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Comment by Danihan | Hacker News Reader

"YOU NEED TO TRY HARDER TO APPEAL TO MINORITY GROUPS."

- 2 seconds later -

"STOP USING STEREOTYPES TO APPEAL TO MINORITY GROUPS, IT'S OFFENSIVE."

I mean, I understand the sentiment, but I can also see why many industry professionals begin to think this sort of thing is a catch-22 where smug criticisms will be levied, regardless of conscientiousness.

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> catch-22 where smug criticisms will be levied, regardless of conscientiousness.

This is 90% of online discourse: most people have absolutely nothing to contribute except smug criticism. Trying to satisfy popular opinion online optimizes for mediocrity, cynicism, and least-common-denominator thinking.

If your pinkwashed bootcamp/outreach program/hackathon is getting people engaged who would not otherwise be engaged, then you're doing the right thing. Same for programs that prioritize technology over identity. There's a big audience for both. If people don't like that a group or event is not catering to their very specific idea of what inclusive environments should look like, then they're always free to go somewhere else or do their own thing.

"YOU NEED TO TRY HARDER TO APPEAL TO MINORITY GROUPS by not stereotyping, patronizing, abusing them and creating a hostile environment"

There, I fixed it for you. You can appeal to minority groups without using stereotypes.

I'm genuinely curious here: how? Isn't appealing to minority groups by definition setting them apart from other groups? If we're not going to genericize all appeals (thus introducing the built in cultural bias of appealing to most people, i.e. the dominant group) don't we have to say "this thing that is unique to your cultural group is why you should be interested"? That sounds like it almost must include some stereotype. That doesn't mean patronizing, but it does mean making some assumptions about the group in question and why they might be interested.

It's almost as if the game is built specifically to be unwinnable. What an odd coincidence.

This isn't a game, and it isn't about winning. The fact that you see it that way is "what an odd coincidence".

"Isn't appealing to minority groups by definition setting them apart from other groups?"

No, in a world where minority groups are set apart, appealing to them can be as simple as not setting them apart, by no harassing, abusing, discriminating, etc.

You don't need pink office chairs to make an office space welcoming for women. You just need NOT to have catcalls, rapists, abusers, sexist jokes, etc.

Simple stuff, really.

The point I'm trying to make is that if we are indeed to engage to appeal to a specific group, we need to make assumptions about that group.

Your example above is a different problem. In that situation we are trying to not be hostile to a specific group. That's really a much easier problem to identify (not solve) because hostile behavior is hostile behavior, no matter who you are. It's incredibly important to solve that problem, but there we really have a universal solutions: treat people with respect, regardless of sex, race, sexual orientation, etc. Build policies that enforce that respect and hopefully build to a cultural shift where respect is assumed.

But "appealing to minority groups" is another problem entirely. We're assuming that we have a problem that is due to some inherent bias in the way our culture has portrayed or encouraged a behavior. In this case that boys are more interested in tech because they got "STEM toys" as kids or that the toys that are available appeal more to boys or that the messaging surrounding tech is unconsciously biased towards boys. None of those problems involve being hostile towards girls. We also assume (correctly or incorrectly) that adjusting that bias could bring a better balance to this area.

That involves targeting a message or policy to a specific group. In that situation we've defined a problem: "girls are not interested in technology to the same extent that boys are" and are presumably trying to say "how do we get girls more interested in technology". I would argue that "don't be hostile" is only part of the problem, it does not address inherent cultural bias. If we assume that bias exists, then we need to make assumptions about girls and build solutions accordingly.

> In that situation we've defined a problem: "girls are not interested in technology to the same extent that boys are"

Are you sure that's the problem? What if you restate it as "at some point in their lives, girls become less interested in technology than boys" or "at some point in their lives, girls' interest in technology declines, unlike boys'"

Now you have very different problems and very different solutions. Why does that interest decline? What is driving it? Could it be a self-propagating, hostile, "boy's club" environment in technology?

Maybe you don't even need to market to them, if they never lose the interest in it.

And based on some data, I believe that my definition of the problem is probably closer to the real problem than yours:

http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachel...

So maybe we're asking the wrong questions.

I'm not sure what that data shows us. It shows us that more women get engineering degrees and fewer computer science degrees since 1980? It shows us that more women get degrees period, actually. It's also showing us a snapshot in time: women between the ages of 18-22. That doesn't really address at all the problem of "girls before 18".

Girls have only recently drawn even with boys in attendance in high school stem classes, and still lag quite a bit in computer science. And minorities do even worse [1]. Anecdotaly, my experience also bears this out. The First Robotics clubs in my area (aimed at ages 9-14) are majority boys, despite several teams (including my daughter's school) being coached by female engineers specifically hoping to encourage more girls.

I don't think it's the wrong question.

[1]: https://ngcproject.org/statistics

> I'm not sure what that data shows us.

It shows that women were interested in tech, but something happened in the 80's that mostly killed that interest.

So the problem isn't that females aren't interested, but that something kills that interest. What is that?

Well, for computer science, that does seem to be the case. But not for engineering, physical sciences or math. And considering that most people are granted a degree before they enter the workforce, I don't believe it can entirely be the workforce culture that's deterring them. So I guess I would argue that it's just as likely to be how we message technology as how we treat women in the workforce, if not both.

