The defensiveness on display is due in large part to the idea that saying something is “sexist” means that it’s deliberately and malciously hateful to women.

I don’t know which would be more difficult: Convincing people of that idea, or coming up with a new word that implies neglect or blind spots instead of malice. I’ve been trying the latter with regards to race, without success.

Oops. I meant “Convincing people that idea IS WRONG.”

I just wish she’d stop being so passive-aggressive about it and just blurt out “You got knocked up… AGAIN?”

The defensiveness on display is due in large part to the idea that saying something is “sexist” means that it’s deliberately and malciously hateful to women.

And to a more malicious extent you also have dudes who get defensive at the notion that women’s subjective experience should be taken into account when designing a product such as this. They make the typical move of assuming that a default undefined person is going to be male, but when challenged on that assumption, double down on it instead of rethinking it.

I mean, I’m not saying that that was the attitude that Siri’s designers had, but that is the reason for a lot of the defensiveness dudes display on the Internet whenever you point out that women have experiences too.

Well, putting it out there is what will get Apple to include this stuff in the future. They’ve officially come out and said that it’s not intentional, so presumably it’ll make it in. No need for people to get all defensive because someone called Siri sexist. Though I do have to put out there the possibility that this is not about neglect per se, but as Apple called it, a bug or glitch. We don’t know whether that’s the truth or just Apple covering its ass for an embarrassing omission, but Yelp knows what to do when you put in “abortion clinic,” and Siri sends these things to Yelp for an answer, and it’s hard to understand why it can’t figure out to do that with “abortion clinic.”* This is not at all to say that Silicon Valley in general and Apple in particular doesn’t have a problem with this kind of stuff (shit, Apple’s executive leadership is like Whitey McManville over there, it’s not like they lead the pack on this. But on the other hand, they do make a real effort to make their advertising appeal to men and women (they’re smart enough to realize that if you make men and women happy, you sell more shit), so I’m guessing they’ll want to fix this. So, yay for this issue being publicized.

Sorry, to clarify, a bug being distinct from “we neglected to link this specific query to a command to access Yelp with it in our database.” The former is clear failure to consider a large subset of possible users, the latter is murkier - it could be neglect, due to insufficient testing of possible requests, or a bug that wasn’t detectable prior to large-scale deployment.

I’m a straight white male programmer, and I’ve gotta say that you (and Jill) are right on here.

The technology industry is way too homogenous, so not enough perspectives come into play. The thoroughness of the test cases is only as good as the diversity of thought of the people coming up with them, but it’s easy for us to think “everything our team can think of is all we need to think of.”

It’s also interesting to me that Apple’s defense is that “it’s just a beta.” That’s the sort of answer that Google has always used (often preemptively), while Apple has historically presented everything proudly as finished and well-polished products. Considering that Siri was the star of the iPhone 4S show, it seems like a weak answer from them.

The problem isn’t that anyone involved with this hates women. The problem is that they just don’t think about women very much.

Omitting half of your client base might not be hatred, but it’s still sexism.

I’m glad this has blown up in the consumer market so it gets some publicity.  This kind of thing happens all the time in the programming business, especially open-source programming where 95% of the programmers are young straight white men.  You get stupid and exclusionary jokes all the time and a refusal to change anything because it’s just the way things are.  You also get way too many clueless comments wondering why there aren’t more women in the business.  Make people unwelcome in your club and then wonder why they don’t join it—lots of brilliant thinkers in this business.

The Feministe piece is absolutely hilarious:

Jill: I want my clitoris licked.
Siri: I don’t understand “clitoris.”

Heh.  Indeed.

So, I was thinking that maybe the problem was with the imprecise nature of what was being asked of Siri, but over at Feministe they indicated that if you tell Siri that you “need a blowjob” she has no problem finding escort services for you.

So yeah, they flat out omitted the potential needs of half of their potential client base.

Jeebus, the defensiveness, the condescension, the mansplaining, the butt-obvious stupidity and wrongness of what Apple and its fanboys are singing in chorus.  What the heck will it take for this corporation to lose its cool-kidz prestige? 

Yeah, I know, its misogyny makes it even cooler.

Siri is likely agist and racist as well, because of the dude mentality of the programmers.

Trying to put yourself in the mind of someone else is hard. My Thinkpad came with Notepad and Wordpad installed, so the iPad did not make me automatically think of menstruation. Apple should at least have tried Siri on focus groups. When I was in consumer electronics, we formed test panels of both sexes, and a variety of ages and races.

It’s simply a more benign example of the “Women are Aliens Who Give Me a Stiffie” mindset.

Exactly, Piator.

For what it’s worth, I put both “abortion” and “blow job” into Yelp, which is one of of the services I suspect Siri trawls for information, and I got Planned Parenthood for the first and a bunch of hair salons for the second.

So, I was thinking that maybe the problem was with the imprecise nature of what was being asked of Siri, but over at Feministe they indicated that if you tell Siri that you “need a blowjob” she has no problem finding escort services for you.
So yeah, they flat out omitted the potential needs of half of their potential client base.

Yeah, that puts it in a bad-sounding light. But (and I feel like an asshole bringing it up, because I have no intention of defending sexism) we don’t know how Siri works. How does it transform a request that it clearly understands into a search on Yelp? Having tried this myself on my phone, Siri knows what an abortion clinic *is* (I know because if it doesn’t it says “I don’t know what you mean by [whatever]” and pops up a Google search. How it has links in its database between blow jobs and escort services is unclear to me; Apple, the company that nerds get pissed at because it doesn’t allow porn in the App Store is hard to see as a big fan of having a public image of promoting blow jobs in seedy salons.

The point being, if Siri knows what an abortion clinic is, why can’t it find one? Someone took the time to teach Siri what is meant by “abortion clinic.” If that had not happened, it would be popping up Google searches - at least, based on my experience with Siri. So the problem is in turning the request - which again, Siri understands - into a search on Yelp.

There’s still a lot of room in that space for Apple to have neglected women customers as a group, but it also makes a genuine random screwup in the programming plausible, if you think that it’s weird to take the time to make Siri know what an abortion clinic is, but not bother letting it search for one. But damn, I don’t know anything about this thing works, I could just be making shit up because I can’t let go of the fact that I like their products.

