A comment on sexism and the web industry
As the title says, this is a short comment on sexism in the web industry, but it also contains a response to a specific point made in the recent .net article: call for greater diversity in web industry.
Before I go any further, however, I am not in any way saying that sexism towards women doesn’t exist in the web industry. I also fully accept that as a male I am probably not aware of how widespread it is and that there are things that I may not perceive as sexism which others might do.
For me, the gender of a person in question has nothing whatsoever to do with their intelligence, value, or ability to do any job.
HTML5 editor
What I did have issue with however, was what I saw as the implied notion that a woman would be better at doing the job of HTML5 editor simply because of her sex.
Isn’t that just as bad as saying that a man would be better at the task at hand simply because he is a man? Such a comment would, quite correctly, cause uproar. Granted the implication probably wasn’t intended, but I think that it was this perceived attitude that started the debate.
Surely the important point is that the correct person should be chosen for such roles as this purely on ability and knowledge alone? The gender of the person in question simply shouldn’t be a deciding factor in such an appointment.
I don’t agree with Shelley Power’s suggestion that people would consider it “painful” to have a woman in an editorial position. Ok some might, but I would very much hope that they are in the minority.
Patronising
I was shocked to read what Shelley had to say in the article linked to above on the behaviour of some members of the W3C and the HTML WG towards her and other women, and think that it’s absolutely appalling that people are behaving this way. Part of me thinks “name and shame”, but I’m not sure what good that would do.
The article is correct, however in saying that more needs to be done to erradicate such behaviour and ways of thinking, but I don’t think that giving the HTML5 editor role to a woman simply because of her gender is going to help.
The question is what can be done to erradicate such behaviour? I’m afraid I have no answer to that, but would be very interested to hear what others have to say.
14 Responses
I’m always suspicious of positive discrimination – putting someone in a position purely because they’re a member of a group that is under-represented.
Appointing a female editor has been suggested because the Working Group is too “male”, too “brogrammer” and – the argument goes – a female editor would counteract that because herding cats and social skills are traditionally female traits.
It’s my opinion that the traditional attribution of certain traits to women or to men perpetuates sexism and homophobia.
Therefore, to suggest that appointing A Woman will automatically produce a group that is nurturing, inviting and concensus-seeking is a sexist perspective.
But what do I know? I’m a phallocentric white male perpetuator of patriarchy.
Completely agree Ian.
I’ve hired freelancers and full time staff for my studio and I’ve hired men and women.
I’ve no issue with hiring women, but the overwhelming, undeniable majority of applicants are men. If I post an advert for a developer now, I may receive 10 CVs in reply. There’s a high chance 10 of those will all be men.
There is no requirement for an affirmative action style intervention. People just need to accept that men and women are different, are drawn to different careers and undeniable talent will always get the best jobs. Regardless of gender.
My point is pretty much what Stephen touched on: I don’t think there’s anything *stopping* women from choosing a career in web development, it’s just it’s not as appealing to women as a career choice. Think when was the last time you saw a female plumber, or a female electrician? It’s not because there’s some magical gatekeeper keeping the fairer sex away from these careers, it’s just because more men than women pursue these careers.
Also agree!
Positive discrimination is a discrimination as well,only creating a suppressed resentment towards a person who’s got a job on the grounds irrelevant to the profession.
The problem will be solved when we stop “gender discussions” and start cherishing people and their achievements and reward them equally. Include in this descussion: child work , handicapped people work.
This meaning also, that a (r)evolution of working environment is necessary, and work-life balance is essential. The 99%Conference had a lot to say on the matter. But keeping the “gender discussion” hot, the companies which take all the profits from the work are actually keeping an unnecessary side show relevant, and shifting the focus away from the actual problem – the way are lives are organized around work, instead of vice versa. Because I only hear from fathers who would love to spend more time or take time off for their babies, but then they’d loose their position. That’s actually depraving, isn’t it? And so is depraving a woman of 20% of her wages only because she is one ( as is a case here in Germany).
I’m going to comment from a woman’s perspective…
I agree with you guys!
Your probably wondering why, but having worked as a web developer, (mainly freelance) I’ve never encountered any discrimination for being a female. In most cases, including my current job, I’m considered the web guru.
I too, as Ian says “saw the implied notion that a woman would be better at doing the job of HTML5 editor simply because of her sex.”
