
I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room - imallika
https://imallika.com/post/168625383130/why-i-dont-want-to-be-the-pink-elephant-in-the
======
programmarchy
This seems like a good illustration of the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Yes, we should make an effort to be inclusive of all individuals, but when
that's done by putting people on a pedestal simply because they're a minority,
it's superficial, cringy and embarrassing for everyone involved.

~~~
21
In my team, where we have a 50-50 target goal, we were told that if we know a
potential woman hire we should refer her not to the regular hiring track, but
to a special "woman friendly" hiring track.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Is that evidence that there's a "softer" path to employment, or that the
regular hiring track sucks?

~~~
21
That's exactly what I'm also wondering. Given that the whole company seems
genuinely devoted to increasing diversity, I would tend towards the first
possibility, especially since the team manager boasted a lot that his team has
one of the highest female to male ratio in the company.

~~~
weberc2
Why would one boast about less diversity? Did you mean "highest ratio"?

~~~
echaozh
But highest ratio is still less diversity. Only 50-50 is highest diversity,
right?

~~~
weberc2
It is, which is my point. Why would you brag about being less diverse? The OP
responded and said he made a mistake and got the order wrong.

------
beaner
"All one should care about is - is this excellent or is it not? Is this right
or is this wrong?"

I generally agree with this article. But you can't be a white male and speak
this way in silicon valley without being shamed and being labeled a Trump
supporter. Especially if your company has militant diversity advocates.

~~~
andrewflnr
The tragedy here cannot be overstated. The truth itself has been demonized by
people who claim to be "just speaking the truth" when they lie, and people who
can't see through it and believe it's ok to sacrifice truth on the altar of
their ideology.

~~~
_jahh
The tragedy is that for hundreds if not thousands of years half the population
has had their voice muted and ability to contribute intellectually hamstrung

~~~
flukus
For hundreds if not thousands of years 90%+ of the population had their voice
muted and ability to contribute intellectual hamstrung. It's only the few
hundred years that we've had the resources to change this.

~~~
belorn
90% is an heavily underestimated number, where reality should be closer to
99%. We only need to go back a bit more than 100 years where researchers
either was extremely wealthy and supported the work themselves (generally
through inheritance), or required a patronage from someone who was wealthy.
Going through the list of famous scientists that dates back hundreds if not
thousands and the idea that you need to be rich to do intellectual work is a
repeating pattern.

Not many people, then or now, can afford at an early age to stop focusing on
creating food on the table and roof over their head, and on top of that fund
what is generally a rather expensive passion.

------
CoolGuySteve
Something I've noticed after 10 years in tech/finance is that there are very,
very few western women in engineering roles. I think I've only ever worked
with 1 woman who wasn't an Eastern European or Asian immigrant (and yeah, I
eventually married one of the immigrant ones).

The gender gap is purely cultural, and we should be learning from what those
cultures are doing that's different than us. This article really hits the nail
on the head in terms of what we do in the west (ie: "math is for boys!") vs
other places where your sex isn't really factored into what subjects are
appropriate. It's very good.

~~~
hackinthebochs
>The gender gap is purely cultural, and we should be learning from what those
cultures are doing that's different than us.

The countries with low gender gap in science/tech are also the countries that
measure low on general measures of gender equality. It turns out there isn't
anything to learn from these cases. In regions with low gender equality and
weak social safety nets, technology is seen as the means to economic security
and thus empowerment. Conversely, regions with high gender equality and strong
social safety nets have the largest gender gaps. There is something to be
learned from this, but we probably won't like what we find.

~~~
jameskegel
Instead of hinting at something, why not just tell us how you really feel? Is
it because it's a conclusion that is generally not accepted when put in plain
terms?

~~~
Veelox
Not op but since you asked, I will draw the conclusion.

