Etsy Hacker Grants: Supporting Women in Technology | Hacker News Reader

Etsy Hacker Grants: Supporting Women in Technology

etsy.com

78 pointskellanem40 comments

What about grants for black people? There's arguably even less black people in technology than women. We don't seem to talk about that though, as women-in-tech always seems easier to argue about ("are they being sexist?" is easier to talk about than "are they being racist?" or "do low-income and/or poorly-educated and/or resource-starved people deserve more help getting into the field?")

"Last September, three out of 96 employees in Engineering and Operations at Etsy were women, and none of them were managers"

How many of the 96 employees were black, and how many of the employees were black women? Should we be concerned if it was lower than the stats about women in general? If not, why?

You talk about "gender balance" as if somehow there's an argument there that is more valid than "race balance."

In terms of engaging specifically females into more tech subjects, i'll relate something i've seen here in DC. I work with Knowledge Commons DC which offers lots of free classes, some of which are tech related (Object Oriented Programming with Java, for example). That class was 75% women last time. Why? One reason might be that most of the volunteers/organizers are women, and their social circles reach out to even larger groups of women. As people seek out similar people it may make it easier for them to gravitate to subjects which might normally be perceived as male-dominated or otherwise not as open for women. Just a thought.

Definitely a valid point and deserving of an entirely separate thread of discussion.

That said, I don't think talking about gender imbalance in software development takes away from discussing racial imbalance in software development.

And I do think underrepresentation is an issue on all sides. In my career so far, I think I've met a total of 5 black programmers. The fact that I can remember the exact number is a problem, because I definitely can't, and don't, keep track of the number of asian/latin/etc. programmers. But meeting somebody black in tech is so rare, it always stands out.

So yes, it is a concern. But they are all valid concerns. And talking about women doesn't take away from talking about blacks. All are valid issues.

Of course they're all valid issues. That doesn't answer anything i've asked, though. I want to know why support is only being given to women and not people who probably have a harder time getting into the field. This doesn't need a separate thread, it speaks exactly to the topic which is Etsy giving grants to only women.

It seems that overall, "race balance" is harder to define than "gender balance" because the gender balance is about 50% in every country, whereas the race balance can vary wildly.

That doesn't make it less important or valid of course. Race discrimination is a serious issue in many countries.

This isn't about broader balance issues, though. This is about matching their workforce to their customer base. If they had an overwhelmingly black user base, then I'm sure that they would focus on that, but they don't so they won't.

"No feigning surprise" or anything of the sort can be important. Years ago, I was in a college math class where the teacher used an analogy and mentioned John Elway. Yes, this class was being held in Colorado.

Anyway, one of the other women in the class asked who that was -- she needed context to better understand this guy's analogy. He was just flabbergasted, and could not believe that anyone could not know who he was.

It didn't help that this particular student had only been in the state a short time, was from New England, and probably knew nothing about football. This prof couldn't make heads or tails of that and proceeded to tear into her as if she was doing it on purpose.

There were many tears and a lot of bad feelings all around. I doubt she got much out of that day in class. I know I sure didn't.

Stuff like this can make or break a system.

You bring up a good point which is not exclusive only to women. People moving to the United States rarely know anything about football. (Not being born in the US, I had to Google to find out who John Elway is, but I understood from your comment that he was a football player).

It's a very common culture of exclusionism, but, I've observed both in the US and Europe that it's pretty much only guys who participate in it. I've only ever had a woman say "you don't know who X is?" to me in jest. And then she would always explain afterwards.

I think it's great to look into why your organization doesn't have more women represented across its divisions. I even think outreach in the form of awareness about this 'problem' is great. I dislike the implicit message being sent by offering money specifically to women to go into engineering/computer science. At best it says, we know you know that engineering is not a field your interested in because your a woman which is why we're focusing on the fact that you're a woman in our recruiting pitch, and so we're offering you a 'bonus' of $Xk. I was aghast when the NYT article ( dave-to-girl ratio ) linked mentioned that "Most women think, 'I'm going to be in a cubicle at Microsoft typing next to some guys who smell funny." if they go into computer science. Because clearly all women make decisions on whether to enter a field based on some absurdly gross overgeneralization of that field. And even if every engineer in the world smelled like a sewer rat, to list that as the first/most important/first mentioned reason women don't want to become engineers is disgusting in the first order.

