It looks like I may have unwittingly offended a few people with an idea that wasn't expressed as eloquently as I would have liked. Some may have read the post and thought I was voicing a common male position of it not being a problem or something that should be swept under the rug and dismissed.
There are indeed many explanations for the appearance of what I described and some have rightly mentioned that it may just be under-reported in Europe due to culture differences. I don't pretend to know what those may be but can only offer my experience and anecdotal evidence, just like most have done here.
Sexism does exist in Europe and I have not said in my post that it doesn't I think we are all talking specifically about tech culture here and let's not conflate this to sexism in Europe across all industries. I've had friends experience inappropriate male attention at work but it's frequently in Law or Finance, and more recently in Education. Friends (more than a handful) in London and in Brussels have experienced this directly. That's a lot considering that 1 in 10 women experience some form of harassment at work. I've rarely ever heard it happen in tech over here. Not to say that it doesn't happen, from my experience I've heard a lot less.
I'd understand better some of the reactions to my post if it was clearly and strongly entrenched in a dismissive or an unsympathetic position but the post is littered with words like 'may' and 'appears' and suggests the problem requires a deeper exposition than what can be stated in an HN comment.
From the stories that have come out it sounds that avoiding this behaviour is practically impossible to avoid if you are woman. That's a terrible working env.
This also appears to be an American problem. I find this difficult to imagine happening as pervasively ( not saying it doesn't happen at all) in London or Berlin or any of the other European tech hubs. The problem may be more evident in America because it has the largest and most successful tech community presenting more opportunities for alienating behaviour around women to be amplified. The reasons are likely to be more multi-faceted and complex.
i tried for ~3 months towards the end of last year then gave up. I did the no shampoo AND no soap. Just showering and this was my experience.
The first week you will smelly a bit iffy (off). It's the transition period. Powered thru and was fine after a couple of weeks and smelled quite okay but my hair suddenly became this mop of oil,gooey gunk on week 4/5 and I couldn't get rid of wash it out. When hair gets that oily, all the dirt, dust and grime sticks to it and it's almost impossible to get rid of it. I tried baking soda, apple cide vinegar and few other things without much success. My hair had never been that oily. Off the NOPOO regiment I'd shampoo once a month and I'd be fine.
Even though my BO was quite good leading up to the sudden oily hair 'syndrome' it became very bad very quickly. It became bad because I couldn't really get clean because the oil from my hair would get onto my body and dirt would gradually layer from wash to wash. Try washing something oily with just water. Now I couldn't get my body clean effectively from the nowash protocol. So I gave up for the sake of my coworkers ( and my dating life).
Sadly the protocol doesn't seem to work for all skin and hair types out there.
There are indeed many explanations for the appearance of what I described and some have rightly mentioned that it may just be under-reported in Europe due to culture differences. I don't pretend to know what those may be but can only offer my experience and anecdotal evidence, just like most have done here.
Sexism does exist in Europe and I have not said in my post that it doesn't I think we are all talking specifically about tech culture here and let's not conflate this to sexism in Europe across all industries. I've had friends experience inappropriate male attention at work but it's frequently in Law or Finance, and more recently in Education. Friends (more than a handful) in London and in Brussels have experienced this directly. That's a lot considering that 1 in 10 women experience some form of harassment at work. I've rarely ever heard it happen in tech over here. Not to say that it doesn't happen, from my experience I've heard a lot less.
I'd understand better some of the reactions to my post if it was clearly and strongly entrenched in a dismissive or an unsympathetic position but the post is littered with words like 'may' and 'appears' and suggests the problem requires a deeper exposition than what can be stated in an HN comment.