Why do some female programmers place emphasis on their gender?

It's always: female programmer... Female web developer... Female android dev... Female Sysadmin... Etc

I mean, you don't see males saying "I'm a male programmer."

Female programmers aren't rare anymore. More and more of them are starting to program, so what's the point of emphasizing your gender?

For some reason, females think it's "special" to be a female programmer.

How does your gender relate to your skill?

#genderEquality -.-

Im not a woman, but I'll try empathy ;) I think maybe the disparity is still quite sizable, but besides that I think anytime minority groups do things that contradict stereotype it's noteworthy. I get a good feeling when I hear that women, blacks, gays or anyone really, beats the odds society both intentionally and unintionally places on them. But it's not just about statistics, rather the humanity behind them... I feel good about having lived in a time when the US saw the first black president not just because we checked that off the list, but because he was the first and he did an amazing job. I feel good when women break thru glass ceilings not just because they're women, but because they're signalling to me that humanity is important to some of us, and maybe the world isn't as bad as it seems at times. 'Winning' as individuals, financially, material gains, etc. that is just much less impressive to me. Just my two cents. I'm always happy to see balance emerging in society.

@Condor
I'm female so no one has the right to call me sexist. :)

@Condor
I would use my typical "I identify as a trashcan" line, but I won't make the same mistake here as I did on SL. It's one of the reasons why people were annoyed with me lol.

Today the world has a problem... A biiig problem

The world has forgotten that we are all， and everything around us are onions.

Yes i do not shit you when i say you are an onion.

Your a dev but also a female. So sometimes your a female dev others your just a dev.

When people think they are one piece of the onion more than the onion they loose themselves...

Never forget.... You are an onion...

@agaskins You said it, and you said it beautifully <3

@Condor Nice to see another helicopters!! I thought I was the only one.

I am a male programmer.

@Michelle Just logon to Instagram and you'll be able to see a dozen of "female programmers" who are trying to showcase their skills by posting pictures!!

I don't say I'm a male programmer. I say and emphasis I'm a lazy programmer.

They are trying to gathering the diversity crowd. You know, those that anti-discriminate themselves into discrimination and allowing someone to work there longer without knowing anything just because it makes their numbers in diversity look better. I'd rather be "surprised" by a programmer being female without it being announced so forward like that personally. Tells me you are more likely to know your stuff, rather than gaming the system. Or warning me that you're going to be a problem if I hire you... But that's probably why I'm not in HR nor a manager... Too much paperwork.

Well, I guess, there's a reason for that. We need to accept that women are less in number in tech jobs. And if I talk about countries other then developed (US, UK, Australia etc.) situation is even worse. Though I accept that, there number are increasing over the year.
In my city, New Delhi (India). There is a group called 'Women Who Code". The motto of the group is to encourage, motivate girl to come to tech industry. I don't find anything wrong in this- Women encouraging other women. Also, in smaller cities people aren't aware about tech jobs. So there those groups are really doing great job.

@Abhimanyu100 The point of this rant is the literal job title being "female <anything>", which is a bit too much, formally seperating women from male colleagues.

If someone says "Im an female X" then why shouldnt i say "im a *male* X". The same goes for any other combination. "Im a gay waiter" - "Congrats, Im a straight one". "Im black, but I still work in a bank" - "Im white, but i still work in a bank". The other way around it sounds just ridiculous to me. And it is not coincidence that i named "ethnical minorities" first because this is usually what you get to hear.

@filthyranter. Yeah you are correct. There's no point in mentioning female everyone.

@romangraef. Being male/straight/white and something is so rediculius because you didn't have to overcome any prejudices to be white and something, you don't have to make x less on the dollar because you're male and something, you didn't have to be brave to tell people you were straight and something... You surely have struggled with things, been brave with things and overcome prejudices of your own, but it wasn't because you were white, straight or male. And I bet you don't hesitate to tell people what you are brave about or struggle with or had to overcome... That's all those people are doing too. Just because it involves their race, sexuality or gender doesn't cheapen your experiences or devalue your whiteness or straightness, but telling others their experiences are not valid because they're tied to those things fundamentally is the very definition of ignorance my friend. Wake up and have some compassion. No one's taking anything away from you when they say what you pointed out.

because it's easier to become a "diversity" hire when you advertise your flavor of "diversity" and, let's be honest, who wouldn't want to use such an advantage, when the society provides it?

Preeeaaaaccchhhh!!!!

