Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Relevant quote:
> That the tech industry would prove so hostile to women is more than a little counterintuitive. Silicon Valley is populated with progressive, hyper-educated people who talk a lot about making the world better. It’s also a young field, with none of the history of, say, law or medicine, where women were long denied spots in graduate schools intended for “breadwinning men.”
> “It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists.”
People don't like the answer, but there's only one: anonymity. Any other solution simply changes who will be discriminated against.
feel free to reach out at jbhatab@gmail.com if youd be so kind
People are really biased creatures. Usually the intent is not malicious, but rather caused by tribalism, evolution, empathy, mirror neurons etc.
One example is ageism, which is actually a systematic bias. For examplem to be a president you have be 35 or older. Let's imagine we created a perfect candidate in a lab which is 29. She's creme de la creme. And we have abolished this law.
No dice. She would not win.
Was it the picture or just bots picking up on activity changes?
I agree about anonymity though, it's the only solution that adds a degree of fairness.
I think that the answer to this question is very important. If we operate on the presumption that SV is uniquely awful, then we may be looking for solutions to sexism in all the wrong places.
If you read the article there is data too, btw.
There's also evidence (e.g. in the linked article) that women are indeed treated unfairly.
Not on its own, it's not.
The vast majority of healthcare workers are female. 98% of dental hygienists, and 91% of RNs are women.
There are 3.6m programmers in the US (as of 2017) and 3.5m nurses (as of 2011) - programmers and nurses have relatively similar salary ranges.
Is the underrepresentation of men in the nursing profession worth addressing on its own?
How about electricians? 99% of journeyman electricians in the US are male. Is that worth addressing?
Yes, and there are programmes encouraging men to go into nursing.
I don't believe that's true.
The gender gap is particularly significant in careers that pay well and are growing in numbers, such as those in IT. (It's a problem that most flight attendants are female, but IMHO it's less pressing.)
It's the same reason why after every election there are dozens of articles about white progressives being at odds with the black community, as opposed to just having a general article on race relations in America or whatever.
It does not. Another reading would say, "why is it as awful as it is?"
>Do we have any comparative data that suggests that SV is any more sexist than most industries?
You provide no comparative data. Comparison to other industries is necessary to identify the scale and causes of the problem, which are necessary in order to fix the problem.
How bad does tech have to be for you to acknowledge a problem? Isn't "worse the average female participation" bad enough?
0) https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/Computer_information_technology...
1) http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by-gender/?d...
2) https://bol.bna.com/the-legal-professions-gender-imbalance-i...
Who said I didn't acknowledge there was a problem? The descriptor at issue is awful. The usual conditions for use of the word "awful" require more than just there being a problem.
The alternate hypothesis that I mentioned, that sexism in tech comes from the country as a whole, is not a denial of there being a problem. I don't see how that could be inferred.
>tech is generally worse(0) than doctors(1) and lawyers(2)
Lawyers and doctors are generally highly educated, whereas the majority of the technical workforce has a Master's in some kind of engineering or even less. The educational institutions provide a means to change culture which generally means that cultural changes propagate faster here than in most of the country. As such it's a bit of a biased comparison. This is why, as you mention, there have been "huge improvements" in such a short time span as the last decade.
The gender imbalance is particularly acute in silicon valley and I think SV has an obligation to do something about it. It isn't about whose fault it is.
- causation matters
- SV is not a notable causal locus
- Generally SV companies should be expected to comply with federal laws/norms on inclusiveness but "special action" is unnecessary and mostly self-congratulatory (oh wow this tech stuff is so awesome everyone should do it)
- there is a plausible if isolated and somewhat orthogonal correlation between companies which make money by "breaking rules" and companies where people break rules as relates to acceptable social conduct. In the specific case of companies (AirBnB, Uber) who are essentially being paid by venture capitalists to ignore regulations and hide the money trail it makes sense that such norms may enforce loyalty. It's sort of like David Cameron's porcine bride. However only a small (but highly notorious) fraction of SV companies depend on this.
On the third point I want to note that saying "tech jobs are awesome, why aren't more women in them" is a sneaky way of asserting "tech jobs are awesome" i.e. for everyone. In reality they're okay but it's not like people here are actually happier or anything.
This is a big problem even if there isn't active discrimination by Google (or anyone else).
Why so few women study computer science is an important question. Again, I think it's dangerous to presume the answer without sufficient data.
