this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Do you realize that there are women out of a job too? It's not just out of good vibes that people bring up issues of representation, they represent the material conditions of people. For you the percentage of women vs men in the workplace might be a meaningless number, but for those women, it's their chance of a living.
I am just saying that this burden shouldn't fall on other people in material need. It is simply extremely unfair from my point of view to imagine that a person which happens to be a man, and is in need of a job should just sit quietly and leave space for women, because generally, in the whole field, women are under represented.
Again, this is just some kind of thought process that can only come in my head if I am not risking for my house to be repossessed by the bank, or when I have enough cash to keep paying rent, or I don't have a family to support. It's a complete luxurious form of integrity that is completely detached from the real world (the one I live in, at least). This seems completely peak war between poor people, where we stop challenging the arbitrary scarcity of resources and we want to solve the problem just by creating a hierarchy by which the crumbles should be shared.
I am from a different country, maybe it's cultural, but this position is completely alienating and unrelatable for me.
You are still not thinking of the women who are also struggling to get jobs, who are poor as well. Women also struggle to pay rent or to feed their families too. You are contrasting women against struggling people as if they couldn't be in the same position.
So not only women in this field already need to fight an uphill battle against the industry's predisposition to hire men over women, now they are having to fight over opportunities that had been aimed at them to begin with. Don't you think they will also face real financial struggles because of this?
It's not a matter of caring about representation or material needs. It's an opportunity to provide material needs through representation.
I don't know where you are from, but I'm not american or european if that's what you are assuming. Yet there are still women struggling where I live. I assume the same is true all over the world.
Surely, there is a point to be made regarding our need to pressure wealthy people so that more poorer people have means to live. But how does pulling the rug under a poor woman have anything to do with that? That's not even the same discussion, that's just changing topics from the ruthlessness being displayed.
And you know what, as a man, if I were in a situation of need as well I wouldn't look favorably over people who are so intent on tripping whoever is around them to cut in line. Desperation is real for sure, but for that very reason solidarity is important.
Of course I am aware of that. Of course there are women who are in the same situation, or worse. Of course there are black women who are even in a worse place. Of course there are old black women who are in even a worse place. The fact is, there are people who need a job, and once this is the case, I don't put any responsibility on any of them if they take the spot that could be taken by someone more deserving. This is simply a decision that doesn't make sense. The responsibility is on those who decide how many jobs exist, to layoff people even with record profits (which coincidentally, are all the sponsors of this fair) and so on.
How is it trying to get a job (paying 600$+!) "pulling the rug" from anybody? This is what I don't get. Literally, anything you do, you are affecting society in a way that damages someone who has less means than you. You are buying something -> you are marginally increasing the demand and therefore the price.
It's not like I don't understand your idea, I simply don't think it makes any sense to expect such behavior to other people who are also victims of the same system. I have no interest whatsoever in fragmenting the working class creating a hierarchy of who is more victimized, this is a pointless exercises which is reactionary in nature.
So if you apply for a job and someone else has already applied, you leave it? What does 'cutting the line' means in this context? We are talking about paying to go to a job fair meant for women, which also probably means that your chance to get recruited are much lower than a woman because companies are nowadays very interested in boosting their diversity metrics. And I think this is the case because for some people the struggle ends there: you get 40% of women in tech, there you go, now you are a good company, thanks Microsoft/Apple/etc.. This is why I think that this particular version of feminism is inherently bourgeois and reactionary.
This is very lofty talk for someone fully willing to take away opportunities intentionally aimed at someone else who needs it.
Don't you think snatching that opportunity is going to cause fragmentation? Do you think women or minorities stop having material struggles as long as you don't think of them as a distinct group? That's not how it works. If it was, then before feminism, working class women would have equal material conditions to working class men, and that is absolutely not how it went.
And yeah, there are people who are even more disadvantaged, which also results in worse material conditions. The solution is not to stop thinking about it.
For all your talk about working class, what you propose is nothing that helps the working class in a systemic or immediate way, it's just "looking out for #1" and then pointing fingers at the system if anyone judges you for it. I guess your logic is that if you are working class and you help yourself you are helping the working class? Funny, but that's not it.
