role.”

This is not a gender problem, it's pedagogical. My granddad would be intimidated to learn to code for those exact same reasons. I assume that having a name like Ladies Learning Code somewhat entices women to approach programming with the perspective that the pedagogy will be different. Playing on the notion that there's an alternative way to explain code to different gender might be a good marketing ploy, but I'm wondering if it's not also doing a disservice by perpetuating the myth.

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You're missing the point-- it is about gender. Women don't want to work with, and especially learn from, men because they are afraid that the man will not know how to speak to them as an equal. They're afraid he'll hide his discomfort behind jargon, and that he will be unable to be nice without being patronizing. Heaven forfend that this man, like many highly technical people, is socially awkward in general! In that case, he may be outright incapable of communicating with them.

They're not afraid of this by chance; this is a rational fear arising from a hundred, a thousand previous encounters with men, even trained teachers, who were abjectly unable to interact with women in a way that left them feeling comfortable. This is of course not to say that such men do not exist, as they surely do. But after a decade or two of experience, why roll the dice?

Well said. It's a pedagogical problem; and it's about gender.

I totally agree with you, except I don't think fear is quite the right way to frame it, and perhaps more that many women know they will be talked down to, make a rational decision that they don't want to put up with that, and do something else with their time.

Afraid doesn't necessarily denote the emotion of fear, I think in this context we can safely say it's merely the anticipation of something which is disliked. Like, "I'm afraid if I order from Sloppy Joe's Pizzeria, I'll find another hair in my pizza."

This was on my mind earlier, but, finding myself unable to put it into words, I didn't comment.

My first thought when I read the article was "lol 'built a wordpress.org,' nice." Then I realized I was being an idiot and that it's great that they're learning. But something didn't jive---excluding my little sister, at no point can I remember teaching a female anything technical without getting either impatient or patronizing.

But, as I think about it, both are signs that I wasn't really there to teach. I was either trying to impress them, or uphold my self-image of being smart, or something else that wasn't teaching.

As a single guy of no particular attractiveness studying a technical subject, I consider myself a member of what one could call the aspirational class of the social world. I don't feel satisfied with where I am in life. Considering the low value we place on teaching in our society, I'm pretty sure teaching would not be a good way to remedy this.

I wouldn't be surprised if many male teachers of technical subjects aren't really happy to be teaching at all. Wallowing in their discontent or outside ambitions, perhaps they're unable to fully engage in the empathy required for good teaching. Questions "obvious" from the instructor's point of view will be brushed off or scorned, reflections of his self-hate. A male student hearing this will think, "Fuck him, I'll learn this anyway." A female student will think, "Why on earth am I hanging out in this environment?"

> They're not afraid of this by chance; this is a rational fear arising from a hundred, a thousand previous encounters with men, even trained teachers, who were abjectly unable to interact with women in a way that left them feeling comfortable.

This is a somewhat prejudiced argument; try switching the roles, or maybe adding ethnicity in there, and you'll see. “Everyone knows” etc.

Of course, that's not to say it must be untrue. The (at least perceived) alternate pedagogy does seem to work, so I'm all for it!

It's not about gender. From your point of view it's about character weakness. A woman has bad experiences with men, so she should be trained to seek haven among women? If she wants to get a mortgage, should she do so only through a female mortgage broker? If she wants to buy a car, does it have to be sold to her by a woman? Or more generally does she need to attend a women-only class that teaches her to negotiate with salesmen? Sounds like a form of community codependency to me.

A better solution might be to teach women (and men) to accept and understand different styles of communication. And that class shouldn't be gender-specific.

In regard to programming, another commenter had a great solution. Get some books, make a github account, learn to code. You have complete anonymity on github. It's a place where all aspects of your individuality can drop out of consideration except the most important in the context: your ability to understand and write code.

Character weakness? In whom? In the men who populate male-dominated fields who are incapable of treating women as equals, or in the women who avoid communities where they are not treated as equals?

Think carefully.

