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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?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by naubol on Monday April 07 2014, @02:36PM
// warning, playing fast and loose with stereotypes I don't really believe, to make a point. Please accord me some latitude!
Tolerating gay men is not analogous. But, it is instructive to explore this analogy. It would be like 99% of the advertising, movies, billboards, television socials, and socially acceptable workplace discussions would revolve around gay men and their relationships. Not only that, but you as a het male would have to put up with serious sexual aggression by your bosses that ranges from the subtle but pressing to the less subtle and more arm-twisting kind.
If you can imagine this, but it will be hard for you, you are basically told, over and over again, that you are more valuable as the object of a gay male's desire than you are as a worker. Here the analogy sort of fails, because gay men in charge could still refrain from being sexist or treating you as just an object. But, if it holds, you will be expected to wear sexy clothing even though you don't care to wear that, you will be expected to shut it in any meeting, to be unassuming, to be polite, etc. If, on the off chance you insist on speaking your mind in any business discussion, you run the risk of being labelled a "bitch".
You might be less likely to be hired because you might ask for family leave for when your wife has a baby, or you might be perceived as less focused on the job in general due to family. And, the stigma will be intense. Sense you don't wear gingham shirts and tailored pants to work, speak in a gender fluid way, or don't keep up with the latest fantasy drag race contest, they will /look/ at you as a bit of an interloper, and there will be awkward moments of silence as you try to disengage from what the culture is doing. Or, you could choose to suppress your "hetness" and participate in things you don't particularly care for in order to be perceived as "one of the gayth".
If you tried to bring up your family life, people around you might very well get uncomfortable. Knowing this, you would be less reticent to speak about it. One of my favorite complaints from het people about gay people is that gay people talk about their private lives entirely too much. Het people are talking about who they banged, who they want to bang, and their families all the time. They think it is perfectly acceptable. This complaint is really about, "why do I have to sit and listen to this when it makes me uncomfortable? It should be unacceptable, dammit!" Women, similarly, are expected not to talk about feminine issues or concerns, and if they choose to do so are labelled in ways that are shockingly rude.
There is an air of oppression in any office in which many men are just oblivious, but which women feel all too keenly, I assure you. This air mixes in with general society, and it wraps into it all sorts of other cultures, like minorities and "urban" culture. Obliviousness to the fact that it is often harder to get hired, harder to speak your mind, harder to be listened to, harder to get paid equally well, harder to be promoted, harder to be accepted and liked for the things that make you you, etc, makes such ignorance that people whine about how the world is equal and why do we have to be so sensitive? The truth is, if you're saying that, you're not sensitive to much of anything.
If you think this is too off the mark, hard to believe, etc... Consider that there are empirical studies, reams of literature, people speaking about it to you, this article, a whole movement, etc. People aren't crying wolf, this is an issue.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Monday April 07 2014, @03:24PM
One of my favorite complaints from het people about gay people is that gay people talk about their private lives entirely too much. Het people are talking about who they banged, who they want to bang, and their families all the time. They think it is perfectly acceptable. This complaint is really about, "why do I have to sit and listen to this when it makes me uncomfortable? It should be unacceptable, dammit!" Women, similarly, are expected not to talk about feminine issues or concerns, and if they choose to do so are labelled in ways that are shockingly rude.
I just had to listen to several of my cow-orkers talk about how the wife of one of them had a baby, how much it weighed, that it was delivered by C-section, etc. etc. Personally, I feel totally excluded since I don't have any children, and these guys are all standing around talking about their kids.
You don't even have to mismatch on gender or sexual orientation to feel alienated; just being single among married people, or being childless among people with children, can be alienating as well.
I don't really have a solution here; it seems odd and oppressive to say that people shouldn't talk about their kids or whatever. What would be better is if we had better work environments where I don't have to overhear everyone's conversations, and where I have privacy and don't have to be part of conversations I don't want to be. In an open-plan work area, I look completely anti-social when I avoid these conversations that take place right next to me.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday April 07 2014, @04:16PM
> It would be like 99% of the advertising, movies, billboards, television socials, and socially acceptable workplace discussions would revolve around gay men and their relationships.
Are you suggesting that women are marginalised because all advertising panders to men? Even if women still aren't earning as much as men, they still do more of the spending. This isn't a lame stereotypical jab about women liking shopping, it's because women are still more likely to be in control of the household budget.
For this reason, advertisers pander to women. Oh sure, for the minority of products that men buy directly and more-or-less exclusively (beer, power tools) you can expect ads full of swimsuits and boobs and macho-geekery. However for everything else, you'll notice that the message is aimed squarely at females.
Switch on your TV and watch 10 minutes of adverts. Count how many times men - and in particular fathers - are portrayed as bumbling, slow-witted, lazy clods, constantly making fools of themselves and causing messes and crises that have to be cleared up by a woman. Now watch a few sitcom episodes and see that the trope has leaped from the ads to the portrayal of men in general.
This stereotype is not just unfair and offensive to men, but damaging to families. It's because of this that many women don't trust their male partners with things like childcare or housework, all the while complaining that the men don't spend enough time with the kids or do enough to help around the home. Dad misses out on time with the kids, while feeling he is being unfairly hen-pecked by the mother. That's not a recipe for a happy family.
Wish I could find the original article that switched me on to this, but here's some further reading I googled up:
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/selling-abbott-lets- bin-the-patronising-doofus-dad-20130830-2swba.html [smh.com.au]
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/18/opinion/18tierne y.html?_r=1& [nytimes.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @04:49PM
Your "one of the gayth" comment cracks me up, just thought I would mention that.
I actually worked at a job like the one you described. The manager was gay, he hired mostly gay employees, and hired me and 2 others either because a) we were highly skilled and he had no choice, or b) he found us attractive. To give this context for "why didn't you quit!" this was 2000 and the economy in that area had tanked.
I won't go into the details (you are welcome) but after working there a year and a half my self esteem was shot, they had managed to make me feel worthless, that the only reason I had this shitty job was that my gay boss liked making me uncomfortable. They all got into it, and they all thought it was so fucking funny. When I finally did get a different job, it took a long time before I felt pride in my work again, that I was actually good at this thing I was so passionate about, not just tolerated because someone liked how I looked.
Most of that had to do with the economy, as I mentioned, but being trapped in a job because it's the only thing paying your bills, then having co-workers and worse yet a boss that demean you and make you uncomfortable is just SUCH a shitty experience.
I think that is how some of these women feel, and if you are not supremely self-confident it can leave you in a state of depression. One crude joke? no. Crude-jokes all of the time, always feeling like it's at your expense, always feeling like what you do isn't seen as being good enough, or else they wouldn't treat you so poorly, it's a sucky way to work.
(Score: 1) by dpp on Tuesday April 08 2014, @02:43AM
I'm completely certain that your example is the minority situation.
Considering just the #s - a much larger percentage of gays has to put up with hetero tax, often harassment.
It's sad to hear about your story and situation and very unexpected to hear about such an odd/uncommon reversal of fortune.