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The Empathy Gap and Why Women Are Treated So Badly In Open Source Projects (perens.com)
Bruce Perens writes: There's no shortage of stories of horrible treatment of women in Open Source projects. But how did we get here? How did we ever get a community where a vocal minority of males behave in the most boorish, misogynistic, objectifying manner toward women? I have a theory: "It’s unfortunately the case that software development in general and Open Source communities are frequented by males who have social development issues. I once complained online about how offended I was by a news story that said many software developers were on the autism spectrum. To my embarrassment, there were many replies to my complaint by people who wrote 'no, I really am on the spectrum and I’m not alone here.'
It’s still an open issue whether males and females have built-in biases that, for example, lead fewer women to be programmers, or if such biases only develop as a response to social signals. There is more science to be done. But it’s difficult to do that sort of science because we can’t separate the individuals from the social signals they’ve grown up with. Certainly we can improve the situation for the women who would be programmers except for the social signals."
It’s still an open issue whether males and females have built-in biases that, for example, lead fewer women to be programmers, or if such biases only develop as a response to social signals. There is more science to be done. But it’s difficult to do that sort of science because we can’t separate the individuals from the social signals they’ve grown up with. Certainly we can improve the situation for the women who would be programmers except for the social signals."
Gender has no role in online interactions unless you make it.
We're all pixels. we have no race. no nationality. no gender. no sexuality.
I'm not sure what online community you're taking part in, that this is happening in but i suggest you leave it =)
Stop Editors. Stop Slashdot. Stop Dice. Stop Bruce Perens. Stop This.
Stop hazing the tech sector. Stop making us out to be hostile to women, or racists, or all white male misogynerds. We're just regular people, regular geeks. Yes we like to play D&D, and pretend we're dwarves, or warlocks, or elf-maids, but that does not make us supporters of rape culture. Yes we like to write computer programs and make geeky websites about science stuff or cat videos. But that does not makes us anti-immigrant bigots. Yes we disagree with you and politely explain our reasons why, but that does not make us harassing MRA online stalkers.
The lies and hazing have to stop. The tech sector does not have a problem with women. The media has a problem with the tech sector.
There are some people who really are awful to women, and they're often (but not always) really awful to work with in other ways too. Finding ways to get them to either improve or get out is tricky because they exist in the same career ladders as people who want a decent place to work.
Then there's a subset of people opposing them who insist on overly narrow notions of how people should be allowed to act, talk, and think. They take it on themselves to police speech and behaviour far more than is reasonable or necessary. In their effort to deal with a legitimate problem, they become another kind of problem.
Making all this less clear is that the boundaries between these are unclear and they tend (but don't always) to line up with political views, and political witchhunts in the workplace (or broader society) are dangerous and ill-advised.
It's messy enough that it'd be tempting to just step back from the whole thing, but the stakes are too high for that. We neither should want to waste the potential of half our population (or other subsets of the population) nor should we create a work environment or society where most kinds of differing views on gender or jokes are curtailed. So navigating this is damned tough.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
You're still blaming men with unspecified "social development issues", which is politically correct for now.
In five years time, when "social development issues" become a protected class, I'm going to remind Slashdot and your employer that you posted this.
Cheers,
Anonymous SJW
where the man is an evil thing and the woman is the pristine victim of the bestial male. This doesn't make man a beast or a women virginal purity.
There's no "Empathy Gap". There's a story being written and the geek is the least protected class, male, weak, strange and acts mostly alone, and this is a valuable target.
Why does this have to be a "male" problem versus an "asshole" problem?
If you say there are unpleasant women to work with, doesn't that kind of transcend gender?
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
No, really it is. You don't need to look far for piles and piles of peer validated, long running, empirical studies showing how women get the short end of the stick in lots of social, economic, and employment situations.
I knew all of the above but the clue bat really didn't knock my personal set of teeth out until early in 2015.
I work for a small-ish nonprofit providing all kinds of IT services, but in a small outfit you end up wearing all kinds of hats. I was asked to move my office to one adjoining a large floor that's essentially free public access computers for job search.
Why? The reason that was literally told to me was "We need a male presence out there"
Nonprofit public service tends to attract a lot of female employees, so my workplace is about 95% female. (And working there almost 15 years gives you some real insights in to the dynamics of women in the workplace) Having the above told to me verbatim by the female director of our organization was eye-opening to say the least.
But not as eye opening as what I experienced in the first week in my new office.
As you might imagine from what I've said above, the staff helping job seekers on the floor are women. They're all wonderfully qualified and extremely patient. They deal with everyone off the street - From the homeless to the people shunted over from the practically un-staffed unemployment office to the old men who lost their lifetime jobs at the lumber mill that just closed and found that their pension has been raided. (They're unhappy is the point I'm trying to make)
Some people, a surprisingly large number of people, simply do not respect women. At all. Even other women.
