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Actually, a better analogy would be African-Americans getting extra scholarships, to compensate for the relative lack of wealth their families accumulated. I certainly wouldn't begrudge this.

Whatever cognitive differences there are between the sexes, I think they're very minor. Do they keep people like Shakespeare from being considered great writers, though women are said to have stronger verbal ability?

Anyone reading Hacker News knows how important communication, teamwork and the human elements are, in real-world software development. We are not troglodytes who shuffle into the office at night to partake in an ancient ritual of becoming one with the Platonic forms. (Not most of us, at least.) The reality is more like Office Space.

In fact, it is strange to consider men good at even just the technical aspects of programming. Most apparently have a hard time solving basic programming tasks (a common complaint here). Lore abounds of programmers with intimidating resumes who turn out to have problems with basic datastructures. The software world looks less like a meritocracy, and more like a cushy office job that beats working at Wendy's.

  Whatever cognitive differences there are between
  the sexes, I think they're very minor

This is not about the cognitive differences but more about what we are attracted to. Men are attracted to stuff (and abstract stuff), women are attracted to relations.

"Actually, a better analogy would be African-Americans getting extra scholarships, to compensate for the relative lack of wealth their families accumulated. I certainly wouldn't begrudge this."

While I most certainly agree I've always wondered why they don't give the scholarships based on economic rather than racial conditions. Quite frankly, with the way that the US is right now, this would end up mostly benefiting minority families anyway and would be much more palatable to the general public.

That said, I grew up in a fairly well-off majority white suburb so I may not have the best handle on the situation.

Martin Luther King actually had very similar ideas. The fact is, racism was used as a wedge issue for decades to divide poor whites from the black community to the detriment of both.

Let me first say that you are right that her comparison of 'cowboy' vs. 'good developer' is completely ridiculous. Talk about her prejudices showing in conjuring up that straw man. I've never worked with any developer that fitted in the cowboy category, while most did their best to fit in the 'good developer' category. However:

  Can't you say that about any form of discrimination?

She could, but that's not what she is saying. She's saying it about this form of reverse discrimination.

You implicitly assume 'forms of discrimination' are interchangeable and you consequently draw a completely skewed analogy. 'Female students in CS' are the party being discriminated against, while 'white people' are not suffering from discrimination (when compared to 'black people'; we're comparing in general; I'm not saying individual 'white people' don't ever experience discrimination: I'm saying it happens much when compared to the amount of discrimination black people suffer). That's why your argument is wrong: we're trying to offset discrimination against women here and we're not trying to defend the continued discrimination against some other party (note: you have to look at the situation before this particular instance of reverse discrimination is instituted: this instance cannot be defended by itself).

Let me repeat that: female students in CS are being discriminated against. Almost nobody is doing that on purpose, but research in discrimination against women is crystal clear on this. There are many cognitive biases in our culture that prevent women from entering CS and becoming successful in it. We need positive discrimination to offset those cultural biases. Someone complaining about the unfairness of 'women-only' grants fails to understand the deeprootedness of prejudice.

This, BTW, is a trap sophisticated men keep falling into. We tend to think there isn't much discrimination against women: after all, aren't we being completely fair against our female colleagues? The answer is simply: no, we probably are not, even if we do our best. The aggregate result of even very small amounts of prejudice are still noticable.

Fallacious arguments don't suddenly become good arguments when they're used to justify good conclusions. Hence, when I say "X is a bad argument for conclusion Y", don't interpret that as "I disagree with conclusion Y". In reality, I just hate sloppy reasoning.

When you say

That's why your argument is wrong: we're trying to offset discrimination against women here and we're not trying to defend the continued discrimination against some other party

you misunderstand my argument completely. You probably interpreted me as saying "reverse discrimination is morally equivalent to normal discrimination", but that's not what I said. I said that in particular, the argument that "you should be happy for the people benefitting from this discrimination" is a bad argument precisely because that argument does not distinguish between reverse discrimination and normal discrimination. "Can't you be happy for the people benefitting from this discrimination" is a fully general argument in favor of any kind of discrimination.

As I edited my comment to say at some point (I think before you responded), there are good arguments for reverse discrimination, but that isn't one of them. You've even provided some good arguments! And if you're in favor of this form of reverse discrimination in particular, then you should be even more diligent than I am in criticizing fallacious arguments for your cause.