By your description it's both. But exculpating one party and relegating them to gender-biased solutions is not a solution at all.

It is about gender. Men don't want to work with women because they are afraid that the women won't be able to reason logically. They're afraid she might hide her insecurity behind politics and power trips, and she will be unable to be assertive without being controlling. Heaven forfend that this woman, like many women with careers, is bitchy in general! In that case, she may be outright incapable of working with logical technical types.

They're not afraid of this by chance; this is a rational fear arising from a hundred, a thousand previous encounters with women, even women in management, who were abjectly unable to interact with men in a way that left them feeling comfortable. This is of course not to say that such women do not exist, as they surely do. But after a decade or two of experience, why roll the dice?

Now that I've flipped the genders, do you see how offensive your comment is?

My general view: if women are avoiding computing due to the stereotypes and intolerance as you describe, then good riddance.

I'm sorry, what? I'm a man, I made a statement about men which I do not find offensive. You edited it to be offensive to women, and that's supposed to make me feel offense?

No. I'd recommend you also ask a woman for her opinion, though, in case my male-ness has prevented me from seeing the obvious.

For future reference, statements made about privileged groups are not, generally, as offensive as those made about the unprivileged. For example:

My general view: if men are avoiding childcare due to the stereotypes and intolerance as you describe, then good riddance.

His point is that it's offensive to prejudge all men in tech as incapable or unwilling to treat women as equal individuals. This sentiment is rooted in the idea that most men are not sexist, chauvinist, assholes. Those individuals who can't even be bothered to endure the torment of a male teacher lest they be patronized or spoken to with a tone of condescension are probably not well balanced people.

From another perspective, would you think it reasonable for black men to avoid tech because of "a thousand previous encounters with [white]men who were abjectly unable to interact with [black individuals] in a way that left them feeling comfortable"?

Then he and you should take it up with the women who have had these negative experiences, whose prejudice you both are supposing, and not me. Do let me know how that goes.

I agree that it's not a gender problem, or at least not only a gender problem. But the problem being more general does not necessarily imply that the solution should be equally general. I think a class like this might be just thing thing to get a certain class of women interested in programming, which is never a bad thing, even if it doesn't help people like your granddad. A similar class for older people might be just as successful. Sometimes being very targeted with your demographic is a better approach than trying to solve an entire, huge problem in one shot.

Of course, I imagine there are plenty of women who would never attend a class called "Ladies Learning Code," but they might be receptive to a different strategy. The point is that having multiple fronts in this war on computer illiteracy may be more effective than having a single big one.

Never a bad thing? The median male developer is so inept at writing correct software that the industry would be better off without him. If these women weren't irresistibly drawn to the work, how can we expect them to be substantially better, rather than merely doubling the amount of crap we're already struggling with? If anything, we need a much tougher filter before we go out and entice the masses.

You've expressed an ivory tower viewpoint. Forget the "industry". These people are learning to code for themselves, to scratch their own itches.

I encourage you to think less like a software engineer and more like a hacker. These people are gaining greater digital literacy. They are gaining the tools to solve their own problems.

Only a few of them will take up software as a profession. They will be subject to the same filtering process as everyone else.

Oh, I'm all for everyone tinkering, that's practically a sacrament. But

> If we allow the future of the web, software, hardware, video games, etc. to be conceptualized, created and maintained by just one sector of the population, it’s impossible to expect that it will serve the needs of the entire group.

and

> We recognize the power of diversity and want to seek ways to attract more women and girls in to the tech industry – for their own personal benefit and the overall potential of the industry.

suggest the goal is to substantially change the face of the industry. And the existing filter is entirely inadequate for a large number of candidates only moderately interested.

Also, I fear that groups of women programming might not get the same experience as if they were also programming with men. I'm skeptical of the value of gender-biased environments helping defeat perceived gender biases found in a particular activity. It seems it would only further promote gender biases.

The program fails if most of the women, upon exiting the program, start programming with men and say "This isn't like Ladies Learning Code!" and either quit programming altogether or simply join other groups of women to program.

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