
Is it Sexist to Recruit Women in Tech? - tyre
http://julieannhorvath.com/2013/10/10/is-it-sexist-to-recruit-women.html
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spodek
This is a common topic of discussion on HN.

I'll risk downvotes to create a discussion in a sometimes touchy subject.

STEM fields aren't the only ones with large gender imbalances. Others include
elementary school teaching, nursing, garbage collecting, road maintenance, and
many others.

Are there efforts to recruit men to become elementary school teachers on the
scale to promote women in STEM field?

Are there efforts to recruit women into construction and collecting garbage?

Why or why not? I don't have the answers, although I don't think male-only
scholarships exist to promote male teachers (though I think society would
benefit from it) nor female-only apprenticeships to promote women going into
construction or garbage collection (though I think society would benefit from
it, and would probably result in making the fields safer).

I'm curious what people say. If nothing else, if we find successes in some
areas we may be able to replicate them in others.

~~~
smtddr
I'll jump into this touchy subject. The reason why there are not efforts to
balance the other fields you mention is because of the "position of
power"/"social prestige" of said jobs. I don't think anyone can debate that
due to complicated social/economic issues, but significantly sexism/racism,
the history of USA shows that jobs with power/prestige are usually held by
white males. Oprah Winfrey crying at Obama's speech wouldn't of happened if
Obama just became the first black garbage man. It was about the power/prestige
of a black man being USA president. Sexism pretty much puts women as teachers
& nurses and "men"(or society in general) is apparently fine with that. Road
maintenance, garbage collection? Those are low-prestige & physical/dirty work.
That's for minorities & men. Society(sexism) probably prevents most women from
even considering those jobs and the few that do, I'm sure are greeted with an
insane amount of inappropriate jokes/comments. Now, since positions of
power/prestige tend to have a much greater impact on overall society, having
some balance in those positions will help make products & laws more diverse to
reflect the diverse society we're in. BTW, this is why I find it ridiculous
the concept of exclusively men making laws on abortion.

Anecdotal: When I was a kid, I had to take some kind of "development" test to
see if I was generally progressing properly. I failed that test, the results
stated things such as "No solid understanding of reality vs fantasy". My
parents were livid. They went to school to complain. Turns out, _a lot_ of
parents were complaining. Also turns out, all the complaining parents were
foreigners. And it also turned out that the questions on the test had a heavy
assumption that you were an american child with american parents. I didn't
know what a pizza was when I was a kid; that's one of the questions I bombed.
My parents never got it for me; at least not yet. The school ended up having
to put the test-questions through some kind of minority/foreign-parents
verification process and re-do the tests for everyone.

~~~
philwelch
Historically, programming was low-prestige as well.

~~~
smtddr
True, but the background required for it... math & science, that was
historically a "man's skill"(sexism). Women went to school for things related
to home-making, if they went to school at all.

That's why this story has an impact:
[http://braythwayt.com/posterous/2012/03/29/a-womans-
story.ht...](http://braythwayt.com/posterous/2012/03/29/a-womans-story.html)

EDIT: Wow, this story fell off the frontpage fast...

~~~
philwelch
I think you have your timelines mixed up a bit. In 1995, right before the tech
bubble, programming was definitely low prestige and women were definitely
already well educated, earning about half of the college degrees.

In fact, there's a direct cause and effect going on--programming became high
prestige, which caused the feminist hullabaloo about not having enough women
programmers that we see today. If programming was already high prestige this
would not be news to us and there would already be more women programmers,
just as people in the past were obsessed with having more women doctors and
lawyers and now there are lots of them.

------
ufmace
Yes. If you're discriminating on the basis of gender, how is that not sexist?

~~~
baddox
Using a definition that simple, most people in the world are deeply sexist.

~~~
obstacle1
Yes, and...?

When someone self-identifies as 'not a sexist' they also implicitly identify
as a liar. To think we can ever get past discrimination -- sex, race, or
whatever -- is extremely naive. It is as fundamental to us as making the
distinction between 'me' and 'not me'.

~~~
baddox
The issue starts to become semantic. If by "discrimination" we just mean
"recognizing differences and making decisions based on those differences,"
then it obviously shouldn't carry a stigma. But usually "discrimination" is
being used to refer to _unfair_ or _undesirable_ decisions based on
differences, and in this case we need to define what is and isn't fair or
desirable.

~~~
obstacle1
If you take action based on a recognition of difference, a value judgement is
implied. For example choosing action A over B implies a preference for action
A, even if you don't consciously think of it that way. So it is hard to see
how any human endeavour can ever be free of discrimination in the moral sense
you're talking about. Every decision we make discriminates against someone or
something in an 'unfair' manner, basically.

~~~
baddox
But why are all preferences "unfair"? What about preferences in partners, i.e.
heterosexuality or homosexuality?

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jonstjohn
As somebody who is in a hiring position and aspires to a more gender-balanced
work-place, I've found it really disheartening that so few applicants are
female. We have mostly male developers and leadership, so I understand that a
female coming into our office might not feel particularly attracted to it. I
guess it is a slow process to try to improve that situation.

