Comment by stmchn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stmchn | Hacker News Reader

I'm really glad to see an article like this and it's exactly how I feel about a lot of women in tech events. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only woman who feels this way and it's a betrayal to denounce these groups in the midst of all these gender debates we're having in the hacker community.

I joined a women in tech group in college when I started Computer Science. I was super excited and sincerely believed in the cause and I threw myself into it 100%. By the end of the semester, what had I accomplished, really? I had made countless posters and pink ribbons and cutesy giveaways for our school fair booth and what felt like zero progress on making things better for women in tech. Instead, it was just a monthly meeting where we patted each other on the back without really doing anything.

I'm sure there are groups out there that accomplish real and admirable things but I think it's far too easy to fall into just self-congratulating each other and approaching all the wrong issues.

I agree with you.

It may be that I'm just partially missing the point of the groups, but I think that what I was actually looking for from women-in-CS groups is "doing very technical things with other women". Most women-in-cs/tech groups I've encountered are more "doing/talking about female-focused things with women who are technical".

Do you think there are groups that do what I was really looking for?

There was a blog post a couple days ago that said it really well: http://trishkhoo.com/2013/04/i-knew-exactly-how-she-felt/

"that’s what happens when we hold events for women in IT when there aren’t that many women in this industry – we tend to broaden the definition of women in IT."

There's so few women in tech that groups like this tends to draw some women who are not even remotely technical (I remember for our women in tech group in college, we held an annual networking event where we invited "real women industry professionals" but the vast majority of them were marketing or HR). I'd like to optimistically think that "women that do technical things with other women" groups will become more prevalent the more women enter the field. I'd love to join a group like that but it's difficult in my area where there are two female CS students in my senior level classes (one of them is me).

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