Sexism isn't getting better in Silicon Valley, it's getting worse In the technology field, many people like to think that they are at the forefront of human development, but it is becoming clear that the industry is failing when it comes to dealing with sexism against women. In January, a survey from Stanford University of women who'd spent at least ten years in the tech industry found that …
....boys are behind at every stage of education.
If the feminazis wanted "Equality", we would see them campaigning to stop what must obviously be sexist education from the age of 5.
We don't see that because they don't want equality, they want to be given the top jobs.
I'm not sure that you understand your point. Education, at least in terms of the three R's and in the west, is not sexist - boys get taught the same as girls. Developmentally, though, boys do advance slower at this stage - it's normal. Do you feel that boys should be given a leg up over the girls? Or, are you saying that, in a true meritocracy, girls are winning at this age - and therefore, in the pre-higher education age bracket, they should have the balance of power?
Or are you just insecure and confused by a matching pair of sex genes?
Ah, so you admit men and women are not the same ?
So differences in the jobs they do can be attributed to their gender.
So the feminazis are totally wrong to engineer society so every ( good ) job is done by at least 50% women.
Thank you for your support in fighting them.
> Education, at least in terms of the three R's and in the west, is not sexist - boys get taught the same as girls.
Except the teachers are 80% female, who tend to grade pupil based on effort, attendance and calm behaviour. And the subjects are skewed from maths and natural science toward - I don't know, some generic humanitarian gibberish? And any form of competition, between peers being considered a bad thing.
Other than that, boys and girls are treated equally, and expected to act the same - as good girls they are.
@srgvd
Can't agree with you.
As you used the phrase I don't know let me offer a counter view.
The skewing if any that you witness is I believe by school. Our local comprehensive happens to have a Maths and Science specialism - well it did while such things were in place under the last Labour government.
Competition is fostered, the kids are under no illusions that the world beyond those gates is one festering pile, populated with a appreciable share of those who do and will exploit any advantage for personal gain.
All of that - Maths and Science focus, with competition means that the school sent 3% of its students to Oxbridge and a hefty percentage thereafter to Russell Group (A far more important metric in my mind!)
The gender bias - Shhh don't tell anyone - it's fairly even and tends to oscillate one year more boys, another more girls.
@Bahboh
Ok! I'll bite!
Do you just come here to lick your balls, take a shit and say "Feminazi" - because a look back over you history suggests that you have serious problems with women and any suggestion that efforts to re-level a tilted playing field are discriminatory.
You might not like that there is a bias - but to help you visualise it - imagine a football match played on a sloping pitch where the wind is blowing from the higher end to the lower. Under your approach, the team playing with the wind would continue to do so for the full 90 minutes. It doesn't work that way. At half time, the advantages are reversed. I do hope you find that helpful
On a side note - one can only guess at how badly slapped down you must have been in a past life - but seriously - go a get some help, go and get a life!
Anon - because I have no desire to incur the shit that will probably ensue following the fact that someone points out what a dick you are! I quite enjoy The Register and as one other comment pointed out - the risk with feeding the troll is you get to keep it. Some things penicillin just cant clear!
Those feminazis sure do get everywhere, putting our boys down, angling for those top jobs and never mind those poor. fragile males they boot as they climb the corporate ladder.
What a depressing comment thread, you kicked off, BahBoh. First post/ first troll.
And to those who cry "clickbait", "politically correct", "goodbye El Reg" I have this to say:
What fucking planet do you live on. Grow up.
Can we stop this nonsense of people generalizing Valley tendencies as if they are the rule of law across the entire industry.
The gender imbalance is _VERY_ geographically dependent and somewhat "part of the industry" dependent as well.
Similarly, try unwanted sexual advances on your Serbian colleague for starters. You will think of Alice from Dilbert as a gentle, kind and caring soul after that. Whatever is left of you.