Here's an idea. Why don't we do real research into what cultural factors influence men and women into going into different fields, and then decide to act on those cultural factors. Rather than say, I don't know, do what we do now, which is tantamount to, here lets fix this symptom of a much wider societal problem, and trample on the 'self-worth' and 'competency' of the very minority we're trying to 'save' in the process.

/rant.

Because clearly all women make decisions on whether to enter a field based on some absurdly gross overgeneralization of that field.

There is at least some research suggesting this is the case.

Archived article: http://web.archive.org/web/20100106021904/http://scicom.ucsc...

HN Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=969646

There isn't any research that suggests that all women make decisions on whether to enter a field based on some absurdly gross overgeneralization of that field

Some people do run their careers like this, some don't. But to suggest that this is the case for all women and furthermore that the claim is backed up by research, is more than a little bit foolish.

I mentally translated guimarin's exaggeration "all women" to a more reasonable "many women" or "women more so than men".

You'll note that in the quote guimarin responded to, the word "all" was not used.

I sincerely apologise for responding to the point that you made, rather than the one you meant to make. My psi abilities are weakest around the full moon.

reconsidering your two new points that you have made there,

(a) many women make decisions on whether to enter a field based on some absurdly gross overgeneralization of that field

(b) women more so than men make decisions on whether to enter a field based on some absurdly gross overgeneralization of that field

Well, I think that (a) is probably true, but is also true for men. And that if (b) has any measurable truth to it I would strongly doubt it to have any statistical significance.

However if you pick any way to divide a large group into two (size of ears, for instance) and then measure something unconnected to that division, you will almost always find a small, measurable, but insignificant difference.

By the way, would you like a shovel?

Consider the possibility that one of the things that discourages women from entering the field is the lack of women in the field.

Consider the possibility that one of the things that encourages women to enter the field is the lack of women in the field.

That's absurd. I am constantly recruiting for more women in my field and talking to those in school about how programming can be exciting and challenging. Many of these girls are already in computing classes, with 1 or 2 girls to 20 or more boys. It's difficult for them to know how else it could be, and it highly discouraging for them especially at an age when socializing with their peers is extremely important.

Have you talked to many women about this?

Yes, but that's not the point. The point is this comment while seeming innocent is an absurd rationalization for the behavior linked to in this post.

> I dislike the implicit message being sent by offering money specifically to women to go into engineering/computer science.

[Disclaimer: I'm attending the current batch of Hacker School and was mad impressed at Etsy's facilities in a recent visit.]

I don't think Etsy is offering women money to attract them into the field, if that's what you mean. As I understand it, the proximate purpose of the money is to enable those women that are otherwise interested in the Hacker School proposition. Supporting oneself in an expensive city like NY for three months is a nontrivial handicap.

The gesture delivers the message that women are appreciated, at least in this particular environment. This may be the right kind of nudge.

In more prosaic terms, because of the newsworthiness of this initiative more women will learn of this opportunity.

It doesn't make sense to me to think of that as a 'bonus'. Who wants to hire anyone that would base their career choice on a $5K bribe?

I think it's interesting how you assume you know what a woman thinks coming from a man. Have you asked women you know about their opinions about a Computer Science degree?

I don't assume to know what anyone thinks regardless of whether they are a man or a woman. I do know that belittling people and playing 'white man's burden' on them makes them feel disadvantaged and marginalized. I see that behavior coming through here; good intentions, bad secondary consequences.

