
60% of women in tech reported unwanted sexual advances - Balgair
http://elephantinthevalley.com/
======
UnoriginalGuy
I wish when people use survey statistics that they would show us the original
question. For example I wanted to know if the sexual advances question was
specifically AT WORK, or if it could be at any point in their lives in any
context.

If they're just asking if women who happen to work in tech _now_ have ever
received unwanted sexual advances in their entire life, well, that is
worthless without a non-tech statistic to compare/contrast it to.

Also what is an unwanted sexual advance? Someone touching someone? Someone
asking someone out once? A boss pressuring their underlings for sex/dates? It
has no precise meaning.

Unfortunately I spent some time studying Sociology in my youth and one of the
biggest takeaways from that was "you can make people agree with any position
you want by changing the wording on the questions." So precisely what you ask
is super important for knowing what to do with the conclusion. We actually
created surveys where we got completely opposite results from exactly the same
democratic just through word-alterations (on purpose).

~~~
hwaite
> If they're just asking if women who happen to work in tech now have ever
> received unwanted sexual advances

Given that only 60% of women reported unwanted advances, it's safe to say that
it's not "at any point in their lives in any context." That being said, you
make a good point about disclosing details of study.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
> Given that only 60% of women reported unwanted advances, it's safe to say
> that it's not "at any point in their lives in any context."

Do you have data on the level of unwanted sexual advances over the course of a
woman's life? I just googled it and cannot really see too much.

PS - Although boiling down a definition of an "unwanted sexual advance" is
required to compare/contrast different data sets.

------
Joeboy
Why is the word "unwanted" relevant? Presumably if unwanted advances are not
OK in the workplace, wanted ones aren't either, unless the issue is inadequate
telepathic abilities among tech workers.

------
swagaholic
On the internet you can always trawl for a few thousand users that happen to
agree with you. When they say sixty percent, they mean sixty percent is their
estimate of how many women would report sexual advances, based off of a survey
taken by volunteers taking time out of their day to report on gender in the
tech industry.

~~~
marcoperaza
They pull similar tricks with college sexual assault statistics too. They
don't ask "Have you been sexually assaulted?" Instead, they ask about a
laundry list of scenarios. If you say that one of them happened, you're now a
sexual assault victim, even if you don't agree and even if that incident never
reached the threshold of illegality. A good analogy is regular assault, which
legally includes verbal threatening language. Who hasn't had a heated argument
with a friend or family member? But imagine if a survey counted you as an
assault victim just for agreeing to the statement "someone has threatened me
during a verbal altercation". The law is intentionally defined broadly but
applied narrowly. Collecting statistics that count people as victims of
violence, when they wouldn't even count themselves, is deceptive and
dishonest. It's being done to justify kangaroo courts in colleges, and
government mandates in private business.

Disclaimer: Just to preempt the easily offended, I obviously acknowledge that
sexual and regular assaults are real crimes that happen way too often, but the
statistics being thrown around are ridiculous.

~~~
smt88
> _They don 't ask "Have you been sexually assaulted?"_

People have different definitions of sexual assault. Asking about specific
scenarios is a way to control for those varying definitions, and it's a
standard requirement of good survey design.

There may be problems with those surveys, but the solution is not to just ask,
"Have you been sexually assaulted?"

~~~
marcoperaza
Yes, but shouldn't you ask that question too? It's extremely relevant.

The law was written in the context of how it would be applied. It was not
designed as a metric for sexual violence in our society. It was designed as
the legal rules that judges, just one part of the process, must apply once a
case is brought before them. And only then in the context of constitutional
law and old common law like _de minimis_.

------
melted
I'm pretty sure nearly all women (and most men) get "unwanted sexual advances"
at least a few times in their lives. After all we can't read each other's
minds. The crucial question to me is not whether advances happen, but whether
they stop when it is made clear that they're unwanted.

------
js8
And how many in non-tech? Let's say, fashion industry?

~~~
theseatoms
Exactly... We can draw exactly zero conclusions regarding gender inequality in
the tech industry without a control sample...

~~~
inglor
Sure we can - let's say we look at the fashion industry and see it's just as
bad there - or even worse. So what?

That doesn't mean that as an industry we should put up with gender inequality.
Gender inequality is an incredibly irrational historical artifact and in times
where it's so hard to hire excellent employees - creating a gender equal
workplace gives employers an edge.

This sort of data can give employers the confidence that investing in fixing
the problem would indeed help giving them an edge over other workplaces since
the problem is so widespread.

~~~
theseatoms
I agree with most of your points. Gender equality is an important issue in
society at large. But the makers of this site are drawing a tech-industry-
specific conclusion, so they should at least attempt to present unbiased data.

------
danharaj
These results might be subject to survivorship bias: all the women who quit
the industry before they got 10 years of experience because of these negative
experiences are silent. All the women who dropped out of CS in college. All
the women who went to a hackathon once and never again.

