I have worked in the Seattle tech scene since 1997 and sex and caste discrimination is rampant in the Indian tech community. I only know this 2nd and third hand as I am the stereotypical cis male white guy.
The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination across dev and qa, with a women making up the vast majority of qa even though they graduated with the same degrees as the men from the same Indian universities.
Even Indian men that I respected on multiple levels, when they get on an interview with a women they are overly harsh in ways they were not with men. So much so that I stopped interviewing all together. I reported to HR and they of course didn't know how to handle it. It really makes me sad.
I try to talk to my Indian colleagues about this and they stay extremely tight lipped about this for a multitude of reasons. I applaud this action. This shit has to stop, leave it in India, America is better than this.
Discrimination is fractal. All interview should be truly double-blind.
> I try to talk to my Indian colleagues about this and they stay extremely tight lipped about this for a multitude of reasons.
I notice this too. It's like someone brings up caste discrimination online (somewhere like teamblind) and a bunch of people come out of nowhere and say "that isn't real". Isn't very convincing to say the least
Living in Singapore for 10 years I talked to quite a few people from India living in Singapore.
It seems that it’s an older generation thing. The younger ones don’t care about caste at all but if their parents ask about their friends they will lie, because their parents care a lot about caste.
And while caste is illegal in India. It’s such a big country it’s difficult to enforce. So it’s still rampant outside of the big cities.
I used to donate to a charity which builds wells in India for small villages to ensure they have safe clean drinking water. They supply the materials but everyone in the village must contribute to building it and everyone must have access regardless of caste. If the village does not agree they won’t help.
One of the biggest ways in which caste discrimination is propagated is through denialism. That helps the quell the resistance against it. Caste discrimination is still alive among younger generation and in cities. Here we are - discussing caste in US cities - which makes no sense if it didn't exist in the above mentioned circles in a large way.
Now way its an old generation thing? I've seen "gang wars" among young adults of different castes in reputed Indian universities, located in cities.
I have first hand experience with people who chose friends based on caste. And caste is not illegal in India discrimination is, but politicians here are mostly caste mongerers and win elections.
We literally select our caste in govt forms,I literally had to get a caste certificate to prove for my college admission.Im not sure you know what you are talking about. Caste based discrimination is illegal not caste, we have a huge problem due to reservation quotas because govt still segregates people based on caste and tries to uplift them, but in turn sometimes it misfires.
But they have their own version of Affirmative Action, notably quotas for universities and government jobs, and a very common form of caste discrimination by upper-caste Indians in the US is to claim a lower-caste graduate from a prestigious university like IIT isn’t a genuine one because he was a “diversity admission”.
IIT has a common entrance exam and admissions are offered solely on your performance in that exam. If you see someone getting in with a very low score compared to the rest of the class, they will be rightfully branded as "diversity admission". It is no wonder that 60% of dropouts at 7 IITs are from reserved categories: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/parliament-proceeding...
How can reservation work without knowing the caste? You also fill it in every damned form (recently was called back to daughters school to fill it when I just left it as Hindu)
"Article 17 of Indian Constitution says:
Untouchability” is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. The enforcement of any disability arising out of “Untouchability” shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law." - https://cjp.org.in/caste-discrimination-and-related-laws-in-...
There is more to the story and that's a good read, but in practice you can see cast discrimination still a lot in India, as I figured out recently when I have been a few weeks in the country.
> The caste system was outlawed ages ago. It very much is illegal.
As you'll note, the actual prohibition is on a narrow class of discrimination. That is what I was trying to emphasize. I live in India and am very much aware of the discrimination that still exists.
If you cannot discriminate on class, the purpose of class is abolished. After the british left, the caste system was outlawed. The constitution was written later to rule out class based discrimination.
I never said it wasn't still practiced. Just that its much more observed outside of the big cities than in it.
You've got it wrong entirely. Just because you dissolve discrimination, it doesn't magically kill segregation. Castes were created way back when they were used to classify people based on the work they do, and young ones continued in the steps of their older generations in their job so it was a mere classification of their family's work. Then it started going ugly when people in respectable jobs wanted to protect themselves from "outsiders" taking their jobs away.
But it just doesn't make sense anymore. No one is following their elders' job anymore. The caste system itself must be outlawed even to mention it.
As long as you still try to identify someone based on their caste, you are encouraging segregation. Govt forms must not include an outdated classification.
I shouldn't show proof of my caste to get a college admission. Marriages must not made based on it.
I kid you not, I was personally rejected from marriage with the woman I was in a relationship based on my caste.banning Discrimination did snt do shit.
You state I have it wrong then tell me proceed to agree with me. I never said that because it’s outlawed it’s no longer practiced. I’m fully aware it’s still practiced. And while it’s lesser in big cities. And much more wide spread outside. It doesn’t change the fact it still exists and is a stupid outdated system.
After the British came the caste system got worse. They used the caste system in their government and caused a lot of people to get upset.
We could literally blame all of India’s current caste issues on the British.
The government should be demolishing the caste system entirely based on the little I know from the people I’ve spoken to. It causes more harm than good. But it doesn’t change the fact that it is outlawed.
You're saying the caste system was banned - it wasn't. The ancient concept of being untouchable was banned after the British left, not the much more recent caste system, which survives to this day.
What others have been trying to explain to you is that only caste-based discrimination was banned, not the caste system itself.
Because they go on to say that the ban hasn't been very effective, you seem to miss that first point and start arguing that you weren't saying discrimination doesn't exist, which isn't addressing the intention behind what they were saying.
It was outlawed, and later written into the constitution.
