{"id":17124,"date":"2012-05-30T04:34:06","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T02:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/?p=17124\/"},"modified":"2017-01-21T01:35:07","modified_gmt":"2017-01-21T01:35:07","slug":"women-it-scientists-outraged-after-sexist-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/women-it-scientists-outraged-after-sexist-comments\/","title":{"rendered":"Women IT scientists outraged after sexist comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the worlds largest IT companies faces continuing criticism after Danish celebrity, occasional speaker and commentator Mads Christensen moderated its recent Copenhagen conference. Now international scientists at the University of Copenhagen have joined the fray, saying that the Dell affair highlights serious gender problems in the IT field worldwide.<\/p>\n

According to reports, Mads Christensen praised the lack of women in IT and asked the men in the room to promise him that they will go home and say, ‘shut up bitch!’.<\/p>\n

\u00bbThe IT business is one of the last frontiers that manages to keep women out. The quota of women to men in your business is sound and healthy,\u00ab Mads Christensen said at the conference. \u00bbWhat are you actually doing here?\u00ab he added to the few women who were actually present in the room. <\/p>\n

Researcher: Dell not up to the task<\/h2>\n

However a number of University of Copenhagen researchers were unimpressed, forcing Dell into apologising on a social networking site and Christensen to explain himself through comon.dk.<\/a><\/p>\n

The reaction of some Danish researchers is scathing towards both Dell and to the speaker Christensen.<\/p>\n

\u00bbWhat worries me the most is that if Dell is not able to recognize that hiring a guy like Mads Christensen is a bad idea, how are they ever going to handle the real gender related problems that women in IT experience?\u00ab argues Aasa Feragen, a post doc at the Department of Computer Science DIKU, University of Copenhagen. She adds that she would currently \u00bbbe reluctant to seek a job at Dell after this, and I would urge my students to think twice as well.\u00ab <\/p>\n

Celebrity: Jokes taken out of context<\/h2>\n

Contributing to the dismay is the current situation of women in IT, a notably male dominated field, as evidenced by the convention’s ratio of 800 men to 40 women, according to Melanie Ganz, a post doc from the University of Copenhagen currently on exchange to Harvard University in the US.<\/p>\n

\u00bbOne of the biggest IT employers in Denmark hires a guy that has the maturity of a five year old as a moderator?,\u00ab she exclaims.<\/p>\n

In his defence Mads claims that his humour \u00bbis steeped in satire and humour\u00ab and was not intended to be serious. He further argues that if you take jokes out of context you can \u00bbeasily make me a psychopath.\u00ab <\/p>\n

Dell apology<\/h2>\n

Teaching your sons how to say \u00bbshut the fuck up bitch\u00ab and questioning why women were even part of the conference at all were part of his act, Mads Christensen claims. <\/p>\n

Dells response was more conciliatory<\/a>, \u00bbwe apologize for this unfortunate event,\u00ab it said on a blog after the conference, and after the comments about the event went viral online.<\/p>\n

\u00bbGoing forward, we will be more careful selecting speakers at Dell events\u00ab.<\/p>\n

Feel like outsiders<\/h2>\n

But according to Melanie Ganz, the episode cannot be isolated to the Dell-incident.<\/p>\n

\u00bbI was really upset that this could happen in Denmark, where I have always been supported by my supervisors, department and university.\u00ab<\/p>\n

\u00bbAs women in IT, we already always feel like we are outsiders, since there are so few of us, and that we have to be better and outperform the guys to get the same recognition. And his comment basically means that he wants to keep the women out.\u00ab<\/p>\n

Is this Denmark?<\/h2>\n

\u00bbI have both visited Google in Zurich and spent time during my PhD at Microsoft Research in Cambridge. While at Google and Microsoft I felt they were really trying to encourage women, especially in research, while I have never heard of any initiative by Dell. It definitely does not encourage me to apply for a job there now,\u00ab she says.<\/p>\n

The impact of Mads Christensen’s act has gone global. Melanie Ganz herself heard about it through Systers, a global e-mail community of technical women in computing, where a blog describing what happened got many responses. <\/p>\n

