Discrimination based on race/gender/ANY DAMN THING is bad and exclusive.
Acknowledging that someone may have a different race/gender/religion/etc/etc which alter their needs and levels of comfort in a given situation is good and inclusive. (Maybe we can even accommodate them. Food for thought.)
Do we see the distinction?
Yes this exactly! This is my whole point. Everyone is different and has unique needs. It just so happens that it often intersects with issues faced by minorities.
Thanks for suggesting that women are paid less because we’re not superb enough, but I hate to break it to you the pay gap is real. It’s statistically unlikely that women consistently contribute less than men and are paid accordingly. Also heaps of really smart people have put lots of science into this, turns out unconscious bias is a real thing with real consequences.
So yes, it’s not always discrimination, but that doesn’t actually mean there’s not a problem. Suggesting that there isn’t just makes you sound either completely ignorant of the inequity so many people face or like you’re deliberately trying to derail the conversation.
@kelle this is what i find hard… From what i understand you are saying Women are different to Men but don’t treat them differently or give them different opportunities. This instantly says there is a difference so any issues are now based on gender. If the differences are irrelevant to doing a job then why bring them into the issue.
My neutral approach to me makes more sense as i am basing my views on a person on whether they are fit for whatever they are doing. I don’t care if you are a women, man, cat or dog if you can code/design/fix a computer then fine by me. If i find you annoying/interesting/irritating/emotional as a person then i have based my decision on that person rather than saying ‘oh she’s a women they are all emotional’ or ‘hes a man so hes aggressive’
The video to my mind says pretty much that. Don’t judge people based on gender/looks etc.
in response to the steps
I put that in quotes to make a point that people were refering to men and women as separate objects.
conversely you don’t always have to assume that all men are t**ts because some women have problems with some men (which is in the video). There was a european study a couple of years ago involving thousands of people that found women bully women below them more than men below them for example ( i do read around the subject).
Without discussion (as said in the video) the problem will continue. Your views are different to other womens within this thread and my views are different to other mens. I can google and read horror stories but i like different points of views directly as i can change my mind. sometimes i can be wrong
I don’t think there should be a pay gap, if you do the same job you should get the same pay.
Discussed this issue with my Mother the other day and she takes offense when someone implies that as a women if you aren’t ‘working’ or a captain of industry you aren’t doing anything important. She would argue to the death that being a mother far outweighs being a CEO. She also happens to have a teaching degree, 2x Masters (one from Oxford) and a PhD, in between raising 7 children. so she hasn’t just been washing the dishes.
@Noppy hmm, there is two ways we can look at the differences I think. The first is whether the differences do or should impact the way you do your job. Obviously in tech there’s no reason a woman would be any less capable than a man based on gender alone. I think we agree on this.
The other way it has an impact is more environmental. One of the things that Ralph talked about earlier is the isolation that can come just from being different. Currently the disparity in gender in technical roles can create a certain type of atmosphere (you can say the same about sports journalism for example). That atmosphere may not seem particularly welcoming to women (making some huge generalisations here, obviously). Role models, mentors, contacts of the same gender (or insert-point-of-difference-here) actually have an intensely positive impact on people (we know this, both scientifically and anecdotally) so in this instance, gender is pretty relevant. And also why (to veer sharply back in the direction of the actual topic) I would support female membership. Ladies helping other ladies is pretty awesome.
The video does say don’t judge people, but it also says that we’re probably unaware of the ways in which we’re influenced by these judgements, which is the more critical point. You may be perfectly able to live without biases (I know I certainly am not) but that unfortunately isn’t the case with the rest of society and the media and wherever else we get our cues on gender roles from.
They are though?
You’re right, it absolutely bears stating that this isn’t a blame-game, not all men terrible, not all women are great. Being a less-than-stellar human is actually pretty equal opportunity Also being biased doesn’t automatically make you a bad person, it just means your brain works I guess.
