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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @02:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @02:13PM (#27488)

    If it is like you say a matter of one sex learning how to interact with the other, why is it more reasonable to demand that men should "learn how to talk to women" than the opposite, that women should learn how to talk to men and be accepting of them and their ways?

    This is something I'd genuinely like a good answer to.

  • (Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday April 07 2014, @02:31PM

    by Vanderhoth (61) on Monday April 07 2014, @02:31PM (#27501)

    According to my wife, "Men need to lean how to talk to women, because women are already adapt at put up with men on a daily basis. Unfortunately it'll never happen; the telepathy gene is in the other X chromosomes you didn't get."

    --
    "Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @02:54PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @02:54PM (#27531)

      Women can be very dismissive of male interests and passions, labeling them childish, immature and subjecting them to all sorts of ridicule, but the moment a woman has a feeling about something it's to be taken serious.

      If we are to move forward to true equality being especially accomodating to the rabid feminists foaming at the mouth while spewing their hatred of the male gender, while the men have to walk on eggshells around them to not offend them or be percieved as insensitive is not a way forward.

      If we take a hypothetical example, one that will for sure get me rated as a troll, if there were only two different opinions in the world, one being the nazis and the other being that all white people should die and I happened to be a caucasian I'd sure as hell side with the nazis.

      The only way forward is compromise, as long as feminists demand special consideration there will be a huge opposition. Come back with reasonable suggestions for compromise and we can finally move past the sexist mindsets on both sides of the argument.

  • (Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Monday April 07 2014, @02:36PM

    by LaminatorX (14) <laminatorxNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday April 07 2014, @02:36PM (#27507)

    Everyone should learn to communicate with one another. Women in man-dominated fields are forced to accommodate mens's ways as a matter of survival. Men need to accommodate women better in order to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. The gender that is (mostly inadvertently) enforcing a glass ceiling (less impermeable than it once was, but very much still there) and pay and hiring disparities bears the weight of needing to be more accommodating. Business as usual will only perpetuate the inequality.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Monday April 07 2014, @02:42PM

    by Sir Garlon (1264) on Monday April 07 2014, @02:42PM (#27516)

    You raise a good point. I don't think all the responsibility should fall on either side of the fence.

    Generally, males are in the critical path to women's career success. The converse is more rarely true. At my company, managers (male and female) get a "bonus round" of diversity training and I support that as a cost-effective approach. What I really advocate is the more power an employee has over others, the more diversity training he or she receive. The fact the most managers are male is incidental to that priority, but it remains true.

    Males right now set the climate of the workplace and if you want to make that climate more inclusive, males are in a position to effect the change.

    Really, everyone needs diversity training. Saying that "men need to do X" should not imply that women need to do nothing, or vice versa. Insofar as the training needs of men and women are different, I think you can make a bigger impact by starting with men.

    --
    [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.