[rev_bird]

>Wouldn't Leap be unfair in the same way?

This assumption completely disregards the measurable advantage men have in the tech community. If you have identical programs, one for a historically disenfranchised group, and one for the group that's been in power for decades, only one of those programs is shitty.

edit: "Advantage" was a poor choice of words, but since it's been quoted in replies I'll leave it. I meant something more like "given the gender disparities in the tech community."

[fvdessen]

> The measurable advantage men have in the tech community

What is that advantage and how is it measured ?

[metaphoracle]

We women in tech frequently need to re-hash this discussion. We offer personal anecdotes, and they are written off as outliers. We present diversity numbers and pay gap data, and we are told that those are due to women either choosing family life over career or that we are biologically predisposed to not being as good as men at tech. We present data and stories about rampant, institutionalized sexism at large industry leaders, and we are scolded for being "overly sensitive". Assertiveness is conflated as bitchiness. Timidness as incompetence. The advantage is apparent - the real goal of constantly asking us to prove the advantage is to create doubt and the appearance of a controversy over the data. But I see these as thinly veiled gaslighting attempts. I have worked in tech all my life, and have had many men take credit for my initiatives and ideas, talk over me constantly through most meetings, pass me up for promotions because I didn't "engage with the team" (ie. attending late night drinking sessions at strip clubs), always get second guessed - even when I am the resident SME and was hired specifically for task, etc. I have lived it. If more men would make themselves aware of the systemic sexism in the industry instead of making women repeat themselves, argue every data point, and be 3x as good as their peers to receive recognition, maybe we could stop having this discussion . . .

See:

https://blog.100tb.com/the-technology-industry-is-a-mans-wor...

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/08/women-in-tech-gender-...

https://www.witi.com/articles/1165/Men-Dominate-the-Tech-Ind...

https://qz.com/940660/tech-is-overwhelmingly-male-and-men-ar...

Also:

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents

There are piles of data. Seriously, you are one google away from incontrovertible evidence.

[rev_bird]

As I noted above, "advantage" was the wrong word, my apologies. There's tons of information out there about the disproportionate number of men working in tech, to say nothing of the salary discrepancies that cause so much drama here.

At the end of the day, women say they feel that they feel isolated by an industry that is overwhelmingly male, and that being able to connect with other women and discuss their experiences is a valuable way to stay in a career that they might otherwise bail on. I'm inclined to believe them.

[fvdessen]

> At the end of the day, women say they feel that they feel isolated by an industry that is overwhelmingly male.

I would like to offer another point of view; A lot of the males who ended up in that industry are, to be blunt, social rejects. They were not the popular kids in high school, but those guys who were playing magic in the corner. Being a male in IT is a big stigma in the outside world. Nerd and Geek are still insults. There are entire sitcoms (IT Guys, Big Bang Theory) designed to laugh at them. Many dating website have the option to filter out men working in IT. I usually hide the fact that I work in IT and have found it very beneficial.

Now that there's money and power involved, things are changing a bit. But I still feel that a large reason that the IT community is like it is because it was simply excluded from society at large for a long time and still is in a way.

I think that people coming now and turning the table around with such righteousness is a bit insensitive. How would you feel about being excluded from the club you build for yourself after having been excluded from everywhere else ?

[etjossem]

Revbird was right. Leap isn't about men trying to claw their way out of the stigma of their industry. It's about women having a place to share their experiences - because right now, it's really common for them not to feel welcome in male-dominated tech water coolers like HN or software subreddits.

Nobody is trying to exclude you from these larger spaces. Though if we want to get rid of the stigma of tech, we can start by making them more welcoming and inclusive.

In other words: if seeing something like Leap makes you viscerally mad, focus on fixing the reason it needs to exist in the first place.

[forgottenpass]

You'd probably like this essay if you haven't seen it before: https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c

[rev_bird]

>I would like to offer another point of view

Honestly, I don't give a shit about "another point of view," and that you think it matters here is a great illustration of why women would run for the hills, whichever hills don't have you on them.

This is not about someone's experience as a "social reject," this isn't about sad boys not being cool in high school because they like comic books. This is about women wanting a place to talk to other women about an experience that they feel isolates them from their male colleagues. That men sometimes feel lonely too has nothing to do with it.

[dang]

Your comments have been crossing into incivility in this thread—not principled incivility, just garden-variety internet swipes like "I don't give a shit", "this is nonsense", and "you're pretending". All this breaks the HN guidelines, regardless of how wrong someone else is or how right you are or feel. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and get on the right side of the rules if you want to keep commenting here.

[rev_bird]

Oh! A moderator! How nice of you to arrive. No need to worry, I won't be coming back.

[eevilspock]

What do you mean "advantage" is the wrong word? In general men clearly have an advantage in tech. Denying it is like denying that white people generally have an advantage in America.

