
This is Not ok - nlz1
http://blog.jessitron.com/2012/09/this-is-not-ok.html
======
verroq
It is the weekly females in tech industry time again?

At the risk of derailing the thread, why do so many people want to get more
women into programming? Isn't that just as misguided as trying to get more men
into nursing? Just because we strive for gender equality doesn't mean every
job has to have exactly the same gender ratios.

~~~
ZoFreX
I don't want to get more women into programming. I want to end the endemic and
prolific discrimination against women in programming. The lack is a symptom.

I also find it very weird that an entire industry went from being female
dominated to male dominated and everyone defends it saying "it's always been
this way! Equality isn't about enforcing even ratios!"

Well no, it's not, but when you have these situations, where the number of
people who could do something is vastly different to those that stick it out
as a career, and those that do talk about systematic intolerance and abuse,
there is a problem there.

~~~
verroq
As others have said, it's very hard to discriminate against women since it's
is mostly based on problem solving/programming skill. But that is not to say
there isn't a general air chauvinism and/or objectification in the tech
industry.

I agree that getting more women into tech is a solution, but this always
operates under the assumption that women actually want to be in tech.

------
moistgorilla
I'm kind of disappointed by the comments here. Not just by the fact that
people couldn't read the entire article before making judgments but more that
I would have thought the people of this website would understand why it's
important to bring women into tech.

Women aren't biologically inclined to not like STEM fields (which I sadly see
is a popular sentiment). The reason women don't go into these fields is
because of the misogynistic culture. The stereotype of a computer whiz is a
man. Ask yourself why you never considered becoming a nurse (if you are a man)
and you will understand why women reject the idea of working in the tech
industry.

~~~
nitid_name
>The reason women don't go into these fields is because of the misogynistic
culture.

[Citation needed]

~~~
juridatenshi
There are definitely studies that show this is why some women leave the field,
even after overcoming the hurdles to get into it in the first place.

[http://www.lpfi.org/sites/default/files/tilted_playing_field...](http://www.lpfi.org/sites/default/files/tilted_playing_field_lpfi_9_29_11.pdf)

------
rbellio
She isn't upset by the fact that the ladies room was relabeled as a mens room,
she was frustrated by the fact that she didn't find as many female peers at
the conference. She felt encouraged around other women to discuss technology
and wants to encourage other women to become excited about the field.

I have some insight into this. I'm engaged to a mechanical engineer who works
in a largely male dominated industry. To this point, I've never heard her
discuss another female engineer at her company. We've discussed the issues of
women in engineering and how interesting the dynamics are for a woman and I
can agree that it would be an enjoyable ideal if there were more women in her
field. At the same time, she wants nothing to do with women in her field that
are simply there to prove that women can do the same jobs as men. I have to
agree with her on this point. Every time I see ads for computer schools
encouraging people with no experience to get a degree and flood the market, I
shake my head. Why should I want someone with no passion, who simply wants a
job, to enter my market and drive down the price of labor?

So, I understand where the author is coming from here. She enjoys the company
of her sex and would like to have a larger network of her peers be female. I
have no problem with that. I would say, though, to be careful about what you
wish for. You want women who are passionate to join the workforce, not just
any old gal.

~~~
shadowfiend
“Why should I want someone with no passion, who simply wants a job, to enter
my market and drive down the price of labor?”

Because for every 10 people with no passion who simply want a job, you get one
who is incredibly passionate but simply wanted a job. One who didn't realize
that hey, this is actually pretty cool stuff, and maybe it's more than just a
job, it can be a passion and a career.

I am of course making up the numbers. But discarding someone because they
don't care _before they've even learned a subject_ is even sillier than
assuming that women don't want to be in tech because they're not interested in
tech, rather than simply because they never took to looking into it because of
all of the stereotypes (many of them true) about the male dominance of the
industry.