I never said the caste system was abolished or doesn't exist. And I never mentioned 'untouchables'. It seems those replying and refuting anything I say are in favor of the caste system and want to keep it, which is utterly horrible.
If you cannot discriminate against caste, the caste serves no purpose, because you're effectively saying people are equal. But writing anti descrimination laws into the constitution obviously doesn't help society move away from it, especially when its so engrained into elders, or people who live outside the big cities.
In my last comment I said exactly that. Being outlawed does not mean it’s abolished. Something can be illegal and people still do it. People still commit murder and that’s been outlawed for like ever. So it can’t have been abolished if it still exists.
> How the fuck do you fix something if you keep pretending it's already fixed.
At no point did I say it’s a solved problem. My very first comment I said it happens outside the big cities more than the big cities. I never said it doesn’t happen.
You know. I heard a saying once: “people outside America know more about America than Americans know about America” it seems like the same is true here.
"old generation" probably means generations of immigrants. 1.5th and 2nd generation immigrants are much different from native Indians, they are basically raised outside India and have non-Indian friends.
There's no such thing as "an older generation thing" when it comes to discrimination. The haves are innately aware and will fight to keep what they have versus the have-nots. We've got plenty of other examples all across Western society and culture, from Britain's royal family to right-wingers actively fighting against the teaching of history in the US.
> right-wingers actively fighting against the teaching of history in the US
I don't think this is a fair characterisation. I have never heard of anyone wanting to stop this. If you mean CRT, that is something different, or at least the versions of it that are causing pushback are different.
For sure - I think that is a tricky one, as I don't feel I can trust anyone's take on it. I do see some of the activism training vs genuine historical education as being extremely disadvantageous, but also of course that black history needs to be taught well as a significant part of American history.
I would argue that the existing state wasn't "genuine historical education": I made it all the way through high school without ever being taught the state I was educated in had outright banned Black residents in its constitution.
My high school had our class go across the river multiple times to visit the same plantation house. They would show how pretty the property was, and give a history of the people who owned the property and how important they were.
We never got to be anywhere near the slave quarters, and it was never once mentioned that dozens of black people were brutally slaughtered there with their heads put on pikes at the entrance.
There has never in the history of the United States been a curriculum containing CRT at the K-12 level because children don't have the background and capacity to understand it.
And by bringing it up at all, you're proving that you don't either.
Older generations from the 90ies were much more liberal than Indian folks nowadays. The Indian politics and culture turned heavily right-wing, as in the 70ies.
Caste discrimination is not open, but still ongoing. Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras (the higher castes) will of course deny it, but still discriminate against the Dalit or muslims. If in private or in the workplace.
Indian movies became almost unwatchable lately. It's getting more and more extreme.
Lets say someone from the EU who's never been to the US keeps telling you, an American, "Don't go outdoors or you might be a victim of a mass shooting like I see in the news almost every day", and you say "that doesn't reflect the reality here", and they say "Isn't very convincing to say the least".
How can I or anyone prove a negative? I can only offer my life experiences as a non-high caste Indian whose both sides of the family eat meat, that caste never ever comes up with any of my Indian coworkers, managers, friends or family. Nor has anyone ever mentioned to me that they experienced issues because of their caste. In rural India and among older folks caste is more important, but in America it's pretty rare for people to care about caste. Any discrimination must be dealt with, but I don't like the generalization on HN than Indians are casteist.
> "Don't go outdoors or you might be a victim of a mass shooting like I see in the news almost every day", and you say "that doesn't reflect the reality here"
The initial example I gave was this: "caste discrimination exists". The response I see is "oh no that isn't real".
That's like someone saying "mass shootings occur in the USA" and me saying "oh no those aren't real"
A white American could say "racism is a thing of the past or is an issue somewhere else, because I don't experience it on a day to day basis". That's what your reply makes me think of
> How can I or anyone prove a negative? I can only offer my life experiences
You're trying to use your own experience to speak on someone else's behalf with respect to discrimination that you've admitted to never experiencing. Even trying to prove a negative in this context is missing the point entirely
Then is it fair to say that caste discrimination in India is akin to mass shootings in the US? In that they happen, but not a big deal for the rest of the society? Otherwise, something would have happened by now.
> Any discrimination must be dealt with, but I don't like the generalization on HN than Indians are casteist.
You get it. This is exactly the fear I have -- that clueless Americans will use an "Indians are casteist" excuse to justify not hiring us to management or positions of power.
There are already "keep it in India" comments on these threads that are going unmoderated, which would be totally unacceptable in any other context.
Imagine that people in Europe were afraid of American immigrants suddenly pulling a gun on them because they (the Europeans) had read a few articles about gun violence in the US.
That's how a lot of us Indians feel when Americans talk about caste discrimination.
Yes, it is absolutely real.
No, you probably don't understand at all how it works. It is kind of darkly hilarious to me that a comment from some guy saying "There are lots of Indians in Seattle, and they seem to stick together. I really don't know about the dynamics of the caste system..." is the second most upvoted comment on this discussion.
Yes, it is exhausting for us to teach you about thousands of years of history and how they contributed to discrimination. Go read up a few history books if you really want to know.
As an Indian, I kind of hate this generalization. It is absolutely our responsibility to explain and also to root out caste discrimination. Just because we had millennia long history with it (through foreigners, no less) does not mean we must not extricate it whence it currently stays.
For disclosure, I am not a high caste Indian, and both sides of my family eat meat.
The main issue is that a good chuck of tech folks upvoting and making this a big don't want to understand. They want to use this as an issue to not let Indians get promoted to managerial positions instead of them. It becomes easier now to say "hey, Indians are casteist, don't make them a managers'.