I guess what I think is important is that it get fixed, and that all of the people who are getting defensive about how this couldn’t possibly be a symptom of sexism need to get over themselves. Because there’s a chance that this a random bug, sure, but it’s an endemic issue anyway.

This kind of institutional sexism-by-neglect is in some ways more effective at discriminating against women than the out-front kind. Even women are willing to make excuses for it, and everyone will spend their time arguing whether it really exists. The straightforward he-man woman-hating kind doesn’t try to gaslight you.

I mean, there’s Blow Job Emporium right next to the Food Court in Highland Mall.

GOD, I continue to get mansplaining about how this wasn’t intentional, and it’s because of the databases it trawls. I KNOW. I wrote THREE SEPARATE PIECES that make that VERY clear. There’s something about a lady having opinions about technology that really draws mansplaining out.

Asking Siri for “blowjob”, hell… a guy at work busted out his iPhone and said, “Where da hoes at?”  And it found him an escort service.

That was mind… uh… blowing.

Just did some tests.

A whole bunch of requests to Siri based on looking for reproductive health services don’t work - ask for birth control pills, she doesn’t know where to go, ask about reproductive health services, she can’t find any, etc. Look for Planned Parenthood and that works. Ask about condoms and Siri sends you to drug stores.

Part of the problem for my tests might be location; Siri can’t find me any escorts when I ask for a blow job, either.

There is definitely a systematic inability on Siri’s part to recognize reproductive health services as a specific category. She will latch onto “health” and “clinic” and find all kinds of medical centers, but she can’t get more specific. Which makes it much, much harder to believe that it’s a genuine random glitch, and more likely that, yeah, they didn’t think to make that distinction. Why “abortion clinic” fails to find anything at all still confuses me, but based on going and trying this out instead of just talking out my ass, I don’t think “it’s a bug” is the right answer anymore.

GOD, I continue to get mansplaining about how this wasn’t intentional, and it’s because of the databases it trawls. I KNOW. I wrote THREE SEPARATE PIECES that make that VERY clear. There’s something about a lady having opinions about technology that really draws mansplaining out.

Amanda, if you mean my posts, I apologize. I was not trying to argue about intentionality one way or another, but I was talking out my ass regardless.

Amanda:

On behalf of everyone smart enough to realize they do it, I apologize. (The ones who refuse to admit they do it, they can go to hell.)

GOD, I continue to get mansplaining about how this wasn’t intentional, and it’s because of the databases it trawls.

Then it’s a symptom of the sexism in our society, that when going ‘out into the world’, so to speak, Siri doesn’t come back with anything for woman-centric issues. Either way…

It doesn’t matter if it’s intentional or what, THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG HERE and everyone needs to SHUT UP and just fix the damn thing.

WRT Silicon Valley being populated mostly by men, I have a friend in management at a large technical company. He laments that places like Google, Facebook, Redhat, and Oracle are actually not helping change the engineering culture, ironically *because* of their inclusive policies. As soon as a talented female engineer shows up, she’s groomed and then promoted into management - the idea is that they’re trying to get way more women into upper management where they can drive organizational change (and they want engineers in management positions).

And this is fine as far as it goes. However, they’re ending up with large working programming teams of all men - they’re managed by women, yes, but these guys still aren’t working on mixed teams of engineers, WITH women. And in tech companies, management doesn’t make technology decisions, only people and resources decisions. Because females computer science and computer engineering are about 15%, even if female managers are more likely to support female hires themselves there’s not really any way to satisfy both mandates (hire female engineers, hire female managers) easily.

This, he argues, really does women engineers a disservice. First, once you’re out of engineering, your engineering skills quickly lapse, so these women aren’t likely to go back to it. It also means that there will be just as few *experienced* female engineers in 20 years as there are today. He feel sure that the cultural change amongst the younger engineers should take precedence, and that this is the better way to drive change in the industry.

Anyway. Food for thought. I’m curious to find out if anybody here has any insight into the situation as he sees it?

There is definitely a systematic inability on Siri’s part to recognize reproductive health services as a specific category.

For the same reason that Republicans wage war on reproductive health services, except without the malice: it’s largely seen as a woman thing. This impression is false, needless to say, but it is the impression our culture has.

Oh no, grolby. Just in Twitter and stuff.

I’m curious to find out if anybody here has any insight into the situation as he sees it?

Nothing to add to your friend’s insights except to say that it does a disservice to the company and the interests of women by saying “look, we have women as project managers!” it marginalized the PM role because they’re no longer considered to be part of the engineering team, but rather a form of “women’s work” supporting line management, and it doesn’t solve the problem of getting more women in collaborative engineering roles.

There’s a similar problem in academia where the idea of making universities more friendly to women students and professors is to “promote” women into the roles of administrative Deans, which doesn’t address the actual issue, because ultimately these are “support roles,” not ones that make the environment more friendly to women in the core mission of the university with respect to the professors on the “front lines.”

But also regarding Silicon Valley companies, the #1 priority for hiring is that the candidate be a “good fit” for the company “culture.” this naturally means that candidates are hired from a pool of people who are just like the rest of the employees. And it DOES make for a good work environment when you know that everyone is “like you”, but it shuts a LOT of people out, prematurely. (disclosure: I move in the circles of that culture)

This is a textbook case of privilege in action: not hateful, not malicious, not intentional—just stuff that mostly-male developers wouldn’t think of, because they don’t have to think about it, because they and everyone they know are dudes. Amanda, good work bringing this out. It’s an incredibly frustrating symptom of ingrained sexism.

I do, however, enjoy the commenters who seem to think that this is a problem unique to Apple, and that by refusing to buy Apple products, they are striking a blow for feminism. Sadly, no. Even the open-sourciest of open-source software comes with great big helpings of privilege in action. In fact, the open-source community is often even more sexist, adding open hostility to the cluelessness.

