What excuse exactly are you talking about? That most tech startups are run by men? That's not really an excuse but a fact and I think people are right to demand more participation of women in the tech world in general.
The general idea that there are a bunch of old men sitting around in smoke-filled rooms saying to each other, "Hey, I have an idea! Let's intentionally discriminate against women in our hiring and salary setting practices. Why? Because fuck 'em, that's why!"
This is the United States of America in 2010. It's not ancient Egypt. It's not feudal England. It's not even the U.S. in 1950. You can do whatever you want to do and be whoever you want to be. Nobody is stopping you but yourself. Might your climb to the top be steeper than mine? Sure. But realize that nobody who's ever made it to the top of their mountain complained about how steep it was. They just climbed. If you want to be the best, whatever that means to you, you have to go Jackie Robinson that shit. No matter what the douchebags throw at you along the way, you have to just smile back and hit home runs.
Now you are just knocking down a straw man argument of your own making. Nobody said anything about conspiracy theories of the kind you are putting forth or pretended that this was feudal England or ancient Egypt. Many women feel that tech is male dominated and that it would be nice if there were more women in tech. Seeing as how so much of our modern day living depends on technology I think it is an excellent idea to have more participation from the female half of the world population in the tech industry. Once again, what excuses of what demographic are you talking about?
I am not living under a rock I just prefer to keep the discussion away from conspiracy theories and petty overused arguments about how "the man" is keeping everyone down because there is no merit in such arguments and it doesn't address or advance anything.
Are you seriously asking how having the views of different demographics represented actually helps? In any domain where ideas count having different views with different perspectives often enriches the discipline and leads to more breakthroughs and beneficial products for the rest of us. I point you to the civil rights movement and the fight to have more people included in the political process if you want an actual example of how having a demographic X in an industry Y can enrich the lives of everyone and make the world a better place and perhaps those different interests of those different people should contribute to the things that have such a large impact on our lives.
I would argue that the idea that people differ on conveniently observable traits is flawed.
Artificially injecting a demographic into an area in which they are underrepresented doesn't guarantee you anything. You can't assume that because of a person's race, gender or background that they think in a particularly different and/or novel way. Superficial differences should not result in mandatory quotas to be filled.
Part of my problem with this line of thinking is that there is this implicit idea that being in "tech" (whatever that means) is A Good Thing. Being a programmer is NO better and NO worse than being a carpenter, or a interior decorator or the President. But yet, when was the last time someone wrote an article about how there were not enough female garbage collectors?
It's not about artificially injecting people anywhere. I guess I am not being very clear. It is important to have balanced representation in any field that is considered valuable to society and it's even more important to have balanced representation in a field that has high overall impact on peoples' daily lives. Technology is such a field and I don't understand why everyone is being so defensive about the subject of including more women in technology.
It is important to have balanced representation in any field that is considered valuable to society and it's even more important to have balanced representation in a field that has high overall impact on peoples' daily lives.
Civil Engineering should have balanced representation from across the IQ scale. Medicine should have balanced representation from scientists and various major religions.
Technology is such a field and I don't understand why everyone is being so defensive about the subject of including more women in technology.
Besides "balanced representation" being a crock, how do you "include" someone who from all appearances doesn't want to be included?
I give up. Good luck holding onto those attitudes and please make sure whatever you do is as inaccessible to everyone else as possible because what is the point of being accessible and open to outsiders when those outsiders are not interested? Everyone in this thread is just talking past each other and it's pretty obvious almost everyone is a nativist of some sort so good luck guys and I sincerely mean that. I hope all your workdays are full of clones similar to yourself.
Like FlemishBeeCycle said, perhaps different people have different interests.
I believe the number of men and women who want equal treatment under the law is more even than the numbers of men and women who are attracted to (or tolerant of) the realities of working in tech. Therefore I do not think it is fair to compare this disparity to the civil rights or suffrage movements.
Perhaps evolutionary biology has something to say about why there aren't more women techies, entrepreneurs, prisoners, or homeless. If you missed it a few days ago, here is the link again: http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm Even if you don't agree with it, I think it is safe to say it is an idea worth considering and seems pertinent to this debate.
