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posted by LaminatorX on Monday April 07 2014, @08:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the Don't-be-a-jerk! dept.

Written in a New York Times article and summarily paraphrased here,

Elissa Shevinsky can pinpoint the moment when she felt that she no longer belonged. She was at a friend's house watching the live stream of the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon, when she saw that it opened with two men who developed an app called Titstare. After some banter, one of Titstare's developers proudly proclaimed, "This is the breast hack ever."

Ms. Shevinsky felt pushed to the edge. Women who enter fields dominated by men often feel this way. "It's a thousand tiny paper cuts," is how Ashe Dryden, a programmer who now consults on increasing diversity in technology, described working in tech. Women in tech like Shevinsky and Dryden advocate working to change the tech culture from inside-out, but other women like Lea Verou write that,

' women-only conferences and hackathons cultivate the notion that women are these weak beings who find their male colleagues too intimidating...As a woman, I find it insulting and patronizing to be viewed that way.'

This all being hot on the heels of engineer Julie Ann Horvath's departure from Github as a result of similar concern.

Any of you care to address your own personal experiences or opinions regarding the subject matter; as well as the accuracy of the articles' stories compared to the industry-at-large?

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by bradley13 on Monday April 07 2014, @11:02AM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Monday April 07 2014, @11:02AM (#27386) Homepage Journal

    First and foremost, be sure to read what Susan Sons has to say on this subject [linuxjournal.com]. She puts a lot of things into perspective.

    I also have a minor irritation with the recent cases that have hits the Interwebs in a big way. Generally speaking, we are not talking about female techies. Just to name three examples:

    - Adria Richards is a publicity flack

    - Julie Ann Horvath is not a engineer, but a marketing type

    - And now, Elissa Shevinsky, who holds a bachelor's in political theory and a master's in entrepreneurship

    Note how it's not the hard-core technie girls who seem to have trouble. It's always the women on the fringes. Perhaps this is more of a geek-culture problem than anything to do with sexism?

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  • (Score: 1) by Virindi on Monday April 07 2014, @02:51PM

    by Virindi (3484) on Monday April 07 2014, @02:51PM (#27526)

    This. Like any new developer, you have to prove your worth. Once people respect your abilities, things generally work out.

    Except the occaisional odd duck character who simply can't talk to a female, but that is much rarer than people make it out to be in this sort of story.

    It seems to me that in today's society, people are always looking for some kind of excuse for why they failed. For a lot of people, software is hard; it helps them if they can tell themselves they can't do it because there is some grand conspiracy or something. This is just one example of that.

    When you prove your skills, you get respect. It is as simple as that, and it doesn't matter what gender you happen to be.

    • (Score: 2) by useless on Monday April 07 2014, @03:20PM

      by useless (426) on Monday April 07 2014, @03:20PM (#27557)

      Valid point, but this has nothing to do with developers. It's a group of people who think because they use their iPhone to post on Twitter and Facebook that they are "geeks".

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @06:33AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @06:33AM (#27999)

      Indeed. I've worked with a woman for the last six years who is at least as smart as I am, can routinely understand and even fix my code, and I can hold technical conversations with her as a peer.

      The only thing holding her back is self-confidence. My sample size is shit, but I believe that's likely a more widespread issue that her alone.

  • (Score: 2) by useless on Monday April 07 2014, @03:22PM

    by useless (426) on Monday April 07 2014, @03:22PM (#27561)

    I somehow missed that article, thanks for the link. Good read.

  • (Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday April 08 2014, @08:13AM

    by mojo chan (266) on Tuesday April 08 2014, @08:13AM (#28027)

    Or perhaps those women are just better equipped to bring the issues to the fore, compared to some anonymous cubicle dweller.

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    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)