~~~
rbellio
I may not have made it clear enough, but I'm not saying we shouldn't encourage
women or non-technical people to pursue technical experience and/or education.
I personally prefer to work in a diverse workforce and enjoy sharing my
workday with people of different sexes, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.
I'm not sure what stereotypes you're referring to, either, as I personally
have worked across a multitude of domains and have not seen any difference in
the approach of the professional development world to that of the rest of the
market (my last software company was co-founded by a woman in fact).

I'm saying that simply wanting women or any other sociological division of
people to be more prevalent for the sake of presence is a mistake. In your
example, you say that out of 10 people that are encouraged/trained, you might
get one very passionate developer. I know the math is made up, but if you look
at this in the other direction, you now have 9 developers that are bad at
their job, dislike/don't care about their job or possibly both. This would
mean that 90% of the workforce is now comprised of people who are hindering
the other 10%. That 90% of the code written is probably poorly executed.

I think that the career of being a developer is attractive enough that anyone
interested in pursuing it would see it as a viable option. Segregating
encouragement along the line of sex I think does more harm then good though.

~~~
shadowfiend
We already have the more-to-fewer split of terrible programmers to great
programmers. They just mostly happen to be men. That's all. Not having a
passion for programming is not an exclusively female characteristic; neither
is having an undiscovered passion.

I expanded a bit on my underlying point at
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4597547> , and there is an excellent
reply regarding early-stage discouragement by nancyhua there as well. I have
no interest in a sociological division being more prevalent just because. The
problem is they're subtly discouraged from joining our field altogether, and,
as others have pointed out in the past, that means we're missing out on a full
50% of potential awesome developers (or whatever other subfield you want to
talk about).

Or potentially so. We don't know, because there isn't a truly equal sense of
this field being a possibility.

~~~
rbellio
I just want to say that I think it's great that you're impassioned about this
topic. I'm definitely not trying to discourage you from it. My reticence comes
more from the fact that this is such a complicated topic for me.

On one hand, I'm all for supporting the goals and opportunities of all
individuals equally. When it requires special interest in certain groups
though, I sometimes worry that it will create a larger divide. Sexual identity
has such a huge impact on us during our developmental stages. The pressures of
it don't just stem from adults, but from peers and school as well. I'm of the
opinion that rather than singling out individuals by sex, it would be more
valuable to expose all of them to it.

This is anecdotal, but I have a personal experience with a program that
encouraged more adoption of specific fields by females in my classes. In
middle school, a large number of girls were separated from the regular classes
to attend special math and science classes. These girls were provided a more
in-depth education when it came to mathematics and were given more support in
learning the material. It really irked me, especially at that young age. I
couldn't understand why these girls were being singled out for certain topics
and why I couldn't be involved with them simply because I was a boy. I can't
speak to the effectiveness of this program. I do know that a large percentage
of these girls ended up in my high school math and science classes which
regularly had a nearly 50/50 split, but again, that's not evidence that the
program worked.

What it did do, though, was make me realize that I was not an equal. It was
probably my first realization that not everyone was treated equally and that
there was really no rhyme or reason to why. I saw similar things throughout my
years in school, but this one affected me the most. When I hear about the
professional female organizations that go to schools and encourage girls
specifically to pursue careers in mathematics or engineering, I cringe. I want
equality, but I don't know how inequality gets us there.

~~~
shadowfiend
I think the point of those situations is to make sure they're not under the
impression they're alone in domains where, if you don't do specific programs,
girls often think they are. Essentially, you create a social support net that
may not otherwise be there.

In my view, you're technically right. We shouldn't have to emphasize one side
over the other. The problem is we're combating an existing, underlying
emphasis. If a balance scale is unbalanced towards one side, you don't balance
it out by adding weight to both sides. You have to add weight to the one side
until you've restored balance.

Now, I think it's fair to question how much we should segregate and isolate
with respect to that. What you describe as happening in middle school is
probably not the best approach. I think it would probably make more sense to
open a whole class, gender-unspecific, but, again to create that social
support, perhaps try to group the girls in the class into one of the sections
(assuming there are multiple ones). The problem is, in that case, probably a
marketing one. Presenting it as an girls only course may increase the mystery
and interest, and, thus, enrollment.

------
TylerE
This doesn't really make sense.

She's complaining that at an event with 97% of attendance by men (by her own
statement), they got, say, 92% of the bathroom facilities, and then throws a
fit.

Not buying it.

If this is the biggest outrage in your life you should consider yourself
fortunate.