I find that funny, as if sex and HTML have to do anything with each other. What was Shelly Powers thinking?
With that being said I do agree with Molly E. Holzschlag who said she’d “love to see a woman or group of women edit the #HTML5 spec”
Ms. Holzschlag, comment doesn’t necessarily mean there is discrimination, just that there is not enough women in those roles. This makes sense, since the web development industry is mainly male dominated, but is there not enough women leaders, because men are holding them back, or simply not enough women seeking these roles?
Currently, I teach Web Design courses at Pittsburg State University, and I can definitely see a stigma that web development is hard and that more male students are willing to take my classes. However, being a female myself, I’ve been actively recruiting female students into this area, and I can say this semester that my classes are 50-50 male and female.
I think a lot of time people think they are being discriminated before they try. Has there been a case in the w3c that I don’t know about where a woman was denied a leadership role? Or is it like I pointed out earlier, is there just not enough women volunteering to take on those roles. Many times I think there may be more a perceived discrimination than the existence of discrimination in most industries.
Despite the whole question of discrimination, there is definitely a need for more women to pursue careers in Web development.
Those are my thoughts anyways.
I just want to nip a couple of things in the bud. Apparently I read a different article from the rest of you in that I only saw a call for a more diverse input and not only focusing on including women in defining priorities but also putting more of a priority on accessibility. It does seem to be something of a chronic problem that browser makers and standards makers are much more focussed on business applications and games to the detriment of anything else, otherwise we wouldn’t still be waiting for simple text columns an internationalised email address RFC and full ARIA implementation while Angry Birds can be played in a browser. This is, unfortunately, what happens when money is the core driver for development over providing a better browsing experience for all.
Following on from this, I’m well aware that few women apply for jobs in any area of computing or IT (in fact, Web Development and Design is better for this than any other area of computing) but if you’re going to look only at the surface and not look for any deeper reason then your opinion on the matter doesn’t mean anything. Quite apart from the number of women who are put off even going near computers before they leave education by the rampant sexism surrounding them from school, through A’ Levels and, should they stick it out that long, degrees courses but should they even go for a first job, many are looking at a career change before long.
I’ve observed a great deal of subtle and not so subtle sexism in these environments and all the while I’m hearing the usual excuse that women just aren’t interested in computing trotted out, which requires an almost wilful level of ignorance as to what is happening right in front of them and a painful lack of questioning of their own assumptions or curiosity as to why their view of things is not shared by all.
I’m more than a little tired of the lack of effort displayed by so many people to ask questions which they know will provide difficult answers, answers which will require that they do more, make more effort and confront discriminatory behaviour themselves. It’s disappointing to see that once again all some people can manage is to drag up the same tired old excuses for doing nothing, preferring to stay in their comfortable bubble where everything’s easy.
I’m disappointed at both the article and most of the comments.
There is no such thing as positive discrimination. That’s just complaints from people wanting to maintain the status quo.
Akram Burris, have you ever thought that comments like yours can be used against women in the field?
“Look, here’s a woman who says there is no problem. Well, thank goodness, now we discard what other women say.”
Rather than blithely discard the comments, you could have taken a moment to explore the issue more. You didn’t even take a moment to learn more before you commented.
Sad.
No one ever said in any of this that women would do better in the positions because we’re women. Molly made a brief comment that it would be an interesting experiment, because leadership has always been exclusively male. And I retweeted her rather gentle comment.
My comments following have more to do with my experiences with the W3C over several years, the appalling way it dealt with my concerns, and the need for the W3C to be more diverse.
The need for diversity extends beyond getting more women involved–it also includes more respect given to the accessibility folks, more representatives from industries other than just browser companies–across the board, more diversity.
How can we expect a group of men who share a strongly similar background, and who demonstrate an appalling lack of empathy to do a good, representative job defining the specifications underlying the technology we all use?
And not one of you asked why I would bring these issues up. I certainly didn’t do so to help my career, because it never has. If anything, it has harmed my career.
Paul Duffy is the only one of you who said, “Wait a sec…maybe we should learn more”. The only one of you.
Preface: I’m only posting this to see my words in this lovely Bookman font.
From Ian: “The gender of the person in question simply shouldn’t be a deciding factor in such an appointment.”
Hm. On the face of it, this makes perfect sense. We want, first and foremost, qualified people doing important stuffs.