Given that we observe a larger gender gap in countries that are more gender
equality we can conclude that when men and women feel more equal their choice
of profession diverge.

~~~
oculusthrift
i don't think you're allowed to speak that heresy in polite society.

~~~
Veelox
Which is a shame, because even though it makes sense, I am not sure it is true
because it isn't debated.

------
__s
The political correctness climate is so unpredictable. I'm considered both
sexist & feminist due to being a white male who doesn't pay attention to the
gender of my non romantic relationships. Laissez faire ideals makes you an
enemy of everyone in an age of 'allies'

~~~
ScottBurson
I have not experienced this. How does it play out in real life? Can you give
some examples?

~~~
nine_k
Easy. Don't make discounts or other a priori judgments about the other person
based on gender. Outside of childbirth, and certain extreme physical
activities, assume no difference between carriers of XX and XY chromosomes.
Age, culture, experience, etc play by far a bigger role, and make the real
difference.

For me, this works reasonably well, and meets about equal (quite moderate)
resistance from tradition-minded people in countries as different as US and
Russia. (This also illustrates that a culture predominant among engineers
likely differs less between countries that between different social strata or
education backgrounds in the same country. Compared to this, inter-gender
differences can be very safely assumed to be zero.)

------
calvinbhai
Dear Mallika, Many thanks for writing this article! Totally echoes my
thoughts.

fwiw, as an Indian male engineer in US, I initially was very enthusiastically
thinking "lets go out of our way to support the pink elephants" and later was
surprised when some of my peers (female engineers from India in US or of
Indian origin) showed utter disinterest in being part of many of these women
centric meetups/conferences.

They were more enthusiastic to go to conferences that successfully enforced a
'No Asshole Rule' on attendees, followed by attending conferences without 'all
male' speakers, than conferences of any other type. (I thought the feedback I
received was an outlier, but it is good to know I'm not alone).

Hope such articles bring positive changes to improve diversity organically and
address the pink elephant syndrome.

This article reminded me of this video "Modern Educayshun" (by an Aussie
Comedian of Indian origin)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM)
. Feels like the video makes a similar point.

~~~
greglindahl
I'm surprised that you were not very enthusiastic about conferences with a "No
Asshole Rule". Maybe it's possible to try multiple approaches at the same
time? And that trying several different things is good?

~~~
calvinbhai
[you were not very enthusiastic about conferences with a "No Asshole Rule"]

Not sure where I mentioned that?

~~~
greglindahl
I would be pleasantly surprised if you were also very enthusiastic about
conferences with a "No Asshole Rule", but that would make your previous
comment a bit strange.

~~~
calvinbhai
Not sure where the miscommunication is, but it looks like one of us is really
bad at understanding English :)

Either way, I’m not a fan of the bro-mentality places(jobs/conferences) and I
absolutely love conferences which make it nice for people (of any gender,
orientation, race, culture, language) to attend.

------
DoreenMichele
On the one hand, I agree. And on the other hand, I wonder how helpful it is to
be writing this and posting it to HN instead of writing about some engineering
subject and posting that instead.

I think we need more women in tech talking about tech and less women in tech
talking about the problems with being women in tech and only getting attention
of the wrong kind -- for being women in tech.

I mean, it's kind of recursive.

~~~
edaena
That's exactly why I started The Women in Tech Show:
[https://thewomenintechshow.com/](https://thewomenintechshow.com/)

To have women in tech talking about tech topics instead of what it feels like
to be a woman in tech. Although the show is labeled "women in tech", it's
simply to raise awareness of this. This is a good way to help our industry.

------
kelukelugames
Has anyone seen the scene from SV where Jared is excited after they hired a
woman engineer? And Jared expects her to be pals with Monica because both are
female?

I feel some of us men behave that way. :(

link to clip:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dek5HtNdIHY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dek5HtNdIHY)

------
belorn
I often see people arguing against the idea of sexless-ness based on the idea
that its been tried and failed, but I honestly the only time I truly seen
evidence of this is in movies making fun of the 70th's. It seems that when the
feminist movement moved away from equality feminism it cultural had to disavow
the concept of sexless-ness.

The idea of sexless-ness, which can also be describe as women/men as equal and
undifferentiated from that of men/women, seems to me as the way to reach
optimal freedom and agency in life. Gender roles and associated expectations
affect incentives and disincentives, neither which is optimal if we want to
reach the point where every individual can seek their own passions. I only
hope that the ideas behind equality feminism can once again raise to be
dominant within the progressive culture.