There are definitely problems in how women are treated in tech, just as there are in every other field with similar demographics that comes to mind. Those problems need to be addressed.
The title of this article is "Why is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?", though. "Awful". Do you really believe that it's "awful", particularly relative to all other professions?
My point being, SV companies are so diverse across their actual industries it's probably best to compare them as a region against companies in other major regions.
-- from the article (which includes a link)
Question was asked in the article, ("Where are the numbers?"). [0] For all the posturing on how good SV is at data, the question has to be asked, "Why can't tech companies collect and show data on staff?" [1] The only conclusion I can make is SV tech companies do not see this as an ^authentic^ problem.
Reference
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13880515
[1] Staff numbers, pay, diversity, disciplinary actions taken, reported, etc.
Culture and everything else that comes along with gender minority work environments. You adapt, like everyone else.
The push for institutionally enforced advantages is just insane:
> “Tying bonuses to diversity outcomes signals that diversity is something the company cares about and thinks is important,”
Equal opportunity does not mean equal outcome. Giving a minority share an unfair advantage in the market just because "they're a minority" is not progress. I'm so disappointed at how manipulative these sorts of ideals are in reality. Their proponent's hearts are in the right place, but the outcomes are just so backwards.
Regardless of your gender, if you're in an environment and you're discriminated against in an illegal way, go through the appropriate legal channels and crush it. Stop wasting our time trying to police culture.
/rant
Ironically, you identify the thing that creates unequal opportunity: the "culture" that "comes along with gender minority work environments." Men have the opportunity to go into programming and be in a culture that is not stacked against them. Women don't. That's not equality of opportunity.
Acknowledging that the existence of a gender disparity in and of itself creates a hostile culture for the minority gets you halfway to understanding why attempts at eliminating the disparity directly are justified. And such measures are inherently temporary: once you eliminate then disparity that creates the hostile culture, you eliminate the need to take any affirmative measures to keep the new ratio.
You also precisely identify why you can't fix past institutional discrimination simply by no longer doing it. The past discrimination creates a culture that's hostile to the minority gender. That culture is self-perpetuating without active intervention (the "policing" you complain of).
Depends where you define the line between opportunity and outcome. You could take a step back and argue that equal opportunity exists in the education space for both women and men to thrive in said field. The fact that this doesn't result in a 50/50 split in gender in the market is an indicator to me that the cause isn't institutional, it's cultural.
You can't police culture and you shouldn't be trying to police the outcomes of a "free market". I appreciate your perspective, but I think you've honed in on symptoms, not the cause.
If the cause is institutional, fix it 100%. All hands on board, sign me up.
If its cultural - adapt. Cultures will also adapt in-time to the individuals that make up said culture.
What would that argument look like?
This is equal outcome in my eyes, not equal opportunity. It's a stance of absolutes, a "perfect-world" scenario - a practical impossibility.
You've got to align your goals and perspectives to the reality of the world. Men and women are genetically and physically different which manifests in many different ways culturally. There are so many variables here that I'd be writing an essay if I wanted to list everything that shapes my bias - but the point I'm getting at here is; as individuals we're all different in varying ways and this is a great thing (I'd rather not be genderless, featureless clones).
Focusing on eliminating negative bias is great, sure. But its not a gender issue and should never be institutionally enforced as such. Hell, cultural issues and differences should never be institutionally enforced in my eyes. It's just trading in negative discrimination for positive discrimination.
Correct for the US, incorrect for China, Romania, India or Ukraine. So it doesn't seem to be a universal global phenomenon, Silicon Valley can always import people (and women specifically) from programming-friendlier cultures, so there's little incentive to treat it as a problem.
For many minorities, by the time they get to work, they're so sick of discrimination that they prefer to quit, as opposed to going through the pain of official channels that are just as discriminatory as the perpetrators that they were going to report.
What you said is like saying "You burnt yourself because the house is on fire? Have you tried applying burn cream? Don't waste your time putting out the fire, just apply burn cream and live with it"
What are the legal channels for suspecting you're denied a position because of being part of minority X. Sure, the company is all non-X, but does it prove anything? Where do you go when your opinion is being ignored every day - what's the legal channel for that? How much effort and money do you want to spend just to be treated as a normal person. You're not going to crush it. You'll be left on your own.
> Stop wasting our time trying to police culture.
Sure, there's got to be a balance. You can't police everything and force anyone to think anything. But promoting going away from the status quo is a positive thing.
