Ask HN: How often women read HN? Participate? - sushirain
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djcapelis
I read it pretty often and have a comment history going back a number of
years. Most of the time my gender isn't something that comes up. I wish I
could say this place has improved in terms of how it feels to be women
identified here, but I personally don't really feel like it has. It hasn't
gotten worse, which is a credit to the community given how many other ways HN
feels like it passed eternal September a long time ago.

I will note that some of the work I've done under nyms has hit the front page
here and it was disheartening to see across hundreds of comments how many
people just assumed whoever was behind the project was a guy. It was rare for
anyone to be gender neutral and that was as radical as it got. No one assumed
the author of that project was a woman.

Oh well.

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pmoriarty
I expect that not very many women will out themselves in response to your
question, considering how much negative attention such an outing often results
in.

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RandyRanderson
What are you talking about? Can you cite an example?

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pmoriarty
Quick example from [1]:

 _" After sifting through near to three million pull requests submitted on
GitHub, they found – against their expectations – that code written by women
was approved at a slightly higher rate than that composed by men, 78.6 percent
to 74.6 percent, respectively. That’s roughly an extra 120,000 pieces of
code._

 _" Nevertheless, there was a depressing caveat: this rule only applied if
their gender was unidentified. If female coders’ gender was known, their
overall pull request acceptance rate fell from 78.6 percent to 62.5 percent.
This appears to suggest that women may in fact be better coders, but are
automatically discriminated against simply because of their gender."_

Apart from that, there are endless examples of women being harassed, stalked,
assaulted, and even killed because of their gender. Is it any wonder that many
might prefer not to reveal their gender and enjoy the benefits of relative
equality when they have the ability to do so, such as in an online forum like
HN?

Really, you'd have to be living in a cave not to be aware of the existence of
sexual harassment. Just on HN, articles about it float to the front page at
least one or twice a month, which is why I really have to wonder if you are
just trolling by asking that question.

[1] - [http://www.iflscience.com/technology/women-are-seen-
better-c...](http://www.iflscience.com/technology/women-are-seen-better-
coders-only-if-their-gender-isnt-known/)

~~~
reefoctopus
Correlation != causation. Might it be possible that women who play the woman
card are not as capable as those who let their code speak for their ability?

>women may in fact be better coders

How can someone make such a blanket statement like that with so many
confounding variables. Do you think it possible that funding sources and
expected (and socially acceptable) results might have something to do with the
conclusion these sorts of studies come to? Do you think there are grants
available for researchers who would interpret this data differently?

~~~
pdq
Another simple theory is that introverted women may be better coders than both
extroverted female and male coders.

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lalaithion
Maybe someone should set up a comprehensive census for HN?

Note: I do not mean someone should set up a page long google form that asks
for age and gender. I mean someone who has at least a small amount of
experience with census' should set up a detailed and lengthy census which asks
questions with nuance. I don't think I have the capability to do this, or I
would.

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marak830
My wife reads it quite a bit. She isn't a tech, but she likes seeing what we
all say about stories so we can talk about it later

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webwanderings
It is a product/platform/community's failure if you even have to ask such a
question. Remember the days when "a/s/l" used to be common like "lols" or
"IMHOs" of today? Well, nobody cares about gender, age or location. But these
attributes make all the difference in how one communicates, and how
communities (authentic communities) are formed anywhere.

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TsukiZombina
I read it every day but I had not commented until now

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ridemyjock
Who in the actual fuck cares if it is a man or woman reading and
participating?

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nadezhda18
I read it every day and comment once in a while.

I also post links sometimes, not often.

For Russians - m Russian - it's clear from my name that I'm a girl. not sure
about non Russians.

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steanne
how often do people read hn? that is how often women do.

~~~
noobermin
A poorly posed question. I assume the OP meant to ask how much of HN readers
are women.

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esyechka
daily

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GirlsCanCode
Every day.