@agaskins If someone, anyone, has a problem because of their ethinicity and they have overcome that it sure is something to be proud of. My problem is when some people come and tell me those awesome things about how they got that job despite being XXX, when there wasn't even some kind of general bias against them. Example: Maybe my head teacher is a racist. Or the person who told me it was so hard to get on this school and they only could get in after spending 3 years at another school is just bad at school and didn't have high enough grades to go on a gymnasium. Well lets wait for the first test: he got a 5/6... where six is the worst. If someone tells me they have managed to get a job despite having so many people not believing in them, because they are XXX and they are good at their thing, they earn me respect, but if they had no problems at all or aren't good at this thing it is just tiring. (I have to go to school. See you again in ~4hours)

@Michelle What I hate more than people using the term "female programmer" (because who cares what gender really... It's 2018, grow up) is women complaining about it, but actually using it to their advantage in obvious and disgusting ways.
I'm not implying you're doing this, but I do know someone who does.

Virtue signalling.

Well, I mean, you hear about companies and recruiters looking for female developers all the time so I guess it can be used as a merit.

@Midnigh-shcode

Here in germany there are positions where it says,

Because of diversity, female candidates will advance male candidates when having equal qualification

Here nobody says female developer, since it marks you as a pitty candidate

I'll try to start referring myself as Male Developer.

Because it's still a male dominated profession. And employers are looking to diversify, which is a good business move. Thus, people take every advantage they can get on their resume which is just a smart career move. A little redundant obnoxious and on-the-nose? Sure. But as long as they can do their job, I really couldn't care less.

#++Equality

BECUZ MAN CAN CODE WIT PEENIS, WOMAN CAN NOT, SO WOMAN WIL NEVAR GET JOB ON JQWERIE!!!

Hey guess what. I identify as a cat. I give no fucks about anything but food. I'll just put it in my resume "I'm a feline developer"

I have never ever seen a girl who places emphasis on her gender when describing herself as programmer or dev. Where do you find these people?

I don't think I ever heard any woman refer to herself as a female programmer (unless relevant). However, at least half of the time when I tell somebody what my profession is, théy feel the need to point out my gender.
The underlying 'problem', if any, is obviously the same, but I can't relate to this rant at all.

People mostly try to find places they belong to so that they feel safer, stronger, etc.Given the latest few years' ongoing shitstorms on encouraging these acts, we see more of this in many subjects every day.

Once I came upon a sentence on a book I read: "We forgot how to be human while trying hard being men and women".

This sentence pretty sums up this gender equality, gender opposition, etc situations IMHO.

@wilhelmina there are websites and clubs for female devs in my country.

@wilhelmina this tbh. It strikes me kinda like when people complain about triggered femminists and people these days, but fail to bring up more that like 3 people that demonstrate that.

Basically stuff where you can ask "but who does that". (Something which i was blot ked by The CEO of NPM for asking)

Fun fact: programming was mostly done by females in the beginning.

@zeknoss We have these clubs here as well, but they are small. But I don't think that is really a female dev thing. In all parts of society there all-female-whatever-clubs. It seems to me that women just feel more of a need to unite then men.

@electrineer Indeed. And then as conditions improved, individuals got to choose for themselves what profession they wanted. The rest is history.

@NOPSledRider as I remember reading, the shift "coincided" with the launch of the personal computer and the fact it was marketed as a boy toy :(

EDIT:
Source: https://npr.org/sections/money/...

@wilhelmina it's because most clubs are male by default. They claim it's because of the lack of women joining, then they say ideas like you can see all in this thread of false equality, or equality but only with qualifiers. Shure most clubs don't keep women out directly but any person can see the mechanisms at work if they take off the blinders. Just like these rampant ideas that there are women or minorities actively abusing the 'equality' process... That's just one of those things we tell ourselves to justify our bias without feeling so ignorant. Im a straight white male human, but I've seen it in every group and job I've been involved in. It's why I don't particularly enjoy either. There's always an in-crowd that carefully guards themselves and maintains a status quo at all costs. Sure there may be abusers of equality laws, but it's rare, in my experience the minority hires usually end up having to prove themselves moreso than their 'majority peers'.

@Flygger If someone describing something as a 'boytoy' is enough to discourage people from going after it, they weren't THAT keen for starters.

@NOPSledRider true, but if it's marketed as being for boys or men, you don't necessarily see it as an option, and with the things possible and available to do on computers at the time were linked to typical male interests (i.e. driving fast and shooting stuff) it's easy to see why fewer females got started...

