If I were an affected minority (I am a minority but not in any of the ways that are currently fashionable) I would not want to be highlighted because I am a minority. That is treating people like they are animals in a zoo. What I would want to see is people like me quietly working in their field and really, truly appearing (and being) equal to their peers.
Which is amazing, in a way, that that even needs to be specified. That the majority is so incapable of empathizing with their peers and it seems the only visible response is to highlight "diversity" by pointing to diversity hires. Gag -- WASPs :/
I feel the exact same way. Unfortunately, my opinion is often dismissed on this issue because I'm half white or my minority representation isn't underrepresented enough.
Meanwhile many people in tech, specifically women and URMs, who have spent so much time focusing on them being a women or URM in tech are now upset that they're being viewed as just that.
If I had a daughter I wouldn't want her to see that video. I think I would literally cover her eyes and ears. Sure, it's helpful for a little girl to know that there are female pilots. But I think that a kid seeing that kind of propaganda just helps build a complex for thinking women are less than men and need to make videos like that.
I'm a short guy, within the bottom few percentile of male height in the US. Being this short has been highly correlated with decreased wages and significant decreases in attractiveness. Can you imagine a video with a lot of short people saying "X company values short people. You short people can do whatever you want. Us short people are strong together. See, short people can become executives!" Makes me sick just thinking about it.
How do any women at all support this kind of thing?
I'm white and male and live in the US. But I am also short and suddenly understood things a different way, reading what you wrote.
EDIT: As mentioned to in another comment, "Special treatment feels condescending."
Man, it's beyond irritating to see this kind "what's the big deal? just chill" type rhetoric used in this context. Particularly because it's a hard-fought (and ongoing) battle to stop this _same exact logic_ from being used to deflate complaints about what it's like for underrepresented minorities in the workplace.
They're usually pretty unfalsifiable, but they're not unreasonable, and the line of acceptable discourse has been firmly drawn to exclude questioning them.
I'm skeptical that you're actually unaware of these rebuttals: if I said to someone something like "what's the big deal, who cares that you're the only Latina in this company, the only one making a big deal out of it is you", I'm sure these rebuttals would readily come to mind. If not because you believe them, then at least because they're so ubiquitous.
Deciding that they're appropriate just because you disagree with the specific policy being criticized is kind of weaselly.
Edit: For the record, I'm a bisexual Mexican woman. Of course there are times when I perceive people as holding my hand too much and I know it can feel condescending. When I reflect on it, though, no, it's not the same brand of condescension that made my middle school teacher tell me I had no future in math. There's something strange about victimizing yourself out of fear that people are victimizing you.
An internship program for women at Microsoft isn't a ghetto; it can only come from a place of extreme privilege and ignorance to believe so.
> "Why not offer everyone an 'intern buddy'"
Female interns could have complained about sexual harassment, female interns could have had lower rates of accepting return offers, etc.
> "Also, why change from opt-in to opt-out"
The program had been going on for a while. They could have had data that suggested that female interns would be interested in such a program but had fears about bringing it to the attention of their managers or had fears of the repercussions of being one of the few who accepted.
I was the "intern buddy", and the policy was for all incoming interns regardless of their gender.
The transition from college to work life can be challenging for many people (it was for me, I wish I had an intern buddy), regardless of their gender.
Do you think that men may not need similar help. "intern buddy" doesn't imply a gender role, and maybe should choose to be an inclusive concept instead of exclusive.
The also could have just winged it and made the decision without backing data based on the advice of a gender studies professional.
What I really don't understand is how we men can act so innocent about all this. "Oh, I was just asking a question," "I didn't force her to do anything," "she was free to decline," "what, how could you not want help? Think of all the [rationalizations]!" and so on....
Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Intentions are as clear as the sky on a sunny day...
People who see others as equals treat people differently than those who think they see a potential partner, or victim, or lackey...
EDIT: Also, "mansplaining"
You sound like the kind of person I would avoid interacting with at all costs because anything could result in non productive conflict. Have you considered people might be reacting to your hostility not your gender?
And yet...
Benevolent sexism is still sexism.
...and as with much of this stuff, much of it depends on context -- body language, situation, phrasing, intonation, and so on. A perfectly routine request or offer can quickly become patronizing depending on the manner in which it is asked, or by who. The vibe that I got from the original article was HOPPERS was one of those things -- help, ostensibly, but unnecessary and patronizing. Not in the same category as Mr. Sweetie Manager but still offensive.
"Paternalistic" is the word that pops into my head. I really like "condescending" too.
Projecting the belief that we know what's best for other people, the arrogance, is why so many hate "liberal elites" like me. Whereas I'm trying to figure out ways to empower others, many of my cohort continue to unwittingly disempower others.
I definitely don't have any useful answers, insights.
(Aside: "liberal elites" are the mirror image of the "fundamentalists", for lack of better terms, who also know what's best for other people. This is not a left vs right issue.)
As for the word ghetto, that is what came to mind when I read the part in Maria's post about special awards for women in tech.
It would have been fine if I had gotten an email describing the program and inviting me to participate. Instead, I got an email from a stranger, completely unannounced, saying "Hi, I'm your intern buddy!"
It was the assumption that I needed help because I'm a woman that I found condescending. I'm not saying programs like this aren't good, or that nobody needs them, it was the blanket application to an entire group without consulting them first that I took issue with. The difference between a safe space and segregation is whether or not your participation is voluntary. Had it been offered as an invitation I might have even taken them up on it, but nobody bothered to ask first. It was just assumed that because I'm female, I needed help. I disagreed.
