One question we should ask ourselves is why a field would be dominated by men and not evenly split, or mostly women, etc. Does one feel as if they would face an uphill battle trying to get hired in a field that is 80% their other?
The whole exercise feels like an effort to take attention off of the problem of income inequality by instead framing it as an issue of identity. Under this framing, "fair" means we have parity in male and female CEOs - never mind that those CEOs are still making 300x or more of what "frontline" workers make. Why not focus on pushing for higher wages in female dominated fields like teaching or nursing?
[1] https://www.zippia.com/sanitation-worker-jobs/demographics/
It's -- "if important career X has way more men than women, is this a good thing, at a net societal level, regardless of <whatever> that can explain why this is the case?"
Nobody is looking for complete and perfect parity in all influential careers. The intent is just to make sure that, for the highest-impact careers, we should work towards making them representative of our society, as much as possible
Your question implies serval beliefs, which may or may not be true. And that others may, or may not share.
For one, I don’t think the average developer has a ton of say on how products get made. So that’s not likely the power you’re seeking to ensure changes hands? Market forces and legal structure pretty much ensure enshitification and other outcomes which many would likely consider sub optimal.
> Does one feel as if they would face an uphill battle trying to get hired in a field that is 80% their other?
What people feel is hard to quantify. But what we can quantify is the call back rates of male and female applicants. Tech companies are more likely to call back women: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484
HN discussion at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25069644
A good illustration of this concept is the "equality vs. equity" cartoon, with people of different heights trying to look over a fence. https://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/...
I understand why a lot of folks, especially technically-minded folks, bias for equality of opportunity exclusively. This is essentially what a meritocracy is. There's lots of good things about equality of opportunity and meritocracies, but they also have problems, and one of those problems is that, generalizing, they both tend to reflect and reinforce pre-existing biases, and in particular implicit biases. This is exactly the kind of problem that DEI initiatives are trying to address.
I don't really want to litigate the pros and cons of these two concepts, I just want to point out that they both exist, and that initiatives like DEI can have as goals improving one or the other or both.
It's fine if you say, when doing hiring, you're only interested in equality of opportunity. That's probably the position that most people who are anti-DEI would take. But I think it's also fine if you say, when doing hiring, you're interested in both equality of opportunity and outcome. Both are valid.
Also, think through the implications of this photo in the context of hiring: https://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/...
What's really the difference between having a group of candidates standing on a box, and lowering the bar for those candidates? At the end of the day, whether it's standing on a box or lowering the bar the end result is the same: some candidates are considered to have met expectations despite not reaching the same heights as others.
I highly encourage you to think through whether this is a good metaphor to use to justify DEI in a workplace setting.
It's not a question of scope. Equality and equity are not equally valid concepts in hiring. The former is required by law, even if it produces an inequitable outcome. There is no "balance" between respecting candidates civil liberties and achieving your preferred demographic distribution.
Take a step back on the supply side. CS education isn't a requirement, though only 20% of CS undergrads are female.[0]
I'm curious what your stance is on the swathe of asians who got negatively handicapped for checking "asian" on their college applications.
[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-are-too-few...