~~~
artumi-richard
When you realised that "this doesn't make sense", that was the time you should
have asked "or is it me..."

As for women in IT, I can see why IT would want women, but I can't see why
women would want IT.

~~~
bglass
You can't see why a woman would want to be paid quite handsomely to do work
that is mentally challenging, not physically arduous, and -- in many cases --
can have a positive societal effect?

So... why do -you- want to work in IT?

~~~
raganwald
Let's compare this to golf, circa 1965. Caving to pressure, a local club opens
its memberships to Blacks. One or two tokens with strong business
relationships to Whites join, but where are all the other Black businesspeople
and professionals?

A liberal White member sighs, "I don't understand why the Black people don't
want to relax in our luxurious club, play a round on our excellent course, and
eat our sumptuous dining fare. What is the problem?" Meanwhile, the Blacks are
thinking, "Who needs to join the club and have all these racist assholes
resenting the fact that we're in their club and tiptoeing around us in case
the N-word slips out in our presence. How fucking uncomfortable."

p.s. Did I say 1965? What's the deal with Agusta National and Blacks and/or
Women?

~~~
protomyth
I will protect Augusta's right to have just male members (not true anymore),
just as I will protect the rights of every female-only gym. I will further bet
that the female-only gyms have larger benefits than Augusta opening up to
female members.

It is an unfair comparison between a profession and a club. They do not hold
even close to the same place in society.

~~~
raganwald
Who said Augusta shouldn't have male-only members? The point is that IT
departments shouldn't behave like private clubs. The industry behaves like a
private club, but it isn't a private club.

~~~
protomyth
Well, I interpreted you p.s. to mean that. A lot of industries in the US
(cannot speak for outside the US) need to be more receptive to members of the
opposite gender. I am hoping both CompSci and pre-K education both make
strides in the coming years.

------
masterponomo
I had a similar experience when I (a gent) took my grown daughter to a NKOTB
reunion concert as a nostalgia trip. The audience was at least 95% female, and
the arena restrooms were re-purposed accordingly. I asked an usher and he told
me it was common practice to adapt to the gender mix of the audience. I
observed many groups of women noting this reallocation with loud triumphant
braying laughter. I doubt the Strange Loop men had a triumphal reaction to the
bathroom allotment.

~~~
crntaylor
That is not a similar experience _at all_. Even if we ignore that you
completely missed the point of the article (she's not complaining about the
bathroom situation at all, as seventy trillion other commenters have already
pointed out - presumably you didn't read them either?) we still have:

First, you wouldn't have gone to a NKOTB (New Kids on the Block) concert if
you weren't going with your daughter. You didn't actively want to be there.
The author of the article was going to a programming conference of her own
will.

Second, I don't think that NKOTB are important enough that it matters what the
gender composition of their audiences are. Programming, on the other hand, is
very important, and will only get more important in the future. Such a huge
gender imbalance at the most important PL conference will be problematic for
women in the future (and for men as well, if you can believe it).