When I say there are good arguments for reverse discrimination, that implies that there are moral differences between normal discrimination and reverse discrimination that a good argument will be able to pick out. If you say "reverse discrimination in favor of women is good because you should be happy for the women", that's a bad argument because the exact same logic justifies any sort of discrimination ever. If you say "reverse discrimination in favor of women is good because women are discriminated against and it needs to be balanced out", that logic can't be turned around to support ordinary discrimination at all. You can only make the case for reverse discrimination by pointing out how it differs from normal discrimination--asking "can't you be happy for the discriminated-for?" isn't an argument that does that.

EDIT: Merged paragraphs which seemed to repeat each other.

Ah, I understand. Well, there you have a another trap, which I now fell into: mistaking the pointing out of a fallacious argument for support of the argument to which it was a response.

Sorry if my response seemed overzealous. I run into this problem a lot.

...female students in CS are being discriminated against. [...]but research in discrimination against women is crystal clear on this.

[Citation needed.]

Well, there's the investigation linked in the article [1]. This [2] is a review of various types of unconscious prejudices that people entertain and you could well imagine what the consequences are for women. However, if you want experimental evidence, then Googling 'experiment gender discrimination' (leaving out 'for' or 'against' on purpose), yields plenty [3] of [4] studies [5] that support the common assertion that women are continuously being discriminated against. Admission to, and opportunities within, CS is simply no exception.

I can't do any better than Googling it; that's what I did years ago when I was looking to verify that women really were being discriminated against, because I figured we would surely be past such barbaric behavior. Since then, I wised up on the fact that we're just not really that much in control of our behavior. I'm not a psychologist, but I do know how to find and apprehend research in such a domain. Meta-analysis studies are quite convenient :).

[1] http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html

[2] http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~mrbworks/articles/1995_PsyRev.pd...

[3] http://econ2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ321/Orazem/darity_...

[4] http://economics.uchicago.edu/download/JLISTdisc.pdf

[5] http://www.tamu.edu/classes/psyc/payne/ID/ID%2520articles/He...

Near as I can tell, [1] provides virtually no data beyond opinion polls, certainly none showing discrimination. [1] is also an advocacy piece written by people with a vested interest in finding discrimination, since it will get them more funding/chairs/office space/etc.

[2] seems to be a review of psychology, but whatever data they have on discrimination seems to be buried deep within the article (I only skimmed it). I skimmed [3], but it seems to have virtually no data on women in computing at all, and what it has seems concerned primarily with the 90's or earlier.

Then I gave up. I think you should read your sources before posting them.

I don't see a single source which, e.g., shows women outperforming men at the same level, which would be fairly concrete proof of discrimination.

  but it seems to have virtually no data on women in computing at all,

Are you asserting that we need to experimentally verify discrimination in every single new context one can think of? Usually, we generalize from other research: there is no reason to suppose CS is miraculously free of discrimination against women, considering the variety of areas in which this kind of discrimination has been shown exist.

  I don't see a single source which, e.g., shows women outperforming men 
  at the same level, [..]

Why do you have to outperform others before you can be discriminated against? The fact that they are being discriminated against is in itself a reason why they are unlikely to outperform the others.

Usually, we generalize from other research: there is no reason to suppose CS is miraculously free of discrimination against women, considering the variety of areas in which this kind of discrimination has been shown exist.

There is also no reason to assume that all or most of the gender gap is caused by discrimination. If we generalize, we discover that lots of other fields (e.g., medicine, law) have sexism, but they also have 50% women.

Remember, we are asking what makes CS special.

Why do you have to outperform others before you can be discriminated against?

Suppose you are biased against green cars. You want to buy fast cars, and you generally only buy a car if it drives at least 80mph. However, since you hate green cars, green cars must drive at least at 100mph before you will consider buying one. Therefore, you will have plenty of slow (80-90mph) red cars, but your green cars will all drive at least as fast as 100mph.

Substitute "women" for "green", "men" for "red", and "productivity" for "speed", and you'll see the same conclusion applies to workers.

  If we generalize, we discover that lots of other fields (e.g., medicine, law)
  have sexism, but they also have 50% women

Firstly: in neither medicine, nor in law, are 50% of the graduate students women. Secondly: even when the number of students in the field is 50/50, that doesn't mean there is no discrimination. Here's a nice study about discrimination among students of medicine[1], the consequences of which you can guess.

