[RIMR]

>I reiterate: if the industry sees a glut of women speakers who are there only because they are women, then the industry will have no choice but to acknowledge their token status.

This is exactly the problem that goes ignored when people argue that "reverse discrimination" isn't a problem. Treating people differently because of their protected status only serves to further divide.

The interest should be on making sure boys and girls get the same opportunities and encouragement growing up. in US universities, we have 30 male STEM majors for every female STEM major. We aren't going to see the industry change until we fix the root problem - that men are 30x more interested in STEM jobs than women.

No amount of Social Justice Theater is going to level the playing field when men are being raised believing they can be whatever they want, and women are raised believing that marrying a wealthy man and becoming a stay-at-home mom is the greatest thing they can do with their lives.

Women are lacking in STEM not because STEM is sexist, but because few women ever consider a future in STEM. Introducing pro-woman sexism into STEM is a paradoxical way to "solve" the problem.

[jonahrd]

And what if there's a young software engineering student who's inspired by this talk and decides to keep studying against her preconceived notions that this is a "field for men"?

Hosting more women speakers at conferences helps to fix the broken stereotype of software engineers all being white dudes, which in turns fixes the problem of fewer women and minorities becoming interested in STEM.

[new_corp_dev]

And what if said young software engineering student reads Bryana's blog post and realizes that Bryana may only have been chosen to speak because she is a woman? What sort of inspiration would that be for other women to join STEM? How should anyone view speakers that have been invited to speak based primarily on their race or gender?

It would set the whole industry back by decades. Not because women got involved, but because they became token minorities instead of competent colleagues. For an entire generation, minority STEM students would face impostor syndrome in themselves, and have to work twice as hard to prove themselves because everyone would assume they got to where they are based on "positive discrimination" instead of merit and ability.

[jonahrd]

But this argument rests on the case that Bryana was solely chosen because she's a women, when in reality she was chosen because she had the qualifications (much like some of her other colleagues) and is also a woman who had to overcome more challenges to make it to where she is now. That's a pretty interesting and under-represented vantage point to hear a speech from.

This all relates to the same debate about affirmative action that's been happening since the 60's. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1976/5/19/bernard-davis-an... This guy (happens to be my grandfather) argued essentially the same point as you: that black students would be accepted to the medical school based on a lowered standard, and end up graduating as less qualified doctors as their white counterparts. This in turn would lead people to have a general mistrust of black doctors, because they would be seen as only being in their place through affirmative action, and not through merit. That is definitely a scenario to avoid, and also definitely one worth considering in debate.

However, this has proven not to be the case, and Harvard is still viewed as ranking among the greatest institutions in the world, even though they have been admitting minorities to their program since the 70's! In fact, here is a more recent Crimson article highlighting some points in defense of promoting people in minority groups: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/11/7/affirmative-acti...

If we want to decrease the gender inequality in STEM, we need to take concrete action and promote the hard work of women and other underrepresented groups in order to slowly shift the male-dominated culture to one that's more diverse.