~~~
fatbird
The problem with sexless-ness is that it only addresses what we're conscious
of, when we know that there's lots of unconscious or systemic biases that
still exist.

One famous example was a study that involved submitting resumes to various
jobs with names removed and then randomly reassigned (to avoid any actual
correlation between the name's perceived gender and the quality of the
resume). Resumes with female names received half the callbacks than if they
had male names. You can't practice sexless-ness when you're not aware that
you're discriminating.

~~~
LyndsySimon
> Resumes with female names received half the callbacks than if they had male
> names.

I'm a man named Lyndsy. I've experienced the opposite bias - companies that
were initially very enthusiastic about my interviewing with them, right up to
the moment where they realized I was male.

Obviously, I have no way of knowing whether I received fewer callbacks as a
result of my name - but I do know with a very high degree of confidence that I
have landed at least one interview based on my name.

It seems to me that actively "working against" this unconscious bias merely
replaces it with another.

~~~
fatbird
It's probably true that a person trying to self-correct for bias will tend to
over-correct, to no one's benefit. But the sort of things you do to correct
for widespread unconscious bias are different. For instance, the New York
Symphony Orchestra found that female applicants were making it through the
tape screening round more often when their tapes were blinded, replacing
identifying information with a serial number. Women were still being rejected
at the audition stage in higher numbers than men, so they started having the
applicants play from behind a screen so the judges couldn't see the gender of
the audition, and once again, the number of women making it through that round
increased[1]. This was all at a time when the NYSO was consciously trying to
practice sexless-ness, if not actively increase the number of women in the
orchestra.

Several years ago, GoGaRuCo brought in blind judging of their talk applicants
pool after ensuring the pool was seeded with half women. Suddenly their roster
was half women too, on judging the talks purely on the merits of the proposal.

We constantly see that when we successfully block stimuli to unconscious bias,
the bias is disarmed.

[1] Interestingly, they didn't significantly increase until they made
auditions walk on stage in their socks, because the sound of their formal-wear
shoes were obviously different.

------
kinkrtyavimoodh
I think it's important to note that women's issues in different cultures are
often very different, and if you start diagnosing one culture's issues with
the yardstick of another, you will cause a lot of false positives and
negatives.

For instance, India, where the author comes for, is often celebrated for
having had a 1) female prime minister all the way back in the 60s 2) a female
president 10 years ago, and lots of women in the three pillars of democracy.
Compared to the US, that makes India look like a bastion of women's rights.

But anyone who's lived there will obviously tell you that women there have
their own set of problems. And in fact, when it comes to the president and the
prime minister too, some would argue that they were instated as 'puppets'
(Google for "Indira Gandhi dumb doll"). It's a different matter that she
towered above all that and developed an identity of her own.

~~~
danaliv
A certain Indian MP tried to play the female president card with me. I pointed
out that the election of Barack Obama had hardly heralded the end of racism in
my own country.