Melanie Ganz has a hard time squaring off the Danish image of gender equality with the episode: \u00bbI thought it could never happen in Denmark,\u00ab she says.<\/p>\n

Ignoring women<\/h2>\n

But it did.<\/p>\n

Aasa Feragen reckons that most women are painfully aware that there are companies and scientific environments where their ideas will not be taken as seriously as their male colleagues’ ideas. \u00bbNaturally, we are not interested in spending our time working in such places,\u00ab she says. <\/p>\n

In general, discrimination is often well hidden, she explains. In situations where women are ignored, it is often not<\/em> done on purpose.<\/p>\n

Cannot ban unsympathetic people<\/h2>\n

But \u00bbthis actually makes the ‘battle’ harder, because you also have to prove that there is a problem before anyone wants to solve it. As a consequence, whenever I look for a job, I carefully investigate the company’s awareness of the challenges that female IT professionals meet,\u00ab Aasa Feragen says.<\/p>\n

To her, Dell has demonstrated that they do not have this awareness.<\/p>\n

\u00bbThis is what I find disturbing. Mads Christensen himself is not particularly interesting, you cannot forbid unsympathetic people.\u00ab <\/p>\n

universitypost@adm.ku.dk<\/p>\n

Stay in the know about news and events happening in Copenhagen by signing up for the University Post\u2019s weekly newsletter here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comments by moderator Mads Christensen at conference for computer giant Dell have set off a wider debate on gender in male-dominated fields. Angry women University of Copenhagen scientists stake out the issues<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":17126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","expression-news_article"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\nWomen IT scientists outraged after sexist comments<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/women-it-scientists-outraged-after-sexist-comments\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Women IT scientists outraged after sexist comments\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Comments by moderator Mads Christensen at conference for computer giant Dell have set off a wider debate on gender in male-dominated fields. 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Angry women University of Copenhagen scientists stake out the issues","use_post_excerpt":false},{"acf_fc_layout":"Byline","is_author":false,"contributors":[{"use_registered_user":false,"user":false,"contributor_name":"Theo Naidoo and Mike Young","contributor_title":" ","contributor_image":false}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"Content","content":"<p>One of the worlds largest IT companies faces continuing criticism after Danish celebrity, occasional speaker and commentator Mads Christensen moderated its recent Copenhagen conference. Now international scientists at the University of Copenhagen have joined the fray, saying that the Dell affair highlights serious gender problems in the IT field worldwide.<\/p>\n<p>According to reports, Mads Christensen praised the lack of women in IT and asked the men in the room to promise him that they will go home and say, ‘shut up bitch!’.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbThe IT business is one of the last frontiers that manages to keep women out. The quota of women to men in your business is sound and healthy,\u00ab Mads Christensen said at the conference. \u00bbWhat are you actually doing here?\u00ab he added to the few women who were actually present in the room. <\/p>\n<h2>Researcher: Dell not up to the task<\/h2>\n<p>However a number of University of Copenhagen researchers were unimpressed, forcing Dell into apologising on a social networking site and Christensen to explain himself through <a href=\"http:\/\/translate.google.com\/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.comon.dk%2Fart%2F216015%2Fkvinder-skal-holde-kaeft-boern-skal-have-vaaben-og-vi-skal-knalde-bevidstloese-kaellinger\">comon.dk.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The reaction of some Danish researchers is scathing towards both Dell and to the speaker Christensen.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbWhat worries me the most is that if Dell is not able to recognize that hiring a guy like Mads Christensen is a bad idea, how are they ever going to handle the real gender related problems that women in IT experience?\u00ab argues Aasa Feragen, a post doc at the Department of Computer Science DIKU, University of Copenhagen. She adds that she would currently \u00bbbe reluctant to seek a job at Dell after this, and I would urge my students to think twice as well.\u00ab <\/p>\n<h2>Celebrity: Jokes taken out of context<\/h2>\n<p>Contributing to the dismay is the current situation of women in IT, a notably male dominated field, as evidenced by the convention’s ratio of 800 men to 40 women, according to Melanie Ganz, a post doc from the University of Copenhagen currently on exchange to Harvard University in the US.