As far as the workplace going nastier I have a slightly different theory. It is not so much a question of who enters the workplace (it was geeks then, it is still geeks now). It is a question of who is the role model. The "Social Web" role models - the "successful ones" have an extremely strong sociopathy streak in them. That was not around 15 years ago. Sure, you could drown in testosterone and adrenaline on a bad day in the office. The sociopaths, however, were few and far between and they were not particularly successful.
Indeed. Would be nice to see if America could do something about the incarceration rate of black men: 25 - 33% (sorry, no current stats to hand) of black men spend some time in jail. To my mind that's a far bigger disgrace than any of the "quota" issues. All kinds of policies have failed to have a significant impact on this.
It is indeed. However it is possible to do more than one thing at once, so I'm sure you'll agree that racism is not the only inequality which needs to be addressed now.
I do agree and obviously didn't make myself clear. On the other hand, it looks like I'm heading for my own personal best in downvotes, which is nice.
I highlighted the incarceration rate of black Americans because it remains high even after decades of affirmative action.
I'm even more sceptical that any of the tokenisms such as IWD and the various feel-good about diversity boondoggles which ever be good for anyone other than the organisers.
"Would be nice to see if America could do something about the incarceration rate of black men"
Such as preventing them from committing crimes you mean?
Black Americans are arrested at 2.6 times the per-capita rate of all other Americans, and this ratio is even higher for murder (6.3 times) and robbery (8.1 times).
Let's see: "Decent social welfare system to keep people out of poverty".
You mean systems where it is often better paying to remain on the dole, than to work a job ?
"Remove the racial bias of US police"
Funny, when you adjust the numbers for the actual proportions of suspect race, you find that the police racial bias is non-existent, and tends to be the opposite of what is claimed.
"Providing real education and opportunities for all"
Hmm, that would be why numerous skilled trades positions, that pay VERY well, remain empty, while Ph.D.'s in the social sciences can only find work as baristas. The opportunities are there, and the education is easy to get. It's just that the coursework is actually hard, or requires actual physical labor.
You should talk to Mike Rowe about that. . .
Social welfare programs are a big part of why they are IN poverty. The rate of poverty is not any lower in the US since LBJ greatly expanded social welfare programs in the "war on poverty," but the rate of dependency on government has exploded. Marriage and intact families are way down, crime is way up. Dysfunctional communities that tolerate criminality and eschew education are the norm in the poor neighborhoods.
It's not about racial bias of US police. It's about blacks committing way more than their share of crimes relative to their slice of the population at large. They are 12-13% of the US population, but are responsible for over half of the murder-- and the biggest majority of these murders are against other blacks. Would it be better if the cops started going easy on black criminals who principally victimize other blacks? If they did, people would be complaining that black communities receive inadequate policing and that other neighborhoods receive better protection. It would be a valid complaint.
A lot of people are trying to provide better educational opportunities in poorer urban communities. Unfortunately, the very victims of these poor schools repeatedly vote for candidates who are in the pocket of teachers' unions, which stubbornly oppose any and all attempts to provide school choice or to base promotions and rate of pay on the quality of teachers rather than seniority. The teachers' unions scream bloody murder if anyone tries to impose any form of meritocracy upon them, or if they try to dismiss incompetent teachers or administrators. It's nearly impossible to fire an incompetent teacher in a public school.
In short, you're asking for more of the same policies that created the problems in the first place.
How true.
Here I run a very simple system regarding who does what.
1) Can they do the job?
2) Are they the best of the group doing the job?
3) Can they lead by example?
4) If 1 & 2 & 3 = true then they get put in charge.
For me, the ability in the job is much more important than being male or female. I would employ a green Martian big headed midget if they could do the work better than anyone else.
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Bean counters, Spin Doctors and Livestock Oversight
...the three most commonly reviled specialisms (plus Marketing and Consultancy, naturally).
Might there be a touch of correlation/causation fallacy at work here?
Perhaps women (to some degree) experience higher levels of negativity and harassment from colleagues not just because they are women but also because they gravitate towards positions that attract negativity irrespective of gender?
