If you are a man in tech,
read this please 👇
Discussion
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@Em0nM4stodon A friend of mine studied for a technology degree a few years ago, and it was awful the things that men said about women in public places, like in class chat. These were young people, in a generally progressive country! She felt terrible there and told me that some women might have left because of that derogatory atmosphere. :blobCatAngry
“It’s common for those who don’t experience inequality to ignore or deny its prevalence. What we need is more engagement, observation, listening – and ultimately allyship, from men in tech,”
@Em0nM4stodon I do wish we could transform this problem somewhat. It seems to me that we are trying to require a strong social sense from people who steriotypically have weak social senses.
Unfortunatly, the best I can come up with on the spot is an analogy - maybe something to do with how the world runs on Apple, but women were born with incompatible hardware, so now we are stuck running inefficient emulation layers to keep up with a world that keeps trying to break our compatibility?
![Comic by NATHANWPYLE(?)
2 eagles sitting in armchairs, one reading a newspaper, the other holding a cup of coffee and a saucer
The coffee drinking one: - Do you think the owl is a predator?
- No, of course not, he's never bothered me.
- Exactly.
[Pause while he takes a sip of coffee.]
- No idea what Mr Mouse was going on about.](https://todon.eu/system/media_attachments/files/115/838/731/518/354/399/original/0006c015dd655770.jpg)
@Em0nM4stodon I would like to be able to say the women in the same team as me are genuinely treated equally to the men. However, there are no women in the team so it’s a moot point. 😞
@Wifiwits Something to work on then.
Of course women aren’t treated equally.
There are so many ways women are not treated equally throughout society and this occurs from personal to large scale structural domains A great deal of this appears to be mostly invisible to men unless they are wired/socialized to be interested in how other folks experience the world and paid attention.
I’m curious about the thinking and perspectives of the 6% of men that answered YES.
as a 'man in tech' i'm baffled that 80% of 'men in tech' would say women are treated equally...I'd expect the number to be bad but not *that bad*.
I could belive 80% would say *they* treat women equally (which is obviously also false) but my head is actually spinning at that figure.
@jon I think it's rather easily explained. Most people don't consciously treat women worse, it's usually implicit bias learned growing up in a deeply biased society. So the smaller scale incidents, microaggressions, etc. don't even register.
And of course, it's easier to notice you got the shorter end of the stick rather than the longer one; eg., it's hard not to despair when applying for a bunch of jobs with perfectly fine credentials and only get rejections, but most people won't think twice getting a job first try…
@stepheneb @Em0nM4stodon
But don't #menintech talk to #womenintech ?
Clearly not.
No one leads with this for obvious reasons, but every woman I know well enough to have a real conversation with (in tech or not) has plenty of stories to tell about harassment, marginalization and many out right assault before we even get to the complicated things like micro aggressions and structural/institutional misogyny.
@Em0nM4stodon the irony of this is that at the end of the article there is one comment in the comment section that just proves the issue. Obviously they don't moderate their comments section.
@Em0nM4stodon not surprising sadly. I DON’T work in tech anymore for this reason. My experience inside these companies was why I became an organizer.