Sometimes my job is to simply pick up my cup off coffee, walk out on to the floor, and just stand there. When things are getting out of hand, everybody calms down. Sometimes my job is to repeat exactly what my co worker said to an upset job seeker - And suddenly they believe it. Sometimes a troubled soul will come into my office (The door is always open), sit down in a chair, and vent his or her troubles. I listen and nod politely and then direct them back to the people that were helping them 10 minutes ago. (And this works!)
It's creepy. I'm just the IT guy. When I'm done doing my new job as Y chromosome holder I go back to my desk and resume testing backups and managing EC2 instances and updating the website.
Women do get treated poorly, even in 2016. Just .. Be aware.
I'm genuinely curious why women's standards of behavior and empathy are the norm to which we ascribe? Why do they get to set the standard definition?
Perhaps male behaviors with a lack of empathy, etc are the norms to which women need to conform?
-Styopa
Bruce, please do what you can to get the word out that every instance of assholery needs to stop. It doesn't matter what the gender of the victim is - males should be no more "expected" to take abuse than females. If we stop the abuse, we stop the abuse. I agree, it starts with good parenting, but we can also apply social pressures to adults. Our movement is about means as much as, if not more so than, than ends, and this is a black eye on it. Maybe women as a group tend to be smarter about not abiding such behavior.
Most people don't like to hear that every instance of assholery needs to be countered because it requires *them* to act at every opportunity to counter injustice. This can't be delegated to a committee and if learning to behave is as required as learning to code in our community then it doesn't matter what personality types are at a disadvantage, except that they may need extra help. Other community members need to be as willing to help a newbie behave as they are to help him submit good patches. Is that comfortable in our society? No, but we're doing the evolution thing here - nobody said it was going to be easy.
And one good patch from an asshole isn't worth the loss of several more community members. If we had to make that trade, I'd take one fewer patch, on principle, but we don't have to - a vibrant community is non-zero sum.
My favorite open source communities are joyous playgrounds and rich in female contributors. I'm hesitant to post them here because /. has its share of miscreants, but get in touch if you want some follow-up. Thanks for keeping this problem at the fore.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
As a woman & part of a minority who has been in and around open source projects, video games and what not for most of her life, I am frankly flabbergasted at articles and wild accusations like these.
The supposition is that there is a problem 'we women' suffer at the hands of males. The reality is that there are trolls and bullies who just pick on the weak. What I have also found is that said trolls and bullies are generally rapidly expunged from tech & gaming circles as they are unpleasant to deal with.
I have always found both the video gaming and open source/tech communities to be the most pleasant and welcoming of all. Am I doing something wrong here? Am I internalising misogyny, or some such nonsense?
Please, stop making up non-existing problems. We got enough real problems as-is already, including radicalised feminists and the media harassing us female gamers and geeks for not adhering to outdated and/or ridiculous stereotypes. Now there's a target to focus on for some real research on an actual problem. I won't stop you.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
As a woman who's been in the electronics/computer field for more than 55 years, now, I read with much disgust the attempts by some in this thread to discount women, and then claim that, somehow, "It ain't true."
Believe me, I've been there. After three books, hundreds of published papers and articles, and decades of consulting to Fortune 500 firms, I have been on the receiving end of the misogynistic "swinging dicks" who couldn't write a competent subroutine or draw a working circuit if their lives depended on it. I can (and, in the past, have) named names and identified organizations where women dare not go. What's interesting is having the CEO of a Fortune 500 company hire me (at $2,500/day) and then have twerps three years out of school decide they know more than I and refuse my counsel because my anatomy is different from theirs. Usually, there's a competent male around who steps in and shuts the abuse down. When there's not, I have developed a strong skill in suckering such blithering idiots into cul de sacs of their own ignorant reasoning, until they are reduced to mumbling to themselves. But, why should I ever have had to DEVELOP that skill?
We are all born the same way, and discover our gender as we grow up...but, due to family influences (e.g., drunken men abusing their wives, "men of the house" who want their women "barefoot and pregnant"), some males grow up with a tacit belief that women are, somehow, inferior to men. There's a name for these people: They are BIGOTS (and it often extends to other differences, like cultural heritage, skin color, education, that are patently irrelevant to judging whether the person is "human" or not).
Fortunately, not all men are chained to this philosphers' wall, drawing conclusions from shadows and accepting them as fact. There are many men who exhibit humanity and treat ALL others with respect and dignity...and they are a delight to work alongside. Unfortunately, they are outnumbered by the dolts, in my experience.
