[mibbitier]

> In a perfect world, peopleandtech.com would be all that's required, but unfortunately we're not quite there yet.

At the risk of being controversial, we will never be there, and nor should we desire to be. Women like different things to men. We're hard wired to have different tastes, desires, strengths and weaknesses.

[gilrain]

Even with that viewpoint, you could see this site as a positive and necessary thing. There really are girls who are deeply interested in STEM fields, but are discouraged by the apparent lack of female role models. In your view, they are biological outliers, I suppose... but surely they still deserve to have potential heroes highlighted for them?

After all, I assume you don't believe that the women who are successful and passionate about STEM fields are fighting their every instinct, right? So, even if you think they are biologically less likely interests for a woman, it'd be good to encourage the ones who are interested that they can be successes.

[mibbitier]

I'm not convinced. If you need a role model (Of the same sex) to do something, you probably don't 'love' it enough or find it intellectually stimulating enough to do it for yourself.

Personally, I think this just throws up an issue where there is none.

Any woman can get into tech, learn technology, setup websites, make apps, do a startup etc etc. I'm not really sure what barriers there are for anyone, apart from the barriers they impose on themselves.

Also I'm not a fan of sexism even when it's "reverse" - this website is "women only". It'd be much better to just share stories from everyone...

Just my 2c.

[wickedchicken]

> I'm not really sure what barriers there are for anyone, apart from the barriers they impose on themselves.

So this is a really hard idea to get out to someone, and is the core of a lot of the issues here: a lot of issues women face in technology are issues that men have never experienced. They usually aren't aware that these issues even exist, and probably couldn't brainstorm them if prodded.

Here is a thought experiment. You're writing a unit test framework, and the output of your test is like so: http://i.imgur.com/jIsR8.png (sorry for the non-terminalness)

You pass this off to your friend to see what he thinks. "How do you tell if the test passed?" he asks. "What do you mean?" "I can't see if a test passed or failed. I don't get it." "What? All the information you need is right there!"

Turns out your friend is colorblind. Chances are, you didn't intentionally make this hard for colorblind people. It simply wasn't on your radar. Assuming you aren't colorblind, you go through your whole life discerning the difference between green and red and simply assume everyone else does too! The difference is that when someone brings this up, you don't go "nuh uh! We all see exactly the same way! I don't see what barriers there are for anyone to tell the difference between red and green." Yet this is exactly the response you gave above. (Don't worry, we all do this to a degree).

The point is, there are lots of subtle differences that people with different backgrounds view the world through. It's unrealistic to accommodate all of them, but in order to be a better human being you have to stop and listen when someone tells you something that is outside of your experience. So when you say you're 'not really sure what barriers there are for anyone,' well, there are a lot. Especially for women. That's why we need sites like this.

If you're interested in a long but very well written piece, I highly recommend Ellen Spertus' MIT AI Technical Report on this subject: http://people.mills.edu/spertus/Gender/pap/pap.html

[mibbitier]

> "So when you say you're 'not really sure what barriers there are for anyone,' well, there are a lot. Especially for women. That's why we need sites like this."

FWIW, I said it because I learnt to program alone. Sitting in front of a computer. With books. I didn't 'network', or attend gatherings of other people. I don't see the need for it... So that's perhaps why I'm not seeing any hurdles.

[gms7777]

The key with finding a role model that inspires you is often times finding someone you can relate to. I don't think its an exaggeration that in the STEM fields, its much easier to find examples of male role models than female ones. Which is fine seeing as there are a lot more males in the fields. But I don't think its an issue highlighting some women, so young females have someone to look up to when they run into gender issues in their own careers.

As a woman in high school and college in the stem fields (computer science, physics and biochem), while I can't point to any example of explicit sexism I faced, there was definitely this feeling of a "boy's club" at times, and at least personally, there was times I felt excluded and looked down upon by some individuals within the field. And even from individuals outside the field there was times that I got this feeling that people thought it was "weird" that I liked this stuff. Don't get me wrong, I loved it wholeheartedly, never once did I consider switching to something more "feminine". That doesn't mean that it didn't get me down at times. I had the benefit of having some strong female professors, who definitely inspired me.

[mibbitier]

> "The key with finding a role model that inspires you"...

I'm still not sure why anyone feels they need a role model. IMHO we should be teaching our kids to be confident about themselves, and trying what they want to try. If they're confident about exploring the world themselves, then role models probably matter far less.

My personal experience was that I found out about computers, saw they could do cool stuff, and wanted to play with them. "Role models" have never been part of the equation for me. Perhaps it's more necessary for Women to have role models, as they're more 'social' and communicate far more than men?

Just anecdotally, isn't the biochem industry pretty even, if not slightly female dominated?

[king_jester]

> "Role models" have never been part of the equation for me.

This is the key sentence right here. For myself as a cis man, there are SO MANY more roles models that I see and hear about than many other group of people. It doesn't matter if you feel that you don't need role models because you grew up in a world where those kinds of people get the most amount of attention.

For women in tech it is completely different. Women in tech aren't visible. Sexist attitudes and news stories dominate the discussions about women in tech. Can you imagine how off putting that is to someone who likes tech? Would you want to spend your life working in a field where your very existence as a woman will be a constant source of harassment and experience erasure? That your skill will be questioned automatically because of your gender?

To suggest that such a site as Women and Tech is "reverse sexist" is ludicrous, because it is NOT sexist to provide safe spaces and outlets for people who are ignored and silenced in popular media (the web is the predominant popular media source for tech).

[gms7777]

In general, yes. I was more involved in computational biochem and high performance computing which isn't as much.

I agree with you that its about confidence. If you were probably never discouraged by anyone about computing and tech because of some facet of who you are, or always had to confidence to let that stuff go even if you were, power to you. I don't think many of us are quite as strong as that. That's the idea behind presenting positive role models that people can relate to: even when other things are working against you, there is someone you can look up to and go "See, he/she was just like me, and look what they've done now". Its about boosting their confidence (not the only way, mind you).

Its not even about that idea of a stereotypical "role model". If someone asked me in high school or college who my female role-models were, I wouldn't have been able to say. Its more that repeatedly seeing examples of people like you who have "succeeded" hammers in the idea that you could do it too.

And just personally, I find the comment about being more "social" and "communicating far more than men" entertaining. It may be true in the general case, but I'm definitely the quiet one, out of my team, otherwise composed entirely of males :)