This is fail on the part of the Siri developers. Unfortunately, protesting it and avoiding it is not as easy as buying a Droid or a Windows 7 phone instead of an iPhone—or even not buying a smartphone at all. Basically, if you use technology at all, you will run into this kind of privilege/cluelessness—face recognition software that won’t recognize dark-skinned people, controls sized for large hands, websites and applications that don’t work with screen readers, social networks that don’t understand why you might not want to make your gender or full legal name public, etc. The best thing to do is notice it, mention and complain about it, and if you’re in tech, try to do better when you make stuff and think about users who are not like you.

Because I know someone is going to read this wrong: We should not accept this as just the way things are. I am not saying “everybody does it so it’s okay.” I’m saying everybody does it and it’s NOT okay. I am not saying “we can’t do anything about it.” We can and should. I’m saying the problem is not just with one product or one company, and boycotting one product or one company doesn’t mean we’re not supporting this kind of stuff elsewhere.

My hope is that they’ll go a step beyond that and realize that the dominance of straight white men in Silicon Valley means that certain blinders will be built into their products that limit their reach into larger markets.

I’ve worked in Silicon Valley for over 20 years—I even interviewed at Siri two years ago when they were a round A startup.  I work primarily as a manager at startups; I prefer companies of under 100 people.  I enjoy building new teams to develop opportunities.  As a result, I am often involved in recruiting.  (I should note I was last able to make an offer to a qualified woman in 2007.  I’ve not seen resumes from women since.)

First, it isn’t “straight white male” dominance, you are better off saying “straight male.”  A lot of engineers are white, but a lot are Asian immigrants.  “Traditional” American minorities (Blacks and Latinos) are almost completely absent from recruiting rolls.  This isn’t necessarily because of active discrimination—I almost never even see Hispanic names on resumes for engineers, and I’ve seen thousands of resumes.  Currently, if you are an employer willing to consider H1B applicants, your pool of applicants will be at least 50% Asian.

Most H1B’s are male, so this is one factor skewing the gender ratios.  Add to that, the brain drain in the US by the financial sector (This is an interesting perspective:  http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/153/engineers-to-the-valley-pay-up.html ) and you see why women are well under-represented.

So, rather than just complain, what can we do to address this?  Is this important enough to address?

I prefer to use all available resources, and the quality of brains is not dependent on race or gender, so it is important, in my opinion.  Addressing it is both very easy conceptually and much harder practically.

The concept is to make the software engineering position one that is attractive to people, culturally.  Last time a “scientist” type career was culturally popular was the 1950’s-1960’s.  There’s a lot of inertia to overcome, but the current geek-chic is more tolerant than 20-30 years ago.  Next is to make the career reasonably lucrative.  This goes beyond just software—we need careers in general that look good to people beyond just Wall Street.  The harder obstacle to overcome is the “math is hard” bias in our culture. 

Now, the practical solutions, I don’t have a clue anymore.  I just try to advocate for what makes sense to me.

It’s striking how quickly an individual experience can become categorised as the norm, and anyone with differing needs irrelevant, odd, or just to be ignored. We’re introducing a new HR system at work. My department’s in the second pilot, as are about 15 others. And we complain about things, because it’s a pilot - and the answer we all get back is something along the lines of “you’re anomalous/idiosyncratic/not the norm”.

They built the effing thing in two departments. That are as “idiosycratic” as the rest of us. But because they happened to be picked, suddenly the rest of us are the weirdos that are beyond human or electronic comprehension, and the two random starters are “the norm”.

I should also note that in the smaller startup, often the issue is an immediate need, so you don’t have the time to do a full EEO-type search.  You fill positions with the people you can hire quickly.  Sometimes this is for a specific skill that isn’t easy to find.  Larger companies (like Google, etc) can hire an engineer and train them for a task, but a start-up may require a specific skill that is only found in 5% of the applicants.

I’m shocked that anyone could read the criticism of Siri and not conclude there was gender bias.

Imagine the opposite. Imagine a group of mostly female programmers came out with a search device that did a perfect job of locating Sephoras, telling you which fashion magazine to buy, telling you the best bars to meet guys in, directing you to a wedding planner, and telling you what to do if you were sexually harassed in the workplace, but containing no information at all about professional football, erectile dysfunction, or strip clubs.

Would any of these people argue that there was no gender bias in such a product?

Come on. These guys aren’t even bothering to use their brains.

James, I would be more convinced that the problem was a general cultural bias against what you call “scientist-type careers” if women were entering computer science and software engineering at the same rates that they are entering some other scientific careers (like, actually, science - especially life sciences, but the physical sciences as well).

But they are not. Something else is going on, and of course the larger culture is important, but there’s something going on in the programming world, too, that’s keeping it a boys’ club. Looking beyond that, at the tech industry as a whole and the people who write about it, and the same pattern holds - it’s mostly men.

Of course, this “math is hard,” issue that you bring up comes back, again, to the question of who is being encouraged to pursue math with vigor and who is being told that maybe she’s just not good at it. People are beating down the doors for jobs at Google, Facebook and Apple. There is not a shortage of software engineers in general, it’s NOT that too many people think math is too hard. But there sure is a well-known pattern of girls not being encouraged to pursue interest in math and other “hard” subjects in primary education. That’s going to have an obvious effect on the gender balance of the people applying today for those jobs at Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.

As for the op-ed you linked, it’s interesting I guess, but honestly, I’m not particularly sympathetic to the plight of software engineers making a paltry $100k-$150k. The cream of the crop of programmers are obviously very valuable. But you average, acceptable but not brilliant coder is not a person who is in short supply. They are a dime a dozen. What we’re short on, in my opinion, is good designers. But that’s a different discussion.

I’m a woman engineer working for $LARGE_INTERNET_COMPANY, and also doing outreach to encourage other women and historically underrepresented populations in science/engineering/math fields to come apply.  It sort of takes the form of “please apply, I know it looks like the whole place is full of white doodz but there are some of us who are not that and we want more” begging.  I know exactly how much damage it does when the large majority of the people involved in design decisions have privilege blinders; they’re good people, mostly, but it is exhausting being part of the That Will Alienate Some Users, Can We Not Do That brigade all the time.  Critical mass needed.

