My issue here - and why I am glad it's on HN - is because we have this problem in our industry a lot. We question why more women aren't interested in it while we parade them around our conferences or include photos of them in slides barely-clothed. We make very vivid implications that they are just visual stimuli for the taking.
We can go back to that whole Violet Blue Twitter/article debacle wherein she criticized a woman legitimately working at her company's spot on the floor for being a boring-looking booth babe.
In my opinion, the only people that should be doing your advertising for you are your employees. There's no reason to bring human eye-candy to these events in the hopes that it will get a few more customers. I do like PAX's stance where if the "babe" isn't educated on your product as much as you are, she shouldn't be there. At the same time, those are "models" of the characters for your games at a gaming convention, not male or female bodies just standing in a warehouse being ogled to sell unrelated product.
I think we would be remiss if we did not consider this in a more bayesian fashion.
Say 90% of all tech companies are using sexist advertising. Big problem; clearly something wrong with tech.
But that is only part of the picture. We have to consider what companies that are not "tech companies" are doing as well. If we see similar levels of sexist nonsense from them, then we should consider the possibility that the "techiness" of tech companies is not to blame and the problem has another cause.
I think it is very likely that this incident is a manifestation of something that is wrong with marketing and corporations in general. This stuff isn't popping up because tech is involved, it is popping up because advertisers are involved and executives okay it.
I feel I should say explicitly that I am not saying this behavior should be permitted "because everyone else is doing it". The behavior is not acceptable, but we should find the real cause.
Totally agree with you there. VS is a brand almost exclusively for women, and yet all of their marketing is clearly for men. That said, lingerie/fashion do have a [sometimes scantily-clad] human component that should be represented in some way (more tastefully..), whereas tech generally does not. That's my problem with this situation; there's no excuse for this company that could fall into the "but we make x, so it's kinda sorta okay" category.
I don't deny that there is sexism in tech, but I can't figure out how this is an example of it just because the product being advertised is in tech. Is there sexism in the razor-blade industry because of how razor-blades are advertised? I can't imagine the people advertising razor-blades and the people manufacturing razor-blades have very much in common.
I don't think it does much good to try and differentiate between the industry making a product or service and the advertising industry that supports them. They don't exist without each other.
For example, if Apple put out a sexist ad, you can bet people would talk about sexism in BOTH the tech industry and in the ad industry.
"Tech" is considered by the mainstream to be full of socially maladjusted overgrown boys who spend far too long in their mother's basement. They are cold and unemotional and they took engineering classes in college; perhaps one is the cause of the other. Sexism in programming teams made up primarily of this stereotype is a common topic here, and it is almost universally agreed that it is a major problem.
So I guess it annoys me when a bunch of marketing people use sex in their advertising, as they do in every other industry imaginable, and we use it as an opportunity to flog tech some more. Where the exact people who made this decision selling umbrellas instead of hard-drives, would this be on HN? I don't think so.
I can explain a bit. The reason that it annoys me that a tech company did this is that I'm attuned to the struggles faced by women in tech. Two things make this industry different from other industries.
1) The ratio of males to females is worse. Women feel more like outsiders in tech than in other industries. Things like booth babes make us feel like outsiders because they are a ploy to attract MEN to the booth, as if there is no reason to attract women to the booth. Secondly, as a female at a conference, people assume I'm not the technical expert. They ask me if I'm in marketing. I see them directing technical questions to the males. It is really annoying to be judged based on your looks and gender, but I don't blame them, because chances are they are right due to the scarcity of female technologists. Booth babes reinforce the stereotype that women at the conference are there because they look nice and are friendly. That makes the problem even worse. Objectification in general reinforces the idea that a big part of women's role in society is to look good.
2) Tech is an area where people STILL question if women are really as capable as men. That makes women in tech more sensitive to gender bias.
In other words, it just stings more to see this coming from a tech company.
Well, the company in question was totally OK with objectifying women, so I would say that this is both a problem of sexism in tech and marketing. The advertising a company puts out or endorses is a part of the company's culture, even to the people working at that company.
I don't buy that you can draw conclusions about individuals or their trade from what a company that happens to employ them does. This incident reflects poorly on the marketing people involved, and the executives involved. That tech is also in the company is irrelevant.
If Uber started putting out sexist advertising, would that reflect poorly on professional drivers?
The reason I titled this Sexism in Tech was because the story was about tech companies dealing with sexism. I was trying to offer advice to companies who may encounter this int he future. It's not because I think all tech companies are sexist. It's just that I work for a tech company and feel more comfortable talking about this industry. Sorry for the confusion.
I didn't mean to say individual workers at HyperMac are responsible for the sexism, but rather that the company HyperMac most certainly is responsible, esp. those in charge of that company who made to call to run with this marketing.
It's not like this is an isolated incident though, it seems like every other week we see yet another tech company with a sexist ad campaign, sexist convention booth, or sexist job advertisement flyer.
Well, this is another example of tech company that not only sees nothing wrong with employing sexist marketing, but the CEO doubled down on it and attacked anyone who disagreed with what HyperMac did. We aren't saying that only tech companies do this kind of thing, but rather why is it that so many tech companies do this kind of thing at all and why is it that the CEO of this company can get away with this kind of sexism without the whole of the tech community calling that out?
Obviously, a site like hacker news will be reporting stories about tech companies far more often than other kinds of businesses.
I suppose I have never really agreed with the equivalence people on hacker news make between tech, and companies that do tech. To me, they are completely different topics. I don't consider CEOs my peers, no matter what sort of company they are in charge of. A jackass CEO of a "tech company" says absolutely nothing about tech to me.
I know what you mean. No matter where I work, big or small companies, I never really feel in the same peer group as CEOs. I am working in tech, though, so even if I don't feel like I'm a part of what they are doing I recognize that people outside of tech don't really see it that way.
As unfortunate as it is, businesses produce a lot of technology and hire most of the people working in tech on a daily basis. Even if I don't like it, those businesses are a part of the field I'm in and what they do affects me, esp. if they are contributing to alienating women who already have a hard time breaking into or working in tech.
Many readers of HN are in startups whose small teams have to deal with all aspects of running a tech company, from engineering to handling customer complaints like this. On the Keen IO blog we write about all aspects of starting a tech company, and many of our non-technical posts have been very popular here (e.g. negotiating salary, pitching).
It would be interesting to see the breakdown of HN readership. I always assumed a large portion are YC companies and other startups who would be able to relate to these kinds of posts.
