this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Technology
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If we reverse the genders in the story it sounds kinda sexist....
The tech industry is super sexist. We already have a huge advantage and are whining that women get a little one.
"Vast majority of tech works are women" "women are way more likely to hold high level tech jobs" "Men have to fight to to be taken seriously by tech bosses" also sound sexist but it's literally true for men.
I am simply not convinced of this collective "we". Sorry, but me random foreigner with no family support, no perfect language etc. Might have no advantage (or even be at disadvantage) with a woman who got shipped to ivy league.
Reducing all to just gender is simply a way to not solve the discrimination (generally, not a specific discrimination) while legitimizing those very same companies who sponsored the event by giving them some marketing flair.
I am personally conflicted, because I do think that women in tech face cultural discrimination, I just feel that this is not an instance of privileged people wanting to colonize and pollute a safe space for people who get discriminated. I think these kind of pieces are alienating for some people and generally hurt the class solidarity which - in my opinion - is a nonnegotiable requirement to get rid of all discrimination.
This is all true and a totally different issue.
Again you'll often hear privileged white people complaining about minorities getting any kind of advantage. And the same with wealthy people and the poor.
Most people don't realise their privilege and feel betrayed by anyone getting an advantage over them.
But this is specifically about men showing up to a women only thing which is why I focused on that issue.
none of the "men" at these conferences were privileged.
My point is that looking at this just as men showing up at a woman thing inherently fails to acknowledge the reality of the discrimination on the workplace, discarding specifically any debate on why that would be the case. In other words, looking at those as just "men" is a sign of the inability to look at discrimination more broadly, and in my opinion reflects really bad on the intention of people who are working towards the elimination of gender discrimination. From my leftist perspective I see these kind of events as a push to extend the struggle to other victims of the system, rather than as those people ruining your turf.
So we shouldn't help anyone because it doesn't help others from different groups. That's straight stupid.
I was going to answer, but then I realized that if this is what you chose to understand from my comment(s), probably that means you don't want to have a conversation. I will save my time, if you don't mind.
It's not an event for "all marginalized people" or "anyone who experiences discrimination" are you capable of reading
I am, and in fact I have explicitly challenged this very same intention. I have explicitly mentioned that I feel is harmful to certain objectives not to extend the struggle to more oppressed categories, by using the power gathered (arguably expresses by having such large sponsors).
If you don't feel like trying to understand my point and choose to just post edgy one-liners, there is no need to have the conversation at all. You can let me know, I will block you and I will spare some notifications to myself and some reading for yourself.
So leave it to a marginalized group to help a more marginalized group? Why not shit on the ones at the top who aren't helping anyone, rather than the group of women who managed to pull together resources over years to help a specific group? I agree there should be resources available for other marginalized groups too, but this reads like rich people pitting the poor against the middle class so they don't realize who is actually taking almost everything for themselves.
I would say that if you have the concrete power of organizing an event with tens of thousands of people and huge sponsors, you might have some power and are less marginalized. Possibly (and I mean possibly) this is not the case for the average men who attended that event? If this is true, then I don't see why it couldn't be possible to help each other, using the power obtained (with years of struggle and effort).
Ultimately, you do need exactly that kind of solidarity and reciprocal recognition to be able to join the fight against the top.
Also, in this case "helping" is also very generous. Those people paid 600$ for basically nothing. The chances that recruiters who joined the event will care for anything else than recruiting women (to boost diversity in their company) are extremely little.
Either way, I still don't understand what the alternative is. For example, if you are a foreigner who needs a job for your visa, the chances that you will have a) a network of people, b) the resources and c) the overall possibility to organize something similar are nonexisting. What is our proposal for this people? How do we ensure that we can fight the top, if workers are splitting among themselves? I am asking genuinely, because for example, in my opinion, if today you go to some of those guys and you say "sorry, fuck off this is not for you go do your fair", tomorrow, in the workplace it's not going to be as easy to build a union with your woman colleague. It's going to be easier to see yourselves as part of two different groups than the same class.
So what can we do instead that leaves the necessary space for women while not alienating this people?
I'll do us both the favor, actually.
Thank you, whenever you feel like having an actual conversation, you can reply to the comment.
In what way do men have an advantage over women? Women in IT for example are unicorns and if a company has to choose between an equally qualified woman and man for the same position they would 100% of the time choose the woman. No on in tech actually likes the current situation, we'd love there to be an equal male/female ratio.
In reality, however, this situation does not exist. If we got 2 qualified applicants and one was a man and the other a woman we'd hire both (same if it was 2 men or 2 women). It's hard enough to find personnel anyway, we'll take everyone we can get, gender is not a factor at all.
If companies were actually taking in 2 applicants instead of 1 and that in need of employees, I doubt we'd be seeing so many people desperate enough to find employment that they flood a job fair not intended for them.
The keyword is ‘qualified’. Lots of people looking for jobs with little to no skills or relevant education.
I doubt foreigners got here (likely on a work visa) with no skills or education. To get a work visa, don't you have to have a job lined up? There's their experience/skills. Myself and a lot of the class I graduated with in CS are getting hundreds of rejections despite having relevant education (and experience in many cases). With the hundreds of thousands laid off from tech in the last year there is absolutely not enough openings for everyone with skills and relevant education.
Yes, removing all context from a situation can make it look bad.
Yes, removing all context from a situation can make it look bad.
Thank you for pointing that out. I wasn't able to infer that myself.