Men experience higher levels blunt force trauma at work. It has nothing to do with gender per se; it is due to the over representation of men in heavy engineering, construction and agricultural labouring.
There is also the question of reporting/sample bias. When I was 19 I had a Chemistry lecturer who made a habit of sidling up from behind and groping students butts. He was gay however so the targets were other men. No-one ever reported him to my knowledge[1]. It was a minor irritation ... especially when compared to the gas attack from the hetero Business Studies lecturer's aftershave if he got close to you.
[1] University. No children involved.
Yes.
I've experienced many criminal offenses that only constituted a minor irritation to me. Littering. Smoking in bars. Double parking.
Perhaps it is something to do with the Northern Line at rush hour, but I'm not especially precious about invasions of my personal space and brief physical contact with strangers.
On the one hand, refraining from feeding trolls is a good policy.
But in terms of real-life discrimination, "simply ignore them" is functionally equivalent to "shut up and take it."
I'm not offering any clear rules. I'm suggesting that situations can sometimes be more complicated than they appear on the surface.
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You think cis-normative patriarchal micro-aggression is "OK"?!? You'll be suggesting that it is OK to give womyn flowers on March 8th like those degenerate Russian misogynists next.
Saying something that another person does not want to hear is verbal assault, by definition. If there is any sort of potential implication of a future interest in personal intimacy it is sexual assault. Period.
Freedom of speech is just a carte blanche to assault, abuse, ridicule and oppress. Thankfully we are finally moving into to the era of freedom FROM speech which will put a stop to this disgusting "asking someone out" aggression and harassment.
You'll be suggesting that it is OK to give womyn flowers on March 8th like those degenerate Russian misogynists next.
Hehe... We used to do a double round. ALL of our female colleagues got a March 8th bouquet. The ones which objected got an enormous freshly cut lilac one for the 1st of June. As a hint: "grow up".
The rule from the Feds is you can ask once, but not twice.
Some women are really hypersensitive on this issue. I remember one road trip were I asked the customers engineer if she wanted to go out to lunch. She freaked. It really threw me off.Taking the customer to lunch is just something you did. I know from dealing with non-American women that some cultures have issues with it but she was an American.
Yeah...
As most of the ladies would just brush off the first attempt with a uncommiting sentence like "Sorry, I am too busy with the current project", the second attempt once the project is over will be a dice roll. With a critical fumble chart.
Welcome to the wonderful world we live in. You can only ask her out if she wants your advances, otherwise your some evil monster who shouldnt be let out in public. Pretty soon we will need to develop telepathy so we can know if we are allowed to ask them out, except then they will read our interest and be offended at that too.
I do wonder how long until this version of women run off to an island together to escape the men. At least that way they can die out without bothering us.
If you ask women out when you know they are not interested and find it annoying, that's harassment. Continuing to ask after the second clear "no" for example would generally count. Once, you are probably legally in the clear.
But in real life, you are expected to know whether a woman is interested before you ask her.
This is a social convention to prevent women having to bat away a hundred foolish questions every day. You should be able to pick this up from body language and facial expressions. However if you are poor at body language or you are still not sure, ask mutual friends their opinion before asking her.
If you get a lot of "no" answers, you should learn from that you are poor at interpreting facial expressions and body language, and stick to asking mutual friends first.
"Our society is vaguely misogynistic…" WTF is that supposed to mean? Sounds like something from The Day Today. Then again Sue Black would organise <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G07sWzYObnk>excellent jam festivals</a>, I think.
I was at a corporate client's HQ yesterday. Roses were being handed out to women at the canteen because it was international women's day. Can someone help explain how this helps break down stereotypes because I fucking can't. Just more bloody tokenism. And ironic when you consider where, and under what conditions, roses are grown so they can be handed out in early March in Europe.
@ Charlie Clark
"Can someone help explain how this helps break down stereotypes because I fucking can't."
It helps by singling out the selected group and making them very visible with the patronising meaning of 'your not weak, honest'. Because who doesnt want a spotlight on them announcing a negative stereotype they may or may not resemble.