It's similar to how there is always mass confusion around here for the requirements for scouting for local applicants for work visas vs green card applications.
They don't seem to be looking for facts, that's why the discussions are so strange with real experiences downvoted, and some vague notions of high rates of caste discrimination in the US are upvoted.
Thanks. Why is it history sources I must add? I just try to speak out against it whenever I see it. Sadly it's usually the older Indians who insist on it, unfortunately.
This doesn’t follow to me. We brought a system of oppression and subjugation over to your continent, and now it’s your responsibility, racist westerner, to read a history book about it?
Most of us in the West never wanted anything to do with caste! This is a uniquely Indian problem which requires Indian efforts to fix, this isn’t something that can be passed off to western social justice movements to solve for you.
No sorry, you don't get to say this in America. Europeans brought guns, slavery, and racism to America, and I live with the consequences of it every day.
I don't pass off racism or gun violence as "a uniquely European problem which requires European efforts to fix". I study the nuances and try to help where I can.
If you're trying to compare the entire concept of human violence to the very well-defined and narrow concept of caste discrimination, you're not going to get very far I don't think. And for the record, caste politics rears its ugly head in the Desi community in my country of Canada all the time, yet somehow we've managed to avoid the ugliness of gun violence and slavery that you somehow found relevant.
It makes for uninteresting discussion of the misgivings of different countries when the first thing you're able to reach for is "well what about colonialism?"
It's mainly meant as an illustration of the OP's "We never wanted Problem X, take it back to your country!" argument, which is simplistic and uninteresting.
Pardon the ignorance but why does one need to understand history or the caste system in this context? The fact of the matter is dead simple, are you or are you not making decisions that hurt someone in any way based on biological factors they cannot control?
This is not politics or history, or even western thinking. It is fundamentally unfair and unjust. Treat others as you would like to be treated. This concept of justice is not foreign to any country or belief system as far as I am aware, please correct me if I am mistaken here. But every culture has ways and means by which laws, norms and traditions have been established that subvet the most basic senses of justice anyone can have.
I do not need to understand the history between tutsi and hutu in rwanda or serbs and bosnians or native and white americans in latin america or black and white people in the US.
Again I ask, unless you are arguing to justify the injustice, why is the reason behind it unjust?
I would say that I personally don't think any generalizations about "indians in seattle" or elsewhere is correct but individual experiences are not to be ignored either.
I don't see why HR and EEOC won't treat this like any other type of discrimination.
Matter of fact, I don't think seattle should need to ban caste discrimination. It is already illegal at the federal level!
It’s just gatekeeping. The idea behind such gatekeeping is that you don’t want people who don’t understand the nuances of it to apply it blindly to situations where it doesn’t apply. For example, I have on a couple of occasions struggled to get along with other Indians. Nothing related to caste, because neither of us knew the other’s caste (AFAIK). A well meaning but ignorant person would have made this situation worse by applying a caste lens to it.
I get what you’re saying - it’s just discrimination like any other discrimination and all discrimination is outlawed implicitly. I mostly agree. I just wouldn’t want this to become the first and only thing that people think about while trying to mediate relations between Indians.
As an American, your metaphor makes absolutely no sense to me.
Why would a European think an American would possess a gun in their country? And how would they get it there through customs - it’s not an idea? And a gun is a lethal weapon - is the caste system?
Sorry, I’ve spent a bit of time in Europe (including living for a stint). I’m also from a part of the US that has plenty of firearms. I just can’t make sense of this metaphor.
> Why would a European think an American would possess a gun in their country? And how would they get it there through customs - it’s not an idea?
Yeah, you know how stuff works in Europe, so this transparently sounds like nonsense to you. Similarly, the OP's assertion that caste and sex discrimination is "rampant" among Indians in Seattle sounds like nonsense to me.
> And a gun is a lethal weapon - is the caste system?
Definitely, in a bad way. People have been murdered in India over inter-caste marriages.
> I just can’t make sense of this metaphor.
I'll try to explain it point by point:
- Caste-based discrimination is a terrible thing that happens all the time in India, similar to how gun violence is a terrible thing that happens all the time in the US.
- But if a European said to you "You Americans in my country are super argumentative! You seem to be ready to pull a gun on each other all the time against each other, it's just like what I read in the paper!", you'd think it was nonsense that was basically stereotype-matching.
- Similarly, I find OP's comment about rampant caste discrimination nonsensical because it relies on simplistic stereotyping.
The downside to telling people to do their own research is that many of them will end up on your opposition's articles and websites, who will take the time to explain their side while denying you the ability to refute them.
Yeah, people dont understand _at all_ how it works because they were not and are not directly involved, The other side of the coin is they simply condemn all Indians as the modern equivalent of racists.
You are also not obliged to teach people anything, but as you've seen the people will judge you based on the information presented. Not contributing to the narrative only leads people to base judgement on the supplied information.
Reading about Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who led reforms against casteism and wrote the equivalent of affirmative action into the Indian Constitution is probably a good start. He was the Indian equivalent of Dr. Martin Luther King.
His writings are mostly in English and present a deep study of the subject, especially given that it affected him personally.
> wrote the equivalent of affirmative action into the Indian Constitution
Reservations are not equivalent to affirmative action in America. Dr. Ambedkar was the Chairman of Constitutional Drafting Committee. In popular imagination, he is often called the author of the Indian constitution. Reservations are a small part of it.
> He was the Indian equivalent of Dr. Martin Luther King.
I understand that you are trying to make the context relatable to an American audience but I find this framing rather grating. I don't mean any disrespect to Dr. King but this is selling Dr. Ambedkar short.
