Here's an idea. Why don't we do real research into what cultural factors influence men and women into going into different fields, and then decide to act on those cultural factors. Rather than say, I don't know, do what we do now, which is tantamount to, here lets fix this symptom of a much wider societal problem, and trample on the 'self-worth' and 'competency' of the very minority we're trying to 'save' in the process.
/rant.
There is at least some research suggesting this is the case.
Archived article: http://web.archive.org/web/20100106021904/http://scicom.ucsc...
HN Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=969646
Some people do run their careers like this, some don't. But to suggest that this is the case for all women and furthermore that the claim is backed up by research, is more than a little bit foolish.
[Disclaimer: I'm attending the current batch of Hacker School and was mad impressed at Etsy's facilities in a recent visit.]
I don't think Etsy is offering women money to attract them into the field, if that's what you mean. As I understand it, the proximate purpose of the money is to enable those women that are otherwise interested in the Hacker School proposition. Supporting oneself in an expensive city like NY for three months is a nontrivial handicap.
The gesture delivers the message that women are appreciated, at least in this particular environment. This may be the right kind of nudge.
In more prosaic terms, because of the newsworthiness of this initiative more women will learn of this opportunity.
It doesn't make sense to me to think of that as a 'bonus'. Who wants to hire anyone that would base their career choice on a $5K bribe?
All the women I've asked about whether they'd get a CS degree ( if they weren't already ) said that there were much better opportunities available to them, and that they chose not to pursue CS because the barrier to entry was higher for them than other more lucrative careers in finance, medicine and law ( this was almost always not an extrinsic barrier but intrinsic, 'why would I want to sit by myself and code all day for someone else, when I can trade stocks/bonds for myself?'; and other such comments about the inherent abstraction of CS ). My friends did not look at CS as liberating in what they could do, but limiting in how they could do it. And of course the women I asked who were already in CS were there for intrinsic reasons as well. I also don't see how my limited interactions are a good metric to apply to all women, but nevertheless.
How giving money to women -because they are women- isn't sexism?
A more honest approach would be to hire the most qualified person, regardless of your current male/female ratio.
I'm curious that if by always treating female hackers as a special group, that it will create a further divide in the community, analogous to hate crimes:
> In their book Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics, James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter criticize hate crime legislation for exacerbating conflicts between groups. They assert that by defining crimes as being committed by one group against another, rather than as being committed by individuals against their society, the labeling of crimes as “hate crimes” causes groups to feel persecuted by one another, and that this impression of persecution can incite a backlash and thus lead to an actual increase in crime.
Let's call a spade a spade.
Scholarships based purely on the persons gender or race is by definition sexist/racist... it discriminates who gets it solely on the fact that the person was born a certain race or gender.
That being said, the motivation for such scholarships are because the entity investing that money believes an inbalance already exists in the opposite direction, so they hope to balance the scales.
The hard question is whether doing the same thing (biasing support based on gender/race) on the opposite side of the spectrum is really helping the situation.
"Last September, three out of 96 employees in Engineering and Operations at Etsy were women, and none of them were managers"
How many of the 96 employees were black, and how many of the employees were black women? Should we be concerned if it was lower than the stats about women in general? If not, why?
You talk about "gender balance" as if somehow there's an argument there that is more valid than "race balance."
In terms of engaging specifically females into more tech subjects, i'll relate something i've seen here in DC. I work with Knowledge Commons DC which offers lots of free classes, some of which are tech related (Object Oriented Programming with Java, for example). That class was 75% women last time. Why? One reason might be that most of the volunteers/organizers are women, and their social circles reach out to even larger groups of women. As people seek out similar people it may make it easier for them to gravitate to subjects which might normally be perceived as male-dominated or otherwise not as open for women. Just a thought.
That said, I don't think talking about gender imbalance in software development takes away from discussing racial imbalance in software development.
And I do think underrepresentation is an issue on all sides. In my career so far, I think I've met a total of 5 black programmers. The fact that I can remember the exact number is a problem, because I definitely can't, and don't, keep track of the number of asian/latin/etc. programmers. But meeting somebody black in tech is so rare, it always stands out.
