While I understand the good intentions behind girl only events, women in CS meetups and girl geek dinners/mentors something about it feels wrong to me. It's like fighting an exclusion problem with just a different type of exclusion and simultaneously reinforcing the divisions they're rallying against.
In numerous tech offices/companies I've visited in the Bay Area and New York, I've met more foreign born white male programmers than African American male and Hispanic American male programmers put together. And despite the so-called high number of Asian males in CS in the US, I rarely see them in C-level positions in tech companies (say as CTOs) even compared to females. Yet I don't see or read nearly as many articles about initiatives in the tech industry to help any of those minorities increase their participation or break glass ceilings.
And so as a minority, it kind of annoys me that I just get grouped with the so-called dominant segment of 'men' when I feel my and other races are under-represented in different ways. This especially comes out whenever there are tech meetups that are exclusive to women.
Seeing as Asian-Americans are about 5% of the population while women are roughly 50%, all things being equal you would expect to see far more women than Asian men in any given position.
But I agree with the sentiment that these events are fighting exclusion with more exclusion. I would even go so far as to say that some companies seem to have a policy of positive discrimination in favour of women when it comes to hiring. And that is just unfair.
Shifting cultures is hard. Lacking perfect solutions, maybe plausible ones will suffice?
It subtly suggests (unintentionally) that girls can't make it on their own and require this extra help - which I think reinforces the sexist stereotypes that are the core problem. Intimidation, feelings of inferiority and difficulty with work are universal issues, I don't think excluding people by sex is necessary.
There's also the very non-zero chance that I'm underestimating the value women get out of these events, but exclusion based on gender just does seem like the best way to go about it. Maybe it's just that nobody likes to feel left out.
I think one of the purposes of these kinds of separate events is to make it so that women in tech are not "special".
>I think this devalues the accomplishments by focusing on an unimportant aspect.
Unimportant to you, maybe, but not to the people who face barriers because of their gender. To make an analogy, is the success of some African-Americans today "devalued" because they didn't have to work as hard for it as the "exceptional blacks" of previous generations?
>It subtly suggests (unintentionally) that girls can't make it on their own and require this extra help...
One of the benefits of living in society instead of striking out for the frontier is that, when the deck is stacked against you, you can band together to solve problems that might be too hard to face on your own. Yes, there are always "exceptional" people who can go it alone, but the fact that _somebody_ didn't need extra help doesn't mean that _nobody_ needs extra help.
>I don't think excluding people by sex is necessary.
Necessary for what? In an ideal world, you wouldn't have to take gender into account, but (imperfect as it may be), I think women-only events are a way to create environments where gender issues don't come into play.
Gender issues do come into play when you segregate people like this. Some women like to go to these events, some don't. Have you ever thought about how do men feel? Or just because they are generally in a different position it doesn't matter if they're discriminated against?
This thing sounds to me like trying to justify robbing a thief, one automatically becomes a thief after doing it no matter how much sugar you want to use to coat the action.
In the sense that once there are more women in tech, being a woman in tech will be normal, instead of noteworthy or "special".
>Gender issues do come into play when you segregate people like this.
Not for the attendees, who don't have to worry about other people at the event treating them differently based on their gender.
>Have you ever thought about how do men feel? Or just because they are generally in a different position it doesn't matter if they're discriminated against?
What discrimination? Are there men whose careers will suffer, or who will be looked down upon, because they weren't able to attend one of these events?
To make an analogy: suppose food banks or soup kitchens only provided help to people below a certain income level. Is that "discrimination" against all the people who want to eat there but can't because they have too much money? Is it unfair that someone who gets food from a food bank is also allowed to shop at regular grocery stores with everyone else?
>This thing sounds to me like trying to justify robbing a thief...
No one is being robbed. This is not about trying to make things worse for men, but about making them better for women.
I think for that reason alone they're a good thing. Could it be taken too far? Sure but I don't see that happening right now, and at the moment given how few women are in our field I think more such things are needed to at least reduce the sharp edges people view from our world.
But I'm under the impression that today we offer women-only CS courses and the norm has become women get hired over equally or more qualified men in the name of eradicating sexism.
I humbly suggest this is taking it too far. I don't want to automatically get turned down for a job because a woman applied. I don't want to automatically get turned down for CS help because I am the wrong gender.
Every time I hear about a company spending money on CS help for women or "prioritizing hiring women" I cringe, but the HN community seems to readily accept and celebrate those posts.
If that were a real policy (which I don't think it is), I suppose the point is that even then the odds would be against it impacting you as there are so few women applicants.