My favorite mansplainer was the loser on Facebook who called birth control “specialized women’s needs” and wondered why anyone would think such a specialized need should be addressed.  Viagra? Well that’s the number one ad on the Internet, so that’s easy to include.  Birth control or abortion?  Ewww.  That’s icky.

Scrolling through the Slate comments, I see a lot of the manhurt seems to come from identifying a bit too strongly with the image of “gleefully juvenile dudes” who “really like the idea of sex with women.”

There’s something about a lady having opinions about technology that really draws mansplaining out.

What you obviously don’t understand is that we’re programmed by biology to help out you little ladies with these complicated matters.  It’s an extension of our role as protectors of the community cave.  Women are more orientated towards soft, biological sorts of activities rather than hard technological matters, and they need our help.

(How am I doing for points?)

Jeebus, the defensiveness, the condescension, the mansplaining, the butt-obvious stupidity and wrongness of what Apple and its fanboys are singing in chorus.

Incidentally, this is *exactly* what happened during “bunnygate” over at Pharyngula, when people called out PZ Myers for focusing solely on the intent of the author of the gendered bunny cartoon:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/physioprof/2011/11/25/skeptic-skepticize-yourself/

From the Forbes article: When I asked it where to find birth control, it only came up with a clinic nearly four miles away that happened to have the words “birth control” in its name. The Planned Parenthood a few blocks away from me didn’t come up. Neither did all the helpful drugstores that stock condoms and birth control pills along with Viagra that Siri knew exactly how to get.

I don’t have an iPhone, so I have to ask: does Siri do any kind of knowledge tree clarification before spitting out a result? Because for birth control pills or Viagra, Siri would only be able to provide helpful results after you answer a follow-up question about whether you already have a prescription (here’s a list of local pharmacies) or not (here’s a list of doctors/clinics). Seems like the tool can use a LOT of fine-tuning before it’s able to answer questions that don’t have discrete answers like how many inches are in a decimeter.

or coming up with a new word that implies neglect or blind spots instead of malice.

We already have a term for that: unexamined privilege.

bananacat, unfortunately every time you use the word privilege, a thousand men will tell you he grew up poor and no one opens doors for him or pays for dinner when he goes out on a date.

I mean, the simple explanation for Siri suckage is garbage in, garbage out.  Any developer worth hir salt knows that one.  Otherwise Siri isn’t any better than a Google search with a few jokes thrown in.

In fact, the open-source community is often even more sexist, adding open hostility to the cluelessness.

Another dimension to add here is the widespread siege mentality many….especially in the early days of the ‘90s and early aughts of being the “few enlightened” against the “brainwashed Microsoft/Mac using masses” and the widespread idea that each individual must to their utmost to attempt to figure out a given problem themselves and only ask questions if they exhausted all their own resources/options.  It is this group who tended to give the linux/open source movement a bad name. 

A small part part of the latter expectation for all “newbies” is a commonplace mentality among some high academic achievers/“CS/engineers” who are fed up with people asking the same neophyte questions over and over again in class/life or being expected to serve as the “free tech support” for family or supposed “friends”.*

* Experienced this myself as an IT professional.  With the exception of parents….the tone I set is that even relatives will be charged an hourly rate/equivalent favors….much less friends or acquaintances.  Not only does this cut down on the “taken for granted” factor….but also enables me to earn extra cash/favors and reminds them that my time is as valuable as theirs.

James, I would be more convinced that the problem was a general cultural bias against what you call “scientist-type careers” if women were entering computer science and software engineering at the same rates that they are entering some other scientific careers (like, actually, science - especially life sciences, but the physical sciences as well).

But they are not. Something else is going on, and of course the larger culture is important, but there’s something going on in the programming world, too, that’s keeping it a boys’ club. Looking beyond that, at the tech industry as a whole and the people who write about it, and the same pattern holds - it’s mostly men.

This is a good point.  What’s more perplexing about this is that about 25 years ago, computer science was the example science for women.  It has been dropping ever since, while the number of women getting degrees in other sciences has been increasing.

But where do you put the onus on that?  How do we make the software engineering career more attractive?  I do what I can, but at times it feels like a losing battle.

One of my closest friends is a woman who works doing back-end web development. Pretty awesome person in many respects. Of course, since the company she works for does e-commerce stuff for web sites, they have a lot of customers who are running porn sites. She does a lot of those, because she’s the only woman they have writing code.

They even delegate it based on kind; I think she gets a lot of the gay porn because the guys don’t want to look at it while testing. I don’t think she cares a whole lot, but…

This is a good point.  What’s more perplexing about this is that about 25 years ago, computer science was the example science for women.  It has been dropping ever since, while the number of women getting degrees in other sciences has been increasing.

But where do you put the onus on that?  How do we make the software engineering career more attractive?  I do what I can, but at times it feels like a losing battle.

Um, you may be facing a similiar problem to that we have for attracting Maori/Pasifika students to library degrees.  If a student from these groups has the capability to do a technical degree, there’s many organisations willing to encourage and sponsor them - and library and information science is not exactly a lucrative career.

Perhaps a female student who has the capability to do a science degree takes a look around and goes for other more lucrative or engaging sciences, possibly with the help of encouragement from positive discrimination programmes?

PhysioProf, bunnygate sucked.  Of course that’s the first thing I thought of too. 

I like the phrasing of “a sexism that’s so interwoven into the fabric of our society that it’s nearly invisible.”  But how much work it takes to keep it invisible.  Doctoral theses on computer programming are written to explain Siri’s strange obsession with blow jobs, a horde of dudebros has to spend their evening racing to put in 15000 comments about how coffee is just coffee and bunnies are just bunnies, an atheist blogger has to set aside a block of his time to lecture feminists about wasting their time and hurting their cause by pointing out these things that other people don’t see.  People are spending a lot of energy not to see it.

Rather, Siri is a collection of many different services presented under a unified interface.

OMG THIS MAKES IT A MILLION TIMES WORSE not BETTER!!!!

This is describing Siri as solely a user interface design problem.  HOW THE FUCK DO YOU DESIGN A USER INTERFACE MEANT FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC THAT DOESN’T TAKE INTO ACCOUNT HALF THE POPULATION????  and oh dear lord, the mansplaining it takes to claim that such a product could ever be considered well designed….