Nothing can be described as meritocratic because meritocracy is a myth.
Have you ever heard the argument that donating free clothing to Africa is actually bad for Africans? The idea is that by providing free clothing, you destroy the local industries which allow Africans to create clothing for themselves, eliminating jobs, introducing dependency, and eliminating the possibility of a native African-style clothing industry flourishing and eventually exporting products and enriching the community. [1]
Charity comes with a counterintuitive hazard: any time you do something for someone that they could do for themselves, you make them weaker. You deprive them of the independence and control that doing it themselves would offer them, and you reduce the development of their own infrastructure for doing the task the next time.
Charity must attempt to make people stronger. Reduce the impact of a crisis while people recover. Give otherwise unattainable support while the person develops in ways they couldn't without it. Philosophically, funding startups, not donating products.
I'm not saying donating things is always bad . . . it depends on the effects. Charity is hard, I think more because it's hard to figure out how to help people, than because it's hard to be unselfish. I think there are a lot of cases where it's hard to anticipate what the effects will be, which is why it's so important to study what you're doing and see if you're actually helping. It's very easy to do harm while intending to do good. But the rough criterion I use comes from an old song about charity in Africa, and argues that the right attitude to have is, "I want to see you shine / See your light not mine." In a charitable effort -- is the focus on the generosity of the giver? Or is it about what the recipient can achieve and become, with the giver's help being a footnote?
A formalized mentorship seems like a marginal case, one you could argue worked either way. It's giving the new employee knowledge and extra help about the firm, a running start, if you will. Where's the harm in that?
The harm is that the new employee would normally acquire these things herself by asking coworkers, and in the process would learn who she could ask about what, and would begin establishing peer relationships that she will use throughout her career. The implication that she cannot do this for some reason isolates her, and giving her an artificial source of support weakens her ability to find her own support. This would be a bad thing if that artificial support ever went away, but in a way, it's almost a worse thing if it sticks around, because the result is the new employee relying on an inferior network to the one she would have developed herself.
The term ghetto to me implies that all the capable and competent people moved away, leaving the poorest ones stuck with just each other. A targeted system which isolates and coddles new employees will have just that effect -- they'll have the impression that it's the system and each other they can talk to, leaving them with a much, much poorer network than if they had just been introduced to the veteran coworkers as if that were perfectly normal which it is.
I'm right there with you in that this sort of thing shouldn't be taken personally. People intend it helpfully, and that charitable impulse should be honored (if perhaps gently educated, too). But I myself have always been very suspicious of programs targeting women, because there are a lot of people in the world who want to Help Women and I always suspect those programs are about their glory and pro-womanness or whatever, and more likely to harm me than do me any good, even if I can't see right away why that might be. I think my chances are better on my own, and anyway -- I'd prefer to have a similar experience to others in my field in the ways I can, to help me integrate into the new group.
Helping people develop and become stronger is difficult, even in the most concrete cases. It's not dissimilar to raising a child -- you argue one minute that relieving their frustration by making a task easier will give them the boost they need to do something even greater, and argue the next that letting them fail will make them stronger and they will eventually succeed on their own. It's an art more than it is a science, but I think as long as you are teaching something you understand and guiding someone toward mastery, you are pretty safe. But I definitely think it is much safer to devise solutions to help concrete cases than to help statistics. If I see you need help finding the break room, it is easy to conclude that giving you directions will be helpful. Providing you a buddy preemptively because certain classes of employee are less likely to ask for directions easily . . . seems more dubious in its effect. I understand the impulse, but I really think it is safest to stick to the concrete, and to help the people around you and solve the problems you can clearly identify directly.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mariah-griffinangus/africa-char...
Forced participation is never a good thing when it comes to this type of stuff, but to have the money to send those who do wish to participate to events that help those who feel excluded, to feel included is certainly valuable in its own way.
It's one thing to give people the space and support they ask for. It's quite another to shove space and support, unsolicited, upon them.
At the same time I bet that if this was offered to, at least some of, the men I've worked with it would take two weeks until everyone was informed of how important the program was for the organisation. While in reality they would use it to create informal networks within the same to further their own careers. Few of them would ever admit being singled out for any other reason than being an exceptional asset to the people around them. A fact that preferably would be indicated by their salary.
I can definitely see how getting special attention could be annoying. But at some point loudly objecting about something because it's only for women becomes not so flattering for women as a group.
This is exactly how I felt during my Microsoft internship in 1998 when the internal women's organization, HOPPERS, decided to change their successful "intern buddy" program from opt-in to opt-out. (Well, not really opt-out, because until I got upset with them about it they clearly never considered that anyone might want to opt out.) Despite being only one of two women, both interns, on a team of 40 people, I never felt anything other than welcomed by my team and never felt singled out or harassed because of my gender. As such, I felt quite insulted by the assumption that I needed an "intern buddy" just because I'm a woman in a male-dominated field. A long email thread with the head of the organization ensued, and in the end I did not have the intern buddy that I never asked for in the first place.
I wholeheartedly support the self-organization of underrepresented groups to create safe spaces. However, when participation in such efforts is compelled by things like special awards for members of underrepresented groups in tech or being assigned an "intern buddy" without your knowledge or consent just because you are a member of an underrepresented group, that's not a safe space. That's a ghetto.