Third, you "doubt" that there was a similar reaction at the PL conference. I
presume you weren't actually there, then? I wasn't there either, so I wouldn't
even begin to think about making up random suppositions and using them to
support my argument.

~~~
kamaal
No he is right.

The issue is something like this. Most people have a tough time realizing that
99% of the times their net condition on any day is result of their own doing.

You see the problem manifest here.

    
    
       1. Notice non equal participation of women.
       2. Blame men.
       3. Shift the onus of change on men not women.
       4. Wash your hands off the situation, and claim high moral high ground.
    

Now notice what women did when there was a non equal participation of men.
They treat it as it is supposed to be. Which is that men didn't take the
initiative to be there and hence laughter.

The first step to change the world is basically start by changing oneself
first. Now if you do all this and still get limited by the environment around
you, then you can start by blaming the other things.

But even before starting, trying and doing something. You have 100 people to
blame you are not likely to see any improvement soon.

------
hnriot
"That day in the Family Restroom I threw a fit. Hurled my water bottle at the
wall and screamed, "This is not OK!""

How exactly after this do you expect anyone to take you seriously?

Gender equality isn't about having just as many women programmers, and it
certainly isn't well servered by having tantrums over the bathroom
arrangements.

~~~
rmc
You have just used the "Tone Argument" which derails the argument. It's a
common response (it's in Derailing for Dummies
<http://www.derailingfordummies.com/complete.html#angry> ). Please try to stay
on topic.

~~~
Locke1689
You're right, but for the wrong reasons.

There's no such thing as a "tone" argument. Recall your freshman year Greek
rhetoric course -- what are the three main elements of argumentation? _Logos_
(logic), _pathos_ (appeal to emotion), and _ethos_ (morality or "greatness" of
character).

If you start yelling at someone, chances are you're going to destroy your
pathos and ethos. Being persuasive involves more than just logos, it involves
convincing your audience that you are on the right side.

This, by the way, is why many technical people are awful at arguing. They
don't understand that argumentation is about convincing _people_ , not having
a bullet point list that you haughtily defend to the last.

The real reason you're right is that the author was clearly adding a bit of
dramatization and flair to the piece, rather than blowing up and insulting
their opponent.

~~~
rmc
The "Tone argument" doesn't apply to the person who's being annoyed (they are
not making a tone argument), but to someone who 'replies' to them.

Think of "tone argument" like "ad hominem", it's a reply to what someone says,
but you don't actually respond or address _what_ they said, instead you
address how they said it in a very angry manner ("tone argument"), or based on
what sort of person they are ("ad hominem")

------
mertd
It is actually pretty interesting that so many commenters here short circuited
into thinking she was complaining about the bathroom situation.

~~~
deelowe
It really comes across that way at first. My first reaction was to close the
tab at the "throw my water bottle" statement, but after reading the comments
here, I read on and saw the author had more to say than just "someone move my
bathroom." It's just poorly written, that's all.

~~~
benatkin
Nope, the level of reader comprehension here is too low. She said that there
was no line at the family restroom before she said she threw her water bottle.
If that isn't enough to clue readers in about the real source of her anguish
as opposed to the thing that first tipped her off, there's the whole rest of
the article.

~~~
dpark
It's also poor writing. It was a third of the way through the article before
she clued us in about what she was actually mad about. It very much read as if
she were angry about the restroom situation.

However, this isn't especially relevant to the real point of the article.

------
djt
I think she isn't complaining about the toilets, she is saying that she didn't
realize how few women were in attendance until that point.

------
sergiotapia
>That day in the Family Restroom I threw a fit. Hurled my water bottle at the
wall and screamed, "This is not OK!"

Oh please, calm down. Closed the tab.

~~~
ljf
Then you missed the point of the article - she was upset when she realised
that they had to convert toilets as there were so few women. Her upset was
about the lack of women at the event, not at the toilet arrangements.

It could have been more clearly explained, and closer to the start of the
article, but if you read the rest of the article you would have seen this.

------
raganwald
Meta-question for both men and women. If you were a woman considering a career
in IT and you were to read the comments on a thread like this, would you be
more likely to join, less likely, or unaffected by reading the thread?

~~~
benatkin
Certainly less likely to join (unless it made me want to get in and change
things, which I hope is what women reading this will do). What that gets me is
the criticism of her writing, which seems harsher and less constructive than
the average on HN. The thing is that it isn't completely false, and the people
who post it think we won't notice they're being mean, because there's some
truth to what they're saying. But it's only bad writing if you raise the bar
of what makes good writing much higher than it normally is for a blog post on
HN.