Though I do have to put out there the possibility that this is not about neglect per se, but as Apple called it, a bug or glitch.

This is ever so much fucking bullshit.  There’s just not a way to design a user interface like Siri, include Generic Woman as one of the user stories, have the money that Apple has, and have Siri still be doing everything that it’s doing when you present it to the general public.  The problem that is causing all of this started way back in the conceptual phase; it’s not something that only became noticable once the public got a hold of it.

What’s more perplexing about this is that about 25 years ago, computer science was the example science for women.  It has been dropping ever since…

That’s not perplexing at all.  And the reasons are right there in your original comment:

There’s a lot of inertia to overcome, but the current geek-chic is more tolerant than 20-30 years ago.

Computer science ceased to be the example science for women when it became the “cool” thing for (male) geeks to do.  Computer programmers were originally often seen as little better than typists, that’s why it used to be seen as something women could do, even during the transition phase of a couple of decades ago.  But when Jobs and Gates and other Men of Genius became the face of computer programmers, women were pushed out.

I should note I was last able to make an offer to a qualified woman in 2007.  I’ve not seen resumes from women since.

Speaking as a woman with a physics degree who is interested in interface design and programming, and has been half focusing on those kinds of classes while getting my MLIS, I can tell you that the economy is making computer science seem like a huge risk for me right now.  Submitting resumes to start-ups is always a risk.  It’s even more of one as a woman, as there is the not unfounded worry that your work will be taken for granted and not valued.  Making that kind of leap in this economy?  When it’s much less likely that you can find something to fall back on?  Yeah.  Not gonna happen.  Not from me anyway.  I will be working on private and freelance projects and then trying to integrate my programming/design skills into my work with youth and technology and libraries (not always all three altogether).

Also, I really don’t think the issue is nearly as much one of girls thinking “I can’t do math” as it is running into people who take offense when we can.  Or, rather, I think they are equally the culprits in dissuading women from careers in male dominated STEM fields.  Yes, we still need programs to help girls feel comfortable and confident in STEM fields, but I also think we could use some programs to help the dudes we will eventually potentially work with to get the fuck over themselves.

Mulling this over a bit more, this strikes me as the biggest Apple fail since the Newton, caused by the “Next Bench Syndrome.” The NBS works when you are designing products for folks just like yourself, because if you put in features that you think are cool, odds are that your fellow nerds will also think they are cool. But if you’re not designing oscilloscopes or robot assemblers, this approach may fail. One approach to get more diverse input would be to put more non-white/non-Asian under-40 males on the development team.

But when we’re talking about telephones/PDAs, adding a few women to a guy’s club might not be as helpful as getting the developers to understand that people not just like themselves also have needs, and their products need to appeal to these folks, too, to maximize sales, profits, and the value of their stock options.

For what it’s worth, I put both “abortion” and “blow job” into Yelp, which is one of of the services I suspect Siri trawls for information, and I got Planned Parenthood for the first and a bunch of hair salons for the second.

What the fuck sort of hair salons do you have in NYC?

Interesting, one of the commenters railing about doing your research and “grow up” addressed it to Kashmir rather than Amanda, like they can’t even be bothered to read a by-line, much less do research.
The rest are like, duh, more men are programmers, of course there interests are what come up, as if that wasn’t (basically) your point - the programmers being heavily sophomorically male and not considering a significant portion of their clinent base should be considered a huge issue, not defended.

Renee S @26: they could hire other types of engineers.  I have a CE degree, but have managed electrical installation as well as actual construction (though my focus in school was transportation in general, traffic systems in particular).  Engineering project management is engineering project management.  Any half decent engineer is going to have had a couple of foundational courses where they should have learned flowcharts, logic streams and such; they don’t need to know the particular languages or down to the individual lgoic loop line items to manage a project.

Amanda,

Thanks for writing those articles and this post. It’s easy for people to get defensive when labels like “sexist” ar involved, and you’ve put in a tremendous amount of work too make it *easy* for guys like me to get past that first visceral reaction and realize that you’re right.

I found this article very persuasive, in the sense of going from thinking, “Nyah, that’s not really sexist, it’s just typical of the kind of bugs you get when you do this kind of project,” when I started reading, to thinking, “Yeah, that’s really sexist, it’s not just typical of the kind of bugs you get when you do this kind of project,” by the end. I expect when all is said and done, this will be a perfect case study in how a lack of diversity can make a team and its products worse.

jennygadget:

This is ever so much fucking bullshit.

Yes, it is. Sorry, I did too much thinking out loud and not enough in my head before I started typing.

There’s just not a way to design a user interface like Siri, include Generic Woman as one of the user stories, have the money that Apple has, and have Siri still be doing everything that it’s doing when you present it to the general public.  The problem that is causing all of this started way back in the conceptual phase; it’s not something that only became noticable once the public got a hold of it.

Yes, it probably started way back in the beginning of putting this thing together. What I’d like to know (and can’t, because it’s gone) is what happened when you asked the original Siri stand-alone app to find an abortion clinic. Anyway, in Apple’s view, this is probably one reason that they’re calling it a “beta.” I actually think that does make this better than it would be had they presented this to the public as a finished product, but now they’re also experiencing the problems with having their users test the software - users don’t see it as an unfinished product, and there’s no reason they should. Fixing this, given the institutional blindness, probably means calling it an unfinished product at release or finding a way to go back in time and build an industry that doesn’t have a huge male bias. Which I think sounds a bit blasé, sorry, I don’t mean to imply that they needn’t have taken the root issue seriously - they should have.

Hector B.

Mulling this over a bit more, this strikes me as the biggest Apple fail since the Newton, caused by the “Next Bench Syndrome.”

