
Ask HN: What about women on HN? - baxtr
Out of curiosity: I wonder what the share of women on HN is. There are no real names or pictures on profiles so it’s really hard to say. Somehow though in my head all HN users appear as men. I hope that’s not true. Is there any way to falsify?
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DoreenMichele
There are women here. Some of them actively hide or downplay their gender. My
experience has been that even with being very open about my gender, I am
sometimes misgendered by people assuming I am male. I know no means to put a
stop to that and I feel that being too pushy about it would be
counterproductive.

This is a new handle, but my original handle has 25k karma and is still on the
leaderboard. As far as I know, I am the only woman on the leaderboard. If so,
out of 100 names showing on the leaderboard, only one is a woman. This is
really low even in comparison to the 17 percent figure often cited for female
CEOs.

So, yeah, it is an overwhelmingly male forum, but I have been here over 8
years and I am fairly confident that the appearance of male domination is even
worse than the reality. I see questions like yours from time to time, and the
best I can tell you is that data over the years suggests that a) at least 2 to
3 percent of the active membership is female and b) this figure is probably a
case of underreporting. There are probably more women here, it just doesn't
look it.

It seems to me to be getting better.

~~~
owebmaster
> It seems to me to be getting better.

Why more women in a forum where apparently not many women want to participate
is getting better? I mean, I'm black and we are also disproportionately
represented here and I hope this to change sometime, but it would make HN
atmost more suitable to me and other people of color, not necessarily better
at what HN is made for.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I find your phrasing unclear, so I don't really understand what you are
asking.

~~~
owebmaster
> Why more women in a forum where apparently not many women want to
> participate is getting better?

s/is/would be

~~~
DoreenMichele
That doesn't help me.

Are you asking what mechanism is causing improvement? Are you asking why it
would be a good thing to have more women here? Or something else?

Because the rest of your paragraph seems to suggest it is fundamentally not a
good thing and possibly actively harmful to either HN or YC or both, which
makes it really challenging for me to try to engage you at all because it
feels openly hostile to my very participation.

~~~
owebmaster
So the problem wasn't my english, you already had understood the question. Now
your reply doesn't help me. It is not logical to ask why put more people that
don't enjoy hang around would improve something? So I'm asking why should HN
actively change itself to be more engaging to women? And how?

~~~
DoreenMichele
You assume women don't want to be here. I see it otherwise. Women want to be
here, but the climate is not very welcoming of them.

 _So I 'm asking why should HN actively change itself to be more engaging to
women? And how?_

HN isn't required to do anything at all. It looks to me like both YC and the
moderating staff of HN would like to foster diversity. That is their choice. I
try to respect that fact.

I have worked hard at trying to fit in because I want to be here. I know a lot
about social phenomenon. If one woman can figure it out, this will tend to
open doors for others. That is simple reality and has nothing to do with me
trying to change HN. In fact, to the degree that new women so often take it
for granted that they are welcome here, have no idea how hard I have worked to
fit in and how that makes it easier for them and then quite often are
personally ugly to me, I often regret any role I have played in opening doors
for other women here. It seems to be of zero benefit to me and to very often
bite me in the butt.

Your hostility in this most recent comment seems to be much more blatant and
not a matter of misunderstanding. So, if you will excuse me, I don't plan to
engage you further.

~~~
owebmaster
> Your hostility in this most recent comment seems to be much more blatant and
> not a matter of misunderstanding.

All your replies to me were hostiles and some of them complaining about my
hostility. I wasn't hostile at any time, my question was on the subject of the
topic but every answer of yours you tried to frame me as hostile. Because you
feel that women are hostilized here. I feel that black men are hostilized here
too. By men and women. But most of the times I'm hostilized it is directly
correlated to the angriness in some of my replies. I don't think that bring
more black people ready to engage in flamewars about why there aren't many of
us here will do any good to HN and neither them will enjoy the experience.
Tech savvy black people will. And I think exactly the same about women on HN.

"Ask HN: What about women on HN?"

~~~
DoreenMichele
My initial request for clarification was in no way hostile, nor a criticism of
you. I am sorry you are so very angry, but I see no reason why I should be the
target of your anger.

Also, there is no requirement here to be in tech. There are men on the
leaderboard in other professions. There are plenty of respected members here
who are teachers, doctors or lawyers. The suggestion that a woman or black
person needs to be "tech savvy" is just another means to exclude them.

Since you are black, it really isn't in your best interest to suggest that
people who are not white males need to pass additional tests to be here. And
if you think flamewars will degrade the site, then look to the man in the
mirror. Your anger is part of the problem.

I do all in my power to be the antithesis of an angry woman just here to start
fights. I imagine my commitment to trying to engage in good faith in spite of
it being an uphill battle to do so is a key element of how I became the first
woman on the leaderboard.

~~~
owebmaster
> I do all in my power to be the antithesis of an angry woman just here to
> start fights.

Doesn't look like that at all. I weren't the one with weapons at hand in this
thread.

> Since you are black, it really isn't in your best interest to suggest that
> people who are not white males need to pass additional tests to be here.

