Gender certainly doesn't reflect engineering ability, but it totally matters. It would be nice if it didn't. This kind of content is interesting because women have _much_ different experiences working at startups than men.
What you'd rather see is a world that doesn't exist yet. I'd like to see it too. :)
Allow me to take the risk of elaborating on the Parent's thought:
I believe the sentiment the Parent post is trying to get at, is that by constructing more walled gardens which are "women only" or "for women", such as women only conferences, or women only talks, women only groups, etc... it actually has the opposite of the intended effect. It's a self-induced form of segregation and therefore discrimination - and serves only to make the inherent segregation stand out as being perceived as "normal". By putting one group "first", you inherently put another group "second".
I think it's safe to say majority of men would love to have more women in the industry.
In an ideal world, the title of this series is "Ask an Engineer", and it would just so happen that a woman wrote the post. Being a woman doesn't somehow qualify the article author in any way to discuss startups - having started a startup or working for one, does. Nobody would think anything of it so long as the information was well presented, and it certainly wouldn't attract all the negative attention this thread has started off with.
But this isn't a post written by a women nor is it part of a walled garden, it's a question posed to several women, with their longform responses.
If it were titled "Ask an engineer" and all the people asked were women, I wonder what the response would be? I ask that without any snark or presupposition, I'm not sure and I'm curious.
> If it were titled "Ask an engineer" and all the people asked were women, I wonder what the response would be?
Well, it should be (and I assert would be) considered "normal" because women can be engineers too (obviously).
By putting the "woman" qualifier in the title, it immediately discriminates against half of the viewership... which is particularly infuriating because the information is good and valid, regardless of who's telling it.
Right? Women in comp sci is a statistical anomaly [1] at this point, and it's interesting to see how this influences their experiences in the industry.
In Sweden, only 10% of people work in a profession with a minimum of 40% men and women. ie, using similar language, working with someone thats not the same gender is a statistical anomaly.
> It is laughable to assert "half of the viewership" would be male when they make up the majority of the workforce in engineering roles.
Does that not make my point even better?
Sure, all men should be interested in hearing a woman's perspective on being in the engineering field, but if we're honest with ourselves, most likely skipped right over this thread after reading the title.
To be even more honest with ourselves, we must admit if the title was "Ask a Male Engineer", most women would skip the article as well. It's simply because you either belong to the mentioned group or you do not... some will be curious enough to read anyway, but the rest... it just serves to alienate.
This thread largely turned into a flame war instead of commenting on the content of the post... all because of a word in the title.
If the presence of the word "female" in the title prevents males from reading it then, in my opinion those males are being dismissive based on gender. I believe that's a bit sexist. I also believe it is a ridiculous generalization and as a male find it a bit insulting. I mean, this isn't like saying people who aren't TypeScript programmers will more often than not avoid a blog about TypeScript...with the exception of a few curious ruby hackers might. Maybe a devops engineer here or there...
...you are talking about being disinterested in an article titled "Ask A Female Engineer"...because it has the word "female".
Eh. Maybe don't project your problem on an unrelated bit of content? This article has nothing to do with sexism towards men or segregation.
You're getting downvoted by people who don't want to argue. Not for want of an equal society, but for want of the _appearance_ of an equal society that doesn't actually exist.
The fact that people think it's even remotely acceptable to start a sentence like this is strong evidence that we need to spent far more effort seeking out the perspectives of women.
And the fact that you think it's even remotely acceptable to dismiss the personal offense that a good 50% of the population takes to something as clearly passive-aggressively hostile as "ask a female engineer" is strong evidence that you should go about it a different way.
No, 50% of the population doesn't take offense to hearing the perspectives of an underrepresented group who all too often have their points of view talked over, elided, or outright stolen. A small, bigoted percentage does take offense, but that's really more their problem than anyone else's.
When I was studying computer science in an American university 10 years ago, white people were (massively) underrepresented. So you think it would be "ok" for me to do an "ask a white computer science major"? Of course, I already know the answer.
What you'd rather see is a world that doesn't exist yet. I'd like to see it too. :)