

Ask HN: How do I encourage women developers to join our dev team? - quxjj

Right now we have ~5-6 developers, one of whom is a woman. I am not the owner, so I can&#x27;t necessarily move mountains, but I really want to make sure our team stays balanced as we grow (it&#x27;s already a bit Bro-y).  Any things we can do in particular to attract women? Sponsoring meetups? Changing how we phrase our job applications?<p>I recognize that it may be sexist to treat hiring women as an end in and of itself, but I prefer to work in a more balanced environment. There are women working in non-technical roles in the company.  Recent hires &#x2F; interviews have mostly been guys too.
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w1ntermute
How about you just focus on hiring the best developers, regardless of their
gender, and making sure that male and female employees are treated the same by
all employees of the company? Reverse discrimination is not the answer.

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meerita
1+ to this. The value comes from the skill set, not the gender. If you take
this, tomorrow it will be another controversial topic, like race, and next
week can be another thing. Just hire the best people, that will make the
product awesome.

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jdp23
Geek Feminism's page has some useful suggestions:
[http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Recruiting_women](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Recruiting_women)

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chipsy
Create external-facing events(meetups, hackathons, etc.) that advertise the
culture you want to build, then recruit through them. This will also give you
experience in thinking about the overall work environment.

I firmly believe that the "bigger 80%" of the problem when discussing
equality/diversity issues is in putting together an appropriately inclusive
space, one where people can exchange thoughts without feeling like they're in
an argument. At the high level this means successfully tapping into groups
outside of your personal circles and getting people from those groups into
your events. (The easiest way to do this is to find a well-connected co-host
to represent the groups unavailable to you.)

The rest is a matter of managing the event so that respectful intent is
maintained and it doesn't turn divisive. If the balance is already good, and
you've hit on a type of event that is welcoming to everyone, you won't have to
fight fires. The troubles appear when you have a definite minority and the
format ignores minority concerns. Again, your co-host can help you avoid the
problem areas.