~~~
raganwald
John Gruber calls this "Grading on a curve." For example, if we make a big
fuss over her throwing a water bottle in private but celebrate Steve Jobs for
throwing temper tantrums over software quality, we're grading on a curve.

(Not that anybody is doing that, it's just an example).

------
Tichy
At first I thought she got angry about an relabeling of the women's room,
which would be ridiculous, but I think what she means is that it is not OK
that there are only so few women. Could be worded clearer...

------
praptak
It is sort of a followup to the previous post:
[http://blog.jessitron.com/2012/09/confessions-of-woman-in-
te...](http://blog.jessitron.com/2012/09/confessions-of-woman-in-tech.html)

------
k2xl
At first I thought she was complaining about the fact they took away the
girl's bathroom... But I think the article evolved into a critic of the lack
of women in the field in general - saying it's Not OK that so few women are in
the industry...

She probably could have been more clear of what she was not okay with. But a
decline in women in the tech field is a deep and complicated topic, and the
solutions weren't probed in this article. This article was more of how things
are today - and we all already know that there's an extremely small percentage
of women in the field. What would have been more provoking of an article would
have been discussions of the root causes and reasons of why there are so few
women in the industry, and why their career paths tend to differ than their
male counterparts. Contributions to this topic by someone like her would be
enlightening for sure.

------
bking
I definitely agree with your view that there aren't enough women in the field,
but starting an article, where most of your readers are going to be men, by
saying you threw a temper tantrum because a venue swapped the bathrooms to
benefit men is inviting readers to disagree with you before you even started
making your point.

I read the first part and immediately thought how immature you were, then I
read more, and being more open-minded I read over your point, swallowed my
previous thought and agree. Not everyone will do that.

I agree we need more women representation, I disagree with the manner the
article was written.

------
bking
I definitely agree with your view that there aren't enough women in the field,
but starting an article, where most of your readers are going to be men, by
saying you threw a temper tantrum because a venue swapped the bathrooms to
benefit men is inviting readers to disagree with you before you even started
making your point.

I read the first part and immediately thought how immature you were, then I
read more, and being more open-minded I read over your point, swallowed my
previous thought and agreed. Not everyone will do that.

I agree we need more women representation, I disagree with the manner the
article was written.

~~~
rmc
Even without the "temper tantrum" sentances, people would find something else
to disagree with.

These debates are often not logical or rational.

------
shadowfiend
Empathy, noun: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

I think this is our[1] problem. Or a generalization of it: the ability to
share another's viewpoint. To step into their perspective and say “oh. I see.”
And to accept that maybe, just maybe, their viewpoint is valid. This isn't
always true, by the way. But it is sometimes true, even often true. And even
if it is valid, you may not agree with it.

But here's the thing. There's this idea that maybe women aren't in tech
because they aren't interested. That's cool. I'm not interested in nursing,
right?

Well it turns out, I've never done nursing. I haven't even looked into it. I
haven't talked to anyone about it. Because I just assumed hey, I'm a guy,
nurses aren't guys. Not even worth thinking about. That's the mindset. It's
not that you know you're not interested, it's that you don't even give it a
second thought! [2]

The funny thing is, people here have generally found their passion—be it
startups or tech. And when you have your passion and it fell into your lap,
it's easy to say “well these people who aren't interested shouldn't be doing
this anyway, because they're not passionate”. Even if they had no chance to
develop that passion? Even if there was no exposure? Maybe we're being a tad
too dismissive here, no? Perhaps we should give people a chance to explore a
subject before assuming they'll never be passionate about it. Just a though.

What about those who did reach that passion? Those who entered the tech world,
found a minefield of sexism (of which that's-what-she-said jokes are just the
very very tip of the iceberg, but more on that in a second), and said “screw
it, I'm out of here”.[3] Usually those stories lead to another set of excuses,
because the first set of excuses just weren't effective enough to deal with
the full scope of the people being shut out of technology, willingly or not.

Let's talk about that's-what-she-said jokes. There are men who say “psh,
seriously? Come on, it's just a joke! Why would you have a problem with that?”
And there are women who say “well, I can take them. Not only that, I dish them
out! Why would you have a problem with that?” Why would you have a problem
with that? The trouble with that question is it's so often rhetorical. Not
only do you not _reaaally_ want to hear the answer to it, but you don't stop
to think about the answer before asking. That kind of question _should_ lead
to more understanding.

So I propose, without further ado, that instead of trying to understand why
something (anything!) is a problem from _your_ point of view, you consider
trying to understand why it's a problem from the _other person's_ point of
view, and if, with a little effort, you still can't figure it out, then you
ask and look for a real answer. And read the answer. And try to understand
then. Because I see far more effort devoted in most of these threads to
defending one's own point of view than to understanding the other person's.
And these questions, the question of women in tech, the question of social
awkwardness, the question of sexism in tech, they are not math problems. There
is not necessarily a single correct answer. One person being right doesn't
mean the other person is wrong. And right vs wrong is not always immediately
obvious.

[1] - when I say our, I mean the tech industry.

[2] - I can't speak to whether or not this is considered a problem in the
nursing industry. It's irrelevant to the point at hand.

[3] - <http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/>