An op-ed piece from the NY Times? Not what I would consider an authoritative source. The author says caste discrimination is illegal, but goes onto suggest that other than people avoiding discussing the topic, and aside from a few high profile and moderately successful social initiatives, it’s still very much a thing. The piece doesn’t quite support your assertion, e.g.:
> As India transforms, one might expect caste to dissolve and disappear, but that is not happening. Instead, caste is making its presence felt in ways similar to race in modern America: less important now in jobs and education, but vibrantly alive when it comes to two significant societal markers — marriage and politics…
> Inter-caste marriages in India are on the rise but still tend to be the province of the liberal few. For much of the country, with its penchant for arranged marriages and close family ties, caste is still a primary determinant in choosing a spouse…
…and a bit more. Why do you believe caste discrimination isn’t real? That seems like a strong stance.
I think for most part, this is what Indians want to believe. Even the folks on this thread. When I was a kid in school I didn't think the caste system existed in "modern" India because it wasn't something I spent any time thinking about. Caste and religion didn't matter to me in my every day interactions, didn't factor into any decisions I made, therefore it didn't matter to others either. Or so I thought. That's privilege speaking. These things didn't matter to me because I had never suffered because of it. But they do exist, and Indians need to accept that.
Why you might find people being defensive on this thread is that it might feel galling to be talked down to by Americans on this subject. The Indians on this thread, like me, have never thought about caste and yet they’re being told to stop being casteist, to fight casteism etc by people who found out about it 10 minutes ago. For others, being told about casteism makes them feel bad because it’s a reminder that India isn’t as great as it could be, it’s not the land of equality and opportunity that we’d like to believe it is.
Not saying they’re right to feel that way, because we must do our part regardless of what others say. But it just gives you their perspective, so you might understand.
Technology firms in India have a better female to male staff ratio than the tech giants of Silicon Valley [1]. India has a much better male-to-female ratio compared with the U.S. Engineering male-female ratio in India is 1.96 as compared with 4.61 in the U.S. [2]
The 2015 stackoverflow survey has this interesting statement: "Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States." See https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015 Actually it is worse than it sounds because most of the female developers in the United States are first generation immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe.
Just because there are more female devs doesn't imply that there isn't discrimination. You're ignoring that parent said many of the women are (conspicuously) in QA
Just because there are more women in engineering doesn't imply that there isn't a pay gap, or that they're assigned to tasks of equal urgency
Indian here, in India, and here are my anecdotal experiences in decade+ experience
1. Worked with a tech team of 10 with no females, for over 8 years. Manager hired one once HR pointed it out categorically to him. Even she didn't last. Super co-incidentally, she was in QA. I should mention that she wasn't the problem.
2. Worked with design teams in 3 companies, the ratio of females was never more than 2:8 with respect to males.
3. Newly married women generally find it really hard to get back into workforce since it is expected that they will soon be planning a child and hence require a paid maternity leave. HR is explicity told about this by management.
4. Even unmarried ones are usually asked about their marriage plans when getting interviewed.
I would like to add, there is a dearth of skilled talent too with respect to women. Along with the lot less opportunities available to women for higher education, lot many women in India only join workforce to get more qualified for arranged marriages - "having working life" is somehow always in demand, higher skills or salaries do not matter to suitors usually - it is usually expected in both families that males will likely earn more than females so much so that the ones looking for prospective brides do not go for ones earning more than the prospective groom - something that perhaps works as a motivation for some women to not to vie for higher compensation jobs. This of course ends up making them more dependent on their spouses for money matters.
Again, this is not a commentary on all women or all men either but just a perspective of someone on the ground, in India.
"women in countries with higher gender inequality are simply seeking the clearest possible path to financial freedom. And typically, that path leads through STEM professions."
I know plenty of American women who would be outraged at the suggestions that the reason there's fewer women in high paying tech jobs is because they enjoy better gender equality! That's some twisted logic there.
Is it really? Plenty of women in computer science during it's early days weren't in it because it was their first choice. Other fields, like law and medicine overtly discriminated against women. Many med schools capped their female student representation at 10%. This displaced women into other fields, like CS. When those sexist policies were removed, those women got the chance to pick the field of their choice. The women that would have been in CS had these sexist policies still been in place aren't taking jobs at a corners store: they're entering other high-status fields.
Many fields that were once dominated by men are now either at parity, or even majority women. The fact that freedom from sexism stopped displacing women into CS doesn't seem like much of a bad thing.
> The fact that freedom from sexism stopped displacing women into CS doesn't seem like much of a bad thing.
Such a convenient explanation... CS is one of the highest paid professions, and women are taking advantage of lack-of-sexism and choosing to stay out of CS... because umm... they don't need the money? You should consider speaking at the Grace Hopper Conference, because there's lots of women there that haven't been told this truth.
It’s a well known fact (supported and replicated by research in multiple countries and societies) that women are less motivated by money than men. Women also prefer to work with people vs things (also well replicated result).
Obviously if a choice is starving vs CS, most women would prefer CS. That’s the choice for many women in Iran (most equal country in CS) or India. That’s not choice for most women in US or Europe. We are talking averages here - obviously there are a lot of women much more motivated by money than average men.
> women are taking advantage of lack-of-sexism and choosing to stay out of CS... because umm... they don't need the money?
As I stated in my previous comment, it's because other high paying industries stopped being sexist against women, and then the women that would have been pushed out of those industries and into CS can now study and work in the field of their choice. Nowhere did I write that "they don't need the money", and I even said that they were choosing other high paying fields once medicine, law, etc. stopped enforcing overtly sexist policies against women. Discussions are more productive when you engage with what other commenters are writing instead of your own inventions.
