Meet the wogrammers – women in engineering | Hacker News Reader

Meet the wogrammers – women in engineering

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22 pointsanand-s56 comments

Regardless of how HN might not like the name, this is brilliant. Part of the issue in tech is that especially learning women only ever hear in the news about the problems and downsides, which gives no incentive to head in that direction.

Addressing women directly and showing them successes of other women in the field is likely to be a successful approach in the long term to change demographics.

The name is silly, yes, but I do wonder if this kind of thing even accomplishes its stated goals. I've known a few programmers-who-are-women who find the laser-focus on Women Can Program Too to be annoying ("yes, I'm a woman, get over it"), insulting ("no shit, are you implying I couldn't?") or outright counterproductive ("it makes it sound like tech is some sexist hellhole that they have to beg women to even consider").

Like, I'm all for more people of whatever demographic feeling welcome in technology (and any other industry, natch). It's not clear to me whether this kind of PR actually accomplishes that, or does nothing because it's not addressing the more important yet more illegible things ultimately that keep women less interested in going into tech, or actively harms the cause through the sexist implication that it's so special and noteworthy for women to be interested in technology.

Women in programming should find it offensive because it changes how they are viewed. Generally, the more help a sub group is seen being given to fit into the larger group, the less the larger group thinks that the sub group belongs on their own merits. Add in incidents like Donglegate and people will begin to get a foundation to ground their biases which were originally unfounded.

Wow, i'm as far as possible from the modern internet feminist as you can get, but you just managed to create an amazingly accurate example of mansplaining.

This project is a dialogue between women. What anyone else thinks of it is irrelevant.

>What anyone else thinks of it is irrelevant.

I use to live not caring, having been told to not care what others thought about you. Then I realize just how much it does matter.

Also, I was talking about grandparents comment of "laser-focus on Women Can Program Too", not this project specifically.

"Women in programming should..."

Hm. :\

Which is to say "Based on the factors that I think would make some stance insulting/offensive to some group, this insert topic fits enough of those standards for the group women in programming that I expect them to view it as offensive," (using the usage of expect meaning "I foresee", not "I demand").

Phrase policing tends to be a tactic to distract being that it is easy to find phrases in English that can be presented to mean something different.

Take the "I expected the car to be washed." It means something different when talking about visiting someone who loves washing their car and does so most every sunny day vs. buying a car and finding it dirty. It can easily be made to sound demanding even when there was no such intention.

Eh, sorry. I do basically agree with you.

Probably should have come up with a better name. The natural English syllabification of this is 'wog.ram.mers', rather than 'wo.gram.mers'. That's a barrel of worms you don't want to open!... Which is a shame, because such an initiative isn't one that should be pulled down because of something so superficial.

EDIT: The natural British English syllabification, where 'wog' is a derogatory racial slur.

In my mind, strangely, it came out as "woeful programmers" - "women" didn't even occur to me.

Obviously this name is every bit as bad as the execrable "brogrammers".

If they wanted to find a female equivalent to "brogrammer", "sisgrammer" would be closer.

Isn't brogrammer derogatory?

I'm sure it is on HN. There are probably places where they talk about ninjas and rockstars where it might not (yet) be, I'm not sure.

The intended pronunciation came naturally for me. I don't think it's an issue.

"wogrammer" ?

Do we really need a word that exists purely to make the distinction between male and female programmers? Seems to me you're just a programmer, sex doesn't matter.

Maybe it's supposed to be an equivalent of brogrammer?

It's not really about making the distinction, it's about recognizing a group of people (women) that have achieved something that, on average, women have a lot more trouble achieving for various reasons (including prejudice & friends).

I initially thought it was something different: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wog

Indeed. If one that expression, one wonders what the ramming is all about.

Having actually read the article, this is the least-patronizing version of anything that I could have imagined, given that name. It's a great effort, but a really bad name.

Usually, you see these things not as an individual effort, but some sort of corporatized outreach program, and then it is just awful. In the process of supposedly trying to celebrate diversity, it just only further serves to paint it as "The Other", the non-default.

But it's basically just an interview series that a few people are putting together, specifically to treat the subject normally, not continue to differentiate.

"wogrammer"? Really? If there's one thing I don't need (as a woman in tech) it's segregation further from your regular joe programmer.

Show me what other women are achieving - FANTASTIC - but quit with the bloody ridiculous nicknames. (Don't even get me started on "mumpreneurs"!)

joegrammer sounds awesome!

Wow, Silicon Valley the show got in way ahead of the curve on making jokes about this.

Nice, creating a word specially for female developers. Way to create inclusion folks. How is it supposed to help people see 'programmers' as 'programmers' regardless of their gender?

Can we invent words for Atheist programmers, for asian transgender programmers, for black programmers who identify as dolphins?

And I won't even comment on the whole "wow! Women programmers! They are all awesome!! xoxo". Some female programmers are great, some are terrible, most are average. Just like male programmers. Stopping this pedestalizion is the first step towards true equality.

If cruel and unusual punishment is unconstitutional, why do we inflict it on the english language?