  Remember, we are asking what makes CS special.

No, that's what you are asking, because you assert that gender discrimination does not influence gender ratios in other studies and occupations, which is simply not true. Solely based on experimental observation of cognitive biases, it is extremely unlikely to be true. Women are always, everywhere, underrepresented in the top echelons. Even in nursing, there are more males in leadership roles than you would expect from the number of male nurses.

  [..] and you'll see the same conclusion applies to workers.

Wait, what? The women have to perform better to be even considered and only if they are then rejected, then they are being discriminated against? It's the fact that they have to perform better in the first place that is the problem. You are already discriminating against green cars. That's the point.

[1] http://pdfs.journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/2002/12000/Gen...

(BTW, I did an experiment here: I upvoted your comment some time ago. I have a feeling that in a discussion of 'score 1' comments, bumping one of them to '2' precipitates upvoting of the '2' and downvoting of the others)

Firstly: in neither medicine, nor in law, are 50% of the graduate students women.

Oops, my mistake. The actual numbers are 49% and 49.4%.

http://www.aamc.org/data/aib/aibissues/aibvol6_no7.pdf

http://www.lawschool.com/femalemajority.htm

The women have to perform better to be even considered and only if they are then rejected, then they are being discriminated against?

You've completely misinterpreted what I said. Women overperforming at a given level is a consequence of discrimination, not a precondition. Discrimination is equivalent to a higher standard. If women (or any other group) are held to a higher standard than men, then they should overperform men.

Another (non-emotionally loaded) example: colleges have a higher academic standard for regular students than for football players, equivalent to discriminating against non-football players. As a result, non-football players tend to perform academically better than football players.

For this reason, I'd like to see a study that measures performance rather than opinion.

  Oops, my mistake. The actual numbers are 49% and 49.4%.

Those are the numbers of applicants, not the numbers of students actually finishing their education, where women used to have a larger dropout percentage. But that doesn't matter: even if the same amount of men and women start and finish law school, that doesn't mean the women aren't being discriminated against. It may mean they are just working harder to overcome the disadvantages. That works in school, but it doesn't work in the workplace, as research shows, when it once again turns out that women in the exact same position as men earn less than their male counterparts.

  If women (or any other group) are held to a higher standard than men, then
  they should overperform men.

They probably do. However, it doesn't show, because their performance isn't rewarded equally. They may work harder work or have better brains, but they will not be rewarded accordingly, so there is no way to show, by position or salary, that they are better.

  I'd like to see a study that measures performance

I feel that's rather like saying you'd like to a study that actually measures how a lack of oxygen causes death, instead of accepting that all kinds of laboratory experiments show that various part of the body can't do without oxygen. Men have discriminated women for centuries and it's impossible that we suddenly stopped doing that during the past century, as many experiments show. The only things that have disappeared are the egregious cases, where it is easy for anyone to point out there is discrimination. Now we can only show it through statistics.

I have the distinct feeling that I'm misunderstanding the point you are trying to make, because we seem to agree on many points. Must be some fundamental assumption about what we are discussing, but I can't put my finger on it :/.

They probably do. However, it doesn't show, because their performance isn't rewarded equally.

That's why I'd like to see studies comparing (women's performance)/(women's reward) to (men's performance)/(men's reward). If discrimination harm's women, the ratio should be higher for women.

I don't really trust opinion polls (except as a measure of opinion), particularly when they ask questions like "is your failure to get promoted/paid/etc caused by $YOUR_FAULT or $NOT_YOUR_FAULT?"

Then she lists a lot of code-cowboy vs. good-developer differences, involving things like "working in teams" and "understanding human elements" and "respecting people" (which are implicitly feminine traits, according to the OP, unlike the focused solitude that "code-cowboys" employ.) This is triply problematic--she dismisses out of hand the idea that men are better than women at abstract reasoning and such, but implicitly argues that the qualities of "good developers" are feminine and the qualities of "code cowboys" are both bad for development and masculine.

I think that there is something ironic about someone using sexist reasoning to justify anti-sexist policies. While I may agree that it is probably difficult being a woman working in an industry dominated so strongly by men, she's not helping her case by pulling the same kind of crap of which she accuses men.