~~~
etjossem
I can't believe this was the most downvoted comment for a bit.

It's true and incredibly relevant. The responses from women with 10+ year
experience paint a shocking enough picture, and this survey doesn't even cover
those women who left the industry or never felt welcome in the first place.

------
striking
200+ is hardly a representative sample for the entire tech industry,
especially as most of these reports were taken from the Bay Area. There's also
no control group (other gender, other industries). And what specifically is an
unwanted advance with regards to these statements?

I'd like to see the peer review on this one, to tell you the truth.

~~~
smt88
Using a control group here doesn't make sense because we're not trying to
benchmark SV against other places, nor are we doing an experiment. This is a
survey.

Furthermore, if there are 400,000 tech workers in Silicon Valley, then 200
gives us a _less than 8% margin of error_ (95% confidence level). This still
gives us a result of at least 50%.

But we're not surveying the entire tech industry, we're surveying women in
Silicon Valley, which is a number much closer to 100,000 (although that
doesn't radically change our margin of error).

~~~
brazzledazzle
Honest question: do those confidence levels account for how the participants
are chosen? Or is it assumed that it's random?

~~~
smt88
Randomness is assumed for my number. However, there are lots of ways this
survey could have been biased:

\- women who were assaulted, harassed, or threatened have already left SV

\- women who were assaulted, harassed, or threatened were more likely to
respond

\- women who don't believe in an anti-female culture in SV were more likely to
respond

\- etc.

It's up to the designers of the survey to control for these things within the
survey and/or disclose them. Unfortunately, they haven't.

------
sheepdestroyer
Does anybody know of couples successfully formed on the workplace? Seriously
curious here. I have witnessed two personally. Maybe your coworkers, you
friends or even yourself? For each of these, someone had to first try and make
an advance ; Presumably without knowing in advance if wanted or not. Sexual
harassment is not seriously characterized by this metric. Or these two couples
of mine started with some...

------
etjossem
Okay, HN - forget the surveys and methodology. Your actions will be local, so
your data will be too. Take a look around you, in your workplace. Are there
actually any female developers working alongside you? How about in engineering
management, and at the executive level?

The problem is there. It's staring you in the face. The tech industry has not
offered the same opportunities to women as it has to men.

Act now and solve it. Don't wait for that perfectly conducted longitudinal
study, covering a representative sample of women entering the industry and
their experiences ten years later. You don't need it to see what's happening.

~~~
13thLetter
"Act now and solve it."

By doing what?

------
jellicle
This article was, of course, flagged into oblivion within minutes of being
posted, despite having 27 upvotes, because Silicon Valley is quite sure that
there's no sexual harassment problem.

~~~
Balgair
I posted the article. I may be misinformed to what 'flagged' means, but I see
no reports or 'flags' on my screens and whatnots. I am not a power user in any
sense. As of writing, I see no downvotes, just an upvote total of 35. What
does being flagged mean here so that I may avoid it or recognize it in the
future?

~~~
DrScump
Yours is the survivor that gained traction. There were earlier (and perhaps
later) postings that were flagged (I'm guessing because of duplication rather
than nefarious intent.)

~~~
Balgair
Thanks for the clarification.

~~~
jellicle
Every user who has been around for a while has a "flag" option for every
story, to be used for stories which should not be on HN, such as spam. Your
posting briefly made the front page, then was flagged off of HN by people
clicking that link.

There's nothing you can do to avoid it except avoid posting stories which
imply Silicon Valley has any sort of sexism problem.

------
sp332
What is a non-disparagement agreement? And I would like to see a similar
survey of men.

~~~
bradbeattie
"A Non-Disparagement clause restricts individuals from taking any action that
negatively impacts an organization, its reputation, products, services,
management or employees.

Example Definition: Disparaging remarks, comments or statements are those that
impugn the character, honesty, integrity, morality or business acumen or
abilities in connection with any aspect of the operation of business of the
covered individual or entity."

[http://www.contractstandards.com/clauses/non-
disparagement](http://www.contractstandards.com/clauses/non-disparagement)

------
hotgoldminer
[Meta comment.] It is a shame you can't get credibility points for downvoting.

------
dudul
What is "unwanted" sexual advances? Is it a colleague asking out for a drink,
ignoring that the woman was already seeing someone or not interested in
dating? It is "unwanted", but the colleague may just have been taking a shot.
It is said that work is the main environment where people find their partner.

Now, if "unwanted" means "He asked, I declined and he kept asking me out every
day after that" then yes it is a problem.