All the women I've asked about whether they'd get a CS degree ( if they weren't already ) said that there were much better opportunities available to them, and that they chose not to pursue CS because the barrier to entry was higher for them than other more lucrative careers in finance, medicine and law ( this was almost always not an extrinsic barrier but intrinsic, 'why would I want to sit by myself and code all day for someone else, when I can trade stocks/bonds for myself?'; and other such comments about the inherent abstraction of CS ). My friends did not look at CS as liberating in what they could do, but limiting in how they could do it. And of course the women I asked who were already in CS were there for intrinsic reasons as well. I also don't see how my limited interactions are a good metric to apply to all women, but nevertheless.

I just want to understand why you feel that offering a grant is "belittling." You claim to not assume what people think, yet you are trying to judge how women make decisions to get into a particular field. Being involved in outreach, I know that intimidation and lack of relation to others plays a factor. While I certainly know many women that won't get into CS because they aren't into it, I certainly do know handfuls of women that didn't get into it particularly because of the gender gap.

If someone gives less money to women, -because they are women- it's sexism.

How giving money to women -because they are women- isn't sexism?

A more honest approach would be to hire the most qualified person, regardless of your current male/female ratio.

While I strongly believe Etsy can spend their money any way they want...

I'm curious that if by always treating female hackers as a special group, that it will create a further divide in the community, analogous to hate crimes:

> In their book Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics, James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter criticize hate crime legislation for exacerbating conflicts between groups. They assert that by defining crimes as being committed by one group against another, rather than as being committed by individuals against their society, the labeling of crimes as “hate crimes” causes groups to feel persecuted by one another, and that this impression of persecution can incite a backlash and thus lead to an actual increase in crime.

Also, these scholarships are based on financial aid. Yanked directly from article: " 10 female students, we’ll provide a $5,000 needs-based scholarship"

It's compensative sexism.

Not sure why you are being down voted. This scholarship discriminates based on sex (which is sexism by definition) presumably in an attempt to compensate for the sexism targeted at women in tech.

Let's call a spade a spade.

I think the more accurate term is "reverse sexism." When efforts are made to combat sexism (with good intentions) that don't lead to actually working against or solving the root cause of the original sexism. Though sexism is never mentioned in the article, so we can't say that's the intention behind this initiative at all.

A scholarship or grant is not the same as salary. Do you think college scholarships based on gender or race are sexist or racist?

Scholarships based on need or because the person comes from a poor socioeconomic background helps build equality by helping remove an inherent barrier/bias.

Scholarships based purely on the persons gender or race is by definition sexist/racist... it discriminates who gets it solely on the fact that the person was born a certain race or gender.

That being said, the motivation for such scholarships are because the entity investing that money believes an inbalance already exists in the opposite direction, so they hope to balance the scales.

The hard question is whether doing the same thing (biasing support based on gender/race) on the opposite side of the spectrum is really helping the situation.

By your logic, scholarships "based on need or because the person comes from a poor socioeconomic background" would be considered classist.

Grants based on gender attempting to correct an imbalance are not sexist. Classifying them as such is ignoring the greater context: a severe lack of that gender in that field. It also diminishes examples of actual sexism.

I'm not sure why you think scholarships based on gender are sexist but scholarships based on socioeconomic background are fine. There exists a very real bias against women in the tech industry.

> By your logic, scholarships "based on need or because the person comes from a poor socioeconomic background" would be considered classist.

Of course the selection of recipients is classist... so is $100k tuition. The whole point is to reduce the impact that class and socioeconomic background has on who can attend the institution.

The result is a more meritocratic application process, which I believe is a worthy goal in the context of universities.

> Grants based on gender attempting to correct an imbalance are not sexist.

You twisted my words. I said the selection of who gets the grant is sexist by nature. I admitted the motivation for doing so is to help reduce sexism via creating biases on the other end of the spectrum.

Kind of like in war when one country kills a thousand of the enemies because the enemy killed a thousand of their soldiers. It may seem like a fair reaction, but is it solving the root of them problem (for ex making sure another thousand won't die again)? Or is it creating a larger divide?

> I'm not sure why you think scholarships based on gender are sexist but scholarships based on socioeconomic background are fine.

It's simple.