Lets say the whole thing is trying to reverse the course direction of CS to help get more women in the field. We know that having equal amounts of both genders helps and strengthens teams. So while the preferential hiring of women might at first glance appear to be discriminatory, and it may very well be that. The intent might be completely different and the goal of the exercise is to improve the company or teams performance.
Speaking from experience, I prefer more balanced teams. I absolutely hate men only teams because what eventually always seems to happen is alpha/beta male monkey behavior. It is unproductive and I notice a distinct lack of it when there are women around.
Basically I think this is a non-issue to worry about until we get close to 50% of women in CS in general. Given how far behind we are, I'm not even concerned right now. In fact I'd love to join things like rails bridge or whatever just to get things moving forward.
Also note "the HN community" doesn't exist, we're all individuals. This is my own viewpoint and biases. "we" celebrate these things because CS is far too white male centric and that needs to change. We need more viewpoints.
If you're a hiring manager and have 4 white males on a team, do you really need another white male? Probably not, is it morally wrong to want a female on the team or say a non white male? I cannot see why it would be. Especially when we now know based on current research that even if the candidate is technically worse than another, the overall team benefits from the different viewpoints more than a "star" developer.
Again, I am not in agreement this is at all a moral decision from a hiring point of view or overall as a community/CS viewpoint. Why is it wrong to hire for better performance? Why is it wrong to want more females in CS? Most importantly, how does that conflate to being a morality tale? The latter question would be aided here in you explaining your philosophical underpinnings of why a single gender meetup to get more of that underrepresented gender in the community as being morally wrong.
The slave analogy is off base for this particular situation.
Suppose a case where a men-only field led to better performance, would you not think that it is morally correct to exclude women in this case? And that's besides the point: I don't think we should encourage women to go into CS because it makes CS better, I think we should encourage women to go into CS to let them know if that's what they want to do they can and they'll be welcome and they'll have a better life like that.
If I was a hiring manager I would want to have more women on my team, but I would not feel very good about myself turning down a man more qualified for a woman for no reason other than his gender. What if I'm Apple and I just destroyed this man's lifelong dream of working for Apple? Hiring should be based on merit, and nothing else. What's next? Hiring people from different religions because the team will benefit from the different viewpoints? So if you followed a religion you'd be more likely to get hired. I don't agree with that.
Certainly! Nobody's goal is to reverse the historical situation so that men are systematically shut out of the field in some sort of vengeance for women being shut out for so long. A level playing field is absolutely the goal.
But despite all the progress we've made, there are still many, many places where women have to deal with negative biases as students, as job applicants, and as employees. Women still routinely face exactly the sort of bias that you're concerned about, except that it's no longer socially acceptable for people to admit (even to themselves) that they're doing it. (Different industry, but there was a study not long ago that conclusively demonstrated subtle but meaningful bias against women when hiring science lab techs: fake applications with female names were rated lower than identical applications with male names, by men and women alike.)
So my understanding is that when a company or college explicitly states a policy prioritizing women for help or hiring, they usually hope that this overt boost to female applicants will just cancel out the invisible but just as real biases against them.
Here is an article that was posted on hacker news saying just that, and notice the very positive reaction it got from the community here.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4730673
EDIT: I know this is anecdotal evidence, and it's from Europe not the US. But notice what a positive reaction this had from HN. To me it shows that we don't mind this reverse historical situation.
As for whether it's the norm or not, here is the article that gave me that impression: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4730673
The events and boot camps made specifically for women to learn to code/learn about various opportunities are great, but I would hate for young girls to attend these events and learn about the gender inequality in case they weren't even aware of it.
The "for girls" labeling is also for the parents at that age. If you want to have girls signed up, you need their parents to think it's a good idea. Their parents are more likely (I'd think) to be biased that girls probably won't like programming/tech. So they wouldn't think about it as something their daughter would like, except that it's especially for girls. I'm not saying it's great logic, but it seems like it might be a benefit to "for girls" labeling on programming events for kids.
So, it is only logical to consider voluntarily meeting in a space free of such disruptive people. (I'm not talking about the over-the-top Ruby brogrammers I know, whose talks feature sexual images of females who fit a narrow range of appearance. It's more mundane and everyday than that.)
It's obviously not a perfect solution, but males are free to educate themselves and undermine their gender roles. Then we wouldn't need to resort to such measures.
(Which reminds me a bit about how the author is alienated from fellow females. How many of us feel alienated from our fellow programmers? Or fellow males, if you're male? Ever look at world events, and see humanity as a bit... strange? Realizing that, statistically speaking, you yourself almost certainly have many strange beliefs too, for being a member of such groups?)