From Ageism to Sexism
by Miki SaxonIt’s pretty obvious that ageism is alive and well in tech.
As is sexism, which you can see from the email a female CEO received from an engineer she tried to hire.
But far worse are these examples of what women in tech face, exemplified by the latest bit of app stupidity.
“Titstare is an app where you take photos of yourself staring at tits.” –David Boulton and Jethro Batts at the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon
Not to mention those who defended it.
“It is not misogyny to tell a sexist joke, or to fail to take a woman seriously, or to enjoy boobies” –Pax Dickinson, co-founder and CTO, Glimpse Labs
Or the incredible level of ignorance and pure stupidity exemplified by White_N_Nerdy on Reddit.
“I’m honestly trying to understand why anyone says that females are ‘needed’ in the tech industry.” He continued: “The tech community works fine without females, just like any other mostly male industry. Feminists probably just want women making more money.”
Being old enough to remember, medicine, research and law were “mostly male” industries not that long ago—as were college and advanced degrees.
In the comments section of the article, many women say that prior to the Nineties women developers and engineers weren’t subject to nearly as much abusive harassment, which matches my memories from when I was a tech recruiter in the late Seventies through the Eighties.
What happened?
Please join me tomorrow for a look at what may be an epiphany of cause and effect for both ageism and sexism.
Flickr image credit: KAZ Vorpal
April 15th, 2014 at 1:15 am
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