That you feel compelled to apologize reflects the self-preserving power of this male advantage.

[_zachs]

Note the lack of specifics. It's much easier to hold a viewpoint that can't be refuted if it's not measurable in the first place.

[metaphoracle]

What specifics are you seeking? Have you read any of the linked articles in this thread? Or performed a single google search?

-Pay Gap: https://www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gen...

-Employment Gap: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinawallace/2016/10/20/gir...

-Leadership Gap: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-02/why-so-fe...

-Visibility Gap: https://hbr.org/2016/09/to-succeed-in-tech-women-need-more-v...

-Sexism/Hostile Workplaces: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-is-...

-Hiring Discrimination: https://www.aauw.org/2015/06/11/john-or-jennifer/

-General Discrimination: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/the-tech-indus...

And just in case you missed it the last time: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents

[beat]

Measurement is easy. Just look around you. The majority of people working in tech are men. An even larger majority of its leadership is men.

Why is this?

There are only two possible causes that I can see - genetic, or cultural. The genetic argument is basically that men are, by nature, better at being programmers and leaders than women - that women are inferior. The cultural argument is that there is a social advantage to being male (and a social disadvantage to being female) - that, all else being equal, things tend to default in favor of men.

Personally, I reject the genetic explanation. Most people do. If you also reject it, then you're stuck with the cultural explanation, or finding something I haven't come up with.

[adventured]

So your argument is that men and women are exactly identical on all tasks for genetic purposes? Or are you arguing that such just happens to be the case as it pertains to programming?

From my observation, women are frequently proclaimed to be superior to men in numerous ways. My entire life I've heard that women mature faster than men. Women are proclaimed to be more nurturing. Women have higher 'emotional intelligence.' You'll see it almost universally proclaimed that if women ran the world, conflicts (eg war) would be far less common, this is a constant refrain in the US across all media.

There are very well understood differences between men and women when it comes to things like vision, physical strength, hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, physical aggression, and so on. We also have many different health risks due to our genetic differences. All of these things add up to women universally living longer from one culture to the next, and women commiting drastically fewer acts of violence (and thus making up a far smaller percentage of the prison population).

If any of that is actually true, why can't men be superior at various tasks due to genetic differences? Why not programming? What I'm asking is: what's the scientific argument to say that men are not superior at programming, how can that be proven either direction? Just saying such is the case (either direction), is not enough.

[didgeoridoo]

Where women outperform men, that’s science.

Where men outperform women, that’s sexism.

[weberc2]

Genetics could explain the disparity without resorting to a "women are inferior" conclusion. For example, it's possible that the ability distribution is more varied for men than for women such that if you sample from either extreme, you'll find more men, and if you sample from the middle, you'll find more women. Employers obviously prefer to sample programmers and leaders from the high-ability extreme, and therefore end up with more males. However, the mean and median could be the same for men and women.

There are other hypotheses as well that have nothing to do with social advantages--maybe biology or culture has women preferring to elect into other career fields? We also know that (for whatever reason) women prefer flexible careers that let them spend time with kids, and that women are more likely than men to take time off to start a family and that they take more time off than men to start the family. Perhaps men and women are equal in their desire to spend time with family, but society expects men to sacrifice time with family to provide for the family? In this case, the disparity is the result of a social disadvantage to being male.

These are just a few hypotheses that I could come up with in a few moments. Some of these I think are probable and others improbable, but the point is that we have more hypotheses besides misogyny and patriarchy. We shouldn't feel the need to buy into the patriarchy explanation simply to avoid the misogyny explanation (especially because the people who favor the patriarchy explanation also tend to propose some scary reforms, like restricting due process rights for one gender).

[beat]

This isn't Lake Wobegon. Not all the children are above average.

You can cut this cake a different way, too... race. White people are overrepresented (or non-whites are underrepresented) in IT, and in high-status jobs. And the male/female representation ratios are different, as well.

Consider historic example, as well. Right now, women are significantly underrepresented as CEOs and senators. But a century ago, there were no women CEOs or senators. Are women less genetically inclined to their "proper" path as homemakers now than they were a century ago?

At a certain point, I start cutting the cake with Occam's Razor.

[weberc2]

> Not all the children are above average.

They don't have to be. Only the majority, and I have a hard time believing that the majority of software engineers and leaders are of average capability or worse. I'm open to data to the contrary, however.

> You can cut this cake a different way, too... race. White people are overrepresented (or non-whites are underrepresented) in IT, and in high-status jobs.

Not sure what your point is here. Are you implying that because there are racial disparities as well, then both gender and racial disparities must have a common cause? That's obviously fallacious, but I don't know what else to make of this.