I have to disagree on both points, both that Siri is the biggest Apple failure since the Newton and that it was caused by NBS. If Siri sucked, this wouldn’t be so noticeable, and therefore wouldn’t really turn into the problem it has. But Siri is actually really, really good the majority of the time; having it fail a basic request that is likely to affect a large number of users is really jarring as a result. Which is also why it’s not a Newton-like fail. Similarly, unless you mean NBS in a different sense that you are describing (that is, of men designing products for men, which IS the problem, not geeks designing products for geeks), that’s not what it is. It’s not that Siri only works for geeks. Hell, Apple is the least NBS-afflicted tech company out there; geeks got all pissed off when they heard the iPad wasn’t going to have a USB port and complained that it sucked and no one would buy it. We know how that went. But apply NBS to sex rather than to the technical interests of the designers, and yeah - that’s definitely going on.

grolby - it is NBS in the sense of only considering people like yourself and the guy at the next bench, at base guys rather than at base geeks.  We female geeks do exist and I at least resent that you suggest NBS only refers to geekiness.

grolby - it is NBS in the sense of only considering people like yourself and the guy at the next bench, at base guys rather than at base geeks.  We female geeks do exist and I at least resent that you suggest NBS only refers to meekness.

Sorry, I don’t mean to suggest that, I was saying that Hector B.‘s explanation of it seemed to me to imply that it was about being geeky and not about other issues, such as the gender of the people making it. And really, the fact that Apple is unafflicted by NBS in the sense of geeky features suggests that they have even less of an excuse to be affected by it with respect to gender than other companies.

I’m with grolby: Siri is definitely not a “fail”, and the reason this even came up is because everyone is using Siri. It has significantly changed the way I interact with my phone—instead of clicking through menus to play music or change settings/alarms, I just tell it to do something.

The Siri interface’s failure to account for around half their potential users is actually quite embarrassing considering Apple’s always emphasizing user-friendliness and technology which “just works”.

This is the type of oversight I’d expect more from open source/linux or some hardcore Windows fans than Apple….especially when some in the former camp seem to thrive on emphasizing open source/linux’s perceived user-unfriendliness and technological complexity as a virtue….not a flaw to be fixed to gain wider acceptance from the larger non-hardcore techie crowd.

grolby - yeah, I kinda figured you didn’t mean it exactly, based on the bulk of your comments, but it is a sentiment I’ve seen elsewhere and just kinda needed to point out how wrong it was.

This whole thing is just hitting all my buttons.  It’s not just the sexism.  It’s also the way people are getting judgy about how people obtain info, what info they are asking for, etc. - it’s making me want to growl at people as a librarian.  They way people are mis-explaining the design process is also offending my own user-centered opinions as a designer.  :p

And really, the fact that Apple is unafflicted by NBS in the sense of geeky features suggests that they have even less of an excuse to be affected by it with respect to gender than other companies.

Yes! This!  Apple was unsurprisingly a company that caused a lot of heated debate in my web usability/interaction design class.  We finally came to a sorta consensus that part of the reason why Apple tends to cause this more than other companies was that it has the aura of being for geeks, but it’s actually meant for this niche of people that have a certain amount of comfort around technology in general (and the money to have access to it), but aren’t expert users that want lots of complexity right away.

That Apple continues to not think of users like my mother - who actually fits that niche really well - as part of their core user base just pisses me off to no end.  Twenty years ago that may have been true, but part of what Apple has done in the last decade is package industry innovations in a way that make women like my mother loyal consumers.  And yet they continue to act like they just make really cool stuff for guys.  You kinda want to shake them and say: do you not see that by not giving my mother credit for existing and using your product, you are also not giving yourself credit for everything you have done since you built iTunes?!?!?

The Siri interface’s failure to account for around half their potential users is actually quite embarrassing considering Apple’s always emphasizing user-friendliness and technology which “just works”.

This is the type of oversight I’d expect more from open source/linux or some hardcore Windows fans than Apple….especially when some in the former camp seem to thrive on emphasizing open source/linux’s perceived user-unfriendliness and technological complexity as a virtue….not a flaw to be fixed to gain wider acceptance from the larger non-hardcore techie crowd.

Siri was developed by Siri, a company that Apple acquired last year:

http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/04/28/apple-moves-deeper-into-voice-activated-search-with-siri-buy/

James, really?  wow! that’s the first I’ve heard that!

or, you know, not.

Um…it’s not like this is the first time Apple has implemented technology bought from other companies.  Or that having acquired it rather than developed it from scratch themselves absolves them of the responsibility of creating a well-designed product.

Apple’s always emphasizing user-friendliness and technology which “just works”.

Except that in practice, this isn’t true—The early revisions of Apple products are always crippled in some way (no cut-and-paste, no camera flash, way too underpowered, etc.) which makes the product really below the baseline consumer expectations for the product that they don’t fix until later revisions.

part of what Apple has done in the last decade is package industry innovations in a way that make women like my mother loyal consumers.  And yet they continue to act like they just make really cool stuff for guys

From a branding perspective, no one is going to buy the product marketed as “the kind of thing for your mother.” But your MOTHER might buy it if it’s marketed as “the sort of thing that cool hip professionals people use because it ‘just works.’”

@Tyro Subsuming anyone who would be interested in contraception or abortion under the category of ‘mother’ might become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

From a branding perspective, no one is going to buy the product marketed as “the kind of thing for your mother.”

Again, this is absolute fucking bullshit.  The ipod’s success* is built on the idea that it’s easily accessible and fun technology that is pricey enough but still affordable enough for it to be a cool present for everyone not just professionals.  The success of the iPad and the iPhone are built on that same idea and public perception.  As can be seen in the ads for Siri/the new iPhone.  In which they show non-“professionals” doing everyday tasks.  Including women doing traditional everyday “women” things - like taking kids to ballet, getting groceries on the way home form work, working out in the park, and helping kids get ready for school as they get ready for work, .

(I would also like to note for the larger debate that nowhere in these ads is it said that Siri is in beta or in any way different from any other cool new feature from Apple.)

My mother does not buy stuff that is meant for professionals; this is what I meant when I was talking about that niche of people that are somewhat comfortable with technology, but not always super confident with it.  She does, however buy new Apple products that let her tell her phone to call/text her husband instead of having to punch buttons.  She buys stuff that she perceives as being meant for her, but does not talk down to her.