So how would you react if a bloke gave you flowers?
A better analogy would be coming to work and finding a bottle of my fav booze next to the keyboard. Or a fresh coffee in the morning. Though I do not mind flowers too and I have had flowers left on my desk in the morning (with booze and chocs) - a few jobs back after going at 3am to fix the servers so our colleagues in a different TZ can work.
I know, I am supposed to be a demented, politically correct idiot and assume that this is an "unwanted advance" which I should immediately report to HR and my wife. How about an alternative explanation?
TOKEN OF APPRECIATION. Ever heard this one? Oh, I forgot - that explanation requires treating your colleagues like humans. Not like corporate drones. Yeah, tall order - I know. Goes to confirm my hypothesis that the "wrong" with the industry is not misoginism and sexism. It is sociopathy (regardless of the sexual aspect).
Maybe the problem with the whole sexism argument isn't sexism but the stereotypes that are repeated over and over again. If you show one gender from an early age that they cook, clean, hoover up or are a sexual object on the TV don't be surprised when they don't go to work and aspire to get to the top. Likewise if you show one gender as being competitive in most sports then don't be surprised when they are competitive in the workplace. That's the problem and going on about how it is will never change it till the source of the problem is dealt with. I note that some channels are being more gender non-specific and cleaning up their acts, if that carries on and is taken up by everyone else then the problem will solve itself. That's just my opinion.
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"a survey from Stanford University of women" - Well that's not going to be biased in any way... A lot of these types of sexist surveys have a poor number of respondents which always skew an already cherry picked figure. Just have to look at the "1 in 4 women" statistics.
"Prominent women in technology now routinely get blasted by rape threats, sexist abuse, and doxing promises by those hiding behind the coward's cloak of anonymity" - Prominent women obviously don't understand the internet, there are a lot of trolls out there and they will attack you regardless of your ethnicity or gender.
"Getting more women into management is, however, going to be crucial to solve the problems of in-company sexism." - Not really. This attitude will just create a gender imbalance, giving preferential treatment in favour of women and then shift the problem onto the other end of the scale.
I find a lot of these agendas are pushed by feminists and they don't actually want gender equality. They rather play the victim to get preferential treatment. They call for more women in STEM while at the same time shouting how unfair, sexist and misogynistic it is. This actually has an adverse effect as they are unjustly scaring women from STEM.
I find a lot of these agendas are pushed by feminists and they don't actually want gender equality.
Not so sure about that. Depends upon your definition of feminist, I guess.
However, there is no doubt in my mind that there is now an industry of "victim culture". It's not actually interested solutions just in talking shops and junkets for its members.
" twice as likely to suffer sexual harassment as some other industries"
Which industries? Can't seem to find a list in the report. Teaching? Where there are far more women than men and so less likely to be sexual harassment? Healthcare? Same reason.
The most annoying thing with all of these type of reports are the sloppy unqualified numbers.
Come on, everybody knows how wrong that is. The proper way to do that is "sudo make me a sandwich"...
"Incidentally, there is also an International Men's Day, on November 19 each year. No one seems to complain about this, however."
Sigh.. yes, there is an international mens day, and yes there is a lot of complaining about the fact that it exists (19th of November last year the guardian ran exactly 1 article highlighting that it was in fact international mens day, and questioning the need for it, as women obviously have it so much worse, and we need to solve all their problems before we can acknowledge that any other exist - to be fair it was an opinion piece, but that was the only piece they ran). The comment section didn't exactly cover the guardianistas in glory either.
Anyway, yesterday was international womens day, and like many others I took the time to read up on and consider issues that uniquely affect women and girls in our society. I managed this without mentioning international mens day once. Maybe next year you will manage to do the same.
Attitudes change, peoples ideas of what is or is not "sexual harrasment" or "sexist behaviour" changes.
People are becoming increasingly thin-skinned and what constitutes an insult today would barely raise an eyebrow a few years ago. Today, even when "friendly" with a female collegue you're afraid to complement her for fear of being accused of being sexist or "making a pass" at them.
