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I don't see the advantage of trying to make a point with faulty or irrelevant evidence.

But I did "research it all by my big-boy self" and discovered that medicine, investment banking, architecture, the Marine Corps, law, executive-level management, and higher education faculty of all stripes have similar imbalance of attrition. Allied healthcare professions, however, have an imbalance the other way -- male nurses leave the profession at a much higher rate. Maybe they're being hounded out? /s

So thanks for taking the time to educate me; the imbalance is more likely one of "gendered work" and the issues with it, rather than trolls and misogyny specific to technology. I think the actual instances of abuse (of which there are many) are more compelling and require more attention and action than fluff statistics which, while concerning to feminism as a whole, likely have little to do with anything specific to technology.




I apologize for the tone. I had dealt with too many idiots making spurious, derailing objections to nitpicky points, and should have just shut my mouth for a while rather than assuming you were also derailing and taking irritation with them out on you. I'm sorry.

The point of using that statistic for me is that I don't want women dropping out at a higher rate then men. (That investment bankers have an equal level of sexist shitheel behavior is not comforting to me. I have worked in finance, and I don't think that's an acceptable model for tech.) Your offered explanation, that women are the primary caregiver of infants, is still part of structural sexism. Past a period that civilized countries cover with parental leave, both parents are equally capable of caring for children. (My brother was primary caregiver for my nephew, so I've seen it up close.)

I think your follow-up conclusion, that there's a single issue (gendered work vs misogyny), is a false framing. First, I don't think those are necessarily distinct. I see misogyny and abuse as part of the system of control that maintains gendered work. (As is male willingness to tolerate it. Note the all the male pearl-clutching that has taken place around codes of conduct.) It's similar to the way that police (and much of society) are more accepting of the rape of women who "dressed wrong" or were otherwise not following a very gendered code of sexuality.

Second, even if they were entirely distinct, there's no reason to think there's just one explanation here. We're talking about the entire professional lives of millions of people with cultural factors going back thousands of years: it's inevitably complicated. There are likely many causes, many of the overlapping and reinforcing. The male-female ratio is very different in tech, and historically has gotten worse compared to other white-collar professions. The explanation can be gendered work and trolls and misogyny and a bunch of other things.

Third, whatever the causes, the responses may be distinct. Having the rib platter every night for dinner may eventually cause a heart attack, but paramedics don't treat heart attacks with food. That actual mentors of women are seeing the instances of abuse and saying, "Whoa, maybe I shouldn't be encouraging women to get into the field," tells you that there's a relationship.

> I think the actual instances of abuse (of which there are many) are more compelling

If you think something is more compelling, that's great. You should run with it. As I said, other people right here in this thread find anecdotes worthless and demand stats. Not every sentence in every post has to be for you and you alone.

> while concerning to feminism as a whole

So this concerns me; it sounds like you're treating feminism as an other. Feminism is the movement that, for the last 150 years or so, has been trying to change the world from one where women are property to one where men and women are equal. Do you really not think people should be treated as equals based on things like gender, race, and sexual orientation? Because if you don't, a) well duh you don't like statistics demonstrating that women are not being treated equally, and b) I'm not sure why I should worry about your take on a particular statistic, because then we're back in the land of anonymous HN commenters nitpicking things that they were never going to accept anyhow as a means to derailing the discussion.


> I see misogyny and abuse as part of the system of control that maintains gendered work. (As is male willingness to tolerate it. Note the all the male pearl-clutching that has taken place around codes of conduct.) It's similar to the way that police (and much of society) are more accepting of the rape of women who "dressed wrong" or were otherwise not following a very gendered code of sexuality.

This is absolutely true, but it also indicates that tech merits no special treatment or concern in this regard. The attrition problem is actually systemic. (The harassment problem probably is tech-specific, at least the online-troll harassment rather than the paternalism and more "artful" in-person unwelcome advances more common in medicine or law.)

> So this concerns me; it sounds like you're treating feminism as an other.

That says much more about you than it says about me.


No, that there is a broad systemic problem doesn't mean that tech doesn't also have specific problems. And even if the problems were only endemic, it doesn't mean that we can't make a difference in tech by acting in tech.

See, for example, this HBR report:

http://documents.library.nsf.gov/edocs/HD6060-.A84-2008-PDF-...

Chapter 8, "Unnecessary Losses", in particular documents that there is a specific problem in high tech.

> That says much more about you than it says about me.

Sure, it says I've been participating in Hacker News discussions on sexism for the last few years, where there has been an overabundance of anonymous dudes who just happen to be vehemently opposed to anything that might reduce the advantages they have now.


Thanks for the link. There was one sidebar about "tech in finance" that was especially illuminating to me -- half my career was at a large financial institution, and it did reflect the more positive attributes with respect to women technologists and managers described in the paper.

Another factor that may warp my perception (or alternatively, maybe yours is warped if you're in Seattle or the Bay Area) is that my career has been entirely in the Midwest. There's not very much skew at all among tech workers from the culture at large, with respect to gender equality. If anything, a male tech worker's efforts and opinions skew toward equality, relative to the average worker's efforts and opinions.

So I just see sexism problems as society problems; maybe tech companies in some tech hubs are way behind the curve of the regions where they are located? Or perhaps we shipped the most toxic programmers among us to the coasts? :)


Interesting. I've worked in both the Midwest and in the Bay Area, but I've been too long in SF to compare fairly.

The stats are definitely worse than the general population here. Look at Google's diversity stats in their tech positions:

http://www.google.com/diversity/at-google.html#tab=tech

Although now that I look, that's no worse than the CS graduate numbers, which have been sliding for 30 years:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom...

So maybe it's more a function of Google hiring young than being male-biased.

As to the culture, I think there is definitely a lot more humility in the midwest, which could help. I notice that people who think their evaluations are objective are more likely to display gender bias:

https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/uhlmann_et_2005....

And yes, I think there's definitely some shipping of toxic people going on. I was here for Bubble 1.0; a lot of opportunistic people turned up during the boom and then left when the bust came. I would not mind another bubble popping to cool things off and send the greedy back to Wall Street.




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