The problem which socioeconomic applicants is that they can't afford to apply, regardless of their ability. A grant is a monetary award that was voluntarily donated to allow them to compete based on merit/ability with the wealthier applicants.

With gender and (pure) race-based scholarships the problem is usually ignorance or bias of the administration - the school ignores the ability or merit of the applicant simply because of their race or gender. Giving the applicant a monetary award for (potentially) being left behind due to the administrations ignorance isn't solving the root of the problem.

> The whole point is to reduce the impact that class and socioeconomic background has on who can attend the institution.

And the whole point of Etsy's scholarship is to reduce the impact that gender has on who gets into the tech field.

> You twisted my words. I said the selection of who gets the grant is sexist by nature. I admitted the motivation for doing so is to help reduce sexism via creating biases on the other end of the spectrum.

It's not sexist the same way a scholarship for kids coming from households with low incomes isn't classist. Sure, if you want to stretch the definition, it's "classist" (or "sexist"), but truly it's not. It's there to correct already existing classism (or sexism) or to assist a specific group of people.

I didn't twist your words. You specifically said the scholarship is sexist. I said it is not.

> Kind of like in war when one country kills a thousand of the enemies because the enemy killed a thousand of their soldiers. It may seem like a fair reaction, but is it solving the root of them problem (for ex making sure another thousand won't die again)? Or is it creating a larger divide?

Your (rather poor) analogy would make more sense if the first country was constantly killing enemy soldiers for thousands of years, and then the second country tries to take a little bit of land back and the first country screams, "Look! Look what they're doing! This isn't fair! We should be treated equally!"

The only divide it's creating is in people who don't think women belong in those fields. We call those people "sexists" and I don't enjoy their company.

> The problem which socioeconomic applicants is that they can't afford to apply, regardless of their ability.

The same is true of women. Regardless of their ability, it is much more difficult for them to get into the field versus men.

> With gender and (pure) race-based scholarships the problem is usually ignorance or bias of the administration - they ignore the ability or merit of the applicant simply because of their race or gender. Giving the applicant a monetary award for (potentially) being a victim of the administrations ignorance isn't solving the root of the problem.

And, using your same logic, income-based scholarships ignore the ability or merit of the applicant simply because of their income level. They are all in place to bridge a gap. This attempts (rather well) to bridge the gender gap in the tech industry.

Here are a couple of comics that summarize the gist of my points: http://i.imgur.com/fMIRr.jpg http://i.imgur.com/xEiL4.jpg

Fair points.

Theres different ways to approach them problem. I'm much more inclined to figure out what the deeper problems are and address them (ignorances, biases, misconceptions etc)

I feel that grants may only be patching the surface and don't really address the higher level problems.

My cofounder is a female hacker and I recently mentored a "Ladies Learning Code" event.

From that I've learned its best to communicate why programming is fun and interesting. To get past their misconceptions that its all geeky male culture and actually a really rewarding skillset.

Reducing those misconceptions on both sides will have a long term impact. Humans have been effective at evolving and changing "common sense". Newer generations are incredibly more tolerant of race/gender than older ones. I believe that happens through changing peoples understanding of the issues and trying hard to not further segregate it into us vs them groups.

Getting more women into tech* isn't just about the money...

1.) Not encouraged in early years: If you are a tech-savvy female, "soft" tech careers (Graphic Design etc.) are generally recommended as career paths.

2.) It's a Boy's Club: If you make it past the college classes (with a 20:1 M-to-F ratio), you enter the workforce with (mostly) the same ratio. This means that unless you have thick skin & a good sense of humor, you'll never make it.

3.) You're Wrong: Even if you are right. And no one will hesitate to tell you why.

* Speaking for a professional career in Tech.

In my experience, a lot of these actually provoke you to strive to over-achieve & prove yourself. But I can see how it can seem off-putting for a new-comer.

I'm surprised this is still an issue. The guys here can't seem to trip over each other quickly enough to white knight imaginary women from any possible sexism. Is there a tech crowd that isn't obsessed over this topic and is making us all endure having to hear that Leisure Suit Larry is sexist and why? Speaking as a guy who managed guys and gals alike (in tech) and never treated them like children.