~~~
jiggy2011
It depends on whether you believe women are trying to enter the tech field and
are being scared away, or whether they are not interested in the first place.

I would suggest it is mainly the latter, look at any IT/CS type course at a
college and you will see mainly men and these are people who haven't even
entered the field yet to get a chance to be scared off.

The point regards passion is an interesting one, I imagine that there are a
fair number of people here who got an interest in tech at an early age long
before they had to worry about starting a career.

The question for these people would be, if you were at that age and were
instead a born a woman but had the same interests would there have likely been
anything that would hold them back? If so what would it most likely have been?

~~~
nancyhua
We bring up nursing: well, doctors used to be 100% men. Maybe doctors or
biologists used to say, "Women are not interested in medicine or biology."
Would any person say that now? Poets probably used to say, "Women aren't
interested in writing at all." When women became poets, writers probably used
to say, "Women aren't interested in serious literature." Artists probably used
to say, "Women aren't interested in art- they prefer to pose as our nude
models." Would anyone claim women aren't interested in these fields now? I've
never taken a woman's studies class or anything but I imagine many of these
arguments have occurred in the past regarding industries that used to be male
dominated but aren't anymore.

I think we are generally wrong when we try to presume what a group of people
would be interested in. Like who knew Japanese people would get so good at
baseball? Whoever said, "Japanese people aren't interested in baseball in the
first place bc they like samurai swords, not projectiles," would've been
totally wrong, as wrong as whoever said, "Women aren't interested in being
doctors. They get hysterical and like to sit quietly in drawing rooms," or as
wrong as people who say, "Women don't like math or science or computers. They
prefer art and writing and medicine and biology." Maybe one day people will be
saying, "Women don't like intergalactic war travel, they prefer math and
science and computers and tesseracts."

I don't feel any desire to downvote you. Here's my take as a woman who studied
math at MIT and was always one of few if not the only woman in her classes/
nerd camps/ jobs throughout my entire life:

If you're the type of person who always knew what you were passionate about,
you should realize this focus and passion is not common. There are some people
who can explode out of some small town where everyone's main interest is
football and still become a tech mogul. Most people are not like this- people
do what their peers do and what they perceive as normal for whatever group
they identify with. I think this might actually be especially true for
children. Very few children see a scientist doing science or see something
cool like a machine and then say, "Mom and Dad, I want to learn to do/make
this thing," or then go online and research it. Most of the time, someone is
showing the kid what they think this kid should learn or the kid is looking at
stuff other people are giving to them, including their peers. Based on this,
many girls who aren't deliberately introduced to tech/science as a possible
interest don't realize they are interested in tech.

Most kids are friends with kids of the same gender. In middle school, when I
went into a classroom to learn QBASIC as the only girl, it was less fun in
every way except 1 than being in a classroom filled with girls who were my
friends. I didn't make any friends in any of my middle/high school programming
classes and generally kept quiet because boys made me shy, and vice versa- I
also made them shy when I spoke to them. They weren't doing it on purpose- I