You know exactly what "cutting the line" means here. There are other job fairs and recruitment opportunities where these guys could go to. However less likely they may be to be hired, whoever does is taking away an opportunity that a woman needed. However insincere the companies may be at doing this, however this may not be enough to create a better society where everyone can have a decent life, these women need jobs regardless. You know, material conditions, the thing you were saying was much more important.
Taking that opportunity (which specifically, I think is also very little) is someone who also needs it. You can create this hierarchy even among the women at that very fair, in fact.
I think not, if framed under the right perspective.
Absolutely I don't. And I am not claiming that the problem is solved by "meritocracy" or by just stopping thinking about this. I am suggesting that it is not responsibility of the victims to self-police and sort themselves in order of priority.
That's not what I am suggesting. I am personally just thinking in very pragmatic terms. Realistically the struggle of the working class requires strong unions and harsh battles. How are you going to build a union when I - a male - see you -a woman (but you can pick any other category) - as something else as myself, as belonging to another group? To me building strong unions requires a mutual recognition of class belonging, and this is what I think helps in a systemic way. Nothing systemic is also going to change if X% more women would be hired by Microsoft/Apple etc., with the difference that if you reach that situation having alienated and fragmented workers, that's also where you stop.
I have no idea why they chose to attend. What I know is that you don't spend 600-1200$ for the hell of it if you need a job.
And how is this different from any other job? I mean, ultimately you can apply this logic to any job you are going to take. Realistically, any company that will hire you is going to have a small % of women, so any job you are taking, you are taking it from a woman (or a black person, etc.). I really fail to understand how your logic works outside the specific context of the job fair. Are you saying that besides this job fair, then no concerns anymore should exist about under represented categories?
Of course, but it's a matter of deciding the strategy to reach that objective. From my point of view, for the reasons above, I disagree with this particular one.
Absolutely nothing about taking jobs aimed at women helps or even relates to this.
What, you recognize a woman as your equal in class struggles so you kick her in the shins and shoves her off the way? Whoa, the class solidarity truly brings tears to may eyes.
It's like you are intermittently switching into a whole different discussion. However much you may talk of worker class solidarity and I partially agree, these guys aren't showing any solidarity.
Because we are talking about positions indicated to women, who already have a hard enough time getting tech jobs. Who also need them to live. I get what you are saying but here you flipped back to "I need a job, sucks to be them", not a drop of solidarity to be found. This is different because the whole point of that one fair is being different, if you want to chase jobs for whoever makes it, you can look for them in other places. It's not like this is the single opportunity anyone will ever get.
This isn't difficult to understand. It just seems like you cannot for a moment think of what your life would be like if you were one of said women, rather than one of the men rushing to take the job by any means necessary, anyone around them be damned.
Sorry, we are going in circle, and I feel there is no point for me to rehash my thoughts for the N-th time. Either I am no expressing myself well enough, the language barrier is impeding mutual understanding or something else.
I fundamentally disagree with some of the premises of your arguments ("taking" - like one could choose - jobs aimed at women, etc.). I will close it here.
Well, good thing it doesn't in this case.
The whole point is that everything in this field is already, by default, directed at men. That's what it's like in the US. It's the same with race. And saying we have have equality when we don't is just ignoring the way these divisions affect historically oppressed groups. Acknowledging systemic hierarchy and division between races and genders in order to fix it doesn't automatically mean you have to ignore class divisions. They're far from mutually exclusive. Why would it be impossible to acknowledge both at the same time?
It's to the point where no one else can have anything without men going "what about me and my problems?" "Well here's what I think about all these social issues that have never and will never negatively affect me." As usual, the "not all men" of every comment section of every article about a women-only-something-or-other are just making a great case for women-only-something-or-others.
This is a very broad statement. Perhaps the population of males that showed up here is not an average male population in tech but the outliers of the statistics (looking at the videos, it seems mostly foreigners)? So I think it's fairly alienating to go tell them "sorry, fuck off, everything is meant for you already", when maybe you are out of a job for months and decided to pay 600$ (!!) in the hope of getting one.
Who said this?