Your suggested solution involves changing education. This is a favorite tuning knob of many would-be social engineers: diagnose a problem without a study (or with a study made to find exactly that problem, run by people with a vested interest in finding that thing). Specifically, you imply that there's something that schools can do with groups of friends, trying to define the self organizing social groups. This will require a level of policing that is absolutely ludicrous and impractical, and likely very harmful if schoolchildren are denied the ability to choose their friends. School is a tyrannical experience for many, and this plan of yours will just create even more loners, and make them more alone.
It's also amazing to see how thoroughly socially awkward people are chased down and vilified. Finding one of the few places that socially awkward or autism spectrum people are able to spend their time helping society (in some cases for free, and in most cases for less compensation than they WOULD get, outside of it) and trying to find the correct combinations of matches to set their house on fire, all sacrifices for whatever Diversity-God is currently venerated in social engineering circles.
As the pressure increases, they'll eventually figure out what's going on. Within 10 years, I fear you'll be seeing forks of projects along political lines.
That will be the end result of diagnosing a problem where none exists, prescribing solutions where the term is meaningless, and ultimately vilifying and excluding contributors who don't toe the politically correct line. More divisiveness for no gain.
Asshollery has a strong positive correlation to the Y chromosome and testosterone.
Sorry, as someone who knows/has known literally thousands of women in my lifetime, I call "bullshit".
You're actually claiming that the presence of a Y chromosome is a predictor for "assholishness"?
I doubt you could even define "assholishness" (or "asshollery" or whatever) to any degree of accuracy. One person's "assholishness" is another person's perfectly acceptable behavior, so that's a fail. It's like defining pornography, which ends up coming down to some subjective value judgement.
So, in short, you're wrong, and you should stop spreading this nonsense- it just makes you out to be an asshole.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
That's because you don't feel sorry for guys getting their feelings hurt but you get almost teary eyed when women cry. Its sort of the essence of being a man.
I understand your intention, but I would urge you to change your mindset to focus less on stereotypes and more on behavior.
I often find this kind of study/summary to be of the greatest irony.
Person complains men are insensitive or make assumptions about women, which is a great irony because that just making an insensitive assumptions about men.
Let me try another example.
You are trying to point out problems within a group. Yet, you have chosen the word 'male' to represent this group.
Suppose we wish to talk about problems in urban Detroit (gangs, single motherhood...)
Would you state the problem in any way as:
Black people are prone to violence and broken families?
No, because that would be so insensitive. You'd probably call that person a bigot.
You'd have to make it more specific. People in poverty, certain urban centers, certain historical background...
I was born in Apartheid South Africa. I know a little more about racial grouping. I also see the reverse now where the groupings and power plays have shifted. It's always tempting, but if you want to be better than a bigot, you have to check yourself and not fall into 'my tribe' thinking.
Now this is always a tricky area as how do you talk about systemic problems without 'grouping' people.
Well as I say, take two minutes and make sure you've tried your best to narrow your group as much as possible. You might not get it perfect, but at least you made the effort and can offend fewer people AND be more accurate.
It's almost pointless to talk about 'black' people as that is such a large group. Neil Degrass Tyson is black. Condoleeza Rice is black. One of the best IOS programmers I know is black. These people bare no resemblance to the image people have when they talk about 'black problems' perpetuated by both bigots and SJW. There are upscale blacks. There are ghetto blacks and every other subgrouping in between.
It's just as pointless to talk about 'white' people. There are rich white folk and downright poor ghetto white folks. You can for example talk about 'white privilege' but you better be careful about it. Tell some poor white kid from a broken home that he has 'white privilege'. Do you have any idea how harmful that is to that person?
Now ponder your choice of groups. You chose to group humans into two of the biggest groups possible. Male and Female.
And you make grand stereotypes about both, lumping in everyone. You insult anyone who identifies with either being male or female. You insult the female who prefers direct talk or believes she should fight the fight. You insult the male who prefers social grace.
Did it ever occur to you that many men get turned off by poor social behavior?
Perhaps the issue is less that of men vs women, but of people who lack social grace.
I would also imagine with all the tools available in the open source world, it might be interesting to find out why other open source cultures haven't developed. Or maybe they have? I haven't studied it. I'm generally just a deep user, as opposed to an active contributor, but I generally find people quite helpful. There are some assholes, but I've also had some very good conversations and help from a lot of people. Every open source project is started by someone.
Basically, take two minutes.
Check your groupings.
Even if you go in depth with nuance in the research, check your summary. Just do the black test. Change the 'bad' group to 'black' and see how it reads.
How does this read to you Bruce:
How did we ever get a community where a vocal minority of males behave in the most boorish, misogynistic, objectifying manner toward women?
How did we ever get a community where a vocal minority of blacks behave in the most boorish, misogynistic, objectifying manner toward women?
Even masked with the words minority, it still stings doesn't it? No matter how your phrase it, it stings a little doesn't it.
So for someone complaining about insensitive men ... you might want to check yourself.