I don't understand why the gender of a programmer is relevant to anything. You are concerned that there are no enough women. Why? Why do you want more women? Why is the particular sexual organs that someone has of interest to you?
Well, I could talk about social justice and basic fairness, but the tone of your question implies that you don't see it that way. So instead, let's look at the question from a coldly calculating point of view.
Let's say I have a open source project, and it's got 100 contributors (or community members, users, whatever -- the it's all the same). If my project follows today's averages, that group will be on the order of 98 men and 2 women. Let's say we work to increase our diversity such that now 50% of our community are women. How big is the community now?
That's right -- 200 people. It's not like adding 50% women removes 50% men... if we increase the number of women in our community, we increase the number of people. Now I've got twice as many contributors, twice as many users, twice as much activity, etc. Open source projects live and die on the strength of their communities. Increasing diversity is often actually the easiest way to increase membership, full stop.
[Now, in practice, I work on diversity because I care about basic fairness. But the point is that even if you don't give a shit about those sorts of ideals, there are still coldly calculating economy-of-scale arguments for why diversity is important.]
Now, in practice, I work on diversity because I care about basic fairness.
Get down from the ivory tower please. Where do you get off saying that he doesn't believe in fairness? In fact, the original commenter could be seen as being more fair by simply stating that gender shouldn't matter.
At the same time, you're looking at one statistic. The race or religion of project contributors could be looked at, but they aren't because IT IS NOT IMPORTANT. Just to counter any downvotes, when I say it isn't important, I mean the gender debate, not women in general. For some reason, this topic has been rehashed so many times on HN and each time someone tries to look at the argument from a gender-less perspective, people like you -- jacobian -- jump out from the bushes to make statements, charging dissenters with misogyny.
Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc].
> In fact, the original commenter could be seen as being more fair by simply stating that gender shouldn't matter.
We don't live in a vacuum, so even if we feel that gender shouldn't matter it already does in fundamental ways.
> At the same time, you're looking at one statistic. The race or religion of project contributors could be looked at, but they aren't because IT IS NOT IMPORTANT.
Actually this is really important. If projects are systematically excluding people of certain races or religions, we have a discrimination problem.
> For some reason, this topic has been rehashed so many times on HN and each time someone tries to look at the argument from a gender-less perspective, people like you -- jacobian -- jump out from the bushes to make statements, charging dissenters with misogyny.
Nobody called anyone a misogynist in this discussion.
> Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc].
This is absolutely true. However, why there aren't more women in tech isn't just about project maintainers. Women in general are not going into or are finding spaces in which they can participate as developers and programmers. This is the whole point of this particular RailsBridge workshop.
This is a minor nitpick, but I'll bite. I realize nobody explicitly called anyone a mysogynist, but neither did I. There is a difference between saying someone is mysogynist the adjective and mysogyny the noun. jacobian inferred that because the OP doesn't care about diversity then he doesn't care about fairness. That is tantamount to charging someone with sexual discrimination, also known as mysogyny.
[Edit: I upvoted king_jester because, regardless of whether I agree with him on all points, his reply was concise, helpful and he wasn't being a dick]
> jacobian inferred that because the OP doesn't care about diversity then he doesn't care about fairness. That is tantamount to charging someone with sexual discrimination, also known as mysogyny.
Really it's not. There's a big difference between active discrimination and just not caring. I said that my guess is that icedancer doesn't see lack of diversity as a moral problem, not that s/he is a engaging in discrimination. Accusing me of "jumping out of the bushes" to "attack dissenters" is really unfair. Look, I appreciate that some people don't see lack gender diversity as a problem. I disagree, but I'm never going to convince those people to see the issue in my terms. I hope you'll re-read my comment and try to assume just a tiny bit of good faith on my part.
The word "only" makes this sentence completely wrong.
In startup terms it's like saying that to make a successful product you need only make something useful and put up a web page offering it for sale. It would be great if it was that simple!
This kind of reply is the shit people are lamenting about as a decline in the HN comments. If you cherry-pick sentences out of context, then of course you can make a valid point and invalidate mine.
To show context, my entire sentence was: Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc].
So by "only" being open to everyone, I assert that projects can maintain fairness. How is this incorrect? I never said the project would be successful, you falsely added that using your metaphor. Is there some other magic bullet for making a project fair? Do we need to inject some discrimination and close-mindedness into it?
Kudos to you for the honest attempt to reframe, but I think you're just using circular logic.
In effect, you're saying "If we could get twice as many people, then we would have twice as many people".
In reality, there is some reason why women don't want to be programmers. Therefore, it follows that per capita, it's going to be harder to bring women into the fold.
To use your example, if you really wanted to increase your contributors to your open source project, you would be much better served to use your limited capital to attract men who are already predisposed to your project but unaware of it rather than women who are both unaware of it and predisposed against it.
> In effect, you're saying "If we could get twice as many people, then we would have twice as many people".
Sorry, I must have not been clear: my point is that if we have twice as many people, then we get twice as much work done, move twice as quickly, etc. Django has about 30 committers, and among us we seem to be able to commit about 10-15 times per day. If we had 60 committers, I'd guess we'd be able to commit about 30 things per day. That's more bugs fixed, more features added, faster velocity between releases, etc. These are things I want.
