Those wings... I want them too.
АнглийскийNot to say that topic about women in programming is very popular in my environment, but it arises from time to time and occasionally causes heated discussions.
The most common point of view in our country, as I see, is that there are no significant obstacles for girls in technological career. Be a good specialist, and you'll be appreciated and promoted. But as I'm working in the area more and more years, I'm getting more and more convinced that the situation is much more difficult and complicated. My personal opinion is that there are more hurdles and less opportunities for girls in tech than for boys, more prejudices against women, and more labor law violations. That's funny when an HR says: «No, there is no gender discrimination in our country. Employers are just reluctant to hire women due to risk of maternity leave and often prefer men». I met not so few people who think that girls are bad workers and should choose family responsibilities. What is worse, even those who claims that they have no stereotypes, often still (subconsciously?) evaluate guys' opinion higher and believe them more.
At the moment when left KL, the company was quite sexist. There was even a hype once in english-speaking Twitter because of impolite advertising:
The company apologized to the public, but it didn't change anything inside, and I can bring much more materials that I consider offensive for a woman professional.
To be honest I've got accustomed to sexist comments in the workplace and did not considered them as something meaningful. But then it gets up to such level, in my opinion, this is too much. It seems to be an indicator of really deep problems. So when I became free, I decided to look at this question more attentively. After all, that can be also considered as a part of education, in the soft skills aspect.
Well, this subject is quite lively discussed in the western countries. There is a number of projects and initiatives to face up such problems. For instance:
Women Techmakers
Anita Borg Fund
Tech Ladies
Women who code
I've found there useful articles, materials, gender researches etc. that corresponded to events and situations I've seen around me, explained and emphasize some phenomena, gave practical advices. They also offer grants, mentoring programs and job boards, but unfortunately all of them are abroad
The most similar materials that I've managed to find here, in Russia, were the gender studies by the Higher School of Economic:
Гендерные исследования IQ.HSE
Some useful articles can be also found here:
Конcорциум женских неправительственных организайций
However, both resources have mainly informational nature and are devoted to more general women problems. The sad situation with initiatives for women in IT in Russia can be illustrated by that map of communities:
Fuck! Three communities in Ukraine, Arab Women in Computing in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, groups in Africa. And a single community in Russia. CryptoChicks Moscow. Where do I live???
And yeah, I feel a little bit discomfort when hearing the word "chicks" regarding inexperienced beginner girls in the area of unregulated currency. It is used in Darknet for prostitution and childporn affairs, by the way...
That also causes me associations with this article about cryptocurrency beauty contest: Miss Blockchain
The contest emcee told that Russia is very rich country. And the most beautiful its "property" are russian girls. Thanks that not "commodity"
(Bitcoin is money, first of all.)
There are russian feminist groups in the net, and I'm reading them to see what's going on around. But sometimes it seems to me that the main part of their activity is just chitchat in social networks and other media. I also had two unpleasant quarrels there, when I commented some posts.
The first was related with this article: Сексизм в томском IT and this video (link to VK):
Okay, I came into another's person facebook, and my comments were not so open and friendly, and they were not moving toward her desired direction. But should they have been? The blogger created an impression that she was interested in the situation inside IT and ready for the conversation about its peculiarities. Apparently, she wasn't.
What did I say wrong? I brought her another video and told that I consider it more insulting, because it depicts female workers of large international company as powerless and helpless dummies:
Also I wrote that it's easier to prepare for moving abroad, than to change something here. Let the guys stay, with with a sick liver and sluts [snide smiley]. (The first video has mentioned alcohol, and the girls clearly portrayed not the QA engineers).
The rest of discussion was devoted to the question if it is permissible for me to use the word "slut" or not, regardless of the woman behavior. (Hmmm, is there a term for shaming for slutshaming?).
That conversation left me with an unpleasant feeling. The author lamented that women in IT ignore such materials instead of raising a stink, causing a loud discussion and creating communities where beginner girls will be taught programming. But the reality of women in tech didn't matter to her at all. Damn, so I have not only to work hard in unfriendly environment and cope with my problems alone, but also prove and explain to my male fellows why their behavior is obnoxiously to an ordinary woman, as well as educate those girls who cannot learn by themselves the way I do? And never-never-never, never!, show disrespect to any other female. That made me sad
Another quarrel I provoked when comented a post about percentage of fatal auto crashes caused by men and women. I'm not so good in driving, but there are a lot of car owners around me, so I thought I could share some observations. I wrote that women are driving cars not so often as men, but do it more carefully, thus causing less accidents. In the same time men consider cars as a source of pleasure, hobby and self-assertion so drive them in risky and dangerous manner, that can lead to human victims.