But, as Molly said, it would be *very* interesting to see if there was a resultant difference if a group of women (or, try some other group here) were the editors of some major spec. Because as suggested in some of the comments, people’s backgrounds affect how they think, how they associate things, etc. This is why there are general arguments for diversity in the workplace: sure, the legal reason is “fairness”, but the other important reason is (avoiding) groupthink.
I can’t argue that simply lacking a penis is going to radically make how I would think about something different from someone who does have one, but I would imagine various diverse backgrounds (so why things like age, race, gender, culture, native language(!), personal history and national origin) have a greater influence in how people think, how people deal with problems, how people deal with other people, and whether ideas from out of the blue may be more common (and more commonly considered rather than immediately thrown out).
I’ve read plenty about this but admit I have not gone looking for how many (if any) scientific studies have been made on the topic.
I liked Shelley’s comment except this part:
“Akram Burris, have you ever thought that comments like yours can be used against women in the field?”
Whoa whoa whoa.
What, she should have kept her opinion to herself, kept her mouth shut because if she expresses an opinion, the wrath of hell descends upon 50% of the worldwide human population and it’ll be *her* fault? Bah.
Nobody should have to carry such a burden when commenting on a public blog, when for example nobody makes a similar statement about how Bruce might represent all the white male Opera-employed Brits or anything. Unless the commenter says “On behalf of all whatevers…” but stating the comment is from a woman’s perspective… I guess that was kinda redundant; it’s rather difficult to comment from a perspective other than what you have, isn’t it?
Though Shelley, if your point was that such dangers exist, I won’t argue there because maybe they do and likely you’ve seen them yourself. I’ve been luckily oblivious to any possible subtle sexist anythings in my life and career so far, but that’s likely my general obliviousness to subtlety, or my own transient misogyny (yeah, lack of a penis doesn’t prevent waves of this at times).
Off Topic: I would have thought teh internets would have changed some of these dynamics. Did the NYTimes comic get it wrong when they said “on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”? Only recently did I realise CSSWG member fantasai is in fact, not an Italian male.
Stomme, your point is good, and Akram should be able to express whatever opinion without me pulling the “we women have to stick together” stuff on her.
I am preternaturally sensitive on this issue because of an incident at the W3C. When I did express my concerns about sexism in a set of communication at the W3C, one of the W3C leaders emailed me to tell me he had his girlfriend look over the communications, and she didn’t think they were sexist–as if we all think alike.
Akram is right to express her opinion. My apologies Akram.
The people who are wrong are those who think that her view, or the W3C leader’s girlfiend’s view, expresses the same views of all women.
And it is a pretty font.
Shelley: “…one of the W3C leaders emailed me to tell me he had his girlfriend look over the communications, and she didn’t think they were sexist–as if we all think alike.”
Yeah I heard about that. The girlfriend is totally cool… The guy assuming his girlfriend can represent anyone other than herself is the one to go after. He made a sexist assumption and used it to justify his actions/beliefs. I assume. Jumping when people do this can help us not need to do the “we women gotta stick together” bit.
And, ZOMG I opened this page in Chrome (which here doesn’t block stuff like @font-face and scripts and whatnot. Yes, I refer to this browser with a misogynistic term)… different font! Also pretty, maybe prettier… but Bookman was more readable.
Yay NoScript plugin writers++
A quick word on the font, which is Sorts Mill Goudy and is presented here via Typekit, which falls back to Bookman Old Style if that font isn’t found.
I agree that people assuming that the opinion of one female represents all females is daft. “One man’s meat is another man’s poision” as the (sexist!) saying goes.
I do, however, think that positive discrimination does exist. A case in point is South African sports teams on the welcomed end of apartheid. National teams, e.g. the cricket team, had a quota to ensure that they contained black players. This led to a number of black players being introduced to international cricket before they were ready and some excellent white players turning their back on their country and declaring for someone else (usually England) due to limited opportunities. Here white cricket players were being left out of the team because of their colour and black players were being chosen because of theirs. Ultimately the team weren’t all picked on merit.
As for Paul Duffy’s comment on learning more, yes, most definitely we should. How can we go about that?
Ian, it starts with the W3C leadership doing something other than pretend everything is just peachy. That they can’t “ignore” problems away.
Having subjects like these makes me feel we are still not over the fence over issues like these. It doesnt have to do with your topic but with these proposals.