"Girl, you are imagining!": As people have taught Internet sexism
It seems that the Internet, like any technologyshould be perceived as an impartial tool and give it a “sexist” characterization - is absurd. But such animation can be quite justified: in the end, the online space reflects the beliefs of the people who create it. And while sexist sentiments are alive offline, they will find a place online too.
Text: Daria Gavrilova, authoring telegram channel "Patriarchy, burn"
How people taught discrimination algorithms
Developers are inevitably influenced by both the individual preferences of the content creators and the generally accepted language rules, often discriminatory. For example, in Russian, with its notion of a grammatical gender, the gender of the unknown to the reader says “he” by default: “When an author works on a book, it must be disciplined” - so, inevitably, we represent an abstract male author simply because does not mean otherwise. Such processes occur in different languages: for example, in English the trues are called "pussy" - a euphemism for the word "vagina", - automatically equating someone "bad" and "weak" to a woman. In Spanish, the gender of a group of people changes to a male if there is at least one male there.
The way we speak influences thinking: language cliches, repeating, “teach” the brain to think in a certain way. This happens with self-taught online translators: the greater the amount of text passed through them, the more often they memorize standard phrases. For example, Google Translate stereotypically translates gender-neutral phrases from Turkish: in Turkish, third person singular phrases can be about both men and women, but Google translates "O bir mühendis" into English as "He is an engineer", and " O bir hemşire "like" She is a nurse. " Injustice can also be hidden in search engine algorithms: for example, Google is the first to issue white male actors on the list of how to avoid the punishment for murder. Google is the first to issue white male actors, while the leading actress in Violation Viola Davis there is a second.
The studies have repeatedly confirmed that digital systems are adapting to the manifestations of discrimination imprinted in the structure of our communication. One of the high-profile cases is the twitter bot, which, after three hours of its existence, began sending women into the kitchen and urging them to support Hitler's cause; Many of the tens of thousands of tweets, including frankly racist or mizoginnye, were just copies of messages from users who decided to troll the system. Without planning it themselves, adolescents, who began to teach the bot incorrect statements, conducted an important experiment. "Language is like a mirror - it reflects everything that happens in reality. Our love, hate is a word, a relationship. And if we tell each other that the boys are smart and the girls are beautiful, then sooner or later it will be heard from the seemingly harmless assistant robot, "argues the developer-linguist Asya Boyarskaya.
Why women do not feel safe in the Internet
We all want to feel safe - it does not matter, we are talking about the situation in the family, a walk down the street in the evening or a trip in public transport. The Internet is no exception, but, unfortunately, in social networks, forums and just random sites there is always a chance to run into degrading content. Part of the resources, in principle, is built on controversial ideas that make them at least unpleasant, and sometimes completely unsafe for women.
A study by Jasmin Farduli of the Australian University Macquarie showed that subscribers of blogs about fitness and beauty are more dissatisfied with their appearance than girls who do not use Instagram. Moreover, under the influence of social networks, adolescent girls, in principle, tend to value themselves primarily for their appearance. And this already leads to psychological disorders and eating disorders, as demonstrated by a study by scientists at the University of Essex. Based on a sample of almost 10,000 British families with children between the ages of 10 and 15, researchers firstly found that teenage girls use social networks more often than their peers boys (by 3% by age ten and by 12% more at fifteen), and secondly, found an inverse correlation between the use of social networks and the level of satisfaction with life and psychological health in girls, including an increased risk of developing clinical depression.
It is even more dangerous that girls are also looking for the “solution” of their problems (in particular, ways to lose weight) online - in addition to harm from lukizm, we can talk about radical changes in diet that can be undertaken only after consulting a doctor (if it is not available, follow the WHO nutritional guidelines, which are based on research and expert recommendations). Popular diets from slimming accounts are often not based on scientific evidence, but on the “weak” principle: “instagram diets” usually look very attractive, but often turn out to be simply unsafe.
In the US, 76% of women who died at the hands of the current or former partner, were previously subjected to cyber-stalking by them
Another of the main dangers of the modern Internet is affordable free porn. Even if the ethical problems of the industry are marginalized (female workers have virtually no professional protection), experts agree that porn itself creates unrealistic body standards and ideas about sex, including normalizing violence. Some feminists believe that porn videos are contributing to the growth of violence against women in real life: a number of studies confirm these fears, but so far most countries do not consider them sufficient to introduce a new regulation policy - some researchers insist that it is too early to draw conclusions.