~~~
mirimir
Maybe not the end of racism, but it did reflect some decades of empowering
African American voters. Plus Republican disarray, culminating in the bone-
headed McCain-Palin ticket. And you know, he's no Wyclef Jean ;)

------
shiven
Damn. This nails it. Ever since my first exposure to computing and
“programming”, I always _deeply felt_ it was a great equalizer and meritocracy
filter. A field where instead of your skin, the only color that mattered was
of the grey in your brain. Where gender was as meaningless as asking androids
their sex. Where your “accent” didn’t matter, because code does not have any.
Where what you smell of didn’t matter because all anyone smelt was factory-
fresh PCBs, come to life with electrons. Where money was a result of smarts,
hard work and imagination. It was, and will likely always be my utopia. It may
or not exist in the world out there. Maybe it never did. But, it is real to
me, somewhere within me and will _always_ be, in some way small or large.
DudeBros, CodeJocks and SoftDogs be damned along with PussyPasses and the
GoldDiggers.

------
edmccard
>It's substantive and grounded in personal experience.

Yes, but it's the personal experience of someone who has never "had to defend
their choice of or fight an uphill battle while selecting engineering as a
career choice". Which makes it seem like more of an "argument by outlier" than
the expression of some deep universal insight-- yes, maybe Mallika doesn't
appreciate someone listening to her talk as "being supportive", but maybe
women who _have_ had to fight an uphill battle _would_ appreciate the show of
solidarity and the chance afterwards to swap war stories.

(I do agree that it was unfair to flag the article.)

~~~
danaliv
Indeed. When I visited India on a delegation to learn about these very issues,
I was told that the local elementary schools didn't even have girls'
bathrooms, that young women can't attend the entrance exam prep classes
because they're held at night and it's too dangerous, and that when women do
get into engineering schools, it's never the tier one schools.

Obviously I did not grow up in India so I can't say with certainty that the
author is an outlier. But I have heard face-to-face from many, many, many
Indian women who tell a very different story from the one we're reading here.

~~~
calvinbhai
I hope anyone (including you and the author) talking about India is aware that
it is a country of 1.3 billion people.

So you can find a Germany+Austria+Italy equivalent number of poor people in
desolate conditions, but there also a UK+France+Spain+Nordic-countries
equivalent number of people who are doing much better and have access to many
resources.

So one's view of India totally depends on which European country equivalent
you interfaced with, unless they have travelled to every region/state in India
and lived there for a few months/years, without having a
political/religious/NGO entity planning their itinerary.

In support of the author, I agree with what she says. Those women who do make
it to engineering / tech / high-skilled professions tend to do so without
having experienced the pink-elephant phenomena. In fact, I can totally
empathize with what the author is saying in her post.