> Right now, women are significantly underrepresented as CEOs and senators. But a century ago, there were no women CEOs or senators. Are women less genetically inclined to their "proper" path as homemakers now than they were a century ago?

No. I made no claims about the cause of disparities a century ago.

> At a certain point, I start cutting the cake with Occam's Razor.

Good. Then let's hold off on the elaborate conspiracy theories until we can invalidate the simpler explanations, eh?

[beat]

Pointing out the existence of sexism and racism does not require "elaborate conspiracy theories".

As for my point, it's that systematic bias against people by race looks remarkably similar to systematic bias against people by gender. That suggests a common cause, especially when one group (white men) is the beneficiary of both. Hence Occam's Razor. A single dominant group shutting out everyone who doesn't match the dominant traits is a simpler explanation than coming up with two entirely separate causes for the same observation.

As for historical disparaties... I know you didn't make claims about disparities a century ago. The historic example was an argument against the case you made that somehow, women are genetically predisposed to avoid certain career paths.

[thg]

"The real reason why there are so fewer women in tech isn’t because of discrimination, harassment or unequal pay (although like I said these factors do exist and need to be fixed). The real reason is that most women clearly aren’t as interested in technology-related work as men are. It’s a choice. And for whatever reasons, more women seem to choose other fields."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2015/03/16/th...

[YeGoblynQueenne]

I'm sorry but that is a very intellectually dishonest passage. There is real concern that women may be turned away fom technology careers because of cultural bias that says those jobs are not for women. And the answer to that is that "maybe they're just not interested"?

Well- how do you explain the fact that "they're just not interested"? Why is cultural bias not an explanation of this lack of interest? And if it isn't, then what is?

You can't just stop the ball rolling wherever you like. At some point we have to figure out why girls are not into technology as much as boys are and it's very lazy to just dismiss it as "not a girl thing".

[thg]

There are real genetic differences in how the brains of men and women work. Men and women do not have the same interests, the same goals, nor the same desires. To claim otherwise is ignoring established scientific facts. Studies on this subject always lead to the same conclusion: That women are just less interested in tech jobs, just as men are less interested in social jobs.[0]

I presented the OP with a objective, data-based argument and limited myself to quoting only the article (of which there are many, many, many more I could have chosen from) exactly to avoid a subjective response like yours. I am not interested in ideological discussions about purely subjective arguments (Read: flamewars). You can ignore the data all you like, but please don't try to drag me into an argument with that.

[0]: https://flowingdata.com/2017/09/11/most-female-and-male-occu...

[YeGoblynQueenne]

The data you present does not explain anything. It is just an observation. Yet you present it as an explanation to another observation.

By analogy, it's like answering the question "why do cows eat grass?" with "because cows are herbivores", which is really just restating the question. An actual explanation would require understanding how cows have evolved to become herbivores in the first place, and not meat-eaters, like, say, wolves. Without such an explanation, there is no way to understand why cows are herbivores and wolves are not.

By analogy, without any understanding of why women are not interested in technology jobs, there is no way to understand the gender disparity in technology.

>> You can ignore the data all you like, but please don't try to drag me into an argument with that.

This is very unpleasant. First you assume I'm "ignoring the data" when I actually discussed what the data means. Then you assign a motive to me, that I'm "trying to drag you into an argument". Please don't do that.

[brucephillips]

The study you linked says nothing about genetics.

[brucephillips]

There's a third, which is that women are, on average, less interested in being programmers.

[fvdessen]

Could it be that the cultural problem is the low social status of IT Work ?

[etjossem]

Lawyers have about the same gender breakdown as computer systems analysts, so I don't think this is the case. CEOs are even more predominantly male, at a fairly shocking 73% by 2016 numbers (we'll have '17 soon).

The problem with tech in particular is that we're often viewed as an inclusive and progressive industry. But when you run the numbers, we're no better than the law firms.

[beat]

That seems unlikely, considering that you see similar issues in high-status work, such as business executives or politicians.

[brucephillips]

How does IT work have low social status?

[glorkk]

> the measurable advantage men have in the tech community

I’m sure if it is “measurable” you can provide some numbers?

[beat]

I'm sure you can google them. Or, if you're in a tech office right now, just open your eyes and look around you for anecdotal evidence.

[TheAdamAndChe]

> This assumption completely disregards the measurable advantage men have in the tech community.

There is obviously an imbalance in the industry, but can you please provide proof that this is due to an advantage that men have?

> If you have identical programs, one for a historically disenfranchised group, and one for the group that's been in power for decades, only one of those programs is shitty.

Why would fighting racism with racism or sexism with sexism be a productive method of correcting imbalances? Wouldn't that just fuel and maintain the disdain between groups?