It's not impossible, but this happens. A lot of focus on the relatively minor differences between oppressed people creates fragmentation that impedes those people to realize they actually share problems and interests. To make an example, you coming and saying that "everything is meant for men anyway" is alienating to a 45yr old male who has just been fired to be replaced by a 23yr old (maybe, woman). It simply conflicts with the experiences of individuals who - despite potentially being men - face other kind of discrimination and generally struggle. That man has more in common with a woman who is not promoted, compared to the boss of that woman who is sexist, instead, and should not be alienated by gaslighting him with a reality that for him does not exist (I took this example, but the same applies to a black person, a foreigner, someone who didn't study in a fancy university, someone with a disability, and so on). So I am not saying that they are mutually exclusive, I am saying that concretely some arguments, including the overall tone of the article, seem to me to damage class unity to purely focus on gender discrimination.
Sorry, but I would not like to be mixed up with arguments made by others, nor with those who are arguing a-la Jordan Peterson in this thread. I don't care of men as a category, I am a supporter of feminism, I just have an idea of feminism as an inherently anti-capitalist and progressive ideology, which is an enabler for class unity. I just don't see the kind of arguments made by this article (and by some of the commenters) going in this direction. Instead, they seem to me as part of a feminism which is reactionary and part of the system in that it doesn't challenge it. Getting angry at fellow victims just because they are men seem to me an expression of this.
Nota bene: if the kind of tech-bro with a cushy job would be attending this fair with the intention to waste the time of the recruiters or even to look for a better job, my opinion would be different.
As a woman who used to work in tech, I would like to point out that you are missing some very key details here. The expectations placed on women in tech are much stricter, much more demeaning, and much more harsh than those placed on men. I had an employer while I was a contractor decide not to renew my contract because I "didn't smile enough" and "wasn't friendly enough", and this was not an expectation placed on my male coworkers. The contracting agency I was working through tried to argue in my defense, but the employer was allowed to discontinue my contract at any time for any reason. Unfortunately, the contracting agency didn't have any other positions open for me, so I was just out of a job.
In just about every tech job I've had, it was made explicitly clear to me that behaving and interacting with others in the same manner as my male coworkers was not acceptable. I was hired with the implicit understanding that, in addition to providing my labor and expertise, I was required to present myself as feminine, demure, and almost submissive to any men I worked with, even if I was their supervisor.
Women need more help getting jobs in the tech industry because they are more likely than their male counterparts to lose jobs to sexism, unequal expectations, sexual harassment, and hostile work environments. This job fair was not allowed to officially exclude men, so it would be helpful for male tech workers to acknowledge and understand their inherent advantages and refrain from interfering with opportunities aimed at helping women in the industry.
While I do think that the situation is not as bad now (basically in any company I worked, the episodes you mentioned are unthinkable), I am fully aware that gender roles are still a thing and sexism in tech is quite widespread.
I do agree with this. BUT, you can make the same argument with other oppressed categories (for example, foreigners, who have way less contractual power due to the inherent threat of losing visa), and that's a big part of my argument here. From my own observations (i.e., the video in the article and some educated guess), it's not just "men" who rushed this conference, it is men from other oppressed categories. So this leads to us start measuring who is more oppressed, which sounds like a futile if not detrimental exercise, exactly because the same dynamics that lead to women being fired due to hostile workplace lead to old people (even men) to be pushed out, or to foreigners to be paid less. Not all men are privilege by virtue of being men, because more discrimination than just gender is at play.
I agree with this as well, and I have absolutely no problem with events aimed to help women getting into tech. What I have a problem with is the inability to ask questions and to think of these people who wasted 600$ bucks for 0 chances of a job as anything else than males, now that the fact happened. This to me seems an intentional way of ignoring other dynamics that exist in the workplace (racism, for example), producing an overall shortsighted analysis. It seems to me detrimental to the overall improvement of the society as well because ultimately the women at that conference might have way more in common with some of those men than they have with the successful woman speaking at that same conference, and forcing the distinction you are making instead suggests otherwise, creating fragmentation among the workforce in place of union and solidarity.
Admittedly, my sympathies for some of the foreign workers is a bit more limited. One of the worst jobs I had was working as a contracted project manager at Google for an India-based contracting company. The team in India that I was supervising was extremely difficult to work with and my boss and coworkers that were all either H1B visa employees or over-staying expired student visas actively contributed to the problems I was having. There were a few times that my project failed to meet adequate performance metrics because the team in India refused to complete tasks that I had created for them and my supervisor did very little to back me up in that situation.
