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A 60 Minutes Story on Gender Equality Accidentally Proved the Persistence of Patriarchy (qz.com)
Over at Quartz, Ephrat Livni reports that a 60 Minutes story about gender equality accidentally proved the persistence of patriarchy. Reader theodp shares the report: Good intentions are nice, but they aren't enough, the TV news show 60 Minutes recently proved. The show's producers apparently meant well when they decided to do a segment on women in technology and the gender gap, which aired on March 4. But they ended up punching women in the gut, as the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, Reshma Saujani, puts it in her response to the segment. Ultimately, 60 Minutes featured a man, Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi. His [tech-backed] organization's mission is to expand access to computer science education in schools.
Women technologists like Saujani who were tapped to appear on the show about a year ago and worked with producers to provide research and interviews, ended up on the cutting room floor while Partovi spoke on their behalf. Here is the cruel irony: As a result, 60 Minutes' segment was accidentally exceptionally effective-it proved that women in tech really can't catch a break. [...] Ayah Bdeir, the founder of STEM learning toy company littleBits, also responded to the episode in a Medium post. She noted that she worked with 60 Minutes for a year, planning interviews, providing research, talking to the producers and reporters, telling her story and that of her organization, which is focused on closing the gender gap in technology. Yet producers wrote to her last August to say that the focus of the segment had shifted and that littleBits would no longer be central in the story. In an email, a producer explained to her, 'It's not that the important points you made in your interview are ignored in the story, or that you didn't make them very effectively, they're just made by others'.
Women technologists like Saujani who were tapped to appear on the show about a year ago and worked with producers to provide research and interviews, ended up on the cutting room floor while Partovi spoke on their behalf. Here is the cruel irony: As a result, 60 Minutes' segment was accidentally exceptionally effective-it proved that women in tech really can't catch a break. [...] Ayah Bdeir, the founder of STEM learning toy company littleBits, also responded to the episode in a Medium post. She noted that she worked with 60 Minutes for a year, planning interviews, providing research, talking to the producers and reporters, telling her story and that of her organization, which is focused on closing the gender gap in technology. Yet producers wrote to her last August to say that the focus of the segment had shifted and that littleBits would no longer be central in the story. In an email, a producer explained to her, 'It's not that the important points you made in your interview are ignored in the story, or that you didn't make them very effectively, they're just made by others'.
I am a white male heterosexual Catholic. This means I am not diversity.
But wait a minute: Isn't diversity... EVERYONE?
Corporatism != Free Market
Just wondering, wouldn't closing the gender gap on trashmen be as valuable? Or teachers, which at least on my country are almost all women (and reasonably well paid). Oh, is that just chauvinism?
How does this prove "the patriarchy"? Doesn't it really prove that media organizations don't practice what they preach?
What is this doing on Slashdot? Is it literally because "Women technologists like Saujani who were tapped to appear on the show-"? I don't not care about issues like this.... It's just stupid that it's on "News for Nerds that Matters." (yes I'm aware more and more often we're getting stuff that doesn't really relate to that.... but FFS) How many people on Slashdot even watch 60 Minutes?
Normally I'm all about the big bad corporation but quite frankly, it's possible that the material from the women just wasn't all that compelling or revolutionary enough to be in an hour long news show.
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MAKE IT STOP
Slashdot reads like a left-wing propaganda site these days.
Today's stories include "How you're stupid if you question any vaccine on any level, how using the scientific method to question any aspect of climate change makes you unscientific, ten reasons why you should kneel before Apple and Tim Cook, and the patriarchy - how it's still real, and despite proof that the legal system and the culture in general favor women you need to accept it's because you're the patriarchy, you're evil, and it's your fault for possessing a penis!"
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It is too bad, you see reports of inequality with different groups as an attack on the white male.
There is a Them vs Us mentality that really isn't present.
The problem is there was a culture of predefined gender roles, which our current economy doesn't support, which we as a culture need to adapt to.