By the way, about violence - women on the Internet are much more unpleasant to use the services for dating. According to a study by Amnesty International in the UK, every fifth girl has been subjected to virtual violence based on sex. Often, in applications and on the websites, users expect offers to do sex work, unwelcome dikpiki, familiarity, graphic offers of sex, rudeness in case of refusal, and sometimes harassment. So, in the US, 76% of women who died at the hands of the current or former partner, before the tragedy, were subjected to cyber-stalking from their side (we wrote here about how to protect yourself online).
The “culture of violence” on the Internet is also supported by intrusive visualization. Many sites sell places for banner advertising, the content of which is responsible for those who buy it. So, banners with calls to play an erotic game or go to the site of "guaranteed sex dating" often appear on websites - and almost always they are illustrated by hypertrophied erotized female images. Needless to say, online games and the gaming community as a whole are another area in which the problem of the objectification of the female body is acute.
The gaming environment has a sad reputation in terms of sexism at both the industrial and game levels. For a long time, female characters, as a rule, were deliberately sexualized, and professional players were not taken seriously here - Gamergate, which began in 2014, only highlighted the urgent problems. But the easiest way to face sexism and objectification is still in social networks. As recent examples show, Russian SMM marketers still rely on humiliating content from time to time: take at least Burger King, who used the image of a raped girl in his advertising, offering a “second burger for free”. And journalist Anastasia Krasilnikova leads a telegram channel, almost entirely devoted to the analysis of sexist advertising.
Men's industry
While the majority of employees of companies that form the Internet landscape are men, and of European or Asian origin (if in general there are about 20% of women’s IT companies, usually no more than 10% of their managers), it is their individual experience that usually affects on the product, whether it is a search engine or social network.
“Now, after trying on femoptics, I look back and wonder how much longer and harder my high-tech journey was than the standard way of a man,” said Gillian, who works in automated software testing in Israel. “How many times have I heard from teachers phrases like“ programming is not for women, look for another profession, you still can’t do anything and learn nothing. ”Now, twenty years after the end of the school programming group, out of ten girls in this industry only I. At work, I constantly encounter distrust from customers due to the fact that I am a girl. There was a blatant case when a client rolled updates to its server and several services fell. On my letter that everything needs to be fixed, I came answer in do e “Girl, you’re imagining! We didn’t change anything!” When the boss sent a copy of my letter from his post, he was promised to fix it right away. In the end, I asked my email to have a neutral version of my name, Gill, similar to the usual male name of Israel is Gil. "
In the development of games, including online games, women have also been few for a long time (3% as of 1989), and even now about 75% of developers are men. "The mythology around the creation of games is trying to convince women that working in a game dev is a great privilege, for which endless harassment, processing and low wages by the IT industry are needed," says Alexandra Korabelnikova, head of game dev Studio EggNut. She also talks about the recent scandal around the studio Riot, the heads of which for many years, harassed and discriminated against their employees, because those "not enough gamers."
While the majority of employees of companies that form the Internet landscape are men, it is their individual experience that can influence the product, be it a search engine or a social network.
According to Gillian, women in IT still almost always get less men in the same position, and the atmosphere at work often does not contribute to professional growth and achievements. Natalya, a systems analyst from Russia, notes that because of sexist jokes and wishes for “home comfort and female happiness”, she also experiences discomfort: “This is also found in Russian companies celebrating gender holidays and in international ones - it happens that they removed and distributed a video about diversity, but the attitudes in the heads of employees have not changed. It becomes even more interesting if you are not ashamed to call yourself a feminist. Reactions are invaluable: there are even more jokes, and some annoying colleagues are trying to get under the skin y "
Natalia, however, emphasizes that stereotypes no longer have such a serious influence on the process of obtaining a post. "As a rule, employers - probably, except for the most dense, but those who are not interested in me - are interested in you and your development. Anyway, there are still not so many good specialists, so companies have to expand their horizons. I can’t say that it’s harder to break through at work than male colleagues, "she says. Olesya, an HR manager at an American IT company, agrees with this: “It seems to me that there is less gender-based discrimination in workplace IT than in other areas. This is connected with progressive thinking and result-oriented, rather than compliance formalities. " But false social installations work: according to Olesya’s experience, women more often do not risk working in IT and do not send applications, than are eliminated by hiring.