It's side-splittingly hilarious how unironically hypocritical company's approaches to being more "friendly" to women. "What? We don't have enough of these minorities in X field? Better highlight those that we DO have by segmenting them according to that minority!"

Thats the most sexist word ever... kidogrammers, asianogrammers and bullshit ... get a life and stop seeing a gender, a race or anything else to your colleague and just expect from him/her being polite and positive. When will we get rid of this nonsense?

Even aside from sexism (and the casually racist Euro-centric term 'wog') that's a very stupid word and they should feel ashamed for inventing it. It's as bad as 'murse'.

'wog' is not 'casually racist'. If you are British and you call someone a 'wog' it is very, very offensive.

Never heard of either. How offensive are they compared to towelhead or nigger?

Roughly the same level of offensiveness; you couldn't say it as a public figure without ending your career.

When will we get rid of this nonsense?

As soon as people stop using it as an excuse to abuse, berate, degrade and discriminate against people. These words, and the intent behind them, are not the problem - they are a reaction to the problem. Rather than get annoyed with people who invent words like 'wogrammers', why not direct your anger toward the employers who refuse to hire women, or pay them less, or ignore sexual harassment. Those people are the problem.

Believe me, I would be pretty angry at such people, but clear cut cases are also pretty ducking rare.

>why not direct your anger toward the employers who refuse to hire women, or pay them less, or ignore sexual harassment

Do you have any data, which controls for the appropriate variables, to support that?

The fact that you're questioning whether or not sexism is really a thing is quite a big part of the problem. Trying talking to people. I find that pretty much every woman in the tech industry who I've spoken to has at least one example of how they feel they've been discriminated against at some point.

What you have just stated is a huge problem. To accept that there's a problem without even asking for data, or even worse dismissing someone for wanting to make a decision based on data is an unproductive method to solve a problem.

It's shooting in the dark.

Trying talking to people.

That's what is being done right here, right now.

I find that pretty much every woman in the tech industry who I've spoken to has at least one example of how they feel they've been discriminated against at some point.

Then sharing some concrete examples should be easy!

>The fact that you're questioning whether or not sexism is really a thing is quite a big part of the problem.

I take that to mean you don't have those facts? Because it would be easier and more trustworthy to simply put them on the table than berate the gp for posting a reasonable question.

You aren't going deep enough. What are the roots of those problems?

Did the manager have a bias against women because they feel women are worse workers? What caused that bias and how can it be fixed (sadly, in some cases it can only be fixed in the younger generations... or maybe this is a bias I have against older individuals... and why would I have that).

Did the manager have a bias against women because a previous project was massively delayed when a woman took maternity leave and the temp replacement took so much onboarding work that they might have been better being a person down? How about changing culture so a later delivery cue to someone taking medical leave is 100% as acceptable as an earlier delivery (including the same end of year bonuses).

Did the manager have a bias against women because some of their male employees fear an instance similar to Donglegate and as such would be far less open to forming the same sort of comradeship that enables the team to run smoothly? What caused the employees to feel this way?

Did the manager have a bias against women because they are male and they fear for their own professional safety when conducting private one on one meetings with the opposite set? Why do they fear such and can that fear be removed.

>> Erin Summers and Zainab Ghadiyali started wogrammer to break stereotypes about women engineers.

> Thats the most sexist word ever

Are you even aware that this project was started and is being done by women in the tech field and is aimed to communicate at women? You're probably a man. You're not being asked to change, or do anything. All they're doing is showing learning women that other women are having fun and success in the tech industry and so could they. If having a silly name helps in that then what you think about the name does not matter.

This is getting more and more hilarous FFS. Will we have a special group for afroamerican women programmers ? Special group for mentally ill programmers ? Or what about vegan transgender programmers ? This kind of positive discrimination is really annoying and unfair. Using the right tool and right people should be free of all prejudices FFS

Yes it should be but it almost never is. We tend to prefer people who are like us and share cultural similarities to us. This means that people who may have contributions to make don't get the opportunity.

So these groups are important. They allow for people to advocate for themselves and to be heard as something more than a lone voice in the wilderness.

>We tend to prefer people who are like us and share cultural similarities to us.

Interesting, any data to support that?

As much as I dislike positive discrimination, I view it as a necessary evil.

In the specific case of women in CS/CE, I think it's fair to say that the lack of women is rather troubling, and has roots in prejudice. So yeah, who knows. Maybe recognizing the success of women in this field might help restore some balance and one day make this positive discrimination unecessary. Then we won't need any special terms and all programmers will be called programmers.

It may be necessary, but by being evil should we really do it?

> restore some balance and one day make this positive discrimination unecessary. Then we won't need any special terms and all programmers will be called programmers.

How do you define 'balance' in this scenario?

The roots are in issues going far back into childhood. Issues such as gaming being a boy's past time, math being a boy's subject, spending time on the computer being more acceptable for a boy than a girl.

Trying to correct this at the college level or later is like trying to bend a paper clip back into a straight wire.

Talking about unfair... you know... never mind.

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