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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 urza9814 on Monday April 07 2014, @05:36PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Monday April 07 2014, @05:36PM (#27634) Journal

    If there are specific parking spots set aside for women with a transient physical condition that makes parking close to the building a bit easier for them, are there also spots set aside for men with transient physical conditions -- say, a broken leg -- where parking there would help a man out?

    The concept of needing closer parking for expectant mothers is fairly new, as in the past the assumption was that they would just stay home, and that they therefore didn't have a right to be able to access workplaces and certain public buildings.

    This culture is starting to change, but the laws haven't caught up yet. I'm sure the companies would much prefer to have a combined handicapped/expectant mother/whatever parking spots. But the law says they must have a certain number of handicapped spots reserved only for people with one of a certain specified set of disabilities. Expectant mothers aren't on that list, so the companies choose to add those spots separately. Perhaps in a few years that will get included in the legal requirements instead.

    I mean it's just like writing software. If you've got two massive software systems being upgraded at a different rate, every once in a while you're gonna need some crappy dirty hacks to hold things together temporarily!