Except that in practice, this isn’t true

Yes and no.  It’s clear that part of Apple’s larger problem is that they rely on Genius Design and don’t really do enough user testing.  But part of why they can get away with it is not just The Cult of Mac but also because those “crippling” glitches tend to be less noticeable if you aren’t a “professional.”  They still affect you, but you don’t really always know they are supposed to be there and everything else works so much better than the other stuff that it tends to not be the “non-professional” users complaining about these glitches.

* and before that, the iMacs success, if you replace “present” with “first computer for kids leaving the nest”

We finally came to a sorta consensus that part of the reason why Apple tends to cause this more than other companies was that it has the aura of being for geeks, but it’s actually meant for this niche of people that have a certain amount of comfort around technology in general (and the money to have access to it), but aren’t expert users that want lots of complexity right away.

This position was only within the last decade when Apple introduced OSX and started talking up how it’s based on a variant of BSD UNIX and one can geek out on it to their heart’s content while keeping it out of easy sight and maintaining the Aqua GUI for non-techie users and thus, maintain their long-term marketing efforts as a user-friendly computing company for ordinary non-techies. 

Before OSX….Apple was popularly seen by many hardcore CS/STEM folks as a company which makes computers for non-techies or as some hardcore computer geeks have so kindly put it IME, “tech idiots”. 

The vast majority of the hardcore CS/STEM types I knew growing up in the 80’s and ‘90s wouldn’t be caught dead with a Mac as they felt it will kill any “techie cred” they may have by using a computer they felt was geared for the technologically inept.  The only exception I knew of came from a DFH home, was unusually confident in his techie cred, and didn’t buy into the academic/techie one-ups-man ship common among the CS/STEM contingent at our high school and those fields.

exholt

Yes.    Although, I do think Tyro’s point used to be applicable.  Apple may not have been for techies in the 80’s and 90’s, but it was seen by non-techies as being for techies - if that makes sense.

The Mac was the go-to product of graphic artists and desktop publishing professionals in the 1990s. It took Apple a while to hit their stride after the Mac was introduced in the early 1980s—keep in mind that at first, it was an extremely expensive small box with a black and white screen. By the 90s, a Mac was a viable office option that a home user would see is much easier to use.  “Think Different” was not a slogan used to make the Mac seem like a product for the technological novice: it was a slogan meant to attract those who saw themselves as using their computer for something more creative and more important than the mere developer or office drone.

But yes, it was widely not taken up by serious technology professionals until OSX came out.  Not because they’re arrogant, but because there were certain things that serious technology people use computers for (eg, LaTeX, ssh, network tools), that are easier to work with when you’re running OSX. Not to mention that System 7 and its descendants were much more crash prone than popular myth claimed, and OSX solved that problem.

jennygadget @50: 

+1

I work in commercial construction.  The vast majority of criticisms of the ‘puter industry are completely relevant to the construction industry - even, and especially, to the “white collar” portions of the business.  In 15 years, I can think of maybe a half dozen times a field guy gave me a hard time for “bein’ a girl.” Most of which were quickly dispatched with competence. 

I lost count of the times an “office dude” gave me a hard time (or tried to!), either subtly or with a hammer, for “bein’ a girl.”  Even now, in the 21st century - it is very, very hard to conclude that most dudes Just.  Don’t.  Get.  It.

Apple may not have been for techies in the 80’s and 90’s, but it was seen by non-techies as being for techies - if that makes sense.

Yep.  That was an era when only those who were well-off and in professions necessitating a personal computer of some kind would have one at home.  Especially Macs….gah…remembered seeing Powermac Desktops going for $2500-3000+ each….and we’re talking the lower-end models.  Computers didn’t start becoming widespread until the middle of my college years in the late ‘90s. 

Not to mention that System 7 and its descendants were much more crash prone than popular myth claimed, and OSX solved that problem.

Gah! I was forced to use System 7 for one of my two intro CS for majors programming courses.  Brings back many horrid memories of system crashes and mysterious “deblessings” of the system folder.  Moreover, the build quality of some low-end Mac desktops geared for educations.  Performas specifically which sucked so bad sometimes half the machines in a given lab were down at the same time and techs were there at least every month to replace parts.

If some items posted on the “Shit That Siri Says” tumblr are genuine*, Siri apparently regards the word “vagina” as profanity, regardless of context.  She does not have this problem with, say, “testicles.”

*I have no idea how to tell if they are or aren’t, and I don’t have an iPhone, so I can’t test them for myself.  The queries that I’m talking about include “How do I shave my vagina?” and “Why do my testicles smell bad?”  If you ask the former question, she chides you for your language; the latter, she makes a joke.  (I am aware that the vagina is not shaveable, given that it is an internal organ, but it’s unclear whether Siri knows that or not.)

Gone2Ground

My dad convinced to me to help out one summer at a workshop he and some other educators put on regularly on how to teach science.  They would do all kinds of grades, but I think this particular one focused on junior high grades.  Mostly I just sorta did gopher stuff.  But part of why he roped me into doing it was because I knew how to use the equipment (usually) and could be another person to do one on one help when they were doing stuff in the computer lab.

I don’t even remember what we were doing on the computer, but I knew that I knew how to do it - I worked in the computer lab at school, and they trained us really well.  I also remember that most of the teachers there were women, but there was at least one guy.  Who refused to listen to anything I said when I went to go help him.  Now, my age may have been a factor too, but…I just remember thinking at the time “how is this supposed to work when I depend on my job for food and shelter?  How do I explain this to a boss that is not my dad?  How would this affect my chances of doing well?”

And this is (one of the many reasons) why I shudder at the idea of applying to most any tech company in the current climate.

It’s also why I think simple things like what draconis_personae describes can make a huge difference.  I am much more likely to take a leap of faith with a company that does that, because their willingness to do even that totally changes the risk/benefit analysis.

From a branding perspective, no one is going to buy the product marketed as “the kind of thing for your mother.” But your MOTHER might buy it if it’s marketed as “the sort of thing that cool hip professionals people use because it ‘just works.’”

Sure, just like your MOTHER craves a Beemer, and she likes to go to bars where she and her friends can pay $250 for a bottle of booze from which they mix their own drinks. But I don’t really think mom wants to emulate what the cool hip professionals want to do.