> In reality, there is some reason why women don't want to be programmers.
I agree. I suggest that it's because women are systematically being discouraged from joining our communities. I think they's plenty of data to back this up.
BTW, it's not programming as a whole; the problem's even worse in open source communities. Women make up roughly 20% of the workforce in technical professions, but only about 2% of open source developers. Even if you believe there's something in that second X chromosome that disinclines women from tech — and for the record I certainly don't buy that argument — that can't explain why the problems ten times worse in open source.
> you would be much better served to use your limited capital to attract men who are already predisposed to your project but unaware of it rather than women who are both unaware of it and predisposed against it.
How about people who are aware and are predisposed, but have historically been discouraged or outright prevented from getting involved?
And look, this isn't a zero-sum game. I can do this and other things too! A lot of the resistance to diversity seems to imply that these efforts somehow detract from other forms of community outreach, but this just isn't true. We are in fact capable of doing multiple things at once.
I am guessing, but could the part time nature of most of open source jobs be a reason for this as well? More conservative/sexist societies generally assign the role of managing home to the female in a family, even if she is a working woman. So while the males have the time and freedom to go for hobby/low-returns open source projects, the females might be left with the responsibility of taking care of the children. I am from an eastern culture and this is definitely something I could see happening here, I am curious if similar conditions exists in western cultures.
> Therefore, it follows that per capita, it's going to be harder to bring women into the fold.
That doesn't follow at all. It could be that the industry has some kind of blind spot that could be easily addressed by e.g. encouraging and welcoming people who are interested but generally left out.
I think that's totally illogical. How many members of your community are gay? Have red hair? Are left handed. You have no idea, and you wouldn't recruit based on those characteristics. So why recruit based on gender?
> How many members of your community are gay? Have red hair? Are left handed.
The data I've seen suggests that the penetration of these minorities in technology closely tracks their representation in society as a whole. Further, there isn't a history of discrimination against redheads and lefties in open source. Discrimination against gay people is a real problem, though it doesn't seem to have prevented equivalent representation of gay people in tech.
But you could make a similar argument about representation of other minorities -- African Americans, say, or Hispanics, or whatever. And it's true, that's a problem too; we should be working towards diversity of all sorts. It's true that I'm focusing my attention of gender diversity, but I'd love to learn more about efforts towards diversity along other axes. Have any pointers?
The problem is - should we follow this argument all the way? Do you precisely work out the proportion of people of every conceivable group in every team, and cause a fuss when it isn't right? If you don't, what is the reason for that? Why worry about some groups, but not others.
I genuinely think the main reason that people worry about gender, over any other groups, is that it's normally so clear what group people are a member of. And that's not a sound reason to do anything.
I also genuinely think that some men cause a fuss about proportion of women in tech groups, simply because they'd like to meet and be able to hit on more women.
We don't cause a fuss just when the proportion is not exactly right. We cause a fuss when the proportion is way out of whack and obviously wrong. When like less than 3 percent of Boston Ruby programmers are women, something is blatantly wrong. There are probably more factors at work than mere spontaneous career preference that are causing this seriously skewed distribution.
This is not just an abstract inconvenience either. Whenever you are part of a historically marginalized minority -- whether by color, gender, or nationality -- it will likely be more uncomfortable for you to enter fields where you are the only person from your group. This is particularly true for women.
Not only are sexist comments more likely when there are not a lot of women at events (see http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-sex-...), the women will also likely feel more uncomfortable because of the disproportion. Let me quote a posting on our outreach mailing list thread from a woman to elaborate:
"I have definitely never experienced anything threatening or offensive at a Ruby group meeting. But, you show up at an event where there are 50 men or more to 3 women, and you grow to expect some double-takes. Some women, like me, are okay with that. A lot aren't. And it makes it hard to show up alone or when you don't know anyone if you know you're going to stick out like a sore thumb. A man can show up at boston.rb for the first time and not have anyone pay the least attention. A woman cannot.
"There's some critical mass that needs to be reached before that's not true anymore, and it's just hard work to get there. There needs to be enough women who don't care if they stick out, so the women who do care don't stick out so much. And you need to make plans to meet the women you know there, so they already know someone. That could be a component of any project night, outreach, or mentorship effort -- encouraging people to come to the meetings, and affirmatively planning to meet them there."
I hope these points carry at least a little weight for you. Thank you for raising the challenge.
I wish you wouldn't disparage outreach efforts as "causing a fuss." It's patronizing, insulting, and it badly mischaracterizes efforts like the one that kicked off this thread.
I see it like this: lack of diversity is a bug on our community. I'd like to fix it, so I work on fixing these bugs. Right now, the information I have available tells me that gender diversity is the worst of the bugs under the "diversity" label, and it's also one I think I have the skills to tackle. This doesn't mean that other bugs are less important, or less worth solving. I happen to believe that this bug is the one that's most worth my time to tackle.
