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Comment by indubitably | Hacker News Reader

Ah yes, the convenient argument that the world is truly a meritocracy, and that those in positions of power, who evaluate merit, have no biases.

I do not know whether you are in a position of power, but I note that this argument is often advanced by people in positions of power.

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Where are the 50% of open source projects that should have been started by women?

Or are they deleted from the Internet by those in power?

It's a BS argument. A lot less than 50% of programmers are women, so there is no way 50% of open source projects (as a sign of merit, as I understand you) could be started by women.

And the reason there are less women programmers, is because less women want to be programmers. Just as less men want to become fashion designers.

There is nothing to "solve" here. Let people do what they want to do.

Obviously, women do want to be programmers, unless they are told by society that they shouldn't or couldn't. If that weren't the case, movements like DjangoGirls would be far less successful.

The comparison with fashion design is also BS. For one thing, there are lots of male designers (especially the famous ones) and then the number of fashion designers is a lot lower than the number of programmers.

And this is not as irrelevant a choice as whether to play with dolls or lego: Programming is a skill which allows for social upwards mobility like nothing else. Just assuming women (and minorities) don't want that, is a bit too easy.

I think you've completely misunderstood what @indubitably was trying to say...

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