

Ambient Un-Belonging: Women and Tech Startups - deanerimerman
http://www.audreywatters.com/2010/09/05/ambient-un-belonging-women-and-tech-startups
Audrey's got a great summary of all the clarification / untangling of Arrington's mess...
======
patio11
To the limited extent I agree with the critique, it seems exploiting it is a
better resolution than writing about it. I tend to think the tech industry
disproportionately ignores female customers, for example. That means writing
for them is like shaking a money tree.

If one really believes there is a vast untapped well of ladies who want to
code XML files for poor wages for 14 hours a day, identifying and hiring them
yourself sounds like a sure fire path to millions.

~~~
petercooper
_I tend to think the tech industry disproportionately ignores female
customers, for example._

You won't believe the number of times I've heard Ben Affleck's "don't pitch
the bitch" line from _The Boiler Room_ presented as a serious maxim of doing
business.

~~~
patio11
That line, which I've never heard before, richly earns a bozo bit. [Edit: This
idiom means "marks the speaker as an intellectually and/or morally unserious
person who is not worth effort to speak to."]

~~~
petercooper
Ah, it was a popular movie among young guys about ten years back. Actually
pretty good and worth watching - it's all about young dudes learning high
pressure sales techniques to sell junk stocks.

The "don't pitch the bitch" rule was because women supposedly thought more
aboit potential investments and couldn't be coerced into taking risks over the
phone. So, in a way, it was more insulting to mens' level of judgment ;-)

------
philwelch
I'm unconvinced. This blog post just seems like a lot of emoting and
handwaving and contradiction with a light glazing of feminist theory on top,
with no real counterargument or refutation to be found. I'm reminded of two
quotes:

"M: An argument isn't just contradiction.

A: It can be.

M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to
establish a proposition.

A: No it isn't.

...

M: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic
gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.

A: No it isn't" --from Monty Python's argument sketch

"DH3. Contradiction.

In this stage we finally get responses to what was said, rather than how or by
whom. The lowest form of response to an argument is simply to state the
opposing case, with little or no supporting evidence.

This is often combined with DH2 statements, as in:

I can't believe the author dismisses intelligent design in such a cavalier
fashion. Intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory.

Contradiction can sometimes have some weight. Sometimes merely seeing the
opposing case stated explicitly is enough to see that it's right. But usually
evidence will help." (<http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html>)

------
danilocampos
I'm really uncomfortable with how other men deal with the subject of women in
tech.

More than once, I've noticed developers who are women derided as less
competent, less capable than their male peers. Their professional success is
ascribed to their appearance, their male bed partners, or some other such
male-invented loophole. One of these conversations happened just the other day
where I work. The really disturbing bonus is how suddenly "bitch" becomes a
synonym for "woman."

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I can't claim to understand a
cause or a solution. My mom was a single mother who started her own business
to keep me fed and clothed, so I maybe I'm immune to this business of
discounting the capacities of half the population with no more information
about them than their anatomy.

I only know it makes me sad.

edit: Initially terrified that this got voted into the negatives. Thanks for
restoring my faith in you, HN.

~~~
earl
I haven't heard anything like that, and I work in a company with female
developers. Further, I have no doubt that it wouldn't be tolerated by any of
my friends at the company, _and_ would be a firing offense.

No company name because some commenters here are jackasses and anything I say
is representative of my employer :rolleyes: Nonetheless, we're a startup in
SOMA you've probably heard of.

edit -- Perhaps you should sack up and tell people you're uncomfortable with
them talking about your coworkers / women in such a manner? Much like racism,
sexism is aided by ambient acceptance of such stuff. Like, for example, when
people hear sexist comments and are quiet about it. It's not necessarily easy
to do, but the right thing isn't always easy.

~~~
danilocampos
No female developers where I work, so that _could_ be part of it. This
conversation wasn't about anyone at the company.

And you're completely right, of course. I, honestly, was too shocked to react.
I mean, flabbergasted. It's so... antiquated, like finding out someone resents
the Union for that whole abolition thing.

In the days since, I feel bad not to have spoken up.

------
gukjoon
Why is it un-PC to acknowledge that there are fundamental differences between
men and women in terms of both innate talents and, more importantly,
motivations? Differences that would lead to huge demographic disparities in
incredibly niche fields like software engineering and starting technology
companies?

Mike Arrington says flat out that the reason why there aren't enough women in
tech is because "not enough women want to become entrepreneurs." It's a
question of motivation. This statement is easily falsifiable and I don't think
any of the responses make even a meager attempt to do that.

Is there a disproportionately higher number of women-lead start-ups applying
for venture funding and then not getting it? Since this is a question of
motivation, even showing that a significantly higher percentage of women-lead
start-ups fail would suggest that Mike Arrington is wrong.