That’s quite clearly not what they were saying. If you want to argue with yourself, do it in a Word document and don’t involve the rest of us. I’d like to think that this community is above being intellectually dishonest in the name of starting internet fights. I have very very little time or respect for this mindset. What are you hoping to gain from this interaction?
I mean, the hard data is out there. Applicable not just to the US but also to other advanced countries like Scandinavian ones. I know that correlation is not causation and maybe there is some other common cause. But it is undeniable that better gender equality is correlated with fewer women in STEM.
> That's some twisted logic there.
I prefer the term "counterintuitive". And the world works in ways, many of which are counterintuitive. Another famous example - poverty trap, where people are incentivized to stay poor when you offer them means tested welfare. While each of the pillars of such programs (means testing, helping poor etc) sound good in isolation, they have a devastating impact in practice. Moynihan (a liberal, fwiw) was skewered when he suggested as such.
Software Development is competing with all the other possible fields out there for talented people. When we fail to address or mitigate sexism, our profession loses out to the professions that do.
And our evidence that software has more sexism than other fields is...? People tend to simply point to the lower than average female representation, but I don't find that convincing. 80/20 gender split is actually about average. Furthermore, studies measuring callbacks and recruiter interest show preference for women: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484
Honestly…I’m happy to operate under the assumption that tech has a sexism issue purely based on my personal experience with coworkers, superiors, peers online and at conferences, etc. I’ve never even worked in Big Tech! The stories I hear from friends that do, sound ridiculous. I’ve seldom seen a study that meets the standards of objective-ish academic rigour that I feel could even remotely capture all the nuanced ways in which women are (in my experience) screwed by our shitty culture.
If I applied the same line of thinking, I'd be operating on under the assumption that tech has a sexism issue against men based on my experience of being explicitly directed to discriminate against men, and being given gender quotas vastly different from industry representation - often demanding as much as 2x the representation of women. Most of my co-workers, men and women both, have similar stories . That's a lot more concrete to than a hand-wavy "it's nuanced" explanation.
But rather than listening to anecdotes, I'll listen to evidence, which also indicates that tech at best does not discriminate against women and likely discriminates in favor of them.
> 74% of women in software development have experienced gender discrimination
Wrong. 74% of women say they have experienced gender discrimination. This is not measuring discrimination, this is measuring perceptions of discrimination - which is a substantially different thing than actually measuring discrimination through things like anonymized applications, or sending identical applications with different genders. Imagine I had an orchestra. I poll them about gender discrimination, and loads more men say they experienced gender discrimination in hiring. But when we switch to blind auditions, men actually fared worse than women. Which is more compelling evidence?
Perceptions of discrimination could be caused by all sorts of things, like a media ecosystem fiercely promoting the idea that women are being discriminated against in tech - which doesn't always match reality. For instance, Google was constantly said to have been paying women less than men, until they actually studied their salary disparities and found men were underpaid: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/technology/google-gender-...
However, you do raise a good point. The fact that so many women believe they are being discriminated against could very well be part of suppressed representation of women in STEM. The fact that perceptions of discrimination are so strong could dissuade women from entering the field, even though there's little evidence for actual discrimination in tech.
It is/was easier to become financially independent in the states without a STEM degree, although I think it is becoming harder as inflation demands $300k/year FAANG salaries.
And our evidence for this discrimination is, what exactly? As I pointed out in the other reply, the evidence shows that tech companies are if anything discriminating in favor of women. If we measure by job satisfaction, computer science and engineering are among the lowest disparity: https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2017/12/19/wome...
As I pointed out in my other reply [1], this is a poll asking women if they think they have been discriminated against - it's measuring perceptions of discrimination. It's not measuring discrimination.
If I poll orchestra members and a lot more men say the face discrimination in hiring, but when I conduct blind auditions men do even worse what does that tell me? Or tells me that their perceptions of discrimination are out of line with the reality of discrimination.
A very large part of why there M:W ratio is different for immigrants than those back in India is also very sexist - parents don’t want to send their daughters abroad alone because… <sexist> reasons whereas the sons all get pushed to try and get out.
It's always difficult to compare cross countries: for instance it's prettty usual for bigger companies in the US/EU to outsource whole areas that are low paying with high turn over to avoid dealing with the HR. Facebook is famous for outsourcing content moderation, but I'd expect QA and other lower pay "engineering" jobs to be outsourcedas well.
If Indian companies have incentives to keep them in-house, that simple structural difference would completley chaange the numbers.
I'm not sure we havr "facts" (numbers) that are immune to these discrepancies.
This is an American problem too. I've worked with a lot of women in QA who have CS degrees, and lots of male programmers who were shocked to discover that the testers they were working with had exactly the same qualifications they did.
In America companies, women who struggle to find software engineering roles due to discrimination are often able to get lower-paid roles in QA where they are less likely to be pre-judged for not looking like what people think engineers look like. The result is that 38.8% of American QA testers are women, compared to 14% of software engineers.
Fields that hold fixed-mindset beliefs, where success in the field is attributed to innate talent, "being smart" or other unchanging characteristics, have significantly more discrimination against women and traditionally-marginalized racial groups than do fields that believe success relies on hard work and practice: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1261375
Or another possibility is men and women are wired differently, and the things that make a good dev (such as coming up with a novel solution to a problem) is different from the things that make a good QA (testing every possible edge case to make sure the thing does what the thing is supposed to do).
See my comment above about "women in QA". Also, "no female engineers" is laughable because that is 1 anecdote. There are plenty of Indian female engineers. You know that right ?
