Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

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No, it's very different. Men often times are taken seriously just because they are men. The odd thing about it however is that if you are a man, then this is not immediately obvious, because you have always been treated this way and have taken it for granted. But ask any woman in a tech field and they will give you lots of data points about how their male counterparts are always praised by their peers and superiors for minor accomplishments whereas women are either not given much credit or the stuff they do are ignored completely.

I was getting lunch with a female coworker/friend last week and we ended up talking about this very topic. We work for a software company and she's in sales. She recounted that back when she first started, other salespeople treated her like crap and blamed her for things that weren't her fault. Even when she exceeded her daily or weekly goals, she didn't receive any praise. Whereas the male salespeople who started around the same time as her were getting rewarded for performing half as well. It was only after she dominated the quarterly metrics over and over that people started to pay her any attention. Nowadays she's very highly regarded, but had to work extra hard to get that.

I have an anecdote about a guy who wasn't given recognition while female coworkers were. Want to anecduel? Or shall we actually look for hard data rather than relying on hand-waving and stories about women we've known?

More importantly, though I agree that women have to fight harder for recognition in many fields, there is no evidence that this means they are more subject to impostor syndrome. Impostor syndrome is an internal thing, not something somebody else tells you to have.

This constant insistence on "hard data" is extremely tiresome, and throws a wrench in what would otherwise be interesting debates. I think, as intelligent people, we should be able to reason ourselves out of a disagreement without relying on data that may or may not exist.

Logic is a wonderful vehicle for arriving at good conclusions, but without the fuel of accurate data, it is mostly useless for going anywhere but downhill.

We cannot confidently reason about reality without some hard data to use as a premise. We need that connection to reality. By trying to go without it, we are essentially constructing a fantasy universe. It might be a very elaborate and intelligently constructed fantasy, but it is still ultimately disconnected from reality.

But anyway, there is some hard data for this, so we don't need to worry about it not existing. It's already been offered earlier in the thread.

My post is off topic, but anecdotes are data. Poor data to make decisions about systemic changes, but good data to make decisions about individual choices and policies. A single instance of a wrong is enough to discuss how it might have been avoided.

Yes, it's possible to have a conversation without data. Yes, sometimes it's all you can do, if the hard data doesn't exist, so "hard data or GTFO" is untenable. But you started slinging anecdotes, and that's a path to sloppy reasoning. Either stick to the abstract, or provide data that's useful. No reasonable person would be persuaded by your "I was getting lunch with a female coworker/friend" story. It was obviously selected with bias, by both your friend and yourself. It doesn't make you wrong... it makes your reasoning unconvincing.

>>No reasonable person would be persuaded by your "I was getting lunch with a female coworker/friend" story.

No reasonable person would dismiss it as just an anecdote, because no reasonable person would be so blind to the fact that this type of stuff is extremely common. Providing data to state just how common is unnecessary for a good discussion.

What I find especially tiresome in the sexism discussions here is that hard data only seems to be a requirement for those saying something that questions the status quo.

It's never, "Well, there's no hard data on this, but we are just coming out from a multi-millennial period of discrimination against women, so let's assume we have a little further to go."

Instead, all I see is on the order of, "You have no hard data that women are treated poorly this month so I'm going act like there couldn't possibly be a problem."

>It's never, "Well, there's no hard data on this, but we are just coming out from a multi-millennial period of discrimination against women, so let's assume we have a little further to go."

That's because you have to start with a false premise, and then make a completely arbitrary leap in logic. It seems entirely reasonable to consider the possibility that given the evidence shows equality, that baring evidence to the contrary, things are probably pretty equal.

The evidence shows that there is no gender difference in how seriously people are taken in all professional situations? I look forward to you posting links.

This is about how likely people are to suffer from impostor syndrome, not "how seriously people are taken in all professional situations."

From my comment that you seem to have been calling "tiresome"†:

> though I agree that women have to fight harder for recognition in many fields, there is no evidence that this means they are more subject to impostor syndrome.

† At least, it was the parent of the comment you were sympathizing with.

It shows that men and women have equal prevalence of imposter syndrome, which is the discussion at hand. Links had already been provided before you posted.

That is not in fact the discussion at hand.

Enraged_camel complained that men are taken more seriously than women, and gave an anectote in support:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5280061

Chc responded that anecdotes were not hard data:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5280329

Enraged_camel called requests like that tiresome:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5280329

I agreed and shared my observation that on HN, requests for data in sexism discussions are generally used to defend the status quo:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5281860

Then you chimed in to suggest that evidence showed equality.

Do you have it? I'm guessing not.

>That is not in fact the discussion at hand

Yes it is.

>Then you chimed in to suggest that evidence showed equality.

Read the post I replied to again.

>>>> Men often times are taken seriously just because they are men

That doesn't sound right. Given that pretty much everybody in certain fields are men, that would imply anybody there is taken seriously. But it seems to be obviously wrong - no one would just accept just any guy coming from the street as a master in any domain just because he's male. If somebody pretends to be a serious practitioner of the field, he would never be accepted as such without demonstrating some proof. I can come in and say, e.g., "I am a seasoned game developer", but people would immediately as "nice, which games did you develop?", not say "are you male? oh, then we believe you".

>>>> how their male counterparts are always praised by their peers and superiors for minor accomplishments

Being praised for minor accomplishments does not actually mean one is taken seriously - children are often praised for the smallest of accomplishments, but treating one like a child is exactly the opposite of taking seriously.

Perhaps I am being too literal here. But plenty of men are men, and yet are not taken seriously. So merely being a man does not mean you are taken seriously. In other words, no, men are not taken seriously "just because they are men".

Perhaps it would help to think of it this way: Most men are accorded a neutral rating from the get go and proving themselves puts them ahead of that. Women tend to start with a negative rating and have to work their way up to neutral. Yes, if a man screws up he can drop into the negatives. But he is much less likely to start there.

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