~~~
earl
Except I keep meeting female engineers (including several coworkers) who are
all foreign -- chinese, indian, british, E European. So it's not unreasonable
to infer that culture - specifically American domestic culture - is a big
piece of the puzzle.

~~~
patio11
I know more Japanese female engineers at one office in Nagoya than I have met
in my life in the US. Some of that might be cultural: Japanese girls, to all
appearances, don't dislike math. A lot of it is related to other options: tech
is seen as a "progressive" industry to work in, where the Old Guard isn't
going to squash your face in. (Relatedly, translation/interpretation is almost
female only.)

Punting on the cultural issue for a minute, is tech really the best option
available to an academically prepared American lady? Compared to, say,
management consulting, or law, or medicine, or... ? We have good lives as
programmers, don't get me wrong, but for startup hours you could work for
McKinsey and make six figures from day one with no uncertainty about exits
required.

------
jdminhbg
It doesn't really seem to me like many of these rebuttals actually read
Arrington's article; they're just angry in general about the state of women in
tech. Arrington very specifically said that by the time it got to him and TC50
or whatever, it's too late. All this railing about "male privilege" and
"ambient un-belonging" is pretty much tangential to what he said.

~~~
anthonyb
Arrington's article is a big old whitewash as far as I can tell. On the one
hand he's saying "I don't know why women aren't in IT, stop blaming me" but
then on the other hand his comments are full of vitriol. Everyone who's
commented expressing a differing opinion has been "flagged for review",
meanwhile shit like this: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/women-in-tech-
stop-blaming-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/women-in-tech-stop-blaming-
me/#comment-74688020) goes unchecked.

Which is the point of this article: The tech world is a very unwelcoming place
if you're an outsider (and sometimes even when you're an insider, which
Michelle Greer apparently is).

~~~
anthonyb
Nice downvote - want to back it up with some argument?

------
kiba
We cannot and will not eliminate all gender inequality, and some inequality
does not alway favors men. (A good example of this is that no matter how
accomplished or rich a man is, he will probably be asked to laid down his life
for children and women. That's not discrimination, but grim pragmatism.)

Some disparity will alway boil down to choices. If women take maternity needs,
than she will expect to be behind her peers when she come back.

As much as I like awesome hacker females to live in my world, some women...for
whatever reason choose other professions instead. I'll respect that choice,
not try to convince them that they work on tech for the sake of getting 50%
gender balance.

~~~
erikpukinskis
One of the most heartbreaking things smart men do in response to accusations
of sexism is to focus on the rare exceptions to women's oppression while
failing to even acknowledge the rampant examples of it.

Men. Are. Victims. Too. But a conversation about women's oppression is not an
appropriate context to explore it. It makes us feel like you don't believe
women's oppression is a problem.

~~~
philwelch
And now I finally remember why I stopped arguing with feminists.

Unlike reasonable discussions, where you make a point and the other person
points out the flaws in your reasoning, or presents evidence for a
counterpoint, or something like that, arguing with feminists always ends up
with the feminists expressing their emotions and trying to rule certain
arguments "out of bounds", not because the arguments are flawed or invalid,
but because they make feminists feel "heartbroken".

~~~
anthonyb
It's not so much pointing out flaws in the reasoning, as Kiba taking the
argument completely off the rails. "Boo hoo, we have it tough in some very
specific edge cases" while ignoring the general everyday case doesn't do much
for the argument either.

And how can you talk about why there aren't more women or other minorities in
tech when you're just going to paint it as vague or emotional and ignore what
they say?

~~~
philwelch
It takes the conversation equally off the rails to flippantly characterize the
issue as "oppression".

~~~
anthonyb
No it doesn't. Oppression is a pretty accurate word for what happens to women
in IT. Somebody presenting their opinion about how they're being unfairly
treated is hardly flippant.

~~~
philwelch
"Oppression is a pretty accurate word for what happens to women in IT."

We call that "assuming what you're supposed to be proving", or for people who
still remember the traditional meanings of idioms, "begging the question".

~~~
anthonyb
Is that what passes for a rational argument? I'm not assuming anything - I
don't know where you got that idea from. I've seen women being ignored,
excluded or put down first hand, often savagely, so it's not just idle
speculation.

edit - some meat to my point:

One case that I'm thinking of involved a woman making a fairly reasonable
technical point (something involving Apache, I think - it was a while ago) in
the hallway at a conference, but then got lectured for ten minutes by a guy
who took exception to some minor pedantic point. Totally condescending, rude
and thoughtless - he didn't do the same to the other male developers in the
discussion.