My only test is that someone here has to fit and add to this tech community to
not feel hostilized otherwise it'd be in their best interest to find over time
their position here in place of screaming out loud that they should be more
accepted (of course, respecting the guidelines objectively, not subjectively).
Show, don't tell. The same way you got your position in the leaderboard. I've
remember reading a lot of comments from you (Mz?) that I sure upvoted because
it contributed to the discussion.

------
lovelearning
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=I%27m%20woman&sort=byPopularit...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=I%27m%20woman&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

~~~
miguelrochefort
As expected, it's mostly threads talking about women, sexism, etc.

~~~
lovelearning
The question was "Somehow though in my head all HN users appear as men...Is
there any way to falsify?"

The results list multiple "I'm a woman in tech and <blah> <blah>", thus
falsifying OP's assumption. What they were talking about is irrelevant to OP's
question.

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danieltillett
Well yes. If one woman posts on HN then your theory is false.

To answer your question yes there are women who post here, but they are in the
minority.

------
twobyfour
(Raises hand.) I don't advertise my gender, and most people who refer to me by
a gendered pronoun assume I'm male. I don't usually bother to disabuse them of
that notion, because it's typically irrelevant to the current topic of
conversation. Exactly once did someone call out that assumption, which I
appreciated.

HN is a perfectly comfortable place to be a woman... in conversations that
don't touch at all on social issues.

On those that touch on lifestyle and family structure, I find that the
assumptions here tend to be different than in other (not tech or startup
oriented) communities I frequent. The direction of the discussion often
implicitly hinges on the notion that anyone participating in the conversation
either is single and childless or has a partner who is responsible for all
things related to home and childrearing. That if one parent is going to
prioritize childrearing over career it will be the mother. Etc.

It's not hostile. It's just... uncomfortable. The source of a lot of cognitive
dissonance and a sense of being an outsider. A lack of identification and
support within the community. If I brought it up in those contexts, I would
expect to be shouted down by some for being off-topic and by others for being
"shrill".

Then there are the topics that touch explicitly on gendered issues. Gender
equality and the imbalance in tech. Sexual harassment in the workplace. Etc.

Those discussions are much less excruciating than they were even five years
ago. And that's saying a lot because they are still extremely uncomfortable
for me.

Oh, if it's about something truly egregious and inexcusable like a rape caught
on video, I'm confident that the community here will express appropriate
outrage. (Despite the very vocal 0.5% who post enough to make themselves look
like 5% and will inevitably find a way to blame the victim. At least these
days those schmucks generally get downvoted into oblivion. That wasn't always
the case.)

But if there's even the slightest bit of uncertainty, the community as a whole
seems to get defensive and use that as an excuse to question any claim that a
man wronged a woman or that there might be society-wide biases that interfere
with women a) getting equal consideration for opportunities or b) being able
to just do their damn jobs or disagree with someone in discussions on the
internet without having to fend off anything from leering to rape-and-murder
threats.

That's probably, again, a tiny group of reactionaries being extremely vocal.
But I don't see enough of the rest of the community making it clear that
that's what they are.

In short, there are times (not all the time, but sometimes) when HN feels like
a hostile place to be as a woman. There have been at least a few times when
I've rage-quit (for a few weeks at least, the addiction is too strong). I've
even abandoned a few accounts here in the past out of frustration or even fear
generated by that hostility.

Those conversations are a tiny minority of the ones I have here, but they have
a hold on my perception of the community that's disproportionate to their
frequency because, well, adrenaline will do that to the brain.

In short, MOST of the time HN is a perfectly fine place to be a woman.
Sometimes it's uncomfortable, but heck, to some degree the _world_ is an
uncomfortable place to be a woman. But on occasion it's hostile.

It's come a long way, but there's still a lot farther to go.

And if women who check out the community don't register accounts or don't
stick around or don't participate... or even if they don't reveal their
gender, those may be some of the reasons why.

By the way, I've been a member of co-ed communities where the default
assumption upon meeting someone with a non-gendered handle was that they were
female. The perception and assumption here that everyone is male is a self-
reinforcing stereotype. It's like walking into a mall and thinking you don't
see anyone who's gay if you don't see any men holding hands with one another.
There are almost certainly gay people there, they're just invisible to you
because you don't think to question the assumption that each person you
encounter is straight.

There are more women here than you think.

------
thisone
why do you picture all posters on HN to be men?

that seems to say more about you than anything else.

~~~
mbrock
Maybe all the ones you see with a public profile seem to be male. Could be
that everyone they've met in person who's on HN is male. You could argue there
are more subtle cultural clues in something like typically male styles of
interaction (the classic HN nitpicking is easy to imagine as related to
"mansplaining"). Etc.

~~~
thisone
I see no reason in that for anyone to assume an entire internet forum to be
exclusively one gender. Someone sees a set of interactions that they assume to
be between a single gender, so they assume everyone is that gender?

~~~
mbrock
The original poster is saying "somehow in my head HN posters appear as male".
That doesn't really mean the poster is assuming that HN is actually 100% male.
It's a description of his or her imaginative process, which is a matter of
great psychological and sociological complexity.