Natalya, a systems analyst, recalls that she faced stereotypes on a daily basis at the university: "At the university, students were divided into smart and beautiful, and students were given more attention - it was thought that they had expectations and they were threatened by the army, and girls were perhaps decree." HR manager Olesya is not sure that you can influence recruiting if the final employer adheres to traditional views. “On forums, people often write about nasty recruiters who screen out candidates because of age, gender, eye color, etc. But the recruiter, as a rule, has nothing to do with it — hiring managers set limits that are not related to the candidate’s business skills. If they refuse even a glimpse of a resume because there is a wrong gender or “too old” age, the recruiter will not be able to do anything. When it comes to recruiting highly qualified staff or rare specialists, it is especially insulting - you can hardly find one person, but p the practitioners of refusing to consider the candidacy because it "does not want to imagine a woman in the department." "
Who works over changes
In the English version of Wikipedia, 1.5 million biographies, and only 17% of them talk about women - 90% of the content is created by men. Employees of the online encyclopedia addressed this problem and made a list of reasons why women edit articles less frequently. Among them, “lack of free time” (women still devote 60% more time to housework than men), “lack of self-confidence: women are inclined to believe that their edits will be rejected or deleted”, “tendency to avoid conflicts and unavailability participate in lengthy battles for edits "and" misogyny atmosphere in Wikipedia in general. " The company has organized a series of wiki-marathons around the world to introduce women to editorial tools and create new articles about women.
Dealing with discrimination in the field of online video games. “Right now, there is an active struggle for the unionization of female workers in the gaming industry, which will make it possible to demand and achieve better working conditions: pay at the industry level, social insurance, workplaces for marginalized groups and the lack of processing,” says Alexandra Korabelnikova. She says that as an indie studio manager, she is trying, among other things, to change the industry for the better, starting at least from creating a healthy working culture: "I would like more women to create their own studios and work in them, but for this to happen, the industry should become comfortable environment. "
Channels appeared where women publicize rude behavior of men on dating sites: for example, Bye, Felipe in English and ITOM ("And here he writes me ...") in Russian. Commentators, by the way, themselves often offer rudeness to respond with insults, but the fact that women are tired of taking the dismissive attitude to themselves for granted is good news.
In the English version of Wikipedia, 1.5 million biographies, and only 17% of them talk about women - 90% of the content is created by men
British Charlotte Webb, who created the Feminist Internet team, says their mission is to “achieve online equality for women and other oppressed groups through creative and critically meaningful actions.” Feminist Internet is involved in and sponsors Internet research, organization speakers speak at schools and universities, and also offer consulting services for business organizations that want to contribute to equality. Feminist Internet has an application and technology development workshop, such as a device connected to the Internet, trained to report domestic violence, or an update for online helpers that starts the process of fighting internal sexism. Soon the Charlotte Webb group will launch a podcast. Webb believes that sexism on the Internet harms both men and women and we must look for ways to make online life more enjoyable for everyone. "The best way is to negotiate with tech giants because they are here for a long time," she told the British Standard. "We are trying to establish a dialogue with companies with great influence, so that they take responsibility for the content in social media, pay attention to inequality ".
Some companies themselves set their goal to make the sphere of IT and the Internet more equitable. Facebook, for example, publishes annual reports on the reduction of discrimination. According to the document for 2018, women are now 22% on the positions of engineers in the company; in 2014 there were only 14%. Facebook is trying to eliminate ethnic discrimination, but so far 92% of employees are white. An employee of the London office of Facebook from Russia, on condition of anonymity, says that "the difference in work between Russia and England is enormous": "In Russian companies where I worked, many believe that gender equality has come to the world for a long time, and all manifestations of injustice are either proof the fact that women are objectively unable to cope with work, or just a “joke.” And these “harmless jokes" surrounded me every day. In London, people are generally more open to fempovest. All large companies conduct courses on how to maintain a div ersity, fighting discrimination and cognitive distortions. I hardly ever encountered any sexism in the work environment, and it is strongly condemned. "
Photo: Surrys