For sure, but the wrong kind of discussion – the is-this-really-an-issue type of discussion – is actually counter productive. I think looking less for horror stories and more for prevailing trends would lead to more progress (also why the things I suggested reading were all higher level). Because views and experiences are always split and individualised, but the numbers are pretty telling.
Your mum sounds like an A+ human being and you’re lucky to have such an incredible role model.
ok so to bring this back to the OP a bit more in relation to what we’ve discussed is that i feel that a board/forum about issues that people are having in the workplace/industry would be very useful. Although i am not of the mind that it needs to be segregated into male/female. On that basis you’d also need a forum for Black, mexican, disabled issues in computing etc.
There are also subtle implications by doing that. If you have a female only group you are implying that the problem is men, Black group the problem is white etc etc and to me that takes the focus on solving the issues.
My girlfriend was being targeted at work by a female boss (and the male boss above her) last year. I posted a thread on here asking for help on some specific details and i got some very useful replies and support. I couldn’t honestly tell you if they were male or female responses without checking the thread again. Even then i would have to guess off the username or avatar. It didn’t really matter to be honest as it was about the issue not about gender and having multiple views was a good thing i felt.
So for me i would rather see a thread like ‘I am being told not to do computer science what should i do’ being an open response as i’m sure many men on here would like to help and show that there are men in this industry that would be happy to work along side women. It would hopefully also enable the woman to engage with a male audience that they are one day likely to work with and see that they(we) are not all B*****ds.
Maybe it won’t work but that is how i would approach the problem.
In addition if would be interesting to do a survey to find out what drove women on here into computing. I would hazard a guess that a large part of the reason males ended up in computing is from starting with computer games at a young age, which i think is quite well known is of lesser importance to young girls. The nintendo Wii interesting was the first console to break that mould i believe and engage women.
(as i said earlier i think this is a useful thread and 85 posts down and it hasn’t descended into abuse or name calling.)
“If you have a female only group you are implying that the problem is men…”
I think this is entirely false and again part of the problem. The issue is systemic and a lot of the time it’s unconscious bias. It’s the status quo. We simply HAVE to stop thinking that feminism and/or addressing women’s issues means man bashing. It’s ingrained in society as a whole- all genders.
“…many men would like to help” This is part of the issue - this kind of language. Men need not ‘help’ women.
I think you’ll find the if the Wii console was in fact more successful in the female market, it may be because it was one of the largest examples of a console being advertised to everyone - families, all ages and all genders. As opposed to a more male specific audience, which is usually the case in gaming. FYI, I’ve played games since I was five years old, and I started out with Sega, NES and Game & Watch. I cannot pinpoint any females I have ever met who got into tech or gaming because of the Wii console.
“we are not all bastards” - again, see my point above. This shouldn’t be turning into an us versus them kind of argument. It’s a systemic flaw that is ingrained and it’s unjust and uncomfortable and unfair and it’s about time it’s addressed.
@molona I would argue your ineptitude for negotiating is more an issue with your confidence or general skills in that department, and probably nothing to do with your gender.
Well on that point in particular studies have shown that women don’t progress/get pay rises as fast within a company as they often wait longer to ask for a pay rise where as a male will push far sooner whether he has the skills or not (often not). So in general that is a gender issue. If we are accepting differences between males and females, males are often over confident compared with a female counterpart. (probably part of the reason males have more high speed car accidents than women).
Can’t this go the other way as well, where there are those that think bias exists, when there really is none, even that sub-conscious type?
Everyone needs help if societal change is to occur. If one person complains or tries to fight a fight, the chances of success are small. If multiple people do the same thing, the chances of success rise exponentially. Should it matter whether it comes from a woman or a man?
