Not to say that this is not an issue, but is this sexism in tech... or sexism in marketing?
We can go back to that whole Violet Blue Twitter/article debacle wherein she criticized a woman legitimately working at her company's spot on the floor for being a boring-looking booth babe.
In my opinion, the only people that should be doing your advertising for you are your employees. There's no reason to bring human eye-candy to these events in the hopes that it will get a few more customers. I do like PAX's stance where if the "babe" isn't educated on your product as much as you are, she shouldn't be there. At the same time, those are "models" of the characters for your games at a gaming convention, not male or female bodies just standing in a warehouse being ogled to sell unrelated product.
Say 90% of all tech companies are using sexist advertising. Big problem; clearly something wrong with tech.
But that is only part of the picture. We have to consider what companies that are not "tech companies" are doing as well. If we see similar levels of sexist nonsense from them, then we should consider the possibility that the "techiness" of tech companies is not to blame and the problem has another cause.
I think it is very likely that this incident is a manifestation of something that is wrong with marketing and corporations in general. This stuff isn't popping up because tech is involved, it is popping up because advertisers are involved and executives okay it.
I feel I should say explicitly that I am not saying this behavior should be permitted "because everyone else is doing it". The behavior is not acceptable, but we should find the real cause.
For example, if Apple put out a sexist ad, you can bet people would talk about sexism in BOTH the tech industry and in the ad industry.
"Tech" is considered by the mainstream to be full of socially maladjusted overgrown boys who spend far too long in their mother's basement. They are cold and unemotional and they took engineering classes in college; perhaps one is the cause of the other. Sexism in programming teams made up primarily of this stereotype is a common topic here, and it is almost universally agreed that it is a major problem.
So I guess it annoys me when a bunch of marketing people use sex in their advertising, as they do in every other industry imaginable, and we use it as an opportunity to flog tech some more. Where the exact people who made this decision selling umbrellas instead of hard-drives, would this be on HN? I don't think so.
1) The ratio of males to females is worse. Women feel more like outsiders in tech than in other industries. Things like booth babes make us feel like outsiders because they are a ploy to attract MEN to the booth, as if there is no reason to attract women to the booth. Secondly, as a female at a conference, people assume I'm not the technical expert. They ask me if I'm in marketing. I see them directing technical questions to the males. It is really annoying to be judged based on your looks and gender, but I don't blame them, because chances are they are right due to the scarcity of female technologists. Booth babes reinforce the stereotype that women at the conference are there because they look nice and are friendly. That makes the problem even worse. Objectification in general reinforces the idea that a big part of women's role in society is to look good.
2) Tech is an area where people STILL question if women are really as capable as men. That makes women in tech more sensitive to gender bias.
In other words, it just stings more to see this coming from a tech company.
If Uber started putting out sexist advertising, would that reflect poorly on professional drivers?
Tech is only the thing that all of these incidents have in common if you include only tech companies in your survey.
Obviously, a site like hacker news will be reporting stories about tech companies far more often than other kinds of businesses.
As unfortunate as it is, businesses produce a lot of technology and hire most of the people working in tech on a daily basis. Even if I don't like it, those businesses are a part of the field I'm in and what they do affects me, esp. if they are contributing to alienating women who already have a hard time breaking into or working in tech.
It would be interesting to see the breakdown of HN readership. I always assumed a large portion are YC companies and other startups who would be able to relate to these kinds of posts.