#2 would apply just as readily to female-dominated positions like nursing. A man who cannot handle a competitive, female-dominated field like nursing will get his ass handed to him as badly or worse. Men tend to be able to tolerate women who cannot get along in a male-dominated environment. That is not even remotely true in reverse.

Getting more women into tech isn't just about the money...*

I don't suppose you're implying the OP means otherwise?

Again and again, criticism comes up against affirmative action to get more women in computing. How can this possibly be unfair? How many of you know what it is really like to be a woman in computing? Can you imagine what it is like to go to a tech conference and be judged on your gender? To be approached as if you must be someone's girlfriend because why else would you be here, or otherwise be some freak of nature? To have to excel a thousand times over among your peers because otherwise you feel you are not good enough? To not want to use the computer room during your free time in highschool because if you don't socialize with other girls at that age you'll be completely cut out of the social-ladder loop?

Are you also feeling somehow ostracised because of your minority genetic dispositions or lifestyle? Then welcome more women into the field, because acceptance welcomes more acceptance. We rage about what happened to Turing, but I wonder how many of us in that day and age, if we were his peers, would have fought for him publicly. And yes, I put Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper on a pedestal. I put Ada's mother on a pedestal for pushing Ada into mathematics. Without a role model, every person of minority must make the fight to be the first, and why use that energy fighting to be the first when that energy is better spent innovating in the field.

I ask you all please, look to a future 20-30 years from now, when there is more of a balance, as it happened in the fields of medicine, law, architecture.. There was a time when being a woman professional was unimaginable and resisted. It took courage and fearlessness, and it happened. It can happen in our field too, just don't keep blocking it (unwittingly or no) with constant criticism, it's tiring.

I cannot wait until the day a post on HN about achieving a balance in our technical fields has zero comments wondering why this could possibly be a good thing.

All that happens with socially inept man, but they can't dismiss it on gender.

I am skeptical that there are few women in tech primarily due to sexism or any bad behavior on the part of the men in the field. But regardless of the source of the imbalance, I am also strongly in support of efforts to correct the imbalance, as I think that women have a lot to offer the field that it desperately needs. I firmly support "sexist" efforts to create artificial incentives to lure women into the field, however unfair they may be to men, since by my estimation there is real wealth that will be created by getting them there.

Though I support that ideal, I question whether approaches like this are effective ways to achieve it, or even push things towards it at all - Etsy is basically throwing reasonably large amounts of money ($5k apiece) to get people that have already expressed a strong interest in tech to...continue expressing their strong interest in tech.

It's like the customer has already started entering their credit card number as the final step of a purchase, and you're spending all your development time optimizing the wording of your product description on that final page because you really want to make sure they finish entering that credit card number. You've already made the sale, spend your time worrying about something else!

What I'd much rather see is a focus further up the funnel, where you can actually affect people's behavior and choices in some meaningful way. Spend that 50 grand by offering, at a select set of good schools, $100 apiece to the first 500 freshman girls that enroll in a real CS course, and I'll cheer the effort - $100 bucks is a small price to pay to know that a smart girl at a good school is taking a programming class, but it just might be enough so that you actually see an increase in enrollment. If it's not and nobody bites, bump it to $200 the next semester, see if it changes. Keep the sample of schools small enough, and you'll at the very least be collecting some interesting data on how much money it actually takes to convince college girls to take CS classes. [I suspect even a $100 incentive would be enough to get female enrollment on par with male for intro classes, since at most schools an intro CS class will satisfy some sort of distribution requirement anyways]

If we can get girls into first-year CS classes, we will see more women enter the field, I guarantee that. Not all of them, but some, and some of them will be fantastic. It might be crass, but I have no problem with bribing them. I'd happily contribute a few thousand to the effort if there was a sizable one set up.

But if we're going to resort to bribery, let's at least make it cost effective. Bribing a tiny set of people that are already going to do what you want anyways is not a smart approach, not when there are so many more creative options.

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