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbOne of the biggest IT employers in Denmark hires a guy that has the maturity of a five year old as a moderator?,\u00ab she exclaims.<\/p>\n<p>In his defence Mads claims that his humour \u00bbis steeped in satire and humour\u00ab and was not intended to be serious. He further argues that if you take jokes out of context you can \u00bbeasily make me a psychopath.\u00ab <\/p>\n<h2>Dell apology<\/h2>\n<p>Teaching your sons how to say \u00bbshut the fuck up bitch\u00ab and questioning why women were even part of the conference at all were part of his act, Mads Christensen claims. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/117161668189080869053\/posts\/5Zg5FdFEydi\" target=\"_blank\">Dells response was more conciliatory<\/a>, \u00bbwe apologize for this unfortunate event,\u00ab it said on a blog after the conference, and after the comments about the event went viral online.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbGoing forward, we will be more careful selecting speakers at Dell events\u00ab.<\/p>\n<h2>Feel like outsiders<\/h2>\n<p>But according to Melanie Ganz, the episode cannot be isolated to the Dell-incident.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbI was really upset that this could happen in Denmark, where I have always been supported by my supervisors, department and university.\u00ab<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbAs women in IT, we already always feel like we are outsiders, since there are so few of us, and that we have to be better and outperform the guys to get the same recognition. And his comment basically means that he wants to keep the women out.\u00ab<\/p>\n<h2>Is this Denmark?<\/h2>\n<p>\u00bbI have both visited Google in Zurich and spent time during my PhD at Microsoft Research in Cambridge. While at Google and Microsoft I felt they were really trying to encourage women, especially in research, while I have never heard of any initiative by Dell. It definitely does not encourage me to apply for a job there now,\u00ab she says.<\/p>\n<p>The impact of Mads Christensen’s act has gone global. Melanie Ganz herself heard about it through Systers, a global e-mail community of technical women in computing, where a blog describing what happened got many responses. <\/p>\n<p>Melanie Ganz has a hard time squaring off the Danish image of gender equality with the episode: \u00bbI thought it could never happen in Denmark,\u00ab she says.<\/p>\n<h2>Ignoring women<\/h2>\n<p>But it did.<\/p>\n<p>Aasa Feragen reckons that most women are painfully aware that there are companies and scientific environments where their ideas will not be taken as seriously as their male colleagues’ ideas. \u00bbNaturally, we are not interested in spending our time working in such places,\u00ab she says. <\/p>\n<p>In general, discrimination is often well hidden, she explains. In situations where women are ignored, it is often <em>not<\/em> done on purpose.<\/p>\n<h2>Cannot ban unsympathetic people<\/h2>\n<p>But \u00bbthis actually makes the ‘battle’ harder, because you also have to prove that there is a problem before anyone wants to solve it. As a consequence, whenever I look for a job, I carefully investigate the company’s awareness of the challenges that female IT professionals meet,\u00ab Aasa Feragen says.<\/p>\n<p>To her, Dell has demonstrated that they do not have this awareness.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bbThis is what I find disturbing. Mads Christensen himself is not particularly interesting, you cannot forbid unsympathetic people.\u00ab <\/p>\n<p>universitypost@adm.ku.dk<\/p>\n<p><em>Stay in the know about news and events happening in Copenhagen by <a href=\"http:\/\/universitypost.dk\/newsletter\" target=\"_blank\">signing up for the University Post\u2019s weekly newsletter here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"ArticleEnd"},{"acf_fc_layout":"OtherStories","headline":"","hand_picked_posts":false,"references":false,"category":false,"theme":false,"number_of_posts":"4","style":"default"}]},"taxonomyData":{"category":[{"term_id":43,"name":"Culture","slug":"culture","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":43,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":562,"filter":"raw"}],"post_tag":[],"post_format":[],"expression":[{"term_id":15,"name":"News Article","slug":"news_article","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":15,"taxonomy":"expression","description":"","parent":0,"count":11493,"filter":"raw"}],"translation_priority":[]},"featured_media_url":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/womencomputer2-1280x661.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35828,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17124\/revisions\/35828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uniavisen.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}