Hint: It is not casteism. It is cultural. Women in India want to get into IT (best way to make decent money) and QA has lower barrier to entry with less pressure. Nothing to do with casteism. This is why GP's comment is extremely reckless and dangerous.
I read your post, then I we back to again read the original post.
To quote:
The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination across dev and qa, with a women making up the vast majority of qa even though they graduated with the same degrees as the men from the same Indian universities.
No where in that sentence does it say anything about casteism. (Yes, I know the original post was discussing both casteism and sex discrimination.)
Also, you wrote:
Nothing to do with casteism.
Yes, in this particular case. Casteism results in lower human development for low caste people. As a result, they are likely to perform worse in the workplace due to multiple reasons, including education, confidence, etc.
It is not casteism. It is cultural.
Why do you think that they are separate? Any university-level sociology professor would tell you that they are clearly intertwined. Sexism is also cultural.
About "extremely reckless and dangerous": On HN, each time casteism is the topic, it evokes strong, emotionally defensive responses from Indian-descent people (both nationals and the diaspora). Something that I often see repeated: "Oh, you just don't understand." "Oh, you cannot understand this ${thing} in our ancient culture." It's hard to understand if you don't ask. Yes, you may perceive their asking as a slight, but in many cases they are making an effort to learn more about this complex social issue. I see similar reactions during discussions about transgender rights and Black Lives Matter _in the United States_. There seems to be a small, vocal minority that wants to deny these are real, very serious, and important social issues that need our attention.
When a non-Indian descent person sees what they perceive as casteism or sex discrimination towards Indian descent people, how would you like them to raise the issue with you?
> GP's comment is extremely reckless and dangerous
Unless sitkack thumbed their comment into an iPhone while simultaneously driving drunk and having unprotected sex with a prostitute, "extremely reckless and dangerous" is an awfully weird commentary on their post.
Caste System exists in India but you are generalizing way too much by saying "My Indian Colleagues". I am an Indian-American and I hate the caste system. I love that America is multi-cultural and allows people of all cultures/races to come here and make something for themselves. If you are going to assume by default that I believe in caste system, you are mistaken. But I am not interested in explaining too much. So yea, I will probably be tight lipped in front of you because you don't understand the complexity and roots of this practice.
Just be careful about generalizing a country of 1.4 billion people. Someone more ignorant will automatically assume that all Indians are the same and they all believe in caste system.
>> I try to talk to my Indian colleagues about this and they stay extremely tight lipped about this for a multitude of reasons.
> but you are generalizing way too much by saying "My Indian Colleagues" ... I will probably be tight lipped in front of you
All OP said is their Indian colleagues are tight-lipped about caste, which it sounds like you would be too. I'm not sure why you feel that's unfair generalization. OP isn't claiming they all support it, just that they're silent about it.
I can't speak for others but I may be tight lipped personally because it is a very complex issue that a non Indian cannot just understand. I see this tendency that people of non Indian origin throw the keyword "caste" without really knowing what it is.
OP is making sweeping generalizations. Another example: All women in QA. So what ? May be because women find it easier to start with QA (lower barrier to entry) and has less demanding work. Sure, some of it may be cultural but tieing to casteism is a stretch.
> I see this tendency that people of non Indian origin throw the keyword "caste" without really knowing what it is.
Shouldn't we be talking about it then? Openly? Educating others.
> I hate the caste system
This is where being tight lipped doesn't make sense. It falls under the "it's our problem so you can't talk about it". If it's a bad system then let it be just that, why defend it by not talking about it?
A similar analogy would be police doing brutal/illegal things and defending each other. If you're a cop and you hate that, then being tight lipped about the "internal problems and complexities" only keeps the problems going.
> All women in QA. So what ?... Sure, some of it may be cultural but tieing to casteism is a stretch.
There should be equal ratios of women in Dev vs QA for all races. Sure maybe saying casteism is the root cause is too much, but denying it is also wrong. It's like saying racism is never a factor. It's not 100% the factor, but it's definitely a portion of a problem.
I guess... we should talk about it and learn - and not be afraid.
> Sure maybe saying casteism is the root cause is too much, but denying it is also wrong.
I agree with everything you said, but just a note that OP was talking about sex and caste discrimination as separate things, not conflating them as your parent implies.
From OP:
> The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination across dev and qa
> There should be equal ratios of women in Dev vs QA for all races
But it is flawed - it could be easily argued that this group of people are way more sexist than others which could account for that ratios being off vs inherently Caste.
> May be because women find it easier to start with QA (lower barrier to entry) and has less demanding work.
OP is talking not just about casteism but also about sexism, and in the US this would be considered a badly sexist remark. Why do you assume that women seek jobs with a lower barrier to entry and less demanding work?
I didn't say All women seek jobs with lower barrier to entry. I am talking about QA and why it tends to attract mostly women in India. Plenty of women go into other fields including Engineering.
> I am talking about QA and why it tends to attract mostly women in India
Disclaimer: I'm speaking as a Scandinavian with no knowledge of this situation in India. I can only share what we have learned here, as I think it could help explain some of the reason why it ended up this way.
This could be an example of gender inequality. We had the same issue in our countries where the women chose jobs with lower barrier to entry with more dependability and stable work hours. The reason was that they had (and some still do) a lot of responsibilities outside work to take care of their family.
There was also a cultural thing where men didn't feel "manly" enough when they took time off work to take care of the children. The government provides a long maternal/paternal leave, and made an equal part of it reserved to men and women. That quickly changed the culture where it became more acceptable for men to take time off work to raise children.