Which make it's claims entirely subjective and meaningless.
All about the context...
1) A comment is not a comment...
I vary from shaggy beard, to tidy beard, when I am most hirsute due to my ethic heritage I get comments like this one from a Bulgarian colleague, 'mate, what happened?, you look like (insert dead bearded terrorist here )`s stunt double', this made me laugh but I could imagine someone else feeling very uncomfortable.
2) There is a fine line between being friendly and being a flirt.
As a natural flirt, epecially when tired (less restrained/more impulsive), I've just had to learn to keep my mouth shut at work. One of the board level people is a (female), b (seriously clued up) and c (an outrageous flirt), it's a lot of fun, trading banter over a beer, but that's just not going to fly with anyone who is not either a) a flirt) b) not remotely bothered what people think.
A lot of people are seriously worried what other people read into their actions (barmy IMO) but your colleague might seriously be more concerned with managing the perception of herself/himself, than genuinely offended by compliments.
Women can be an outrageous flirt and if a guy can't take it, then he's the one who is at fault - "What's the matter, can't take a joke? It's just a bit of fun" etc etc
If a guy is the one who does the flirting, then he gets accused of being a sexist, mysoginist pig etc.
..about International Women's Day. It is not there to bring recognition of comparatively minor Western workplace issues (although it's no bad thing if they get addressed), it is there to highlight the achievements of successful women and contrast them with those areas of the world in which if you are a woman, to give some examples, you can be arrested and imprisoned for leaving the house without your husband's permission, where you are not allowed to wear trousers in public, where you are not allowed to drive yourself to work, where so-called "honour killing" of women is legal, or where women can have their genitals mutilated at a man's whim.
Stop hiding behind accusations of "IWD is only political correctness" and "IWD is sexist" and stand behind this day which highlights the daily campaign to ensure that women the world over enjoy the same rights and privileges as those who happen to have a Y chromosome.
I entirely agree.
The event is indeed demeaned and devalued by endless editorials about highly paid/successful/independent women being harassed by (uninvited) compliments and the existence of testosterone.
Perhaps we could pay more attention to the challenges of being a female sysadmin in Islamabad[1] if we weren't swamped with articles about the horrors of being asked out for a drink in San Francisco.
[1] I happen to know one.
"It is not there to bring recognition of comparatively minor Western workplace issues..."
-It has a different focus in different areas of the world, and doesn't even mean the same to every person in the same country.. it was started off in the US by socialists specifically to acknowledge "western workplace issues" (a womens union strike if memory serves), was especially big in the soviet bloc and now has multiple meanings across the world (womens suffrage, general celebration of women (like mothers day), highlighting issues that affect women, in-equality, reproductive rights, etc).
There is no need to define what it is or isn't, I think that horse bolted a long time ago.
No we're not. Worse can happen to you for other reasons in those countries, women aren't singled out. But for some reason we're expected to take in all the immigrants they can disgorge and we're expected to adapt to their culture not them to ours.
So yes, IWD is just another feminazi excuse to bash men. Which is precisely why El Reg is getting so much push back on an obvious clickbait article.
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Indeed. I tend to read the comments here on El Reg because they tend to be witty and entertaining. This thread is mostly just fucking depressing. I say this as a person who is _very_ critical to what these days passes as feminism and furious about, for example, what happened to Tim Hunt.
Equal rights and equal treatment, what's wrong with that? And: "feminazi" in the very first message, WTF?
This posting has been approved by Mrs GrumpenKraut. Just kidding.
In the bay area (san bruno, almost spitting distance from youtube). Recently had a company meeting where our female CEO said they are needing to hire more men. I'd guesstimate company wide probably 65%+ women. Inside of the tech departments themselves it's mostly men though.
I don't care either way except all the noise that is being made on the topic is long past annoying. Not quite as annoying as anything political, but getting close.
I never thought I would see the day when the Register started spewing the nonsensical feminist claptrap. This site used to have writers who actually understood issues and didn't simply puppet the politically-correct mantra.
