Comment by RIMR | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RIMR | Hacker News Reader

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Have you made any decisions about Bryana's responsibilities that were motivated by her gender, rather than her personal strengths?

Putting your only female dev in the position of representing your company at conferences suggests that she's taken on the role of "token female". If this is coincidental, and she just happens to be the best spoken developer with the least stagefright, then clearly there is no problem. However, if you deliberately chose her because she is female, then you are doing her no long-term favors, and are engaged in sexist business practices yourself.

new_corp_dev put it better than I could: "If the industry sees a glut of women speakers who are there only because they are women, then the industry will have no choice but to acknowledge their token status."

> Have you made any decisions about Bryana's responsibilities that were motivated by her gender, rather than her personal strengths?

Nope. Fortunately for me, while I was in a position to make those decisions about Bryana (I've since changed gigs), her own excellent performance was the only thing I had to think about.

Look, I'll let Bryana's own career speak for itself, which I have no doubt it will, but for myself I'd have confidence putting her in front of any audience on any topic she feels comfortable talking about.

One other thing, if you know anything about how conferences work, CFPs/speaking roles are something managed by the conferences, not companies. Questions of 'token' or otherwise are best posed to the individual organizers of the conference in question.

So what? What harm is there in showcasing female workers? There's nothing about being a 'token' that precludes competence.

There's nothing wrong with showcase female workers, as long as you aren't doing so BECAUSE they are female.

Since you are constantly accusing everyone here of the Straw Man fallacy, let me provide you an example of an actual Straw Man argument:

>So what? What harm is there in showcasing female workers? There's nothing about being a 'token' that precludes competence.

Um, we must have different ideas of what that phrase means. "A weak or imaginary opposition, set up to be easily refuted". I'd have had to set up something, for that to be the case. Instead of, just exploring the previous comment's setup.

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