It's in pretty poor taste. I know it's probably meant to be taken lightly, but it just helps further alienate women from tech, which is very unfortunate.
Over the top sexualization of women's Halloween costumes requires an article of its own: has it always been like this or is it a relatively recent, e.g. 90s onwards phenomenon?
For guys one great way to protest this would be to dress up as a hooker and attend.
It's just adult entertainment. Nobody is being forced to attend. Why aren't you writing about the "misogyny" of strip clubs and Vegas brothels instead? Why are people so sensitive about everything nowadays?
Also worth noting the author of this article is male.
Let's take another industry, like the entertainment industry, isn't it extremely sexist? They do things that are much more "worse", but there are plenty of women in it.
Or take an industry like medicine or law, do they have problems with sexism? (I don't know)
I don't think the problem in tech is sexism or misogyny. It's more likely to be a combination of poor marketing (it's simply not appealing to most women and women don't fetishize techies like they do doctors and lawyers) and, compared to say entertainment or advertising, there are fewer rewards in tech for being good looking or social or having a female perspective.
The people behind this really come across as childish, immature, and unprofessional, both in their decision to host the party in question and also in the copy they use on their website:
- "We're a coworking space, but we won't tell you where we are until you leave us a comment."
- "Sign up... or else!"
- "ecosocialtechnological (yes we made this up and are calling dibs on it)"
- "The Coworking Experience..." "Is Cool"
- "No one can do anything without energy, so we provide substance while a good brew as well as water, juice, and other drinks of substances more than just sugar."
Doesn't matter how they meant it, what matters is how this is perceived: extremely distasteful. The last thing we need is more little bits like this fueling misogyny in the tech industry.
This is a play on the pimp and hooker balls that some places hold. I was going to say this was merely as misogynistic (or not) as those. I.e. that the change from pimp to hacker was merely done for topicality and alliteration and that depending on what gender role mapped to what, it might be ok. But if you look at the flier, its clear that the artist 1) meant for the programers to be the hackers and the girls to be the hookers and 2) badly conflated the school girl and hooker stereotypes.
Yeah... it's not the most beautiful place I've ever seen... I personally wouldn't want to work there, it's about 2 steps down from working in my own home.