There was another incident at a Developer conference here in Australia a while
ago, where a developer put up pictures of hot chicks in his Perl presentation.
Again, unnecessary and stupid.

Do you still think that I'm assuming things?

~~~
philwelch
OK, that's an argument. You're doing it right--"here is some evidence,
therefore women in software are oppressed".

But erikpukinskis didn't say, "here is some evidence, therefore women in
software are oppressed". He seemingly implied that the "why are there few
women in software" discussion was inherently a "conversation about women's
oppression". He took the "conclusion" and implicitly put it in the "premises"
column, which is exactly what I was criticizing.

It's not a conversation about women being oppressed--it's a conversation about
why there are few women in software. "Women are oppressed" is an answer, erik
was characterizing it as the question.

~~~
anthonyb
Go and read the article. It is absolutely about oppression. Not necessarily
overt (although go and read the TechCrunch comments and be horrified), but
it's still there, and still happening.

> OK, that's an argument. You're doing it right...

Yeah, that's exactly the sort of stupid, patronising attitude that causes the
problem in the first place. I'll just point out that neither you or Kiba have
introduced any evidence in your arguments, that you don't even know what
begging the question is, and that someone arguing rationally would have
instead pointed out all of the areas in IT where women are treated fairly or
overrepresented, and leave it at that.

~~~
philwelch
"I'll just point out that neither you or Kiba have introduced any evidence in
your arguments..."

I haven't made any arguments. I've criticized some statements for using
outbursts of emotion and assertion in place of arguments, and I've criticized
other statements for implicitly treating "women are underrepresented in IT" as
synonymous to "women are oppressed" rather than actually going through the
trouble of arguing the point. But I haven't advanced an argument of my own
yet. I have my own tentative answer to "why are women underrepresented in IT"
--can you guess what it is? (Probably not.)

"...that you don't even know what begging the question is..."

Care to enlighten me?

Wikipedia: "Begging the question (or petitio principii, "assuming the initial
point") is a type of logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is
assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premise."

Implicitly treating "women are underrepresented in IT" as synonymous with
"women are oppressed" begs the question, because "women are oppressed" (or the
more complete, "women are underrepresented in IT because women are oppressed")
is the proposition to be proven.

"... and that someone arguing rationally would have instead pointed out all of
the areas in IT where women are treated fairly or overrepresented, and leave
it at that."

Criticizing the form of someone's argument is perfectly rational--more so than
criticizing their "stupid, patronizing attitude" or making personal attacks.

~~~
anthonyb
> Implicitly treating "women are underrepresented in IT" as synonymous with
> "women are oppressed" begs the question...

Right - so you haven't read the article then? It presents a lot of arguments,
not-very-implicitly-at-all. Maybe that's the first place to start.

~~~
philwelch
I posted my thoughts on the article after I read it yesterday. Here's a link
for you: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668031>

~~~
anthonyb
Yeah I saw that, and thought it was particularly crass and insensitive. Set up
both a strawman _and_ a cliche so that you can mock a minority as a character
in a Monty Python sketch.

Bravo.

------
nitrogen
I found this article lacking in concrete suggestions. What can be done to
improve the situation? Should we paint the walls of CS classrooms pink? Hire
female architects to design the engineering buildings on university campuses?

Maybe one of the reasons for the gender disparity in software engineering in
particular is that it revolves around logical analysis and direct steps from
problem to resolution, while women are (stereotypically) more adept at
emotional reasoning than logical reasoning. If so, what, if anything should be
done to correct this?

------
dgordon
I knew this would be more complaining about "privilege" when I saw the two
gratuitous uses of "fucking" in the first paragraph. I see the two together
all the time.

------
blacksmythe
I would like to see more women in tech, partly because I don't want to work
all day in a mens-only club.

I hope all of us would agree that it is wrong to judge people on their gender.
I think the reason a lot of women have a very negative response to the
original post is that the women responding feel like they don't get equal
treatment at work.

I think that articles that seem critical of women for not achieving more in
the tech field are counterproductive to promoting a good working environment.

I would like to see more men come out and say that publishing blogs that make
women feel unwelcome in the tech field is wrong.

------
petercooper
Even though the topic of women in tech rarely gets mentioned on Hacker News,
it's encouraging that when it does the discussion comes to a consensus that
really pushes things forward.