I was about to write about this earlier but the post got pretty long itself. it’s not only the gaming thing. Some of the males I’ve seen in computing are there simply because of lack of other options. I’ll need to quote a male QA at one of the companies I worked at who was so pissed with one of the male developers that he was joking that if the guy had to work a manual labor, construction is off limits because the guy wouldn’t be able to lift a brick, not to mention heavier stuff. If he had to go into home repairs, for example, and if he applied the same vision of quality he had in software development, ‘happy’ clients would: a) take him to court, b) beat him to a pulp, c) shoot him, d) all of the above. Everybody who had worked with him was confident the correct answer would be d).
While I can’t testify because I had no personal experience working with that particular guy, I had seen quite a lot of other guys who definitely fit the description - they work in IT not because they are good but because money is good, it’s more prestigeous, you don’t have to do the manual work you are anyway unfit for, etc. And honestly, I wouldn’t like to see this replicated with females - you are not fit for anything else, go into computers or tech in general because there are so few females there. This approach doesn’t help!
It’s bad to deny that gender discrimination exists, even if you don’t see/prefer not to see it in your environment. But it can be even worse when you assume that simply because the issue exists somewhere in the world, it exists in your very environment.
When there is no sexism in a particular environment, and you play the gender card, this can start the problems. A female coworker of mine was constantly complaining she wasn’t appreciated because of her gender and before I got familiar with her coding “skills”, I sided with her. After I had to review some code of hers, basically her complaints sounded like: “I managed to write a four-line for loop with only forty errors in four weeks and they didn’t appreciate me, they didn’t make me at least a senior developer”. If I didn’t know the particular case (i.e. her coding “skills”), I would have bet my life on the statement that she was a victim of gender discrimination because such discrimination exists (but definitely not in her particular case).
This is the problem with the problem. More or less a person believes his or her own eyes more than what he or she reads in a scientific journal somewhere on the Internet. And let me repeat, as bad as it is to deny gender discrimination because you don’t see/prefer not to see it in your environment, the opposite is also true - to complain of being discriminated based on gender when the problem is elsewhere (i.e. poor coding skills).
One suggestion. Maybe Sitepoint (and its Learnable platform in particular) could partner in some way with the Association? The courses/tutorials at Learnable are not for males only and I don’t believe we need a separate versions of them for the ladies.
Should it matter whether it comes from a woman or a man?
I think this is the wisest thing I’ve heard in quite a long time and it matches my vision of equality.
I suspect a little of both. Evolution would in general favour women to take less risks and more of a social element to ensure the children had the best chance of survival. Men generally take more risks, which would favour winning the prize of food or women. Probably not as essential a skill these days but dare i say still engrained in our very being. (assuming you believe in evolution). You can hatch ducks out under a chicken but the ducklings won’t be chickens, they will swim by themselves (much to the confusion of our chicken).
which is why as others have said we have to be careful not to create a bias where there isn’t one.
This again is not to say women shouldn’t do computer science but if there is an inherent disinterest in computer science by ‘most’ women then it could account for a large proportion of the percentages. Other professions, which were male dominated, such as medicine (which has a far more social aspect) is now much more female orientated for example. Which is why i think a study into why the women already in computer science jobs ended up there would be interesting and could help increase numbers by understanding the type of women more likely to have an interest in the subject who can be encouraged.
Replace that with “people” and you might get further with understanding whether the differences are real or perceived. Take it further and study those who didn’t go down the computer science route, and you might understand the barriers that those who did pursue it didn’t see.
Sometimes, the whole point in the hiring (among a group who is already obviously capable) is to prevent your GroupThink from destroying you. Though this would be more background than anything else: a vagina isn’t going to change group dynamics, but a girly/feminine person who was raised that way and has those kinds of friends will. Same goes for skin colour (it alone isn’t the point, but is there culture/ethnicity associated with it?), kind of school you attended (was it preppy? or did you skip class and play in a punk band and watch your mates talk about the current shit their dad’s in that day?) etc.
A nice read:
We have perceptions based not only on how we look physically, but how we are reacted to socially, and who we grew up with, who we went to school with, and what kinds of ideas are “normal” for us versus others.
Also being biased doesn’t automatically make you a bad person, it just means your brain works I guess.
