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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: 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.