It turned out that women actually wanted the same careers as men :-) The expectations from society made it hard for them, and when those expectations changed the pattern also changed.
Sure, we still have some types of work that are dominated by women, but it is increasingly their own choice. We are not finished yet, and there is still work to do, but the gap is closing.
From my experience, it seems that female developers in my country go through a different path. Instead of going to a lower entry job, they frequently start as regular developers and often end up as managers and other positions of influence.
>OP is making sweeping generalizations. Another example: All women in QA. So what ? May be because women find it easier to start with QA (lower barrier to entry) and has less demanding work. Sure, some of it may be cultural but tieing to casteism is a stretch.
It isn't a generalization to point out that there's something strange when the distribution is skewed that strongly considering that men and women are generally equal. Some slight bias is understandable, but the larger the deviation gets, the more unrealistic it is. There is nothing inherent about being a woman that would lead to them unanimously choosing to go with a lower barrier to entry and similarly there is nothing inherent about being a man that would lead to them not choosing said lower barrier and easier work.
As an Aristotelean the thought that I need to understand the Platonean idea of a caste system seems vain.
I think it is distracting.
What we should talk about, and what we can talk about, is the inacceptable behavior of (some) people, in this case (some) Indians in the US work place.
There's nothing complex about caste-based discrimination. It's a laugh and a half that Indians like you try to defend it like this. This shit has no place in the West.
Caste discrimination is strong in male Indian immigrants to the USA. The higher the caste, the stronger the discrimination. Just as you ["...you don't understand the complexity and roots of this practice."], most will defend their Indian society's attitudes. They certainly won't accept lower castes as equals.
I have no experience regarding Indian womens' attitudes.
I don’t think he generalized in a way that makes assumptions about you or all Indians. It was across his Indian colleagues, maybe he only had 2 Indian colleagues
The ones that hate the caste system are often from the lower castes, who are the ones that see the unfavorable side of the system.
The ones from the higher castes (which are the most likely to be wealthy enough to come here) are the ones favored by the system and are more likely to approve of it.
Very coarse racial/religios groups, (caucasians/asians/africans or christians/jews/muslims) discriminate against each other. But those groups are each divisible into smaller groups, which discriminate against each other just as hard, and those groups are also divisible into yet smaller groups, which discriminate against each other just as hard.
There's a famous old Emo Phillips joke about this problem, which goes as follows. Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
Probably that groups discriminated against often discriminate internally. Recurse a couple times. Rarely is someone only discriminating or discriminated against. Most people are both.
Think of the fractal images, when you zoom in, you see more fractals (discrimination). Discrimination happens even within sub groups that are being discriminated against. It is rarely one-way.
A common example is women discriminating against women co-workers by gossiping and backstabbing them in the social aspect of the workplace. We may not see that it is discrimination (on the basis of gender) because it's women doing their thing.
In the Deaf community, we experience discrimination every day from those who are hearing. Then there is a big one against people who identify as "D" deaf [those who identify with the Deaf community as an identity] and those who identify as "d" deaf [those who identify as having an impairment]. Those within the deaf community additionally discriminate those who aren't "deaf" enough, and then in turn, even discriminate against deaf who are mentally handicapped.
regarding sex discrimination. Did you actually asked women in qa whether they chose to be in qa or were forced to be in qa or you came to this conclusion solely based on the observation that there were more women in qa than dev?
My anecdotal experience is that lot of south asian women choose to go in QA. I have several women in dev jobs coming to me asking for transfer in QA when they needed predictable office timing and wanted to concentrate more on their family lives but without losing thier touch from corporate jobs. I also have women transferring from QA back to dev jobs when their kids were slightly older and well adjusted to school when they needed more challenge.
I have had similar requests for going into program management jobs too for similar reasons.
This was before pre-pandemic i don't know the current state as i am out of corp. world but i don't subscribe to this idea. I think there is cultural angle to it as well.
When I was working for an American tech in China, my boss would joke about the QA team being all female while there were scarcely another girls in the engineering team. I guess that kind of thing doesn’t just happen in India (although things are much better now at the company I worked for in their Beijing office).
I worked for a Chinese tech giant in India. I just realised that all the female Chinese engineers I interacted with were SDETs. While the skew existed in India, it wasn't as pronounced.
I'm seeing a lot of Indians replying to this post's point about sex discrimination, but I'm assuming they're men. Are there any Indian women on HN who can sound off on their own experiences with sex discrimination?
Newspeak™ terms like 'cis' should be kept out of the general discourse, they have no place in a society where people live and thrive based on what binds them together. This type of language only serves to divide and create more 'us versus them' which may be a boon for those who want to push identity politics but is a bane for the rest of society.
That being said, it does provide some recourse for those who can show they’ve been discriminated because of their caste against the perpetrator. It doesn’t fix the root of the issue, and cases might be difficult to prove, but seems like a net good to add this protection. Might force discrimination on these grounds to be more subtle, but that means blatant discrimination would have consequences. Which again, seems better than the status quo.
But from a practical perspective all of this is already done and kept on the DL even before the law was in place. The social pressure already stops the blatant treatment from occurring.
Nonsense. People respond to incentives all the time. I recommend reading up on "zero-determinate strategies": all it takes to change someone's behavior is changing your behavior in response in ways that impact their payoffs.
We are rationalizing creatures, not rational creatures. Once racism, sexism or caste discrimination stop being strategic, people stop buying into them. The book "Pax Ethnica: Where and How Diversity Succeeds" describes several instance where this worked. Voluntary legal protection of minority rights by a historically-dominant group has repeatedly dismantled long-standing ethnic conflicts.