PS: I just made up the list of countries and equivalents, but I hope my
analogy helps in understanding how vast India is, in terms of population, the
demography, including the languages spoken, scripts written, religions /
cultures followed by people.

~~~
danaliv
Absolutely agree. India is a huge place. I may not have been strong enough in
my caveats: this was a delegation with a specific purpose and fixed meetings;
we visited two regions only; the use of the word "local"; and obviously none
of us on the delegation are even from there, so what do we know, really? I
just wanted to point out that I've heard stories from Indian women that are
different than this one.

As a woman I can also empathize with the author and would of _course_ prefer
to have my work valued on its merits. I just don't think that's contradictory
to having a robust diversity effort.

------
shadowfiend
> There is no room for “maybe” - and there is no room for “is this a woman who
> wrote this or is it a man”. All one should care about is - is this excellent
> or is it not? Is this right or is this wrong?

The general way that I have understood folks who advocate the programs that
are being presented as problematic here is: whether or not there _should be_
room for "maybe", and whether or not one _should_ care about anything else,
people inject maybes and do care about gender. That is, the diversity programs
and the sense of “I should support this person because she is a woman” is
rooted in an observation or impression that being a woman puts you at a
disadvantage in one way or another. The bias is already there, and the attempt
is at a counterbias.

I think it's very good that this isn't a problem in the author's experience,
but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem at all. That said, I'm wondering if
there can be a better balance between supporting women who are good but aren't
judged to be, or feel like they aren't even though they are, and women who are
perfectly confident in their abilities and just want to operate like a sexless
engineer at work. Certainly I'm hopeful that women don't experience that bias
in every organization, and a (hypothetical) organization that's already
structured in an unbiased way would perhaps not want to focus on gender.

From a purely practical standpoint, though, it feels like the right question
here is, does the approach the author doesn't like _reduce_ the number of
women who don't enter or who leave the industry due to bias more than it
_increases_ the number of women who leave in frustration from being treated as
‘different’. If the problem these programs are meant to address is ‘many women
leave the industry or don't join it because of perceived bias’, then that's
the real metric. In a perfect world, nobody cares… But in a world where people
are biased against women, perhaps you have to try to adjust explicitly for
that in the short term, so that you can get to the goal of a world where
nobody cares in the longer run.

------
stephengillie
One side ostracizes the "other" in an attempt at superiority and domination,
as they are naturally driven to do. The other side places the "other" on a
pedestal, in an attempt at submissiveness and placation, as they feel natural.

The "other" sees this for what it is - 2 people pandering instead of including
them into a group of 3 equals. When confronted, each side will claim this is
how they include people, and accuse of sowing dissent.

The more people I meet, the more I realize there is no "them" \- there is us,
just us, and more of us.

------
wst_
Quoting article:

> I come from a country and a back ground where intelligence and the ability
> to work extremely hard is valued highly, with beauty, money and popularity
> ranked far, far below. Growing up as a South Indian in Mumbai, neither me,
> not anyone I know or grew up with, has ever had to defend their choice of or
> fight an uphill battle while selecting engineering as a career choice,
> regardless of their sex.

I come from the different country but I've got few Indian colleagues. We're
talking a lot because I've been always interested in cultural differences.
From what they said I feel like above sentence is not true. Male's role in the
society is to become an engineer and bring money. Female's - to get married
and raise kids. Society's expect you to fit in your role and it's difficult to
do something else without tons of comments from your family and friends. One
example could be a male colleague who's interested in cooking and wish he
could open a restaurant. Yet, he's an engineer. Another one says he didn't
really have a choice - he could be an engineer or nobody so, obviously, he
choose to be an engineer.

Could anyone confirm how does the reality look like? Maybe it differs by
region. It's a big country after all.

~~~
yawaramin
Maybe the picture you're getting is not from South Indian people? There's a
different mentality and situation in the south. The southern states of Tamil
Nadu and Kerala have the highest literacy rates in India, with Kerala
especially having the highest literacy rate for women. Mallika's perceptions
about the cultural importance of education are almost certainly correct
especially if she is from the south.

~~~
mirimir
Ah, Kerala!

[http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/living-
examples...](http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/living-examples-of-
matrilineal-societies-in-india/1/614739.html)

And now I'm vaguely remembering a section of Stephenson's _The Baroque Cycle_
, where Jack Shaftoe gets help from a so-called "pirate queen". In Kerala, I
think.

------
mcguire
" _I come from a country and a back ground where intelligence and the ability
to work extremely hard is valued highly, with beauty, money and popularity
ranked far, far below._ "

Wait! Where is this fabled land? I would bow humbly before the philosopher-
kings who rule it, grovel at their feet to learn how they so wisely manage
mere human weaknesses! Surely there the streets are paved with gold and
happiness and good fortune follow all those who fail to foolishly abandon such
a blessed land.

~~~
scotty79
Even developed country that was never exploited, suffered no war damage to
their production capacity since the beginning of industrial revolution,
basically used WWII to switch their industry to high gear and sucked in half
of the world scientists doesn't have streets paved with gold.

Then again it might be just because they think they owe their success to being
right about everything, which they are not.

------
bo1024
I liked the article, but disappointed that I had to run code from tumblr.com
in order to be able to read it. I'd urge the author and others to reconsider
site designs like this.

------
jancsika
> Intelligence was, and still holds the top spot amongst almost all South
> Indian families.

What's the evidence for that claim?

~~~
chewxy
She's Indian. Does lived experience not matter?

