this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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I know you didn't mean it like this, but the result from this line of thinking is that we only try to put women on equal footing with men in tech when it's convenient for men because times are good. Which in turn means we never put women on equal footing because the needs of men always come first.
Put differently women have to deal with being women in tech on top of times being desperate, men only have to deal with times being desperate. Things like this are why spaces like these are necessary in the first place, and if you break them down at the first discomfort you're not a working class hero fighting the capital, you're tearing down women and setting everyone back.
Gender is absolutely not the only nor the most important discriminating factor in tech. Being a foreigner and, probably most commonly, being old is an extreme disadvantage in tech. Similarly, a woman coming from a wealthy family might be a privileged compared to a man coming from a poor background (which translates into lower access to education, resources, etc.).
Look at the video in the article, and tell me you don't notice some commonalities among the men in the queues.
I see mostly foreigners, who most likely have no network of support, and need a job to maintain a VISA before getting kicked out of the country. Are they in a better or worse position compared to a local woman? Does it even make sense to start asking these questions?
I want to challenge this vision where discriminations are only looked at through the lens of gender division. This is shortsighted because discrimination on the workplace is extremely diverse and it exists for the benefit of those same sponsors of this event.
I've had a lot more foreign male colleagues than I have female colleagues. Where are you getting you information about who's disadvantaged?
Quantitative measuring tells you nothing. You have no visibility of the "starting condition", how many foreigners are not even accepted a job interview, how many apply, etc. Discrimination is not something that can be measure with a scale.
Not to talk about age, ageism is huge in tech. Old people are sometimes fired to be replaced (hello IBM). In my company we are at around 25% women, 20% on engineering. I still need to meet a person over 50 (in engineering), I think there are maybe 3-4 over 40 (on a total of 300).
Also, discrimination doesn't mean just not getting hired, it means contractual penalties, less salary etc., which happen in some cases with women too, of course.
That said, I am not arguing that women in tech are not discriminated, of course they are. I am saying that there are multiple vector of discrimination and that we should be able to fight against the general phenomenon, without having to choose which discrimination to keep and which to fight.