Nonsense my ass. What fantasy incentive are you talking about? There's no incentive preventing someone from not hiring someone because of their caste and then completely fabricating a different reason.
>We are rationalizing creatures, not rational creatures. Once racism, sexism or caste discrimination stop being strategic, people stop buying into them.
Sure but the point is, it will never be "not strategic".
It's only strategic when it incurs social rewards from some people and no countervailing social condemnation from others.
It's up to us to be that countervailing social condemnation. Even imposing that cost of making up a totally different reason raises the cost of discrimination, and raising the cost of something means people will do it less.
Promoting cancel culture? Personally I find cancel culture too reactionary and too extreme and irrational. Additionally cancel culture often gets shit wrong and ruins the lives of the wrong people. I would say in this case if you participated in such a mistake you should be the one that's put down.
But let's disregard that. For this specific case you can't even know who to socially condemn. If the law can't determine it how can you?
20 transexual people who identify as furries applied to my job post. I didn't hire any of them because they didn't have the technical skills to perform the job.
copying from earlier where I posted this answer....Kshama Sawant is exploiting the ignorance about Hindu religion and ground reality about India among US audience to get a political bill passed which makes "Hindu= castiest" to avg ignorant american and opens them up for hate attacks....
the problem is certain groups thrive on the American's lack of information about Indian society to spread their misinformation as truth. Caste, being a complex issue, has been reduced india to rural areas. Any cases about caste favoritism or discrimination area dealt with public outcry and government laws. Meritocracy is the currency in the new Indian tech space.
Caste as portrayed by American newspapers and "human rights" agencies is that every Hindu (they single out, even though caste problem exists in all religions in India Pakistan Bangladesh etc) comes with caste lense, which is untrue. There has been a deliberate attempt to make Brahim = white so that US left liberals can easily make oppressor-opressed connections. Reality is way different and complex but nobody wants to read sources. In many parts lower castes are in high power, and they exert atrocities on everyone else - other lower castes and higher castes. Whole India is riddled with examples like that. Person in power exploits poor person. Caste is just a tool. Again, with public outcry and strict laws, it has been relegated to deep rural areas of India. You won't find it easily in cities. What all this points to ? This is an attempt to dehumanize hindu population, attack hindu tech workers (who are micro minority in USA) and erode any goodwill around India.
Take this article for example, it doesn't go into the Dalit activists obvious misinterpretations but paints Rajiv Malhotra as devil incarnate. Propaganda pieces rarely show their teeth this easily. Any follower of reuters will form their opinion by reading such propaganda piece.
Salvatore Babones, american statistician warned about same thing -
For a western audience, India is becoming a fascist state even though ground reality is entirely opposite because they are surrounded by media reports which say so. If you repeat lie long enough, it becomes the truth.
> No, women do not all want to be QA, I assure you.
Of course they don't! People make their own choices!
My point was that QA teams are often more welcoming to women, and don't have a ton of male brogrammer "let's crush some LeetCode" types. This also tends to be a self-reinforcing cycle. Where would you rather go, the team that treats interviews as a hazing ritual, or the one that conducts a good conversation and respects your time?
I tried to make this more clear in my comment, since clearly I didn't do a good job of communicating it the first time.
Interviewing double-blind in a discriminatory system is still going to reproduce existing discriminatory dynamics.
That solution works in situations where performance is individual, the standards are largely agreed-upon and the access to training & opportunities are equally-accessible. That's why it was so effective for orchestras.
Unfortunately, computer science education remains one of the most discriminatory part of our industry, and the decades of discrimination mean people's resumes and post-education training vary already.
And finally, what makes a developer effective varies by team and context, and we don't have any consistent way to judge those things.
Luckily, there are plenty of techniques that can successfully address bias even under those situations. They just tend to be harder to sell to anxious people who want to stay centered in the majority, because they all require admitting that discrimination exists.
He is rhetorically saying an "ought", not "is", although grammatically it is an "is". At least that's how I read it. (Disclaimer: I'm not American and English is not my native language though.)
> India is not dealing with this issue, America is.
India is not dealing with caste discrimination? Is this a joke?
India has implemented incredibly wide-reaching and aggressive policies to both combat present-day casteism and remediate the effects of past/historical casteism.
Yes, caste discrimination still happens in India - that's why it remains an ongoing effort with a multi-pronged approach. But it's very much an issue that is actively being addressed at nearly every layer of society, to a degree that would be inconceivable in the US or Europe.
Honestly, if you compare the tangible and concrete steps to combat casteism that India has undertaken (a currently active effort) to the incredibly milquetoast anti-racism efforts within Europe (for example), it makes the latter look like mere lip service by comparison.
I'm interpreting it as that the issue of caste discrimination being perpetuated by immigrants in America is, by definition, not being dealt with by India. India has to deal with the issue of caste discrimination being perpetuated in India.
I think most people would agree you’re far less likely to be victimized for your caste in America than in India, which means for all intents and purposes it is better than this.
The biggest one to me is the sex discrimination across dev and qa, with a women making up the vast majority of qa even though they graduated with the same degrees as the men from the same Indian universities.
Even Indian men that I respected on multiple levels, when they get on an interview with a women they are overly harsh in ways they were not with men. So much so that I stopped interviewing all together. I reported to HR and they of course didn't know how to handle it. It really makes me sad.
I try to talk to my Indian colleagues about this and they stay extremely tight lipped about this for a multitude of reasons. I applaud this action. This shit has to stop, leave it in India, America is better than this.
Discrimination is fractal. All interview should be truly double-blind.
https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-term...