When there's a dialog about women in technology, there's usually an effort to let more women speak in the discussion than men. This is good, because the point is to give women a voice. Yet it's bad, because as we're trying to make some people feel less left out, we make others feel left out.
Men who care want to contribute to the conversation, too. When they're pushed out of the discussion, they feel excluded and rejected. It's like there's a double standard: only women can speak about how important it is that everyone have a voice.
Well that sucks. It isn't fair. And I want to tell you: it's also essential.
There's a meme permeating our culture, an idea that gets passed down and entrenched without ever being stated. It is: "White men dominate discourse." This is just a fact. And it's a fact that reinforces itself. Men expect to dominate the discourse because they do, and this means they are comfortable speaking up, and they do. And so they dominate the discourse.
This isn't anybody's fault, but it is everybody's loss. Inclusion and balance means more ideas, more sharing, more learning for everyone. This is especially true in tech, where ideas can have a positive impact quickly. Learning and growing is everything in our field.
You don't have to think men should dominate discourse to perpetuate it. This meme spreads itself, it's a feedback loop, a circular causality. Because it's suboptimal for our culture, we can choose to consciously counteract this meme.
Panels of mostly women, discussions where women's contributions outnumber men's, these are one way to counteract the meme. Every conversation where women speak at least as much as men is one that teaches us, subconsciously, "You have a contribution to make. Speak up." Where better to achieve this than in discussions about women in technology? If we can't change the ratio in discussions about gender, where can we?
Still, there's a long way from "women speak at least as much as men" to "shut up! you're a white man so you have no contribution to make!" There are many men who care and can contribute. Why would we discourage them to chime in?
The answer is: math. In a field that's 90% men, any random distribution of comments, even without cultural influence, will be 90% men. In one conversation, say the whole 10% of non-men speak up. If not more than 50% of comments are from men, then only the same number of men may speak. 10% of the total, out of 90% that are men, means that 8 out of 9 men are excluded.
Sometimes the best way to contribute is to remain silent. As a man, if you want to help mitigate the meme of "white men dominate discourse," it often means being quiet. Instead of speaking up, amplify the women's voices with +1s and retweets. Make the audience of your contributions the men around you who aren't listening to discussions about women in tech. Or speak individually to the women you're closest to, get their perspective, and maybe let them get the ideas into the conversation without contributing to male domination of discussions. It isn't your fault. It's the way things are. You can help us adjust them, help make tech more fair for everyone in the long run, by accepting some not-fair-to-you-ness in this particular case.
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[1] 90% men: In my experience as a senior dev and frequent attender of tech conferences, this is a generous estimate. If you disagree, change it and do your own math. The qualitative conclusion is the same.
3 comments:
You are mixing up two definitions of "dominate" (see dominate at webster's), specifically (4) "to be predominant" such as "sugar maples dominate the forest" and 1/2 "to control, to exert supreme guiding influence", and that skews your analysis.
If men are 90% of a group, it is only natural that they make up roughly 90% of the conversation, unless there are very specific circumstances.
For example, I was often the only German in the group when I was working in the US. So should I get more air-time than others unless the topic is specifically Germany, in which case it only becomes natural as I may be considered a (relative) expert.
And you can slice up any specific group in many ways to confer "special" status to any particular individual(s) you like. Did you know that short men are, as a group, more disadvantaged than many other groups that get to claim special status? (and no, I am not, I am average or a bit above average depending on where I am living).
Another example: I was enrolled in english at university, which in Germany is a female-dominated (4) degree. So a frequent situation was that there was a female instructor and maybe 20 female students and 1 or 2 males.
Yet even in that situation, the men "dominated" the discussion, not because we particularly wanted to, but because the women simply refused to participate. The drawn out silences just became acutely embarrassing and the instructor was extremely grateful that at least someone participated.
You see, speaking up in front of a group is actually not that easy, so much more comfortable to remain silent. And then complain about the ones who overcame their inhibitions and spoke up.
If 90% of a given field are men, isn't it not only natural but correct that 90% of the voices in any discussion are male?
If you're going to give special privileges and power to the voices of the minority 10%, isn't that just sex discrimination and female privilege in action?
You are literally saying you think women's voices are more important than men's voices.
It's certainly important that men and women have equal opportunities in life, and that fields that discriminate against women and fields that discriminate against men are changed to be more welcoming. But being more welcoming to people does not mean giving them special privileges and benefits just because they are a minority.
There's a discussion panel with 10 people on it, they should match the demographics of the population they're talking about. If that means its 9 men and 1 woman, because 90% of CS people are men, then that's fine. If the panel is made up of 9 woman and 1 man, which doesn't represent the population at all, then you have to ask - are these women getting special benefits and privileges simply for being women? Are the voices of potentially more competent men who aren't being given special privileges being silenced in favor of hearing less competent but more privileged women? The women might be perfectly competent to be on this panel, but by giving them the special privilege of deserving a voice over men, their competency will automatically be called into question and their opinions will automatically be devalued, because the listener will not be able to know if they got on the panel from their own merit or just because people want to privilege female voices over male voices.
And that's terrible for everyone.
@Marcel -- I know that silence. Do you know who breaks it? The person who is most comfortable speaking, so your story actually proves the point. Men are more comfortable speaking publicly in part because they are used to seeing men speaking publicly. When the men are out of the room, the women are more free to talk, and the brave ones among them become more used to speaking.
@seth -- panels don't usually represent the population, or even competency. The average age is usually quite a bit older than the audience age, for one thing. Also, panels are usually drawn up to reflect a variety of opinions or points of view, and to include people who speak well enough on their feet to cover any awkwardness. Women should be considered valuable panel members, particularly if they can provide some contrast and express themselves well.
It is easy to say that any conversation should be based on competence, but the sociology of human interactions (the actual data) argues that women have disadvantages in how they are perceived. People give attention more readily to larger people with lower voices. People give more credit to people who credit themselves, and there are some big gender differences is how we judge performance.
To judge true competence is hard. To take gender out of musical auditions, the judges listen from behind a curtain, and the performers must take off their shoes -- the sound of heels on a stage is a clear give-away.
And if you want to consider who actually has special status, you might look at the discussion on the bechdel movie test over at fivethirtyeight:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-dollar-and-cents-case-against-hollywoods-exclusion-of-women/
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