Suddenly a very pushy woman appeared in the thread and asserted that women drive cars not less, not worse, not slower than men. She provided no indisputable arguments but blamed me in projecting my own subjective perception to the whole world. I assume she was a good driver, but wasn't she projecting her own subjective experience to the whole world too? She blamed me that I stuck in the past centuries, while I see the whole country stuck in the past centuries. With a car being a masculine symbol of status, not the transport. It seems to me that I saw a general picture and she saw only her grandiose personality. Is the second more important for the society? Okay.
The main topics in feminist agenda in this country, as I see, are prostitution, home violence, sexual harassment and rape. Not the questions of education, self-development, professional growth, moving up social hierarchy, going for sports and obtaining physical form, self-defence etc. And I cannot understand why. Who will be able to involve into prostitution a woman who has enought money? Who will beat his wife if she can fight back? Who will humiliate his wife if she can easily leave to her own dwelling? Who will harass and force to sex a status woman, knowing that it can lead to troubles?
Eric Berne wrote that people often gathers in groups not to solve problems and to bring positive change, but just to "play games", gather "emotional coupons" and confirm their positions. It looks like this is that case. There is even such a "game": «if it weren't for you». It allows to put all the blame on somebody more authoritative, for example, on a dominant husband, And I hear similar thoughts in such groups. Men are awful. Women are better. Women can be better at anything! But men are awful, they are responsible for all women problems. Women deserve more! But men are awful and do not allow them to achive more! Men must give women more! Women are not guilty for anything!
Well, I saw a category of women obsessed with the word "career", status etc., who are trying to operate in the IT area. But they are glamorous, not geek
Once I went to their meetup titled "Career for women in IT" and found myself in the room where two HRs were explaining for non-technical student girls how to pass HR interview in a large company. Fuck. It was never a problem for me to pass HR interview and I didn't consider it anything more than an idle formality before a conversation with a technical expert...
I attended the «Ladies Code conference» and I didn't see tech women, self-made women, I didn't hear effective advices. Most "experts" invited to "inspire" the audience, in my point of view, were "successful" just because they were born in high social stratum or somehow else got surrounded by influential men. And their behavior patterns seems to be deeply patriarchal. I looked at them and saw just pampered pretty girls, who wanted to speak about trendy topics in beautiful clothes in the surroundings of bright pictures. And when something goes wrong, such girls run to a, maybe virtual, "father" with tears and whims, demanding to give them the same things that foreign girls have... Women with high position, but having nothing under their feets. If their protectors stop holding them, they will fall from that height. So they will never argue with the strong...
Just for the sake of interest I tried also the project «MyMentoring», but again, I found it senseless...
I've subscribed to some thematic groups in VK, sometimes they publish news about events, meetups, hakatons, internships for student, grants etc. Those that are proposed here, locally, are gender-neutral, and all women support initiatives are foreign. Thus they require good level of english and ability to spend at least several months abroad. I do not have that at this moment. However, some posts turned out to be useful. I learned about some good free educational opportunities there.
The most promising community among all of these, in my opinion, is freshly organized PyLadies Spb:
It is a Saint Petersburg subsidiary of international women Python developers group. PyLadies Spb grew from another project, Django Girls Spb, that conducts workshops about Django framework for beginner web-developer girls. As there were a lot of non-beginner girls interested, the organizers decided to create PyLadies department too. They held one meetup with presentations about algorithms, git, plotly and Python technical interviews, and one "breakfast" (it's exclusively a communication activity). The first event was broadcasted online and recorded, so I watched it:
PyLadies on youtube
But I was not ready to go to Saint Petersburg cafe just for a developers breakfast, of course
They also have Telegram chat:
http://t.me/pyladies_spb
Well, I don't consider the average level of the participants as being very high, but I think it's enough to start from. It's cool if I'll be able to invest something in it in the future. And sure, I hope the similar group in Moscow will be started, they talked about that.