Nowadays those people are senior leaders. So they do what people do in these situations: gather the tribe. (Aka old boys network) More than in any other line of business that I have seen, IT has lots of old school ethnic and cultural fiefdoms. Bro guys, various south asian groups, school alumni, etc.
The places I have worked at that had more women in technology also had fewer of these networks.
Look at the story about the dude stealing tech from Google, starting a fake company to get bought out by his pals at Uber. In what other industry is bullshit like that even possible!
If you want horror stories, ask lots of intelligent women from western Pennsylvania why they are now sitting in Silicon Valley.
There is a big difference between a couple of socially inept brogrammers making shitty comments and every single relative asking you why you're planning to go to college instead of getting pregnant like your sister.
"Awful" is going into court 3 times because the court couldn't get your house title right because you are married but didn't take your husband's last name.
"Awful" is being told you don't need a scholarship because you're just going to get pregnant anyway.
"Awful" is being a female in Japan who felt that suicide was her only option because if she got fired she was never going to get another job.
Does Silicon Valley need work on fairness? Yeah, on a lot of fronts. However, almost all of them are malfunctions of "power". Trump wasn't grabbing pussies because he's in Silicon Valley.
It's not specific to sexism, and it's not specific to Silicon Valley. It's about the fact that the powerful feel they can abuse their position.
If you want a more geeky description and I'm being charitable, consider it an Amdahl's Law problem. You're optimizing a tiny case while leaving the big case go.
If I'm being uncharitable, it's a case of "Why do animal protesters throw paint on old ladies and not Hell's Angels?"
People are happy to attack sexism in Silicon Valley because it's pain-free. Attacking sexism around our current Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief is likely to provoke a response that people are not prepared to face.
Unfortunately that's the important battle.
I was born in western PA. Yes, this was a thing there when I was growing up. In both cases, people are probably just being subject to their culture. They may not even think they are being aggressive or doing harm. They may even be virtue signalling from their point of view.
Based on what I've seen over the last 10 years working at a variety of software companies: both men and women get mistreated, roughly equally, at least at the places I've worked. People often assume the reason they are being mistreated is due to some factor of themselves (race, gender, etc), but this is the fundamental attribution fallacy (see social pyschology) that colors our perceptions.
But, i haven't worked at every company. Perhaps, there are some where egregious conditions do exist, as mentioned in the article.
As long as the talent oversupply exists, it will be hard for men & women affected by these adverse conditions to move to companies with better cultures.
The problem? They didn't bounce back from failure as well as men did. They failed and quit, while the men continued to fail until they had success. How can you know this isn't a similar effect?
This is the article I mentioned.
I read or skimmed every comment up to this moment, and every single one sounds like it's written by a male.
Perhaps I'm silly but I feel a female commenting here would have mentioned their experience-- and nobody so far does as far as I could tell.
Women who Code: always ask fellow men for help with their coding skills or just appear to not know what they were doing. Present them as sex objects, where men are thinking of them just for sex
Women who can't code: generally presented either as stupid, dumb or as assistants of men who knew better.
It seem that Hollywood is also complicit in presenting women as sex object. But I wasn't sure if this really is the truth about the culture in general in SV.
Carla played by http://www.hbo.com/silicon-valley/cast-and-crew/alice-wetter... was a prominent woman coder with none of what you described exhibited.
Granted, I can't think of any other female coding characters on that show.
Did you mean the HBO "Silicon Valley" show or a Bravo TV series with the same name (later re-branded "Start-Ups")?
> The percentage of female computer- and information-science majors peaked in 1984, at about 37 percent. It has declined, more or less steadily, ever since. Today it stands at 18 percent.
In an environment that's over 80% male, not to mention largely young and/or single, women will have a rough time. I don't think SV is necessarily any worse than any other similar environment (e.g. infantry, oilfield work), but that's not high praise.
It's a bit off-topic, but this old Phil Greenspun article comes to mind: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
What would those be? Tech is relatively easy, relatively highly paid, it involves no hazardous work conditions, and it can be done from almost anywhere in the world with good internet connectivity.
Or if you like interacting with people more than machines, sales and marketing are universal skills that are always in demand.
I wonder if we ask the same questions about men in female dominated careers such as nursing, and ones where men have almost been driven out of, like K-12 education.
