[aredington]

When you include the women as a perk in an effort to tempt engineering talent, it's easy to interpret the mindset of the author of using women as objects. Even if the author ISN'T authoring the list that way, they are not being cognizant of the pervasive problem of viewing women as objects and acting to prevent it.

Everything else on the list is proffered as transactional compensations of talented engineers renting their labor to the CEO. Highlighting the youth of these engineers while including them on a list of perks implies specific things about how they are valued.

If he had separately described the work environment, and had included these engineers in that description, and had not focused SOLELY on the young female engineers, then this wouldn't be a story.

[jabbernotty]

I could never have written the ad in such a thoughtless manner myself (neither could I have written your own well-reasoned post, for that matter).

But I do think it is just clumsyness - I don't think he thinks of women as objects, he is probably just happy to have them around for what they add as a person.

Or am I being naive?

[aredington]

Objectifying women is rarely an act that people embrace with a conscious perspective or decision. It's a way of behaving that most people engage in because the culture they occupy and learned in showed it as an acceptable behavior. They continue the behavior which reinforces their privileged position in society (again, often not consciously).

The intent and perspective of the author do not make the problem go away any more than a hunter realizing he accidentally shot someone in the wilderness that he mistook for a deer makes the victim's bullet wound close.

Part of the concern is that the youth and gender are highlighted prominently for these engineers, and ONLY the young woman engineers are listed as perks. I absolutely value the contribution women engineers bring to my work environments, they are valuable additions to our team, but some of them aren't young.

Again, IF the engineering team was described separately, OR if other engineers were included as 'perks', e.g. "We have a senior Rails contributor on staff whom you can learn with", OR if the perk wasn't specifically calling out their youth and gender (we have a multinational team of many races and genders), then this would be a non-story.