The most common point of view in our country, as I see, is that there are no significant obstacles for girls in technological career. Be a good specialist, and you'll be appreciated and promoted. But as I'm working in the area more and more years, I'm getting more and more convinced that the situation is much more difficult and complicated. My personal opinion is that there are more hurdles and less opportunities for girls in tech than for boys, more prejudices against women, and more labor law violations. That's funny when an HR says: «No, there is no gender discrimination in our country. Employers are just reluctant to hire women due to risk of maternity leave and often prefer men». I met not so few people who think that girls are bad workers and should choose family responsibilities. What is worse, even those who claims that they have no stereotypes, often still (subconsciously?) evaluate guys' opinion higher and believe them more.
At the moment when left KL, the company was quite sexist. There was even a hype once in english-speaking Twitter because of impolite advertising:
The company apologized to the public, but it didn't change anything inside, and I can bring much more materials that I consider offensive for a woman professional.
To be honest I've got accustomed to sexist comments in the workplace and did not considered them as something meaningful. But then it gets up to such level, in my opinion, this is too much. It seems to be an indicator of really deep problems. So when I became free, I decided to look at this question more attentively. After all, that can be also considered as a part of education, in the soft skills aspect.
Well, this subject is quite lively discussed in the western countries. There is a number of projects and initiatives to face up such problems. For instance:
Women Techmakers
Anita Borg Fund
Tech Ladies
Women who code
I've found there useful articles, materials, gender researches etc. that corresponded to events and situations I've seen around me, explained and emphasize some phenomena, gave practical advices. They also offer grants, mentoring programs and job boards, but unfortunately all of them are abroad
The most similar materials that I've managed to find here, in Russia, were the gender studies by the Higher School of Economic:
Гендерные исследования IQ.HSE
Some useful articles can be also found here:
Конcорциум женских неправительственных организайций
However, both resources have mainly informational nature and are devoted to more general women problems. The sad situation with initiatives for women in IT in Russia can be illustrated by that map of communities:
Fuck! Three communities in Ukraine, Arab Women in Computing in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, groups in Africa. And a single community in Russia. CryptoChicks Moscow. Where do I live???
And yeah, I feel a little bit discomfort when hearing the word "chicks" regarding inexperienced beginner girls in the area of unregulated currency. It is used in Darknet for prostitution and childporn affairs, by the way...
That also causes me associations with this article about cryptocurrency beauty contest: Miss Blockchain
The contest emcee told that Russia is very rich country. And the most beautiful its "property" are russian girls. Thanks that not "commodity"
(Bitcoin is money, first of all.)There are russian feminist groups in the net, and I'm reading them to see what's going on around. But sometimes it seems to me that the main part of their activity is just chitchat in social networks and other media. I also had two unpleasant quarrels there, when I commented some posts.
The first was related with this article: Сексизм в томском IT and this video (link to VK):
Okay, I came into another's person facebook, and my comments were not so open and friendly, and they were not moving toward her desired direction. But should they have been? The blogger created an impression that she was interested in the situation inside IT and ready for the conversation about its peculiarities. Apparently, she wasn't.
What did I say wrong? I brought her another video and told that I consider it more insulting, because it depicts female workers of large international company as powerless and helpless dummies:
Also I wrote that it's easier to prepare for moving abroad, than to change something here. Let the guys stay, with with a sick liver and sluts [snide smiley]. (The first video has mentioned alcohol, and the girls clearly portrayed not the QA engineers).
The rest of discussion was devoted to the question if it is permissible for me to use the word "slut" or not, regardless of the woman behavior. (Hmmm, is there a term for shaming for slutshaming?).
That conversation left me with an unpleasant feeling. The author lamented that women in IT ignore such materials instead of raising a stink, causing a loud discussion and creating communities where beginner girls will be taught programming. But the reality of women in tech didn't matter to her at all. Damn, so I have not only to work hard in unfriendly environment and cope with my problems alone, but also prove and explain to my male fellows why their behavior is obnoxiously to an ordinary woman, as well as educate those girls who cannot learn by themselves the way I do? And never-never-never, never!, show disrespect to any other female. That made me sad
Another quarrel I provoked when comented a post about percentage of fatal auto crashes caused by men and women. I'm not so good in driving, but there are a lot of car owners around me, so I thought I could share some observations. I wrote that women are driving cars not so often as men, but do it more carefully, thus causing less accidents. In the same time men consider cars as a source of pleasure, hobby and self-assertion so drive them in risky and dangerous manner, that can lead to human victims.