These status quo groups I mentioned eat it up when they find a female that bashes other females or the black guy that used the N word with them, or the gay that lets them call him 'faggot' like it's endearing... and then they go on believing they're diverse and supporting some 'true diversity' with their 'token friends'. It's sad once you see the psychology at play... The desparity of some to fit in and the way other seem to prey upon it and use it to justify and promote a weird sort of corrupted 'false equality'. I think this sort of thought and behavior is in some ways worse than the more overt hatred and prejudices because it's so subtle that it can get in to the thought process of anyone that isn't super vigilent in questioning why they believe the things they believe (which is probably most us at times, I'm not perfect at it either). These sorts of ideas are like virii for the mind, as they are so easy to get behind if you are not careful and look below the surface.

@wilhelmina I don't know, I've never wanted to presented myself with a gender, country, sports club, age, etc but my well earned qualities, every time I come upon a society with identification benefits I feel sorry.

@Flygger Fair enough, but it doesn't explain the present day gap. People are free to choose whatever field they want, and have been for decades. This is the result of that freedom. Men and women have different interests, there's mountains to support that claim available for anyone who wishes to take part of it. It's trendy now since the post modernistic neo-marxism insanity wave swept to world to propose that these differences are "social constructs", which is complete and utter nonsense. I say embrace our differences instead, enjoy and accept people as they are. Stop manically trying to put the exact number of each gender in every field like some OCD-marathon. Let each and every one choose what they want and let the chips fall where they may.

@zeknoss I can understand why you wouldn't want that. In the end we all want to be a unique personality. At the same time presenting yourself as, or only considering yourself to be, part of a certain 'group' can be tremendously helpful for both blending in and standing out in a group.

@wilhelmina Maybe most people would want that from the reason you gave but as I said I would like to be defined by my actions and choices, not by things I have no control over. Neither standing out in a group nor being unique is something I aspire to.

@NOPSledRider what you're talking about is a case when a company in a place that already has trouble filling tech positions has trouble meeting the so called 'quota'. But these are edge cases, although possibly valid issues to be worked out, these don't reflect the whole. The system is there because of a problem. Big problems that have been addressed in case studies and court rooms. There's no shortage of minority kids going towards tech jobs, of all gender, color etc. So we owe it to them to fix this problem of bias and clear hiring and pay descrepancies towards women and minorities. It doesn't meant that the system is perfect, but to claim it's broken and not needed based on a few edge cases is in fair.

@NOPSledRider what you're talking about is a case when a company in a place that already has trouble filling tech positions has trouble meeting the so called 'quota'. But these are edge cases, although possibly valid issues to be worked out, these don't reflect the whole. The system is there because of a problem. Big problems that have been addressed in case studies and court rooms. There's no shortage of minority kids going towards tech jobs, of all gender, color etc. So we owe it to them to fix this problem of bias and clear hiring and pay descrepancies towards women and minorities. It doesn't meant that the system is perfect, but to claim it's broken and not needed based on a few edge cases is in fair.

@zeknoss You are probably not going to (want to) agree with me on this, but aren't big parts of those choices and actions influenced by all these things you have no control over?

[cont.] I've worked at several small companies where I overheard comments about minority hires and meeting quota... Almost Everytime a minority was hiired. Thing is, those companies weren't even large enough to meet those requirements, some people just say that 'its quotas' whenever a minority is hired at a job, and that's the real problem... Latent ignorance and prejudices that we explain away with these fake tales we hear so often they 'must be true'. Yet they seldom are.

@wilhelmina I am responsible over whatever free will I have. I had many big choices in my life that would define me one way or another.

Eg: Last summer I resigned from a very large government contractor, rejecting a shitload of money after a month when I suspected and verified they were wasting / hosing taxes of my country.

The real choices are about morality, not the color of your clothes or how much money you earn a month.

How did we go from equality to color of clothing?! These are the imaginary issues I was referring to earlier, the things we conjure up to justify that for which there is no logical justification. Just like trying to say 'morality' is more important... When few things can be said to be more about morality than equality! ...but when the target is moved to 'color of clothes' what more can we really debate? :(

@agaskins why do you think it is not debatable anymore, whatever argument you have you can say, I did not carry the subject to color, just pointed out my view of choices.

@agaskins I've read your text a couple of times now but I think I'm missing your point, I don't understand what you are trying to say. Regarding the pay discrepancy between genders: the professions where females are over represented generally pay less than the professions where men are over represented. Thus, men on average make more money. Men also die more often on the job doing hazardous work, work longer hours, move long distances for job opportunities and don't get pregnant. The pay discrepancy IS real, but the interpretation of the statistics is wrong. It's not oppression, as 'they' would have you believe; it's a matter of a choice. Your choice.