Yes, I do see lack of diversity -- in all forms -- as an issue in our community. There are other minorities besides women that're systematically discouraged from entering tech; we should do something about that. Hopefully our fix for the gender bugs can be abstracted and applied in other areas.
Or do you mean should we prevent women turning up? No we should not allow events that prevent women turning up. But if an event happens to have no women turn up, then so the fuck what?
Are you going to challenge woman-kind why they aren't going? Why would one woman know why every other woman didn't want to attend?
During many debates about gender (or race or sexuality etc.) in a group that lacks a lot of diversity, someone will come along and try to claim the high horse by claiming to be less sexist (etc.) because there don't care about gender, with the imitation that if you want equality, we should not focus on any group.
We do not live in that utopia yet. At the moment women in tech and men in knitting circles need more help (seriously I (a cis male) went to a local craft night and felt out of place). We should focus on people who need help. If people need more medical help (i.e. are sick), we give them more medial help than healthy people. Same with gender & tech.
Diversity does have concrete benefits that stem from a solid theoretical underpinning (comparative advantage). If everyone in programming has the same utility curve, then certain tasks or areas will always be "expensive". By introducing more diversity (gender being a large source of this), the production possibilities curve expands since more trade can occur and thus enable more specialization. Usability and design are areas where gender diversity could play a big role; there is no doubt in my mind that men and women perceive things differently when it comes to interaction logic and visuals.
Diversity is generally good for the industry. There have been many studies showing that diversity improves teams on a variety of different dimensions. Increasing interest from underrepresented groups can help increase the number of available programmers (there's only so many white men in the world with the skills and interests necessary to be a programmer). Diversity also makes a lot of sense for meeting the needs of the consumer population, which is incredibly diverse.
Sexual organs != gender. Gender is relevant because of the micro- and macro-level issues the programming community has in regards to letting women be a part of that community. That you get defensive when someone does good work to try and help women be a part of the programming community speaks a lot as to why women don't feel that many spaces are not safe for them in tech.
I get defensive, if you want to call it that, because I think any attempt to specially encourage one involuntary group is patronising. If a individual woman doesn't want to attend then that's her business. You can't ask woman-kind why none of their group aren't attending because she has nothing to do with the rest of her group.
It's also the grouping that confuses me. You want more women in the community, and so you are encouraging someone to join your community based on an entirely irrelevant property. You only want them because of their gender. You look at them, and see a woman - just that one property. It's objectification, de-humanisation.
> I get defensive, if you want to call it that, because I think any attempt to specially encourage one involuntary group is patronising.
If anything this RailsBridge workshop shows that there are woman who are voluntarily interested and want resources like this workshop, so this is definitely not involuntary.
> You can't ask woman-kind why none of their group aren't attending because she has nothing to do with the rest of her group.
We aren't asking individual women to speak for all women, that would be silly. However, when women share their experiences in tech or attend events like this, we get reactions like yours where women are challenged and questioned for seeking knowledge in the first place. Instead of attacking women when they participate in tech circles, try listening and stepping back.
> It's also the grouping that confuses me. You want more women in the community, and so you are encouraging someone to join your community based on an entirely irrelevant property. You only want them because of their gender. You look at them, and see a woman - just that one property. It's objectification, de-humanisation.
So treating women like human beings with genuine interests and struggles and listening to what they have to say and offering resources for them when they are under served in tech is objectifying and dehumanizing?
Let's clear something up: women in tech are actively discouraged from existing in those circles in a variety of micro- and macro-level ways. I do not see women as just women, but I do not deny that being a woman is part of their experience and it shapes their life in a way I cannot experience since I am not a woman. Nobody should be excluded from programming and tech because of their gender, but pretending that men and women are on an equal playing field in terms of treatment and opportunity is ludicrous.
"reactions like yours where women are challenged and questioned for seeking knowledge in the first place"
No, come on, that's grossly unfair.
I would never challenge or question a woman for seeking knowledge. I would never treat a woman any differently. You're implying that I'm doing something objectionable like those who grope or make sexist jokes.
I'm saying that I'm not interested in anyone's gender, and I don't think it should be a property of interest to anyone except for dating.
I think that saying "hey! you're a woman! this special event is just for you! there's the main event as well, which we'd love you to come to, but there's also this special one just for you" is offensive.
Perhaps I've missed some part of the community, or I don't attend the right (wrong?) conferences, but I've never seen anything that discourages women. The only possibility is that they see an existing low proportion of women and then conclude it's not for them. Well that's their loss and their prejudice.
Good software involves good design (both for UX / code), good design requires empathy, and without women in the industry you are loosing out on the diversity, design and empathy that women can bring to the table.
That is "why" I think there should be more women in the industry.
Good design requires good design skills. 'nuff said. One could say that good design requires eyesight, but even blind people have been shown to be exceptionally bright at making beautiful things. Why is this? Because it is about passion and effort to build those skills, not because one happens to lack a Y chromosome.
Men are able to show empathy as well. There are a great number of chefs, layout artists, fashion designers, and hairstylists who have a knack for design and would disagree with you.
I agree with typicalrunt entirely - its not that men are not incapable of design/ empathy, its the lost of opportunity of not having including women who are equally able
