If you are in a privileged position, and then that privilege is reduced, it can feel like a barrier is going up. It's not.
When you rebalance scales, the side that was too high has to go down a little.
When you rebalance scales, the side that was too high has to go down a little.
What about this situation makes you think that white and Asian men are privileged as compared to women?
The assumption that women are underprivileged in tech often does not hold up to scrutiny. Many studies have found significant bias in favor of women. When Google studies it's wages recently it found proportionally more men were underpaid.
Again in case you missed it, my company does explicitly deny employment opportunities to white and Asian men where they would have been hired were they women: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19464944
Barriers are going up. Perhaps at the moment this is limited to certain places like San Francisco and silicon valley. But to say barriers aren't going up for white and Asian men is counterfactual.
And besides, I'm Cuban myself so I ostensibly belong to an "underprivileged" group (though I would be among the first to tell you that this is a BS generalization. I am not by any means underprivileged).
What fraction of companies would you estimate have policies similar to yours?
Public figures also agree. Bloomberg's Emily Chang - one of San Francisco's most prominent tech reporters - encouraged adopting explicit reservation systems for women. Even though this is totally illegal in the United States.
I'll admit that at the end of the day I'm only one data point and that maybe I fell in with an especially progressive group. But this is what I'm seeing.
I think you are basing your opinion solely on anecdotes from your company/bubble.
Women are underrepresented in tech - just go any tech conference and see for yourself.
Are women not as smart as men when it comes to tech? Or are there barriers to entry for women?
When Google conducted a study recently to determine whether the company was underpaying women and members of minority groups, it found, to the surprise of just about everyone, that men were paid less money than women for doing similar work.
I wouldn't say smart because thats a whole other can of worms but generally less suited, yes absolutely no doubt about it. It's weird but outside of the SV-buzzfeed-vice-huffpost filter bubble it's common knowledge that most women would rather do anything else besides stare at a screen all day and do something that neither involves people or art in any way.
It's not exactly rocket science but somehow it has become verboten to point out what everyone across cultures around the world (ex US progressives) and even science can clearly see.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/899263...
I will say that in the past what I mentioned has been abused to keep out and belittle women who clearly WERE suited to jobs like this. The excellent movie Hidden Figures shows how wrong and sad that is.
But two wrongs don't make a right. Focusing on gender parity is also going to make for lot of miserable women pressured into careers that don't really suit them.
Those are not the only options.
"1. We only accept applicstions from candidate from non-traditional backgrounds if they're diverse. Diverse is defined as any of the following: women, black, Hispanic, or native American - maybe also veterans but I'm not sure. Non-traditional background means coming from a coding boot camp, or majoring in a non-computing related field. I think after 3 years industry experience candidates are considered traditional even if they came from one of those two.*"
Note that this isn't impacting those well represented in tech; a white or asian man from a middle or higher class background.
It is instead rebalancing the priorities of those lacking in representation. A white guy who had to drop out of school to take care of his family? Not interested. Asian woman who decided her previous field wasn't for her, and does a coding bootcamp? Come on in for your interview.
I'm not saying I have an answer, but this is a legitimate concern. Responding with a generic platitude about how OP is merely feeling the effects of losing relative privilege is I think quite belittling and inappropriate.
A poor white boy from Appalachia doesn't benefit from whatever "privilege" young white men in the Bay Area might tend to enjoy as a result of their parents' success.
And you raise a good point. The acceptability of "learn to code" when it was directed at laid off coal miners, but sudden shift to unacceptability when it was directed at journalists is extremely hypocritical. White male coal miners who went to a boot camp would have their resumes rejected on the basis of their race and gender. The same would happen to many journalists, but a substantially larger portion of journalists belong to demographics from which we do give a chance at interviewing when they come from boot camps.
> When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
(Unknown author.)