@zeknoss Im sorry if I didn't state that last line about 'what else to debate' clearly! It did leave a bit to interpretation. To clarify, what I meant is how can anyone have a debate if the topic, that of equality (if I've followed the conversation's evolution correctly), is a) not considered a moral problem at the point, and b) has been reduced to pure non sequitur (why is clothing color even mentioned?). Im really just a bit nonplussed over the state of concensus here that equality laws are not based in any substance and just result in nothing positive (plenty of examples in comments above). At this point I'd really just be repeating myself anyways, so I'll leave the floor open to my fellow devRanters, haha. -- that's really what I was getting at with my 'what more can we really debate' comment (along with a hefty bit of elaboration for the sake of clarity).

@NOPSledRider the factors you mention are just that factors. Of what percentage they contribute is debatable, but to believe that those things account for the totality of this thing we call ‘inequality’ seems a bit naive...

@agaskins I believe you thought I initially replied to a reply but initially I only replied to OP. After wilhelmina answered me, the conversation went between us two. If you want to understand what I've been trying to say to whom, you must follow that path :) Cheers.

@agaskins Ah, I see! It's friday night and I'm off for my debauchery. If you are interested in these topics I would highly recommend you watch the 'interview' turned debate between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman from channel 4 on youtube. She throws all of the oppression arguments and the kitchen sink at him and gets a refreshing dose of objective reality in response. Food for thought. Enjoy your weekend!

Because otherwise people assume you are male (or transgender). The industry is still predominantly male, and women have been fighting for so long to be treated based on their skills and not their biological sex that announcing it is like, "I'm not male and I am actually doing this, so you keeping me out was wrong."

The fact you are asking is another symptom of why it happens. Unless you've been oppressed since the beginning of time, you'll never understand it.

@agaskins You're freaking amazing. Thank you.

I don't know. In my uni there were 3 female students for 25 males. So I would say it is a rare occurance. 2 of them were waaaay better than me and finished with a distinction. Never once did they point out their gender. If anything they were mostly gender neutral.

Because se need to divide to be equal, that is why there are also women only or women oriented tech summits, conferences and conventions.

Yeah I know, it does not make sense.
It's like women mansplaining shit to each other, I find it hilarious and very very stupid.

Divide and conquer.
The question that has to be asked is: who wants to divide us?

It's worse when people put that title on you. I want to be treated like a software developer that just so happens to be a girl.
Get all stressed out that they are putting a different standard on me and that I'm actually an awful developer in the grand scheme of things and I really only have this job because I'm a girl and they are fitting a quota.

@adorkable i saw this thing about quotas, feminist ask for hirying women right? Like for management, development, anything high pay.

So this dude replies "why?, can't women achieve this on their own?"

And the dude is right! We do not need quotas, we need to stop seeing gender and start seeing talent. Quotas are just a bad patch to a problem, a fucking ugly patch.

@lavandysh it's surprising to me that you are including yourself to this. Nice catch :)

Oh and nope. I was just lurking here all the time and enjoying the comments lmfao

Maybe because they want the techies to recognise them? Maybe some are looking for the feeling of belonging, no matter how counterintuitive that might sound? Some might be trying to build a network and some may be trying to abuse the system. There are all sorts of people, male OR female.

And why would you be bothered by that? Does it change anything about how you are doing your job? Does it influence you in any way that these women are pointing out that the pseudo- default of "male" is not correct for them?

Truly, it is inconsequential. But you're still here complaining that women are not doing things as YOU think they should. Why not let them decide for themselves if their gender is important to point out.

Oh, and feel free to add "male" to your job title. I mean, it's not like the default assumption for a technical role is still "male" in people's minds.

@miau michelle is female...

And adding the gender to a jobtitle is sexism in my eys. So shes absolute right about that.

Oh, and seeing that you're a woman, what kind of shit is this? Do you think you're getting "Cool Girl Points" by shitting on other women?

Have you any idea how fucking ridiculous it is for women out there still?

But no, let's appeal to the men by pointing out that women doing a thing is stupid and OMG look how cool I am because I'm not doing it I only measure myself by "skill"; but you're totally ignoring the fact that the unconscious biases against women leads people to evaluate women's skills as lesser in the first place. "But I am a woman and therefore can't be sexist" you say. I call bullshit.

Really think about this shit and challenge your own internal misogyny.

@miau read the text properly since you clearly did not, i am a male.

