This applies just as much to finding employees. The resumes don't just appear out of thin air usually, and it's no excuse to say you just didn't get any from women.
I myself used this excuse in the past, but I hope not to make any excuses in the future.
People of color.
Immigrants.
Those of young age.
Those of old age.
While women is clearly the largest demographic in that group, each listed group is commonly put in an disadvantage when applying for work. Outreaching to each of those groups is also the only way to get a work place that includes a fair portion from each demographic, as they are used to being denied and thus do not apply for as much work as white middle aged men.
One should also want to consider people previously convicted of a crime, as that is a very large demographic in the US and is one which also have a very hard time finding jobs. Many have given up on ever finding a good job, and do not apply for higher paying jobs even if they got a higher education that would qualify them for hire.
I did not include ex-convicts as a joke. Many people get locked up falsely, and even more get locked up because they enter a plea barging that they shouldn't have. Many of those has some kind of higher education, but is put in an disadvantage because of some real, or imaginary mistake in their past (like downloading a song at age 9). Assuming that those people can't do work beyond sweeping floors, or that they have nothing to contribute to a conference is discrimination without basis.
As to the young and old, I too would like to see less agism in the work place and conferences. Old grey unix neckbeards tend to only be acceptable in some places. In regard to the type of conference the article discuss, game developer conferences, I think old grey unix neckbeards and 14 year old developers are a rare sight and clearly underrepresented.
Pointing out that there is more than one form of group under discrimination is not an appeal to ridicule, and it does not lessen the acts done by the author in the article. Rather, the method used by the author is an effective method to address discrimination without causing further discrimination by the act of exclusion.
You still pick the best applicant from all submissions, but it forces you to make sure that news of your position spreads into more than just the usual communities.
I think if you see all people as just people, a notion like "targeting a demographic" comes across as racist / sexist / and plain old discriminative. But that's just one opinion.
You suggest gender-blindness is the solution. I don't disagree that such blindness is a worthwhile goal, but to simply say "let's all be gender blind now" without addressing an existing under-representation just cements the imbalance. Demographics realities have inertia. Women don't go into STEM just because that's not something 'that women do'. It's only appropriate to be blind once the imbalance is wiped out.
That's not to say that affirmative action as previously imagined is the right way to address the imbalance--it's been shown not to be for a variety of reasons. But as this shows, and as GoGaRuCo shows, when you eliminate gender advantages for men, women are selected equally in blind judging, so there's no essential difference between men and women, just an historical artifact worth eliminating.
To say more women should be in STEM is sexist. I mean, if more women get into STEM, great. But to say an entire sex should do something is nonsensical. It's entirely possible they don't want to study stem. It's possible they value other knowledge that is equally important. To say that they're under-represented is to belittle what individuals choose to do with their lives.
But to say an entire sex should do something is nonsensical. It's entirely possible they don't want to study stem.
You realize these two sentences contradict each other, I hope. You say that it's non-sensical to discuss what the entire sex should do, then try to talk about what the entire gender may or may not want as a reason for (or against) acting.
To say that they're under-represented is to belittle what individuals choose to do with their lives.
No, it doesn't, because it doesn't require any individual to do anything, or to give an individual responsibility for what the entire gender does.
When I talk about "under" represented, I mean that absent the historical injustice of sexism, you would see a different gender balance. And as this conference and GoGaRuCo demonstrate, when you control for the historical imbalance, women and men are selected equally to speak in a blind process, thus showing equal ability, if not interest; it's reasonable to assume that after correcting the historical artifact, gendered participation ratios would be much closer.
I've already agreed that affirmative action isn't the answer, but this--community outreach, basically--isn't affirmative action in any sense.
I hear this quite a bit, but it always seems to be asserted without substantiation. What evidence is there that it's true?
And, more importantly, if we're going to make distinctions between individuals based on their membership in putative demographic categories, why not also distinguish between those who internalize that demographic category as part of their identity, and those who do not? It would seem that an inhibition to pursue one career or another due to demographics would likely indicate that one is part of the latter category; but would we not be more likely to prefer the former category, and want to work people who assert their own ambitions without allowing themselves to be constrained by internalized abstractions?
How are these demographic categories themselves not entirely arbitrary? How is analyzing a demographic category as though the definition of that category were preemptively relevant not an exercise in question-begging?
If you conducted a study that indicated that people with odd-numbered shoe sizes were "under-represented", would you begin targeting that "demographic"? Why would you have been looking at people's shoe sizes in the first place?
Disproportionate representation is fair (only) if the criteria of discrimination is justifiable.
An obtuse example: Gifted & hardworking athletes are disproportionally over-represented at the olympics, vice gifted + lazy, non-gifted + lazy, and non-gifted + hardworking ones.
The article doesn't say that.
"To keep the selection process fair, Courtney chose applicants based on their pitches only, without looking at the speaker’s identity or gender. The result was a 50/50 split between male and female speakers, which she counted as a success."
It baffles me how you can consider men an "excluded demographic" in this scenario.
It's also a worthy goal to find out (1) why women don't ask and (2) work to encourage women to do that asking.
The more forward momentum is built, through efforts such as this, the less of a problem this is in the future.