We have had article after article claiming it is obvious women are being oppressed in the tech industry. Every week there is one of these. Many make bigoted claims about male engineers, enforcing stereotypes of male geeks I have never actually seen in industry.<p>Where are the technical articles written by women? There are plenty of contributions complaining about oppression, while attacking men and claiming absurd stereotypes. Where are the technical contributions?
I for one dont care who answers my question, man, woman, member of long lost indian tribe from amazon or a teapot, as long as the question is answered and i can get on with my work.<p>In fact, I fail to see the point of this article. Even its title fails to make a point. It does succeed in producing headline-baiting effect which implies sexism in StackOverflow community.
This article is interesting because I had never considered gender to be a component of the community at StackOverflow. To me, it is about questions and answers, both of which are measured for quality. It seems to be a pure meritocracy.<p>In the end, I don't think it matters what the gender of the participants is. But if for some reason the site could better serve people of either gender, it'd be interesting to know what tactics could accomplish that.
I honestly think that a lot of the perceived sexism on anonymous places, like the supposed gender downvotes in this instance, just is the Internet being the Internet.<p>Okay, this may be a little sexist, but my impression is that women take negative stuff on the Internet (wether it's a mean comment or a downvote) more personal than men does. It may be because the emotional part of the brain is more developed in women's brains or just because they often don't have the same Internet experience as many men does. Stack Overflow can be a tough and ruthless place, but that doesn't make it sexist at all, even if some women are turned off by it.<p>Anyway, by looking for a meaning for something that doesn't make sense, like the downvotes in internet communities like in this case, you'll most likely find something (but often not the real reason). It's easy to "see" ghosts - that doesn't make them real.<p>Sexism is real and should try to be prevented, but unfortunately sometimes it seems to go a little bit overboard - either by actively looking for it (and finding it everywhere) or making it sound like there aren't any differences between men and women.
"StackOverflow is a meritocracy, therefore women should feel just as welcome as men." Some women tell you that it's not. Is your first reaction: [a] we should honestly try to listen to their feedback , or [b] publicly hypothesize that they're probably just whining because they can't take the heat? One of these answers leads to change, the other demonstrates how an egalitarian space turns unwelcoming.<p>Sick of hearing how sexist Internet forums are? Good! Let's keep working to change that. Other than discouraging people from pointing it out I mean.
I'm starting to get tired of the hand wringing around the issue of an anti-woman bias surrounding the software development/tech space.<p>Out of curiosity, does the same standards of equal representation exist for predominantly woman dominated communities in the case of men?
<i>So there’s good news, there are women on StackOverflow. The visible ones are far below the representative % of women in the industry.</i> So you can safely determine that it’s an unfriendly-to-women place.*<p>Oy vey...
I know I shouldn't feel this way but I never see the poster of questions or answers as women? I'm not saying at all that I think the value of a woman programmer is any less than a mans, I just do not encounter women in programming, full stop.<p>I actually started reading that post then as if it was from a man and I thought they were making a sexist remark about "are my women here". When I discovered it was a woman, I read it again in a different context completely.<p>I don't know what other peoples regions are like but whenever I encounter a programmer anywhere, they are male?
Lets put this all to rest:<p>@spolsky says that 24% of SO visitors are women<p><a href="https://twitter.com/spolsky/status/215906113470742528" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/spolsky/status/215906113470742528</a>
This might be a crazy idea, but if more men posed as women, women would feel less intimidated to participate, and douchebags would have less effect on the actual women in the community.