Suddenly a very pushy woman appeared in the thread and asserted that women drive cars not less, not worse, not slower than men. She provided no indisputable arguments but blamed me in projecting my own subjective perception to the whole world. I assume she was a good driver, but wasn't she projecting her own subjective experience to the whole world too? She blamed me that I stuck in the past centuries, while I see the whole country stuck in the past centuries. With a car being a masculine symbol of status, not the transport. It seems to me that I saw a general picture and she saw only her grandiose personality. Is the second more important for the society? Okay.
The main topics in feminist agenda in this country, as I see, are prostitution, home violence, sexual harassment and rape. Not the questions of education, self-development, professional growth, moving up social hierarchy, going for sports and obtaining physical form, self-defence etc. And I cannot understand why. Who will be able to involve into prostitution a woman who has enought money? Who will beat his wife if she can fight back? Who will humiliate his wife if she can easily leave to her own dwelling? Who will harass and force to sex a status woman, knowing that it can lead to troubles?
Eric Berne wrote that people often gathers in groups not to solve problems and to bring positive change, but just to "play games", gather "emotional coupons" and confirm their positions. It looks like this is that case. There is even such a "game": «if it weren't for you». It allows to put all the blame on somebody more authoritative, for example, on a dominant husband, And I hear similar thoughts in such groups. Men are awful. Women are better. Women can be better at anything! But men are awful, they are responsible for all women problems. Women deserve more! But men are awful and do not allow them to achive more! Men must give women more! Women are not guilty for anything!
Well, I saw a category of women obsessed with the word "career", status etc., who are trying to operate in the IT area. But they are glamorous, not geek
Once I went to their meetup titled "Career for women in IT" and found myself in the room where two HRs were explaining for non-technical student girls how to pass HR interview in a large company. Fuck. It was never a problem for me to pass HR interview and I didn't consider it anything more than an idle formality before a conversation with a technical expert...
I attended the «Ladies Code conference» and I didn't see tech women, self-made women, I didn't hear effective advices. Most "experts" invited to "inspire" the audience, in my point of view, were "successful" just because they were born in high social stratum or somehow else got surrounded by influential men. And their behavior patterns seems to be deeply patriarchal. I looked at them and saw just pampered pretty girls, who wanted to speak about trendy topics in beautiful clothes in the surroundings of bright pictures. And when something goes wrong, such girls run to a, maybe virtual, "father" with tears and whims, demanding to give them the same things that foreign girls have... Women with high position, but having nothing under their feets. If their protectors stop holding them, they will fall from that height. So they will never argue with the strong...
Just for the sake of interest I tried also the project «MyMentoring», but again, I found it senseless...
I've subscribed to some thematic groups in VK, sometimes they publish news about events, meetups, hakatons, internships for student, grants etc. Those that are proposed here, locally, are gender-neutral, and all women support initiatives are foreign. Thus they require good level of english and ability to spend at least several months abroad. I do not have that at this moment. However, some posts turned out to be useful. I learned about some good free educational opportunities there.
The most promising community among all of these, in my opinion, is freshly organized PyLadies Spb:
It is a Saint Petersburg subsidiary of international women Python developers group. PyLadies Spb grew from another project, Django Girls Spb, that conducts workshops about Django framework for beginner web-developer girls. As there were a lot of non-beginner girls interested, the organizers decided to create PyLadies department too. They held one meetup with presentations about algorithms, git, plotly and Python technical interviews, and one "breakfast" (it's exclusively a communication activity). The first event was broadcasted online and recorded, so I watched it:
PyLadies on youtube
But I was not ready to go to Saint Petersburg cafe just for a developers breakfast, of course
They also have Telegram chat:
http://t.me/pyladies_spb
Well, I don't consider the average level of the participants as being very high, but I think it's enough to start from. It's cool if I'll be able to invest something in it in the future. And sure, I hope the similar group in Moscow will be started, they talked about that.
@темы: Люблю филосовствовать, Вот так живут программисты, english writing skills, Жизненное
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21.08.2018 в 21:54-
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22.08.2018 в 13:13Unfortunatelly, in our country the questions of people interactions and acting in the workplaces are considered as something insignificant, and that's bad. The civilization is being built by humans, not the physics laws.