Well, computers are what I know so I'm concerned about that. I guess if I were a male nurse I'd be saying the same thing about men.
I think it's important to have somewhat equal representation. First, we have a shortage of developers so this is an easy way to address that. Second, like the subject of this article, a lot of girls would be interested in CS but because of the lack of women they're turned off. This is a real shame. Third, CS people are literally designing our future. Do we want to live in a world as envisioned by men or as white men or as a fair balance of people?
There are 2^(6 billion) subgroups of humanity. A large number [1] of those subgroups are poorly represented among developers - the number is too large to represent with a long integer.
Why do you choose one particular subgroup to be concerned about?
[1] The number is, however, very small in comparison to 2^(6 billion).
Because this particular subgroup makes up the majority of the population. This should be blindingly obvious to anyone who isn't trying to be disingenuous.
This is an exceedingly poor way of looking at things.
First, and pedantically, your statement "are poorly represented among developers" doesn't make sense as I don't know what "representation" would mean in the context of arbitrary subsets of humans.
Admittedly, you could phrase it as "developers are poorly represented in the subgroup", and it would work, but given that you phrased it the way you did, I feel like you didn't really think through what you were saying.
As for why the particular subgroup in question is special, well, it has an important quality:
If you ask people to construct a model of a human in n dimensions, I guarantee you that almost everyone will include "gender" as one of those dimensions. So, it's an important characteristic.
Next, wouldn't you know it, this particular subgroup we're concerned with is one where every single member has the same value in that dimension, while every single member of its complement has a different value! Wow, what are the odds!? Among the powerset of humans, there are probably fewer than ~10^5 subgroups where the humans contained therein share the same value in an important dimension of our model. 10^5 / 2^(10^9), what is that, like, practically zero!?
Okay, so now we've narrowed down the practically limitless subgroups of humanity to a reasonable number -- but does that mean anything? Are we on the right track? Holy cow! It appears that humans with this particular value of this particular dimension have been treated completely differently from other humans with another value in that same dimension. This can't just be simple coincidence, we must be on to something here. When we've investigated this in the past and made changes, the collective social utility has increased. Cool.
So, to recap:
1) We've constructed a model of a human by characterizing them by their most important traits, as determined by an extensive survey of humans themselves.
2) We've used this model to narrow down the field of the powerset of humans to only subgroups whose representation or under-representation among developers may mean something.
3) We've seen that using this technique in the past to investigate the subset of humans with a certain value in a certain dimension has achieved positive results as measured by the increase in social utility per capita of that group, with a relatively minor decrease in the social utility per capita of its complement.
4) Yes, it is worth being concerned about this one particular subgroup, because among the 2^(6 billion) subgroups of humans, there might be something easily correctable which yields great results.
I'm not sure why it's a "poor way of looking at things". I'm an individualist, so I believe that only harms perpetrated against specific individuals matter.
You seem to disagree, so I'm asking for a philosophical justification for your beliefs. Apparently it's based on an argumentum ad populum - if the masses consider some dimension empirically meaningful, slicing humanity on that dimension is morally meaningful as well.
Then again, if you want to go down the road of argumentum ad populum, I can guarantee you that everyone will also consider "height", "weight", "hair color", "good looks" and "pleasant personality" as meaningful dimensions to classify humans.
People with high levels of "good looks" and "pleasant personality" are also treated differently than people with low levels of these values, as are people with a high level of weight / height.
Should we also be concerned if, e.g., ugly people or those with an unpleasant personality are poorly represented in some field?
Yes, it is worth being concerned about this one particular subgroup, because among the 2^(6 billion) subgroups of humans, there might be something easily correctable which yields great results.
If you want to appeal to historical discrimination as something easily correctable, we've already fixed it. It worked across the board, but to varying degrees (e.g. women went up to >50% of doctors, <20% of physicists, >50% of journalists, etc).
> Third, CS people are literally designing our future.
That's a little grandiose. Actually, that's a lot grandiose. CS people build things to other people's requirements. Even if you're an entrepreneur, odds are you're building Facebook or Zynga to satisfy the passing whims of, more often than not, women.
More fundamentally, there's no such thing as an overarching design for the world. You can't point to anyone and say the world came out the way they planned or intended it in any significant way. The only thing CS people can do is invent things. And inventing things never really reshapes society in a way the inventors can even predict, let alone effectively plan for. Frankly, at the end of the line there's usually someone who wants to make money from it, so as long as women have the power to spend money, some CS guys somewhere will be bending over backwards to invent something those women might want.
I think it's important to have somewhat equal representation. First, we have a shortage of developers so this is an easy way to address that. Second, like the subject of this article, a lot of girls would be interested in CS but because of the lack of women they're turned off. This is a real shame. Third, CS people are literally designing our future. Do we want to live in a world as envisioned by men or as white men or as a fair balance of people?