~~~
tekalon
I don't think that having mostly men as coworkers is a deterrent. I had a
conversation with a co-worker about general work life in our company. There
are no work from home opportunities and no paid time off for maternity leave.
Most of my (male and female) coworkers like the idea of a work from home or
alternative work schedule (4x10 or 9x9 days) but only women commented about
better maternity practices. Don't be disheartened by the few number of
applicants, that's more due to there being less women in general with the
skills needed. I agree don't hire for token numbers, but work on retention,
see what keeps them.

Also work with community to encourage both boys and girls into your field.
Women get discouraged not when its time to find a job, it starts when they are
learning what they are supposed to do (good and bad of gender roles).

------
colmvp
Is it racist to recruit Black's and Hispanic's in Tech? Asian's in Hollywood,
Politics, and Sports?

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nemothekid
I don't think it is sexist, but I think its misguided. Maybe I lack the data,
but it seems to me that forcibly encouraging companies to hire more women only
seems to mask the real problem. Is the problem really top-down or is it bottom
up?

For example, a couple months ago I read this report on bitcoin adoption that
said bitcoin users were 92% male. If we assume this report is correct, then
why? If bitcoin, (pretend with me here), is going to be the next driver in the
global economy, why is it so heavily male dominated? Bitcoin is fairly
anonymous and low entry. Now in our world where Bitcoin rules, if our bitcoin
overlords were 92% male, who do we blame for this gender homogeneity?

Now, I may be ignorant in the latest innovations of public schooling, but is
the problem that "Brogrammers" are refusing to hire women, or are women just
not entering into CS/STEM tracks, and if the problem is the latter, wouldn't
it be more sustainable to force our efforts into public schooling rather than
constantly remind HN that if our company doesn't have a female mixer we are
doing it wrong?

I really hope I'm right with this, and I'm really excited for BlackGirlsCode
([http://www.blackgirlscode.com/](http://www.blackgirlscode.com/)). With this
organization's efforts I hope in the next 10-15 years we see a growth of
talented female/black developers leading to a more concentrated effort on the
source of this problem.

------
TomGullen
There are many gradients of inequality, and only one true equality. Anything
that isn't true equality is inequality.

Is giving a helping hand to disadvantaged minorities an exercise in promotion
of equality? I don't think so. So is it a bad thing? Not always.

------
Dewie
> I remember I was helping out a friend with a side project after work one
> day. We sat down and spent the night writing code together. It was just
> so...easy. To get along, to get on the same page, our arguments were
> productive and from the minute we sat down together there was an immediate
> sense that we respected each other.

She get's along better with a person that has more in common with her. The
outcome of this is kind of ironic, if you think that the purpose of these
initiatives is 'diversity'.

~~~
ufmace
That's the part that I found a little funny too. Sure, it's a lot more
pleasant to work closely with somebody you get along well with, but I don't
really see what gender has to do with that. I guess she doesn't get along with
the men she works with all that well, but being a guy myself, I don't
necessarily enjoy working closely with every guy I've worked with just because
we're both men. If there were 50 women developers at her company, would she
enjoy working with every one of them? Or if there are 50 men and she doesn't
enjoy working with any of them, then that's a little odd too.

~~~
scott_s
She probably gets along great with her male colleagues. But if she is straight
(I don't know if she is), and she was with a straight, male colleague after
work, and spent "the night writing code together", there would probably be at
least some romantic tension.

At work, it's possible to have none, because everyone is a professional and we
all understand the boundaries. But once you're _electing_ to spend time with a
person outside of work hours, then it can become ambiguous, and one party may
feel compelled to say "By the way, this isn't a date...". If she is straight,
and she is spending time with a straight female colleague, then that tension
is not present at all.

When you're a straight guy, working almost exclusively with straight guys,
then this doesn't have to enter your thinking.

~~~
Dewie
This is real life we're talking about, not a romantic comedy.

~~~
scott_s
I don't see how what I described has anything to do with a romantic comedy. I
think it's completely reasonable that women may not feel immediately
comfortable spending after-work time with male colleagues. But, with a fellow
female colleague, there is no ambiguity.

~~~
Dewie
> I think it's completely reasonable that women may not feel immediately
> comfortable spending after-work time with male colleagues.

Yes, that might be the case for a lot of women. In Saudi Arabia.

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ninjac0der
I'm not sure I follow this logic. She fessed up to pushing a sexist hiring
policy and then tried to justify it by explaining it's just because she enjoys
working with other females more?

Well, I enjoy a good laugh... and sexist jokes often make me laugh. Should I
apologize?... I feel like I should.

------
Dewie
I'll believe that "tech" is interested in diversity when it stops being
married to nerd-culture. Tech seems to be just as homogenus as any other
subculture, and people within it actively encourage it with trying to
playfully out-nerd each other with whatever slightly obsessive quirks are in
vogue.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> "I'll believe that "tech" is interested in diversity when it stops being
> married to nerd-culture."

I hope that will never happen. Being a nerd is not a fashion statement, it's a
way of thinking, which happens to drive the progress of technology.

~~~
Dewie
But is the nerd "way of thinking" the only way to achieve things like that? Or
is it just that being mired in such a homogeneous culture makes it _seem_ like
the two are inextricably and inevitably linked?

