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Comment by dylandrop | Hacker News Reader

According to this article (http://women2.com/girls-go-geek-again-fog-creek-software-blo...), apparently in 1987, 42% of software developers were women, and computer programming was considered a female position in the 1960's. Actually, my own grandmother was hired to use an early sort-of-computer (a comptometer, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comptometer) during WW2.

Regardless, I'm confused what your point is here. It seems like you're implying that modern women complain too much about sexism and the majority of men in the workplace. To this... I encourage you to look, well, pretty much anywhere on the web to see its veracity:

http://valleywag.gawker.com/techcrunch-disrupt-kicks-off-wit... http://www.fastcolabs.com/3016238/why-your-startups-culture-...

I don't know about you, but as a man in CS, I'd rather attract women to come to tech rather than ostracize them or marginalize them. I don't want my workplace to become a frat.

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I wasn't aware that the gender balance was tipped towards the female side for so long. Thanks for the information.

I agree with your final point, but to be honest in my personal experience, I've only encountered one case of sexism in my career, and the man in question was frowned upon pretty universally for his remarks. All in all, I've seen women treated with the same amount of respect respect (and generally more kindness and less petty rivalry) then their male counterparts.

A lot of the stories I read about sexism in the tech industry seem to complain about problems that aren't really there (most recently, a parent complaining that teachers should enforce positive discrimination for females in computer science classes to attract a more balanced gender palette).

I agree that it would be nice to attract more female coworkers to the programming craft, much like it would probably be nice to attract more male nurses into healthcare.

But I'm rather annoyed at the "big deal" people seem to be making of this (as far as I've experienced) mostly imaginary gender discrimination problem in our field. It could be that this problem is geologically clustered (I don't live in the US), and the problem is really much bigger in other parts of the world, but from where I'm standing, women don't have it worse than men in my profession.

I expect you've only noticed one case of sexism. That only one case was overt enough that, despite being a man, it affected you. Many women in the field have countless stories of discrimination. The article I think you're referring to was a parent complaining about a teacher not reacting to harassment and bullying her daughter was receiving simply for being female in a computer science class. To the extent that her daughter no longer wanted to study computer science. That's a far cry from arguing in favor of "positive discrimination".

But here's the thing: it doesn't really matter what you have or haven't experienced. What matters are the experiences of the people being discriminated against. As I said, these stories are everywhere; if someone says they were made to feel a certain way (such as: unwelcome) it's not your prerogative to question whether that was a valid way to feel.

>women don't have it worse than men in my profession

Spoken as a man with privilege. I've posted this concept in this thread before, but I'm going to post it again.

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Privilege

Privilege is a concept used in anti-racist, anti-sexist, and similar anti-oppression movements.

Anti-oppressionists use "privilege" to describe a set of perceived advantages (or lack of disadvantages) enjoyed by a majority group, who are usually unaware of the privilege they possess. It is a term of art that may not align particularly well with the general-use word "privilege" or the programming term "privilege".

A privileged person is not necessarily prejudiced (sexist, racist, etc) as an individual, but may be part of a broader pattern of -ism even though unaware of it. *

The key point here is "usually unaware of the privilege they possess."

There was a reason for many years I invented a gender neutral first name for myself to use online in place of my birth first name -- to avoid harassment and exceptionalism [http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Exceptionalism]

Viewing privilege as something possessed by all individuals of the superficially-structurally-favored class is a dangerous, and potentially counterproductive concept. Racist, sexist, and other group-biased social structures often constrain and disadvantage individual members of the notionally "priveleged" class -- particularly those least interested in preserving the bias.

Insofar as their is real privilege, it belongs to those whose desires align with the role assigned to their class, but even that notion of privilege has some danger, because to a certain extent those desires can be shaped and constrained by the structural bias.

But, more to the point, simply asserting that any argument against the existence of privilege by those in the class asserted by those claiming to be advantaged by a structural bias is invalid because part of the concept of privilege is that those who hold it are often unaware of it is fundamentally flawed.

(Also, the use of "majority" when the intent is to refer to the structurally-favored class is problematic; apartheid South Africa is a good example of this problem in regard to discussion of racism, but its a problem with sexism, too, unless you are asserting that the female sex is the structurally-advantage group, which is inconsistent with your reference to male privilege.)

>Racist, sexist, and other group-biased social structures often constrain and disadvantage individual members of the notionally "priveleged" class -- particularly those least interested in preserving the bias.

Agreed. I'm not saying everything is black and white. It's a generic concept.

>use of "majority" when the intent is to refer to the structurally-favored class is problematic

Not that kind of majority.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_%28sociology%29

A minority group is a sociological category within a demographic. Rather than a relational "social group", as the term would indicate, the term refers to a category that is differentiated and defined by the social majority, that is, those who hold the majority of positions of social power in a society. The differentiation can be based on one or more observable human characteristics, including, for example, ethnicity, race, gender, wealth, health or sexual orientation. Usage of the term is applied to various situations and civilizations within history, despite its popular mis-association with a numerical, statistical minority. In the social sciences, the term "minority" is used to refer to categories of persons who hold few positions of social power and whose position in society is underprivileged.

The grandparent sounds like he [I can assume that it is a he, but I don't usually use gendered pronouns with an unknown speaker] is speaking from a very privileged prospective of not experiencing sexism himself, thus not realizing it is there.

Might want to check out the Male privilege checklist: http://amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/

I went to college in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and I can testify that about 30-40% of the CS students were female. And even then some people were expressing concern about how male-dominated the field was becoming.

I wonder how much the real issues here are with startup culture rather than the IT/CS/Programming community/profession

[A]pparently in 1987, 42% of software developers were women, and computer programming was considered a female position in the 1960's.

Yes, and those female programmers in the 1960s were referred to in ads that said things like "What has sixteen legs, eight waggly tongues, and costs you at least $40,000 a year?" In those days programming was considered a menial and lightweight clerical task -- perfect for "women's work". Once we realized that programming was actually hard, the boys took over.

After all, women can't do mentally challenging work! Ha ha!

sigh

That's not what I meant. I meant that as soon as the men realized it was challenging work, they decided it was men's work and worked to keep women out of it.

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