For some reason people find it difficult to see people who look differently them them as equals and be able to treat them as such.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Quite frankly this sounds as if the producer was too polite to say "you're bad at bringing points across".
She's the CEO of an activist organization that focuses primarily on gender. What are the odds she's a rabid feminist who's just going to put people off and knows little about technology? Their website makes that pretty clear: gender activism first, coding maybe 3rd if we've got some stock photos left over.
Sad, there was a time decades ago where some of them at least tried to be professional reporters.
Not true. 60 Minutes has never been professional journalism. From the beginning they relied on sensationalism, biased reporting, ambush interviews, editing of interviews to swap in different questions that what the interviewee actually answered, and fabricated evidence. They were doing fake news long ago.
Plenty of examples here.
Diversity is Everyone, but to be accepting of diversity also means realizing people who are not in your classification are just as human as you are, with a same sets of problems and needs that you have. But realizing that there are often old laws and cultural norms, that makes it harder for such people to function, as well as you do.
In America Catholics tend to be looked down on compared to the Protestant majority, however there are so many sects of Protestantism that makes Catholics the largest single sect of Christianity. Which explains how the problem with diversity, it is normally how we classify what group we are in at the current time.
Back in elementary school we had K-4 in individual local schools, and 5-8 were in a unified (across the district schools).
In K-4 there was this kid we weren't friends, (we weren't enemies either, we just didn't have any similarities) However when we moved to the fifth grade to a different school, where most of the classmates we never met before, for the first few weeks, we were friends because we were groups as the kids from that elementary school, because that was the biggest form of classification of the time. Later on other factors of our self classification kicked in and we have once again moved apart, as we were just too different.
We also see a lot of this in the military and during war. In a middle of a war you are classified as a solder for your country as is the other people you are fighting along with. The fact that the other guy may have a different race, religion, sex, political stance... then you really doesn't matter, because during this time, you need each other.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I've been treated like shit my whole life... Every time I hear this Jewish bullshit propaganda, designed to make males and females hate each other to further the Jews' plans to exterminate all races except Jews...
Maybe you're being treated like shit for being an resentful, antisemitic person? It's pretty damn hard to like someone like you who hates another simply for the circumstances of his/her birth.
No, it doesn't prove anything
The story only proves that the writers used strong, loaded language. Even the headline "accidentally" is loaded meaning ignorance, "proved" is loaded as an absolute.
The article is filled with loaded, emotional, and biased terms: "punching women in the gut", "the cruel irony", "proved that women in tech can't catch a break", "tried to rationalize", "accidentally exceptionally effective", and more.
This bit of writing in the story is a real gem: But ultimately Bdeir felt that she could not explain away the show’s mistake, or blame herself, or her organization’s size, or the fact that English isn’t her first language. She could not ... wait, what? How do you parse that thing? She could not blame herself? She could not explain away how she blames herself? She couldn't explain that English isn't her first language? Everything after the first "or" turns the writing into nonsense.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
The fact that the other guy may have a different race, religion, sex, political stance... then you really doesn't matter, because during this time, you need each other.
Color-blindness doesn't help solve the problem of systemic oppression though. It's the same mentality right-wingers have of "all your troubles are your own fault for being lazy". It denies the insidious influence of white supremacy, heteronormativity, cissexism, etc. For diversity to be truly meaningful, it needs to actually fight against the oppressors and not just be complacent.
Note that the issue here is not diversity, it's that they were making a TV programme about women in tech and the issues they face, asked women to collaborate and help make the show, and it somehow ended as mostly one guy talking about it.
The issue is not his gender or race or anything like that, it's not even the guy himself - it's that women made something about women, but instead of letting women talk about issues that directly affect them and that they are directly involved in resolving, they went with this guy. Why can't women speak for themselves about things they have first hand experience of?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The mere act of reducing people into their races and genders end up hurting a lot of people, and that's what those reports, and the political actions created by them end doing.
You should ALWAYS judge people by their individual lives, even if its more expensive.