Apple started as the cheap computer for everyone. Wozniak designed it to use the minimum number of parts, for example. It was actually cheaper than an Intel-based computer. Later, Apple IIs were ubiquitous in schools, never the places with big technology budgets, where things had to be simple to use and durable.

Hector B.‘s explanation of it seemed to me to imply that it was about being geeky

Sorry. Maybe “laddish” would be a better word. Nerdy males. Things that Beavis and Butthead would think were cool, if Beavis was one designer, and Butthead worked in the next cube. If your algorithm connects “blow job” to “escort service,” that seems like a Beavis-designed bit of software.

Apple started as the cheap computer for everyone. Wozniak designed it to use the minimum number of parts, for example. It was actually cheaper than an Intel-based computer. Later, Apple IIs were ubiquitous in schools, never the places with big technology budgets, where things had to be simple to use and durable.

That’s not true if we’re talking personal computers unless you’re talking the very first computer he created in 1976….which was limited, meant more for hardcore techies..not consumers, and still cost around $700….IBM PCs didn’t exist at that time.  The first IBM PCs cost around $5000 in the early ‘80s.  The first consumer-targeted Apple/Mac computers cost around $10,000 around the same period. 

That was one of the reasons why from the ‘80’s onwards…Apple/Macs were known for being much more expensive than their IBM/PC compatable counterparts.  In fact, it was the PC compatible which ended up being the first relatively cheap mass-produced computer.

However, what the Mac did have over the PC compatible was its emphasis on ease of use through its GUI interface….something which Microsoft made several attempts to copy which we now know as the various versions of Windows from 1.0 onwards.  Apple also pioneered supporting educational institutional users by discounting Apple/Macs going to schools in the ‘80s….a reason why Apple IIs and early Macs dominated classrooms while the PC compatible didn’t until the early-mid ‘90s. 

In fact, it was the rising concerns about students being able to work in corporate environments where they mostly used PC compatibles with Dos/Windows(Key factor in Microsoft’s OS dominance), the price difference favoring PC compatibles, production/QC issues with Apple in the early-mid ‘90s, and possible stigma for being associated with K-12 educators/schools that caused PC compatibles to be overwhelmingly dominant while Apple/Macs were regarded as expensive problematic toys. 

I’m old enough to remember using both Macs and PCs throughout the 80’s and 90’s in school.  By the ‘90’s, many were wondering why should a premium be paid for Macs when they were not only expensive, but also unreliable due to QC issues and a crashprone operating system(System 7 and its immediate descendants) that increasingly had issues doing “real multitasking”. 

Heck, those factors were reasons why Macs were regarded as expensive jokes no serious STEM aspirant/major/professional would be caught dead with by most high school classmates and STEM professionals I knew at the time.  It was commonly associated with rich “tech idiots” or unreformed DFHs who were working in creative/artistic fields who didn’t want a computer/operating system associated with corporate drones(PC compatible/Microsoft OSes).

The first consumer-targeted Apple/Mac computers cost around $10,000 around the same period. 

wrong:

The Apple II series (trademarked with brackets as “Apple ][”) is a set of 8-bit home computers, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products,[1] designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and introduced in 1977 with the original Apple II. In terms of ease of use, features and expandability the Apple II was a major technological advancement over its predecessor, the Apple I, a limited-production bare circuit board computer for electronics hobbyists that pioneered many features that made the Apple II a commercial success. Introduced at the West Coast Computer Faire in 1977, the Apple II was among the first successful personal computers; it launched the Apple company into a successful business (and allowed several related companies to start). Throughout the years, a number of models were sold, with the most popular model remaining relatively little changed into the 1990s. By the end of production in 1993, somewhere between five and six million Apple II series computers (including about 1.25 million Apple IIGS models) had been produced.[2]

Industry impact

The Apple II series of computers had an enormous impact on the technology industry and on everyday life. The Apple II was the first personal computer many people ever saw. Its price was within the reach of many middle-class families, and a partnership with MECC helped make the Apple II popular in schools.[44] By the end of 1980 Apple had already sold over 100,000 Apple IIs.[45] Its popularity bootstrapped the computer game and educational software markets and began the boom in the word processor and computer printer markets. The first microcomputer “killer app” for business was VisiCalc, the earliest spreadsheet, and it ran first on the Apple II. Many businesses bought Apple II’s just to run VisiCalc. Apple’s success in the home market inspired competitive home computers such as the VIC-20 (1980) and Commodore 64 (1982, with estimated sales between 17 and 25 million units). Through their significantly lower price point, these models introduced the computer to several tens of millions more home users.

As someone who was alive then, I can tell you that the Apple II and it’s descendants impressed the Apple brand into the public conciousness at a time when the PC wasn’t even around to survive the computer wars that followed:

The Osborne 1 was the first commercially successful portable microcomputer, released on April 3, 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation.[1] It weighed 10.7 kg (23.5lb), cost USD$ 1795,[2] and ran the then-popular CP/M 2.2 operating system. The computer shipped with a large bundle of software that was almost equivalent in value to the machine itself, a practice adopted by other CP/M computer vendors.

Its principal deficiencies were a tiny 5 inches (13 cm) display screen and use of single sided, single density floppy disk drives which could not contain sufficient data for practical business applications.

The highly priced Apples that exholt refers to came much later than when the Apple II first came on the market, but the Apple was prefered in the education field until the late 80s, of couse, this was when I was substitute teaching in San Jose, CA, so YMMV.

It should also be noted that the Lisa and the Apple III were early failures, FWIW.

jennygadget@74

“And this is (one of the many reasons) why I shudder at the idea of applying to most any tech company in the current climate.”

That’s the problem with “Gosh, why don’t women apply here? We’d love it if women applied!”  Women and minorities look at the group they would be joining, see all white men*, and don’t waste their time applying at a place where they will clearly not be welcome.

An interesting recent study:  http://www.lpfi.org/tilted-playing-field-hidden-bias-information-technology-workplaces

One thing to note is that women and minorities do show up when it is clear that they are welcome.  For example, this annual conference gets a very diverse crowd:  http://2011.socialdevcampchicago.com/

* Outside of Silicon Valley, open source software organizations have very low percentages of people of Asian descent as well as women and other minorities.