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by sillysaurusx 785 days ago
That! This! Thank you for talking about it and putting it into words. Not only is it applicable, I’ve had so many discussions about it with my wife. Her central theme is "treat us normally; stop making it a big deal" but with the added context of "it sucks that there aren’t many examples of that." So it’s a balance between the two. I told my wife your story and she said yup, that checks out. I wanted to touch on this but couldn’t figure out how to fit it in.

She points out that the thing not to do is to be like "wow, you’re a girl!" and instead showcase examples of women coding. It’s the showcasing part that helps them feel like they belong. She notes that it would be cool if people would just say "this is Ada Lovelace, she was the first programmer" instead of doing the usual thing of saying "the first programmer was a woman". They might seem equivalent to us, but it feels way different to experience, and it’s something that I couldn’t appreciate until a few instances of me feeling out of place as a man. And then I realized that’s how women feel in tech.

That’s also why OP’s example meant so much to me. It was completely casual, which is the only way my daughter might feel like she belongs too.

Thanks again, and you also have a wonderful week.

1 comments

Another person’s explanation: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702676>