And in countrast to your sexistic screatching all that counts for my and the big majority of companies is how well a individual writes code and suits into the team.

The only sexism i witnessed was in the 90s by a CTO who said woman can't code and hes dead by now.

reminds me about the Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman interview where cathy stated that only 7 out of the top 100 companies have a woman running it. Jordan pointed out that being the head of something is a very competitive lifestyle... so Cathy suggested that mabey the they introduce more feminine traits to the other companies so the women dont have to compete with the men for these positions....
(i know its a media stunt but quite a few feminists actually seem to think the same)

@lavandysh It's a good thing that America is not the whole world then

@miau
Women who do that are dividing themselves from me.

It's like there are two groups, a male one and female one.

What's the point of dividing male and female programmings when in reality, our gender doesn't matter. We're all programmers and nothing matters except our skill.

Age, gender, and race isn't important.

You must be one of those women who think they're superior to others.

@lavandysh It might be. I've never stated that other countries are better. I'm just saying that from my experience it's very rare in Denmark at least.

There is a female only computer science club at my school. But there is no regular club that makes can join.

Imma git out of here...

Maybe @Alice can tell us more about the reasons for it

@Alice yeah sometimes I imagine being a girl in tech is like the early age of being a girl in a online game 😂

@Abhimanyu100 there's nothing wrong with groups or organizations encouraging women to code and to be apart of the tech industry. However I would say it becomes a problem when it segregates people by sex. What I mean by that is even though the intentions of the group is good they need to focus on working in mix gender environments in the real world. Nothing good comes with segregation. putting too much emphasis on sex rather than skill without proper guidance is a sign of going down that road.

Male model, male nurse, male midwife

You just reminded theres a job posting for a game developer and they end the advertisment with hey so it'd be nice if you were female, diversity blah blah blah.

It's super hard to get a game dev job in nz (not a lot of companies, market is very young) and no i have less of a chance because one company would favour gender.

Oh wait there was two postings, the second one was building games for girls in their teens and they would favour a female developer over a male one, guess what it's been sitting in advertisement for months now!

:/

Don't prefix anything with gender except where its needed like on toilets. Why does gender have to be stated all the time?!

Just seen another one "Black girls code". Going to start a new one, '6ft+ with a BMI of 20-23 and green eyes code"

@irene had to smile when i saw you + my comment:)

@irene just because in our ither debate i was refering to this comment ina way but eas not sure how to refer you to it. But you ended up finding it anyway.

So i was smiling with you not against you ;)

@irene ho. Female gamers -_-

@irene crying is part of life. If you dont cry then
You dont smile!

@irene that women are onions? I agree with you thats false! You were just playing me!

@irene okay. Ill give you this one! 😓

@michelle Are you on Instagram? I’d like to post this on my Story and give you credit.

@alphaCoder
Sure, go ahead. :)
My username is: a_regular_trashcan

Queue the Silicon Valley episode with "I'm not a female engineer, I'm an engineer."

When you start reading a thread and then notice how tiny the scroll bar is...

Fucking feminists ---__---

Yeaaa I think some of them think flashing their boobs means they get an instant job in nerd land. I tend to scare the shit out of guys; it's great!!! They're all like "Oh look a girl we can perv" and then by the end of the day they're like "PLEASE NO MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT OUR SHITTY CODE BASE AND DONT ASK WHY WE HARDCODED EVERYTHING"

but still, female devs are minority and I think they need to add female prefix for "gender equality"

It's not that we're better than everyone else cos we're developers but we don't follow the fucking trends and were not afraid to do what we wanted to do and that says something we are special.... We're not sheep 🐑
And most likely this career wasn't for status or money it wasn't a choice.. it was something we fell into because we genuinely love computers since for ever and it's just meant to be . Because who in their right minds would choose to go against the statistics lol or maybe it's just me #intp

Well I think it is very good, necessary and appropriate to emphasize on the female because it is still not a common thing we see every day. Female programmers are rare and I always respect those I come across because it ain't easy being a successful female programmer right now, so "SALUTE" to all ye "FEMALE" programmers out there keep up the good work.

@V4LKR15

However, even their job title literally describes them as "female software engineer", they are seperating themselves from male engineers and the other women that don't seperate themselves.

Perhaps we want more women in the field, but is treating them like a holy artifact because they are interested in something and also happen to be female the right way? I think not.
(1/2)

(2/2) In Germany and Austria, there's a search for *specifically* male kindergarteners and nurses. However, again, should gender warrant special treatment because of scarcity in a field?

They are specifying the quality of work you can expect from them