think it's just human nature for us all to behave the way we did.

If I were less interested in programming and more motivated to have a fun
classroom experience or to fit in (being a girl with my interests made me
weird, which bothered me slightly but I was also interested in art so that
kind of evened it out. I can imagine it bothering other people much more than
it bothered me, sufficient to make them avoid this feeling of strangeness by
avoiding atypical (for their peer group) activities), I easily could've not
gone to those CS classes or to any of my nerd camps. When I went to a
Theoretical CS nerd camp called Andrew's Leap at CMU, out of the other 30
kids, only 3 others were girls. We 4 girls were all Chinese and we became
great friends. We also befriended the boys but it wasn't as easy because both
boys and girls interested in Theoretical CS don't tend to have PhD's in male-
female interaction or even human-human interaction.

Most kids do whatever their friends do. Most people do whatever they perceive
people of their type to do. I think having a woman scientist in a popular
movie does a lot more for planting that possibility in the popular imagination
than many types of affirmative action programs. If anyone is saying, "Black
people don't like hockey bc they prefer basketball," I think it just takes a
great movie about a famous black hockey player to get more black kids to start
saying, "I want to play hockey."

If I have a thesis, it's this:

1) Most people do whatever they perceive the group they self-identify with as
doing. If you're a person who self identifies as an intelligent male, maybe
you're more likely to think, "I should become a businessman," than, "I should
become a nurse." In contrast, a person who self identifies as an intelligent
female might be more likely to think, "I should become a doctor," instead of
"I should become a programmer." If you're a person who self identifies as an
athletic, white male, you might be more likely to think, "I should play
basketball," than "I should play pingpong." People don't tend to want to be
"weird" because of complex cognitive stuff to do with identity.

2) Most kids do whatever their friends do, and most kids are friends with
people their own gender, and most people prefer being with their friends than
not. So if you're a girl walking into a classroom full of nerdy, Starcraft-
playing boys or a man walking into a yoga studio full of giggling females, you
might think, "I should find another room where I fit in better," instead of
discovering whether you have an interest in this strange field. Hence the
chicken and egg thing. It's less fun for kids to be "weird" because being
weird is lonely.

~~~
kamaal
You have some very interesting points.

My mom always says(Who had a working career of almost 30 years), that working
women live in a world of their own. Her sisters never went to work. She always
found that amazing, that a few individuals can spend their whole life doing
nothing. Yet now when you talk to my aunts they live in their own world where
they have every reason in the world why not working is right. When they both
talk about it, men and their influences rarely pop up. Its always discussions
about work life balance, stress, affects on kids and own physical and
biological selves.

In my opinion the bigger struggle in empowering women will not be to counsel
men, but women themselves. Most women who don't go to work do for their own
reasons, and not because men don't want them to work. If you can convince
women to come out of their comfort zones, take risks, try and even taste
failure at times. Let me tell you women will be far well off.

But there are always going to jobs which are going to very demanding for
women. There are also security issues with respect to working and traveling
late nights, pushing very tough long work hour schedules. Most of those clots
will dissolve slowly with time.

