{"id":761,"date":"2012-03-22T08:30:57","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T15:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/?p=761"},"modified":"2012-03-21T15:38:40","modified_gmt":"2012-03-21T22:38:40","slug":"casual-sexism-in-software-engineering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/22\/casual-sexism-in-software-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"casual sexism in software engineering"},"content":{"rendered":"

Casual sexism happens all the time in software engineering. \u00a0If I hear one more person say that they want to make their app easy enough for their mother or grandmother to use, I’m going to scream. \u00a0Let’s stop assuming that women aren’t technical or aren’t willing to understand something. \u00a0And for the love of all that is good in this world, don’t try to justify this one to me. \u00a0I don’t care if your mom isn’t actually technical, you can still come up with other examples of people who aren’t technical. \u00a0Don’t be lazy<\/p>\n

Women in software engineering have to deal with this casual sexism every day, and mostly we let it go. \u00a0When you hear it so often, it’s hard to identify it for what it is, and you get tired of being told that it wasn’t actually intended to be sexism. \u00a0But then you get hit between the eyes with yet another example of casual sexism, such as this displayed in Sqoot’s invitation to an “API jam” in Boston:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s right, ladies, you’re just a perk at a hackathon, like the massages and booze.<\/p>\n

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At first, they tried the “it was just a joke” defense. \u00a0It took more outcry for them to issue an apology, first by saying that they were “really sorry” (a Google Doc that now no longer exists), and then by saying that “we can do better<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

Yes, you can do better. \u00a0You can realize that women aren’t a perk. \u00a0You can realize that you can’t blow it off as “just a little humor”. \u00a0You can realize that your first non-apology apology isn’t acceptable, and that your second attempt saying that you were just trying to “call attention to the male-dominated tech world” can’t possibly be accurate. \u00a0Beer wenches call attention to beer and breasts, they’re not an attempt to address gender inequality. \u00a0Would you try to make call attention to the lack of diversity by pointing out that you’ve got Latinos cleaning the bathrooms?<\/p>\n

There’s only one acceptable apology here: “I’m sorry. \u00a0I was wrong.” \u00a0No explanations, no posturing, just an admission that you got it wrong. \u00a0After that admission, the next step is to figure out how you got it so wrong and what you’re going to do about it. \u00a0Maybe, for example, you need to reach out to local women’s developer groups to try to do something about the “male-dominated” nature of hackathons. \u00a0Do something, don’t just say that “we can do better”. \u00a0Tell us what that better thing is that you’re going to do, and make sure that it actually is something better. \u00a0If your solution is just making sure that there are hot boys to bring pink frilly drinks, you’re still missing the point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Casual sexism happens all the time in software engineering. \u00a0If I hear one more person say that they want to make their app easy enough for their mother or grandmother to use, I’m going to scream. \u00a0Let’s stop assuming that women aren’t technical or aren’t willing to understand something. \u00a0And for the love of all … Continue reading casual sexism in software engineering<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nadyne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":767,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions\/767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}