[dang]

> Why would fighting racism with racism or sexism with sexism be a productive

Here you cross into making this yet another same-old generic ideological thread, thus guaranteeing repetition and tedium. What more we can do to explain to HNers that this is where discussions become off topic because the light/heat ratio goes to zero? I realize the line isn't obvious when a topic starts out close to it anyhow. But you know, it especially isn't obvious when you aren't consciously looking for it in the first place. Since you have a habit of doing this in HN threads and stand out as a user who's done particular damage this way—unintentionally I'm sure—we need you to do a better job with this.

Perhaps the following heuristic would help. If a comment breaks away from the specific content of the specific story and becomes generically ideological, it's on the wrong side of the line and you probably should not post it.

Note that this doesn't have to do with the ideologies or politics in question, or what view you're arguing for. It has to do with generic discussions being boring in HN's sense of the word.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

[TheAdamAndChe]

There definitely is something I'm not understanding if this comment crossed the line. I'm sorry, it's still not my intent to negatively affect the quality of this site.

This may seem pedantic, but what do you consider ideological? I said what I said because I saw it as a fundamental flaw of the community. I don't believe fighting discrimination with discrimination is productive, and I believe a woman-only community is discriminatory. Would it have avoided the genericism if I had tied it directly to the thread by saying "I believe this community is wrong because you can't fight discrimination with discrimination?" Or would mentioning discrimination genericize the conversation as well?

[dang]

By ideology I mean something like predictable clusters of ideas around large questions. On HN it doesn't much matter which ideology people subscribe to or battle against—it's all more or less off topic here. There are two reasons.

First, all of it is predictable. Each time something gets repeated, its potential to gratify curiosity diminishes. In the case of ideological squabbles, the repetition is so entrenched that there's no curiosity potential left at all. What is has instead is strong conflict potential, meaning that such discussions not only add no value here, they burn up and destroy what does have value.

Second, it's all generic. The larger a question is, the harder it is to say meaningful things about it. Signal/noise ratio goes down as topics get more generic.

I don't doubt that it's possible for people to find new, meaningful things to say about large generic questions. But internet comments are not the right genre for expressing them. Someone who truly has such ideas would write a book or an essay, for the same reason one wouldn't excavate the foundation for a house with a thimble.

[rev_bird]

>Why would fighting racism with racism or sexism with sexism be a productive method of correcting imbalances? Wouldn't that just fuel and maintain the disdain between groups?

Is this the "all lives matter!" response to this project? It's not a crime to point out that some groups are poorly represented in an industry. Are you saying the solution to "hey, women feel isolated in the tech industry" is to say "Well, let's figure out how to include men too"? If women felt like their discussions were being treated fairly in public forums, they'd have stayed in them.

[TheAdamAndChe]

> Are you saying the solution to "hey, women feel isolated in the tech industry" is to say "Well, let's figure out how to include men too"?

No, my solution to a sense of isolation is instead to find ways for women to no longer feel isolated within their field.

A great example with the other sex would be male nurses. Male nurses are definitely the minority in their field, yet they manage to not feel isolated overall. Even if they did, creating a male-nurse-only group wouldn't do a thing to correct the isolation-causing systems in their place of employment, and would only work to further separate male nurses from the majority by isolating them from the wider nursing community.

If women feel isolated, we should try to find out why and correct that instead of just sticking them with other isolated women.

[DannyBee]

"If women feel isolated, we should try to find out why and correct that instead of just sticking them with other isolated women." Certainly you realize they may feel isolated because you are not sticking them with other women?

What is wrong with doing something like this until they generally feel less isolated, then moving on to something else?

IE Why is it unreasonable for this to be a step along the path?

[TheAdamAndChe]

> Certainly you realize they may feel isolated because you are not sticking them with other women?

This is possible. I do not know.

> What is wrong with doing something like this until they generally feel less isolated, then moving on to something else?

What I'm afraid will happen by taking this route(though I do not know that this will happen) is that this will divert energy that would have gone into converting work cultures to improve the interaction between men and women and shift that energy into an external forum that doesn't affect their real employment conditions in the slightest.

I'm also afraid of the optics of a double standard. If women can have women-only groups while men can't socially get away with having men-only groups at the same time that the number of women grows in the field, then that may make seemingly displaced men very angry.

I could be wrong. If you see a reason why this doesn't make sense, please let me know.

[rev_bird]

The only way you'd be able to say "groups like this won't fix feelings of isolation!" is if you ignored all the women in this comment section saying it has definitely helped their feelings of isolation. Which I guess might be kind of the point.

[metaphoracle]

> If women felt like their discussions were being treated fairly in public forums, they'd have stayed in them.

This so much. Most men in tech can have a majority male discussion in any open community, due to their numbers. The amount of disparity from men towards leap in this thread is a prime example of why we women in tech seek to have discussions in more closed environments.