Remember in ancient times, women used to work in fields with men all the time
and that generally used to do a lot of work more physically demanding than
what most women have today. If it worked fine then, it can now. But the
transformation will be slow.

~~~
nancyhua
You're right that fear of failure prevents many people from reaching anywhere
near their full potential.

The working mom thing is a separate issue from representation of women in
various industries such as tech. For me, I'm hoping to band together with
friends so we can all watch each others' kids and cooperate more and have the
whole childrearing thing be more "village"-centered and less of an individual
burden.

------
protomyth
First, I didn't read it as she was mad about the bathrooms other than what
that implied about the ratio of attendance between men and women[1].

I'm not real fond of the ratio, mainly because lack of female programmers
means we get a lack of female managers with programming experience. Women who
came up through the ranks and get the gig. I have encountered too many men and
women who have no clue how to manage technical projects.

I should point out that at least female programmers are not subjected to the
crap that happens to male ECE (early childhood education) instructors. Many
places will say to an applicant's face that, because of potential lawsuits,
they will not hire males.

[1] There are actually a lot of facilities that have sliding partitions that
allow the number of stalls to be changed between events. I cannot find it
right now, but there is a video explaining research done into average time
using the stalls - male vs female and percentage of people doing #1 vs #2.

------
JulianMorrison
Everyone who rushed in here to say "calm down, dear" in a patronisingly male
tone of voice, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

Stop being sexist.

~~~
steele
How does one type in a patronizingly male tone of voice? I hope you don't mean
"calm down, dear" is characteristically male.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Yes, I absolutely do. The concept of women as "emotional" AKA "hysterical" is
an old, untrue, patronizing and dismissive stereotype, with a long history of
being used to oppress women (sometimes in the most horrific of ways). "Calm
down dear" and its close paraphrases are a way of asserting male privilege to
ignore a woman's reasoned argument, because she got angry.

~~~
steele
"calm down dear" has been said frequently to men, women, and children by both
men and women. Also, there is nothing uniquely male about using that phrase in
a patronizing tone.

------
Tipzntrix
I think she forgot Ada Byron when she said there were no important women in
computers this millenium.

EDIT: No "keynoters, the language designers, the authors of seminal texts" in
this millenium. And there was Grace Hopper too.

Double edit: Admittedly, anything in 1xxx is technically the "last millenium".
My mistake.

~~~
ehamberg
Err. Both of them lived and died in the last millennium.

~~~
Tipzntrix
Fair point. I was thinking the last 1000 years as opposed to 1000, 2000, etc.
In that state the same could be said about the last century or even the last
decade really.

------
yason
In short, it comes down to that she wants more women in the industry. Maybe
she seemed a bit lonely among so many men, or maybe something else—I don't
know and she didn't tell.

All right. Now what?

------
enraged_camel
People always complain that there aren't enough women in tech fields, yet no
one ever complains about there not being enough men in, say, fashion. I've
always found this odd.

~~~
mitjak
How many fashion publications and forums do you read a day?

~~~
enraged_camel
Two. The consensus among fashion industry veterans seems to be that if a guy
wants to work in the fashion industry, he must be gay or at least bisexual.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Or affect being gay. I understand that's quite commonplace.

------
rheide
It's not ok that only 3% of people present liked peanut butter! I'm going to
make it my mission to get more people that like peanut butter into
conferences.

------
nuttendorfer
If she would have just used the "new" men's room nobody would have cared and
she wouldn't have had to write this blog post.

People do this all the time if one room is full.

~~~
ljf
I'm guessing you didn't read the article? It wasn't about the queue (or lack
of) it was about the lack of women at these events.

------
indiecore
> That day in the Family Restroom I threw a fit. Hurled my water bottle at the
> wall and screamed, "This is not OK!"

What? I can understand being frustrated but that reaction doesn't seem
constructive at all.

~~~
simonh
It was constructive because she then to do something constructive about it.

Compare and contrast to the story about John Orwant throwing his mug at a wall
at a Perl conference - and single handedly inspiring the start of the Perl 6
project.

But then that's ok. He's a guy.

~~~
indiecore
> _But then that's ok. He's a guy._

Yeah that was _obviously_ the implication. A guy tossing a fit in the bathroom
would be just as randomly nonconstructive.