It's exactly why I hate Identity Politics. It raises an "us v them" mentality, mandates that any slight, or any perceived wrong (such as being passed over for promotion) has to be because you're a member of group (x). It couldn't be anything other than that.
Once you start looking through the world from that perspective, everything becomes about that. Despite the extremely high likelihood that you're wrong (occam's razor; the fewer assumptions you make, the more likely you are to have a correct assessment). Assuming (x)ism is one hell of an assumption to make.
Um, in a program about women in tech, spending a year interviewing women for the program but then deciding "we don't need to put any of the women we interviewed on screen, we are only going to feature men saying that women are underrepresented" is, in fact, a solid statement in favor of the point "women are being ignored".
If the program were about Catholic males, and they spent a year interviewing Catholic males but then only used footage of a Muslim woman explaining Catholic culture, you might object, too.
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What if the person they used in the segment to talk about the issue presented it better than some of the other people they interviewed to talk about it?
There's all this assumption about gender and patriarchy - which could be true - but it's not the only explanation. Why are all the other explanations assumed not to be true?
> It is too bad, you see reports of inequality with different groups as an attack on the white male.
These reports blame men, claiming, like this article, that certain differences are proof of a patriarchy. These reports don't usually talk about male vs. female suicide rates, or imprisonment rates, or the lack of male nurses or teachers, or the lack of female bricklayers or coal miners, or about men falling behind in higher education. That's why these reports are an attack on men - they are not about creating a better society, they just complain that women are behind men in a few cherry picked areas, and they blame men for this.
I'm all for helping disadvantaged people, regardless of gender. Maybe that could be based on socioeconomic status?
> For some reason people find it difficult to see people who look differently them them as equals and be able to treat them as such.
That's exactly what articles like this are doing - feminists wanting women to be treated preferentially. All people should be treated as individuals. Group identity should be immaterial.
"Blame it on GitHub!"
That joke is in the direction of indicating the true underlying craziness of the topic.
More than 30 years ago, while backpack traveling outside the U.S., I became friends with a medical doctor. She gave me a book to read that said, "In Italy, feminism is pro-woman. In the U.S., feminism is anti-male."
That seems correct to me. To me, women in the U.S. seem to make themselves unhappy. It amazes me that women in the U.S. don't realize that being anti-male will make themselves unhappy.
Yesterday, I had a first conversation, by telephone, with a Brazilian woman who is in Brazil. She was very happy.
It's a solid statement about them being ignored by THE NEWS MEDIA. It's a pretty blatant example of the media lying to you. Whatever agenda you wand to support beyond that is dubious.
This is a great example of media bias, not a confirmation of the victim hood narrative.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"Oppressors". Because of their race and skin color. Yeah okay.
Because you bought into the identity politics. It's hard not to - it's pretty pervasive in our culture, and there's a lot of shaming for dissent.
"White fragility" == reacting appropriately to being told you are a racist when you know you are not.
If you even have to make a program about women, the situation is already hell.
You can't fix gender discrimination with more gender discrimination.
Businesses are out to make profit...
If it were possible to pay women less than men but otherwise achieve the same standard of work, don't you think that all companies would be exclusively hiring women?
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The same reason my posts are often marked trolling at random. You have stalkers.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
None of the people who visit this website were involved. No male Slashdot readers were consulted prior to the airing of 60 minutes. There is no conspiracy. Some woman thought she was going to be on TV but it didn't happen. If there was a male conspiracy, we would use our power to make you stop guilt tripping us when we just want to read about technology.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Just be white.
Well, when you don't have the facts, just make stuff up.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Then why were women overpaid at Google, and why do so many Asian people do so well in technology?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
It's only an "obvious problem with optics" if you assume that his gender matters. An inherently discriminatory assumption.
The topic was "closing the gender gap", not "talking to women in tech". I see no reason to only interview women for the segment. Anybody engaged in bringing women into tech fields is a valid guest. Blaming some phantom power structure looks like little more than sour grapes.