

LinkedIn announces Global Women's hackday event in Mountain View and New Delhi - iag
http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/06/22/developher-hackday/

======
antr
If we keep telling women that they need a "women's hack day", a such and such
women's event, etc, all we are doing is creating a bigger gender disparity.

I start to think of these events as pure PR stunts, rather than Linkedin et
al. tackling any underlying gender issues.

~~~
lclarkmichalek
I think you need to back up your reasoning for how this creates a bigger
gender gap. The aim of this event is not to create cliques of female
programmers who only work at 100% female companies and only attend womens'
events, which would do as you say, but to try and encourage more females to
enter/stay in the industry, which would reduce gender disparity by moving the
proportion of male to female members towards 0.5.

~~~
antr
gender disparity isn't about equaling ratios (i.e. volume), it's about
aptitude and ability. That is exactly what I mean by "bigger gender gap".

Awareness should focus on abilities and not about "lets get a 50/50 gender
balance for the sake of equality". Creating a gender biased event only
promotes the wrong reasons why women should go into software development (or
any other industry).

~~~
lclarkmichalek
You're assuming that the only reason that women do not enter the industry is
because they do not have the aptitude or ability, which is just plain false.
This event isn't about saying, girls do this because we need more of you, it's
saying, girls do this, because society suffers as a result of gender
stereotypes. Having an event to counter society's flaws is not the same as
having an event to artificially manipulate the perceived quality of the
attendees.

Also, your second paragraph makes little to no sense. The event is not going
to persuade women to enter the software development industry because of some
irrational reason (maybe you could actually say what reasons you think the
event promotes?), it's there to reduce the effect of our culture on people who
want to get into software development. No one is handing people who attend
this a free pass to getting a job in the industry; ability does still matter.

And also, I did not say that .5 is the goal, but moving towards that would be
a step in the right direction. I looked up the male to female ratio of a
random university course (UCL Computer Science). The ratio there was 77:23
male:female. That's quite a long way off 0.5. And before you say I am putting
equality before ability, ability doesn't come from nowhere. While software
development continues to be so male dominated, or at least, seen as a male
career by society at large, we will exclude god knows how many brilliant
people from the youngest ages. Having outreach programs is _not_ a bad thing,
and to think otherwise is to be ignorant of one's privilege.

~~~
antr
no, that is not what I'm saying. do not imply that i'm being sexist in any
way, which i'm not.

the labour market, when it comes to comparing gender ratios, is a zero sum
game. there are dozens of other well respected industries which are female
dominated, and as far as i know, there are no men groups organizing men only
events in those female dominated industries/jobs.

you are right on one thing: "Having outreach programs is _not_ a bad thing"
what is morally wrong and ironic is the fact that an outreach effort excludes
50% of the population.

~~~
hackinthebochs
>what is morally wrong and ironic is the fact that an outreach effort excludes
50% of the population.

Pure nonsense. In the (apparently) hostile to women environment that is tech,
it makes perfect sense to have women-centric meetups so that women can feel
comfortable exploring technology and develop bonds with other women that can
help them counteract bias.

What you should be questioning is why there is a need for a women centric
event. Dismissing these issues and turning it around to ask why its excluding
_you_ (lets be honest here, this is exactly what you're doing) is the only
thing morally wrong here.

~~~
antr
>Dismissing these issues and turning it around to ask why its excluding you
(lets be honest here, this is exactly what you're doing)

No, it is excluding part of the problem.

But hey, if your approach is to teach _women_ "don't get raped" rather than
tell _society_ "don't rape", be my guest.

~~~
hackinthebochs
Your response has absolutely no connection to anything I said. It's rather
impressive in its unrelatedness, actually.

------
sidcool1234
Just wondering, if there was an Men's hackday, would that be look upon as a
sexist event?

~~~
hackinthebochs
I would hope the readership around here could elevate the discussion beyond
trite little quips such as this. Again I come away disappointed.

For future reference: these "reverse the roles" arguments are about as shallow
and ignorant as one can get. The context is completely different for the
"reversed" roles, rendering the comparison not even meaningless, but downright
hostile.

------
sudeepy
Really excited to see what comes out of this!

~~~
iag
I believe this is the first of its kind. Both women-centric and international.
Props to the Slideshare team for coming up with the idea and putting it
together!

------
d_j
awesome. looking forward to this and more in the future.