So yes, it is a concern. But they are all valid concerns. And talking about women doesn't take away from talking about blacks. All are valid issues.
That doesn't make it less important or valid of course. Race discrimination is a serious issue in many countries.
1.) Not encouraged in early years: If you are a tech-savvy female, "soft" tech careers (Graphic Design etc.) are generally recommended as career paths.
2.) It's a Boy's Club: If you make it past the college classes (with a 20:1 M-to-F ratio), you enter the workforce with (mostly) the same ratio. This means that unless you have thick skin & a good sense of humor, you'll never make it.
3.) You're Wrong: Even if you are right. And no one will hesitate to tell you why.
* Speaking for a professional career in Tech.
In my experience, a lot of these actually provoke you to strive to over-achieve & prove yourself. But I can see how it can seem off-putting for a new-comer.
I don't suppose you're implying the OP means otherwise?
Anyway, one of the other women in the class asked who that was -- she needed context to better understand this guy's analogy. He was just flabbergasted, and could not believe that anyone could not know who he was.
It didn't help that this particular student had only been in the state a short time, was from New England, and probably knew nothing about football. This prof couldn't make heads or tails of that and proceeded to tear into her as if she was doing it on purpose.
There were many tears and a lot of bad feelings all around. I doubt she got much out of that day in class. I know I sure didn't.
Stuff like this can make or break a system.
It's a very common culture of exclusionism, but, I've observed both in the US and Europe that it's pretty much only guys who participate in it. I've only ever had a woman say "you don't know who X is?" to me in jest. And then she would always explain afterwards.
Are you also feeling somehow ostracised because of your minority genetic dispositions or lifestyle? Then welcome more women into the field, because acceptance welcomes more acceptance. We rage about what happened to Turing, but I wonder how many of us in that day and age, if we were his peers, would have fought for him publicly. And yes, I put Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper on a pedestal. I put Ada's mother on a pedestal for pushing Ada into mathematics. Without a role model, every person of minority must make the fight to be the first, and why use that energy fighting to be the first when that energy is better spent innovating in the field.
I ask you all please, look to a future 20-30 years from now, when there is more of a balance, as it happened in the fields of medicine, law, architecture.. There was a time when being a woman professional was unimaginable and resisted. It took courage and fearlessness, and it happened. It can happen in our field too, just don't keep blocking it (unwittingly or no) with constant criticism, it's tiring.
I cannot wait until the day a post on HN about achieving a balance in our technical fields has zero comments wondering why this could possibly be a good thing.
Though I support that ideal, I question whether approaches like this are effective ways to achieve it, or even push things towards it at all - Etsy is basically throwing reasonably large amounts of money ($5k apiece) to get people that have already expressed a strong interest in tech to...continue expressing their strong interest in tech.
It's like the customer has already started entering their credit card number as the final step of a purchase, and you're spending all your development time optimizing the wording of your product description on that final page because you really want to make sure they finish entering that credit card number. You've already made the sale, spend your time worrying about something else!
What I'd much rather see is a focus further up the funnel, where you can actually affect people's behavior and choices in some meaningful way. Spend that 50 grand by offering, at a select set of good schools, $100 apiece to the first 500 freshman girls that enroll in a real CS course, and I'll cheer the effort - $100 bucks is a small price to pay to know that a smart girl at a good school is taking a programming class, but it just might be enough so that you actually see an increase in enrollment. If it's not and nobody bites, bump it to $200 the next semester, see if it changes. Keep the sample of schools small enough, and you'll at the very least be collecting some interesting data on how much money it actually takes to convince college girls to take CS classes. [I suspect even a $100 incentive would be enough to get female enrollment on par with male for intro classes, since at most schools an intro CS class will satisfy some sort of distribution requirement anyways]
If we can get girls into first-year CS classes, we will see more women enter the field, I guarantee that. Not all of them, but some, and some of them will be fantastic. It might be crass, but I have no problem with bribing them. I'd happily contribute a few thousand to the effort if there was a sizable one set up.
But if we're going to resort to bribery, let's at least make it cost effective. Bribing a tiny set of people that are already going to do what you want anyways is not a smart approach, not when there are so many more creative options.