The other side of the coin for the foreign worker situation is that the mega-conglomerates like Google, Apple, etc. specifically hire foreign workers and H1B visa employees because they will work for less pay and minimal to no benefits unlike American college graduates that have student loans to pay off and nowhere else to go. I have a couple of friends still in the tech industry, and they are frequently undercut and out-competed by foreign workers that can accept lower pay and worse benefits as it is a temporary situation for them. I have much more sympathy for those that are actively immigrating and assimilating, but the ones who work on H1B visas or other similar contracts are part of the problem that drive down wages and benefits for everyone else. If they were working in genuine solidarity with American workers, I would feel very differently about it, but as it stands, the vast majority of foreign tech workers I have interacted with have been people abusing the visa systems and dragging down the market for everyone else. In some ways, they are victims, but they also help to perpetuate many of the worst problems in the industry.
California recently passed legislation that now protects social caste against discrimination because the massive Indian population in the tech industry has been horribly discriminatory and brutal to Indians from lower castes. It's also worth pointing out that many of the H1B visas and more temporary workers are from the upper castes and they intend on moving back to India after making enough money and the ones who are truly immigrating are usually from the lower castes and are working under green cards. The workers from the lower castes are also much less likely to be tech workers in the first place because they did not have access to education in India. All of this to say: there are injustices that foreign workers face, but for foreign workers in the tech industry, I'm more inclined to believe that they are among those that are part of the problem.
(Not to mention the fact that some of the worst sexism I have dealt with was from Indian workers from upper castes.)
I can't comment on your personal experience. I can only say that I know that in certain countries, India for example, the rat race is unimaginable and some people would do anything to get out.
I would hardly consider this a privilege to be honest, as it is still way better compared to companies that now specifically want to hire women to boost their diversity numbers (let's face it, mostly for purely marketing purpose). I can see your point of view, mind you, but this to me already feels like inter-class war.
This is very common to be honest, beside the tech sector, and I agree with you. However, these in my opinion are manifestations of a bigger, higher level problem, not the problem itself. Similarly the case with women who actually accept jobs after being asked if they intend to have kids (illegal in many places, I believe). The problem here is that higher order needs prevail sometimes (or you don't have enough education/awareness to even understand that you would be part of a problem), leading to effectively workers undermining other workers (you make the good case for salary undercutting, which then becomes a cliche' talking point for any xenophobic, right wing party, right?).
All of this to say, it is a complex issue, and if anything shows that there is tons to do in the tech field which is one with super low rate of unionization, to build a common class consciousness. I simply hope that we can look at this as obstacles to overcome, not at reasons to change course.
I can imagine that, although my experience (working with a UK company with many Indians) has been completely positive so far. Not to talk about people from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, which I consider - in my limited experience - some of the nicest people I have ever met.
EDIT:
I want to add in any case, I have to admit that this is a far more interesting conversation compared to what the article leads to by itself. I would have loved some more in depth reflection on the different categories of workers, the competition created, the impact of layoffs, etc.
It is a profoundly complex issue, and that's what makes much of this comment section so frustrating. Many of the arguments here are very reductionist and fail to account for detail or nuance. In this particular case, I have a hard time excusing the behavior of the accused interlopers given that this is a women's conference that has been a recurring event for quite some time and has always been a women's conference.
Lack of education or not, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask professionals to act professionally and refrain from attending events not intended for them. I think there's a significant amount of leeway being given to the men/foreign workers who showed up at the women's conference as if they cannot be expected to regulate their behavior in a professional context. It's the same kind of hand-waving and excuses that perpetuate the good ol' boys' club that the tech industry already is. It is irksome that people here aren't realizing that the arguments they are making about exclusivity or discrimination are the same arguments frequently used to excuse the misogyny and sexual harassment that is so ubiquitous in the tech industry to begin with.
A bit of a nit, but consider there has always been a percentage of men to this conference. Reading online, between 5-10%. So it's not like it's a first for men to be there.
Oh no, that's not the point. My point is more along the line of "maybe they are in such conditions where they can't afford the luxury of giving up potential opportunities to respect dynamics which are on a more abstract level compared to the immediate needs". Then I would also argue that going there is a huge waste of 600$ and will give 0 chances, but that's another topic.