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I ran out of time to reply to every comment yesterday, but as Faruk linked to this as one of his best comments, I thought I would take the time to reply now. The example of African Americans carrying the legacy of slavery with them is not a fair comparison to women. African Americans are a group of people who, whilst now large and diverse, mostly share a common history which in the grand scheme of things was not all that long ago. You could use Native Americans or Jewish people as similar examples. Women don't have a shared history in the same way. Women have suffered terribly throughout history (and in some countries they still do now) by either horrible violence, being treated by second class citizens or both. However there was no one cultural atrocity which affected all women. I'm aware of ways in which women have been persecuted. I'm also aware of how people have been persecuted based on race, religion, sexuality, age. Those things all contribute to my understanding of history, and I think it's extremely important not to ignore them, but not ignoring them, and not being weighed down thinking about them every day are very different things. Stories like you describe - I can honestly say that I don't have a story like that. It might be that I've been extremely fortunate and I'm in a small minority. It might also be that I try very hard not to jump to conclusions. I don't want to unfairly judge people based on what is probably an entire harmless gesture, but I completely understand why other women do. When writing my post I started to wonder if I was weird because I didn't fear being raped. If the article could have that effect on me, isn't it possible that articles and comments like this are actually detrimental to that problem? Finally, I don't think that "I'm concerned about the gender gap in tech. I think it's an important thing for us to be talking about" was what the original article was about. It's probably what the original intention of the article was, but it's not how the article turned out. I actually see the gender gap talked about a lot (both by women and men). I barely go a day without seeing someone or other talk about it on Twitter. My Twitter feed clearly is by no means a representation of the whole industry as a) there is a definite bias towards UXers and designers, and b) it's an entirely self-selected list on my part. However it does show that these discussions are already happening, amongst some communities at least, on a regular basis. I think that an article that was truly about the gender gap in tech would actually talk about the gender gap in tech. There were so many issues that the article actually could have talked about - disparity in pay, women being overlooked for promotions, women getting unfairly let go or not hired because of pregnancy, women finding that their opinions are ignored or not even asked for, women feeling left out because the guys go for drinks after work and they're not asked to go with. The article did briefly touch on speakers at conferences, but for me personally that's a less important issue. I go to conferences a couple of times a year; I go to the office 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year, and issues like pay and promotions affect my whole life. That last paragraph is something I regret not putting in my original post as it helps to demonstrate that I was not criticising the intention of writing the article; I was criticising the way it was written and the things that it chose to concentrate on. |
I do just want to comment on one tangent:
> However there was no one cultural atrocity which affected all women.
I don't think this is as big a difference as you do. There is no Holocaust, no singular event of great subjugation, in the history of African Americans.
The Atlantic slave trade and the ensuing institution of racial slavery wasn't an event. It happened day by day, one ship, one beating, one auction, one rape, one lynching at a time, generation by generation, for hundreds of years, well into the last century.
It is the same situation with women. No, no one ever decided to round up all the females and shoot them; but day by day, one gospel, one edict, one rape, one revisionist history at a time, backed up by very real violence, women have had their natural rights to life and liberty and property and justice neatly excised and kept in a box for safekeeping. In nearly every civilization for ten thousand years of recorded history.
If we don't call that an atrocity, it is only because the word is not large enough to contain such atrociousness.