There must be a tech news site that hasn't bent over. Goodbye El Reg, it was good while it lasted.
You know, it doesn't bother me that The Register covers stuff like this. They're legitimate topics. What does rub me the wrong way that they are reported uncritically. Things like apparently conflating unwanted advances with sexual harassment, or the vague comparison to "other industries" need to be called out. Why can't stories like this be covered with even the same level of skepticism we see in the ones about how "company foo says product bar will be awesome", or the level of impartiality in an article discussing the merits of a new Linux distro? Heck, even the entertaining "Line Break" stories make some attempt to present both sides.
It seems no rational discussion can be made on this topic anymore, which like religion and race, is drowned in emotional debate and ideology. In any case, after five decades of feminism, nothing prevents women from studying what they want to study. At Boston University, for example, the class of 2018 is 65 per cent female (1,160 women) and 35 per cent male (635 men), which would be considered a shatteringly serious problem if the figures were reversed, but never mind. Of the entire cohort (not broken down by gender), 76 chose computer programming as a major, 69 chose Math and 51 chose neuroscience.
Some say that women feel intimated by large numbers of males in class. Even if we consider this over-sensitive excuse, numbers at women-only colleges are remarkable:
- Bryn Mawr, 4 per cent of the 2010 graduating class majored in chemistry, 2 per cent in computer science, 2 per cent in physics. At Smith, 0.5 per cent chose physics, and 1.4 per cent computer science.
- Barnard (2009), 0.33 per cent chose physics and astronomy, 2 per cent chemistry.
Females are hopefully not intimated in women-only colleges either. There are also studies indicating that in liberal democracies, women tend to choose professions traditionally-linked with female traits. Health and psychology for example, are overwhelmingly female-dominated. I have no issue with this since males are not interested in those fields, yet they need to be fulfilled. Interestingly, in more repressive regimes, females then to choose STEM fields, the only fields where women remain in minority in the Western world. (I lost the link to the study - if any one have it, please reference it) There are also indication of biological factors which would explain the ongoing desire for women to choose professions gearing toward social aspect or nurturing.
It's 2016, women are free to choose which profession they want. I fail to see the obsession of having a parity everywhere. The point is: is the person can make a significant contribution to the field? Who cares if it's a woman, African-American, midget, or blue alien. Stop wasting time and resources in fulfilling ideology, diverting research funds based on gender and diversity, let women choose whatever field they want to go and make a contribution to it.
[1] Summers, 2008
[2] National Post, http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/barbara-kay-flattening-feminisms-campus-myths
Did nobody (including the Reg story author) bother to check out the Stanford "survey"? It's nothing close to a proper scientific survey -- it's just a collection of anecdotes from whomever felt strongly enough to send in their comment. Thus, this story is just unfounded click bait, and you're all stuck wriggling on the Reg's hook.
My personal opinion, as one of those who graduated and became involved with computers in the mid seventies is that those of my age group were trained to be polite and respectful of women. We have since been told that to do that was sexist (it has not changed the fact that I continue to be respectful to women) but the younger generation has grown up with the idea that everyone, women included, are 'just one of the guys' With the pretty disrespectful and obnoxious way younger people treat each other today, this behavior is to be expected. I abhor it, disagree with it, and would like to stamp it out, but the fact remains, the vocal majority of self indulgent, obnoxious brats that are entering the workforce today respect nothing and no one. They are self centered, self indulgent and care little for the other person's feelings, man or woman, except that they revel in the ability to anger or hurt them.
Before I get flamed, yes, there are some decent younger people who don't act that way, but they are much, much rarer than 40 years ago, and getting progressively rarer all the time.
Then I see examples such as Carly Fiorina, Carol Bartz and Marissa Mayer.
There is no glass ceiling. The gender wage gap has been thoroughly debunked. No old boys' club oppressing the women.
Meritocracy is colour blind, gender blind, age blind and religion blind. The whining 'equality' agitators just want affirmative action.
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