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Comment by dangerlibrary | Hacker News Reader

Is any organization of meaningful size (# of employees, revenue, market cap - pick your metric) handling diversity issues in a way that completely satisfies the "proportional representation of the population" metric? Are there any success stories that one could use as case studies?

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"proportional representation of the population" metric?

Is there some reason the social disrupters only get all frothy mouthed about this in certain areas? Like shouldn't we spend much more time going after the NBA, Fishing, Logging, Elementary teachers, Nurses, etc. because these industries are far more out of "diversity balance."

Are people clamoring for a "proportional representation of the population" metric prepared to fire a whole lot of Asians and Jews at places like Facebook and Google in order to bring these populations more in line with their broader United States society proportions?

Your point is pertinent and well-made in the latter part of your post, but the ad-hominem language in the former makes it difficult to believe you want to discuss the issue.

Some people seem to have an unhealthy bias against colorful language when it is used in service of a larger point. But they seem all too happy to use it as a distraction from engaging with the points raised.

Calling people who disagree with you "frothy mouthed" is a distraction. Your comment is also not responsive to the question posed in the root comment.

I think diversity is not exactly an end in and on itself, but a way to reduce general inequality. Increasing the number of woman in fishing, or logging, or coal mining is not going to have as much effect on the general economic/social power of women as doing the same on bigger, richer industries such as programming. As resources are limited, you want to be as efficient as possible and that will probably shift the focus away from industries that are not that influential. Of course the fact that they're not as attractive is also relevant, but it seems that being non-attractive and being less important are correlated features in an industry sector.

I think diversity is not exactly an end in and on itself, but a way to reduce general inequality.

So it's basically a shakedown.

general economic/social power of women

History and stats don't back up the image of women as some horribly oppressed group at least in western society.

And I am tired seeing this pitted as some kind of battle. The vast majority of people don't feel this way. Men and women are meant to, and do work together for their own mutual benefit and the benefit of succeeding generations.

And they work together in complementary ways, it is silly and destructive to think of the sexes as interchangeable.

People in tech build consumer products that people actively engage with, which is why diversity is important. Logging/fishing/NBA/etc, not so much. I would argue that there should be far more diversity in the teaching profession, but it is a low-paying job.

It's a valid question, but I'd like to remind you it's not all or nothing.

Is the ideal representation of women in tech (assuming sexism doesn't exist) 50/50? I have no idea, probably not.

Let me offer a counterpoint: I work on a team of 12 people with 0 women programmers. I'm personally convinced that's not ideal. So wherever the finish line is, I don't think we're there.

This NPR infographic seems to support that assertion, at least that seems to make more sense to me than an interpretation where programming became dramatically less attractive to women due to reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with sexism.

https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2014/10/21/womencoding_wide...

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