~~~
dragonwriter
“Lived experience” is anecdote, which is a fine way of coming up with
hypotheses about generalities, and a very bad basis for asserting any but very
weak, tentative conclusions about generalities.

~~~
chewxy
Absolutely. I agree with you. For the purposes of her article, I think it's
more than enough. Most discussions about issues of diversity and similar
"dangerous ideas" try to use statistics to back them up but often do use
statistics terribly.

It's better in my opinion to be upfront about anecdotal data.

------
dominotw
Its nice that author ended up going to engineering school via massive social
and economic inertia afforded only to a tiny sliver of indian population. But
there are lot more women who need the helping hand and encouragement provided
by those groups. So perhaps a little empathy towards those programs and what
they are trying to achieve, even if it causes minor distress?

~~~
calvinbhai
I know many women/engineers from/in India who have braved worse situations to
become engineers, because that often is the only hope for anyone irrespective
of their gender, to gain a good career and escape from poverty or move up the
wealth ladder.

Not sure of the author's family background, but either way, its not trivial
for women in India to escape the social pressure (of getting married earlier
than men) even if parents are supportive.

From my Indian POV, it feels a little frustrating to see that there's so much
focus on getting women into tech after they are out of college or mid career,
than focusing on it when they are in middle/high school.

As you said, "helping hand and encouragement provided by those groups" is
needed, but it needs to focus disproportionately more on kids about to start
middle school / high school than girls at any other age. It is too late to
think of helping for a transition once a girl / woman is out of college.

------
dang
This article was flagged unfairly. It's substantive and grounded in personal
experience. Those are good qualities for an HN piece whether one agrees or
disagrees, so I've turned off flags and rolled back the clock on this
submission to give it a second shot.

If you want to comment here, please (re-)familiarize yourself with the site
guidelines at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html),
including this one: _Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less,
as a topic gets more divisive._

Edit: I feel bad about not being able to find a way to let the author know
that her article is currently being discussed on HN, so if any of you know
her, could you give a heads-up? When people submit an article, it doesn't get
attention, and then we re-boost it, we always email them if we can.

~~~
rdtsc
Wonder if the flagging system can be enhanced by having the flagger provide a
reason. Maybe having to explain would reduce the incidence of drive-by
flagging.

~~~
yawaramin
Would be better to de-anonymise flagging so that we could interrogate
flaggers. Show 'flagging's as actions that appear like comments on the page.

~~~
dang
There can be few things HN users would like worse than being interrogated.

~~~
yawaramin
Perhaps 'interrogated' is the wrong word? How about 'discuss'. Since HN is a
discussion forum, presumably users are open to discussing their flags and
reasons for flagging. If not, just like any other type of discussion, we don't
have to give their flag any credence.

------
danjoc
Excellent title. It conveyed the entire meaning of the article in this
context. That's wonderful, because the moment I clicked through, I realized I
would not be able to read the article without enabling javascript. All I
receive is a loading spinner. I closed the page and checked the comments to
confirm my understanding of the article was accurate. It seems it was.
Excellent title. I wish more articles could be this clever and succinct at the
same time.

------
mynameishere
She really seems to think that South India is particular in parents wanting
their children to excel in math and engineering. That's...really a strange
assumption. That extreme of cultural ignorance is all anyone would notice
about this article were it pointed the other direction.

Also "pink elephant" is a kind of symbol for delirium tremens, though I don't
know how common that is anymore.

------
orsenthil
I make this point every time with my friends whenever discussing these "Girls
who code" kind of initiatives. I grew up with two sisters who took interest in
science naturally. In my class in computer science, girls outnumbered boys and
scored well. It is natural for girls in India (middle class educated Indian,
which is the majority of the country for the past 50 years) to pursue science
related degrees. I think, in US this is not the case and US girls were
encouraged to impress boys for dating and activism is targeted at US girls.