This has been mentioned many times on HN. Yes, there are programmes to get more men into teaching young people, and into nursing. (Also more women into mining and construction).
also: I had no idea there was even a down vote button on HN.
but maybe Silicon Valley is awful to everyone. the reality distortion field that sustains the notion that these people are special, in fact gods among men, twists the normal social contract into something unrecognizable.
put that in the context of a fairly sexist society, add a healthy dose of people who are in tech because they couldn't hack it in the normal world, and voila
Just look at this thread of all the people whining for more data on this supposed "problem". Some of the folks won't be happy until there are secret Amazon Echo's tabulating all the shitty comments and passive aggression in every office or emails being scanned and categorized for domineering and condescension.
and even then you'll get a bunch of "correlation doesn't equal causation, dummy!"
When a minority group is consistently saying there is a problem, one should probably question their existing beliefs and wonder if they don't see it due to some sort of bias. And it's fine to be wrong, to not have see it. However, take an honest chance to listen. Not debate. Listen.
For a bunch of smarter-than-average folks here, we're still susceptible to groupthink.
Except by then, the whole analysis becomes a charade. When you try all the possible combinations of variables and then stop the moment you find one that rejects the null hypothesis, your analysis isn't objective... it is predetermined.
What's exactly wrong with data controlled by relevant variables such as education, hours worked, and experience? If you find a combination of variables that reject the hypothesis, maybe you should look further into it, no? Dismissing it because you think it's not objective for some absurd reason is rather unscientific. "Trying all possible combinations of variables" does not disqualify an analysis from being objective--not sure where you got that idea from.
What's not okay is sequentially trying all of the possible analyses and then stopping the moment you find the exact combination of variables that tells you what you had already assumed to be true. Especially so when simple analyses point to A, and you keep adding new variables until you get to B, which is exactly the case here. That is a very well known abuse of statistics. There is a reason all the well known and popular Information Criterions (which measure model quality) are parameterized by the number of parameters in the model.
And while adding control variables isn't per se bad, there are proper precautions to take when doing so, which become exponentially more costly the more you add. Such as segmented sampling, non-linearity transformations, and even controlled experiments. Because these fraudsters have a motive, the model only needs to be as rigorous as necessary to secure their predetermined conclusion. The "keep adding variables" model almost always ends up as a way to lie with statistics.
The horseshoe nature of politics will never cease to amuse me, though; thanks for the example.
Also, if a hypothesis is supported by simple studies but falls apart under more complex ones, it might be too simplistic a hypothesis. Almost as if sexism (and sexism guilt-slinging) wasn't an entirely black-and-white problem. Who'd have thought?
You'll notice that I've never claimed that new parameters universally make the model worse. All of the common Information Criterions [2][3][4] are numerically capable of improvement of model quality with increases in parameter space...it's just unlikely. Such p-value hunting might give you the p-value you're looking for, but it is very unlikely to improve the model.
Sexism is a hard problem. Throwing variables wantonly at models until sexism disappears isn't doing anything for the problem...it's nothing more than a pseudoscientific way of pretending it doesn't exist.
[0] https://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect.ht...
[1] http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/october/urban-heat-island...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_information_criterion
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deviance_information_criterion
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akaike_information_criterion
If sexism is a major problem in the technology industry, it should be easy to produce data demonstrating that fact. Until we understand the magnitude and nature of the problem we face, any attempts to find a solution are, in a very literal sense, completely misguided.
Solid comparative studies that account for confounding factors. Something obviously not taught in gender studies.
It's like Wall Street, selling cars, working oilfields. The popular perception has been fuelled by megafounders who struck gold, becoming the richest people in the world by their mid 20's. SV is in a 40 gold rush for the next big thing and it doesn't seem to be slowing down.
For all sorts of reasons that have been beaten to death, most women won't stick around in such a field.
For gender balance to return in our lifetimes software engineering would need to lose much of the existing culture
I feel like maybe we ought to give some attention to the situation of the masses of Spanish speakers in the bay area. They're certainly facing far worse than women in tech companies, and it's a much more fundamental problem.
But imagining for a second that the story did somehow manage to get statistics and quantify the "mean"-ness of an individual, there would still be case for sexism being a factor that uniquely impacts women more negatively.
For example, many people are somewhat "mean" but 1. Are these people only mean to women? 2. Are they "meaner" to women than men? 3. Are they mean in different ways to women? (ie, sexual harassment is usually only towards women)
Interesting thoughts though. I wonder though if emphasizing a more radically respectful culture in general would make a difference. It would definitely curb the resentment that men feel over stuff like diversity hiring goals, but without data, we do not know if it would meaningfully make women and minorities experiences any better.