Or it could be that computer science (what most people refer as "tech") came to be dominated by the boy's club videogame/nerd culture from the early 80's, which pushed women out.

It goes back to another topic here on HN: I don't know of any other career so dominated by a culture as SWE/tech.

Sure, I think you're probably correct that rampant video game culture probably did begin to alienate women, even back in the eighties, since they saw that computers were mostly being used as tools for violent competition and most women were not very interested in that.

That's where our opinions will probably diverge though, because I also believe boys glean more enjoyment from video games simply because they are biologically-predisposed to enjoy violent / high-stakes competitions more intensely.

http://www.radford.edu/~mzorrilla2/thesis/differencesinplay....

http://assets.ngin.com/attachments/document/0042/7590/Do_Boy...

It's not just video games, look at the gender ratios in competitive poker, or chess, or debate. All very similar.

Since there seems to be a strong chance that the root of the problem is innate / hormonal / biological it's not an issue that's "easy" to even rationally discuss, let alone solve, as you keep stating throughout the thread.

> video games simply because they are biologically-predisposed to enjoy violent / high-stakes competitions more intensely.

You're making the assumption that all games must be competitive and violent and therefore women will enjoy it less.

That is wrong.

Not only women enjoy video games as much as men, they already outnumber men in gaming in many markets.

Every time you make an assumption, think if that assumption is being driven by gender stereotypes.

"Since there seems to be a strong chance that the root of the problem is innate / hormonal / biological it's not an issue that's "easy" to even rationally discuss, let alone solve, as you keep stating throughout the thread."

No, women liked technology, then they were pushed out by a hostile culture. The problem isn't hormonal or biological, it's cultural.

The problem isn't women not liking violent games, is men treating women like shit.

>Every time you make an assumption, think if that assumption is being driven by gender stereotypes.

I have, and most of the time the stereotypes have some truth to them, however unfortunate it may be.

> The problem isn't hormonal or biological, it's cultural.

Culture doesn't spring into existence from a vacuum, it arises from the aggregation and normalization of the biological impulses and drives of many people.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

Most workplaces have been doing this "simple stuff" for decades and the problem appears to persist.

No, they've been putting it on paper. There's a long distance between that and actual welcoming workplaces.

But how? I'm being serious here. You put anything culturally appropriate into the system and someone is going to call it an offensive stereotype. So you have to make it relevant to the user while not referencing anything specific about them, not an easy problem to solve.

Easy: get rid of the blocking factors.

As I just mentioned in another post: You don't need pink office chairs to make an environment welcoming for women. You just need not to have catcalls, rapists, abusers, sexist jokes, etc.

[Edit] And for a bonus round: don't focus on culture. If you're interviewing someone for a SWE job, don't ask if they played videogames when they were kids. There is a good chance that they were too poor to afford them, or they never got it as a gift because they were females and people didn't think females would play videogames.

It is possible to include minority groups in a community without pandering or using reductive caricatures. It can be difficult if the community has little familiarity with the actual experiences of those minority groups. In that case, it would be important to seek out people who are from those minority groups, or who at least have a great familiarity with those groups, to direct efforts to grow the community in their direction.

If a person is anxious about being reprimanded for using an offensive stereotype, they do not have the expertise to employ "culturally appropriate" materials and ought to do more research/inquiry or delegate the responsibility of the outreach to somebody else.

Merely not driving away minority groups isn't enough to fix the imbalances in representation. People don't avoid things because of future negative experiences, they avoid things because they expect to get negative experiences there. Like, if police magically started treating African Americans like they ought to overnight, there's a lot of built-up fear that would still have the African American community avoid interactions with police.

It's not just a behavior problem, but also a marketing problem. You can't fix a marketing problem without, you know, marketing.

> People don't avoid things because of future negative experiences

Oh, people do, all the time. How many times have you avoided doing something because of the fear of pain, failure and shame?

It isn't a marketing problem.

http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachel...

That's exactly my point. The fear of the future causes behavioral changes now, not the actual future, which hasn't happened yet and cannot affect your current self.

The only way here to "Win" is not to play the game.

Catering to minorities = good until its not. And that fine line for some is blatant racism/sexism/ageism for others.

Going on merit and projects also has its own downside - the claim there is the disadvantaged don't have a way to prove themselves due to inherent barriers against them. Seems accurate, but again, we have to discuss and not discuss....

Edit: I've seen these arguments and discussions at least a dozen of times on HN, in varying ways. And it all amounts to "Well, we shouldn't do bad, but bad's already being done and we can't fix it alone." Every time, I see very little constructive discussion how to make things better for all - it usually devolves down to low-grade flamewars and simmers up until dang and other mods do something.

So, are there actual, constructive things we employees can do, to make these situations better? I know I try to watch my language, and try to treat everyone with respect and dignity. What else is there to do?

But the problem is that pandering is silly and not effective (whether or not it's offensive to anyone is neither here nor there).

It's hard to question cognitive biases without invoking said bias or over-correcting.

"Stop falling for the gamblers' fallacy!"

"Stop calling everything with a low probability of return gambling!"

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