Etsy Wants to Give Female Programmers $5,000 to Attend Hacker School
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Yes, yes, I understand the argument that it's somehow desirable to change the gender makeup of engineering (although I've yet to see programs aimed at fixing the general balance in elementary school teaching or nursing), but this does nothing to address the problem that there are INDIVIDUALS who might like to apply for a grant but are excluded because of what's inside their underwear.
Next is Etsy going to pay guys $5,000 to take knitting classes?
You can't solve this problem through exclusion, the solution needs to be inclusive, like Lady's Learning Code and other such groups.
This is creating a positive effect for women, but having a negative effect on men by excluding them from the ability to qualify for their grants. That is not a solution, it does not solve the problem, it is a reversal of the problem which shifts the negativity to the other end of the spectrum.
A proper solution would be to remove the negativity altogether, perhaps by initiating societal reforms that don't shoehorn men and women into a particular role at a young age.
We should consider this socially acceptable for our own good.
100% agreed.
I stand for the right for every firm to pass out scholarships, hire, fire, etc. based on all sorts of things: I support the RIGHT of bookstore owners to exclude on race, the RIGHT of golf courses to exclude on sex, etc.
...but once we turn from the topic of what people should be ALLOWED to do, and address what people SHOULD do, I will say that I dislike people who exclude on race, sex, sexual orientation, etc.
Your uncle has the RIGHT to be racist (thought it makes him a jackass), and Etsy has the RIGHT to be sexist and judge people based on the accident of their birth instead of the content of their character.
...and it makes them jackasses.
Nothing makes them better, nothing makes them worse. The point is not to find people who are "better" but merely to fill a gap in the workforce (diversity). You can't get more diversity by hiring more of the same.
Additionally, as per HN's guideline, I would suggest linking to the original piece of information being http://www.etsy.com/hacker-grants and not the TC one.
I tend to do this mistake myself (link to TC posts instead of the original one) but have realized that the HN community prefers to see the original source (from the HN guidelines: Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter.).
Sorry, didn't realize this. Gotta catch up on my HN rss.
Hear me out.
The negative reaction to bigotry arises from a perceived inequality: one group is getting favored over another, and that's unfair. Sure.
But that assumes that both groups started out equal in the first place. If one group were at a disadvantage then giving them a leg up merely equalizes what was already an unequal playing field. So, in this example, men have been and continue to dominate professionally by almost any metric we care to look at across the entire population (salary, job title, etc.). Helping out women in this regard is an attempt to level the playing field.
That said, in practice it is not that easy. Quotas are my favorite anti-pattern in this arena; they simply don't work and do more harm than good. In this case, I'm a little leery because Etsy has financial motivations behind wanting to be seen as women-friendly. A government offering this kind of scholarship as a social contract effort is more neutral to me; a business offering it as a marketing effort is more suspect. Maybe I'm too cynical, though.
Women get more degrees.
Women live longer.
Women work less, yet collection social security longer.
Women get equal pay for the same experience in the same job.
If Etsy is doing this just as a purely cynical marketing stunt, playing to their female demographic, I could have some respect for them, in the same way that I respect a sleazy salesman, or an alligator.
...but if they think that they're "solving" a "problem" by discriminating against young men, then they're just fools.
That goes against a whole lot of sociological research, including CEO pay in the private sector and professors at the academia level. Where are you getting that idea?
One third of all women are killed by an intimate partner. Women ages 20-24 are disproportionately the victim of non-fatal domestic violence.
Women live longer? Well, okay: that doesn't have to do with pay scale or work inequality, though, right? They don't live longer because someone is deciding to let them live longer, but they do get less money because some institution is deciding they should get less money.
Ultimately, how do any of these facts relate to professional equality?
> That goes against a whole lot of sociological research
No it doesn't.
Here's a report that the Department of Labor commissioned
http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20...
TL;DR: women and men with the same experience and the same job get the same salary. Women, though (a) opt out of the labor force to have and raise kids, and (b) opt out of high paying jobs that are dangerous or require insane time commitments.
Feel free to respond with any actual statistics you may have.
> One third of all women are killed by an intimate partner.
One third.
ONE THIRD??!?
Let's see what the CDC has to say:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm
1,219,784 women died in the US in 2009.
3,673 died of homicide.
That means that 0.28% of women were killed by ANYONE.
...yet you claim that 33% of women are killed by their intimate partners.
Check this out: http://jec.senate.gov/public/?a=Files.Serve&File_id=9118...
It refers to your study, but clarifies some stuff.
All other things being equal (skills, experience, etc), resumes with female names were responded to less than resumes with male names.
Women who have children are paid less than men who have children in the same occupation even if they are at the same level.
In nearly every study of gender inequality in pay, there is an unexplained discrepancy that favors men.
It would be in the news all over the country. If you can't switch male/female without feeling like it's wrong one way, it's wrong the other way too.
This is just madness. You can give poor black kids a chance by giving them equal rights and rules. Anyway, woman are underrepresented by their own choice and are in no way disadvantaged. I actually feel it is the opposite, that as a woman, I'm in advantage in IT.