[RIMR]

"discrimination" is a very vague word. Technically all employers practice some kind of discrimination. Applying for a job is an exercise in getting discriminated against (typically for your skills, education and experience).

The key here is that discrimination against someone for their race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, etc. is unethical, no matter what kind of social wrong you aim to right.

Giving women more opportunities may seem like it's progressive. I mean, "we're helping women"! But it still contributes to defining people based on their gender, rather than their skills and abilities.

I worked at a company a few years ago that would ONLY hire women to work at the front desk. This was a deliberate move to make the office look more diverse than it actually was, because most of our male employees worked outside of the view of our visitors.

That, and the CEO openly admitted that he enjoyed "seeing a pretty face every time he came to work".

How do you separate my blatantly sexist employer's hiring of women for visibility from social-justice oriented businesses doing the same thing to "further women"?

[chillacy]

I think a lot of disagreement in this thread can be boiled down to Equality vs Justice: http://imgur.com/RD6NDfK

I'm not sure which is the right one to aim for, and it affects not only the women in engineering debate but also things like affirmative action. There are certainly good arguments for both sides.

[JoeAltmaier]

Straw man? Nobody would of course. We want to see women with skills and abilities hired in the same ratio as men. Anything less tends to be discrimination, and unethical, right?

[RIMR]

You seriously need to learn the difference between constructive contrasting, and fallacious straw-man arguments.

I am telling a true story about an actual boss I had who was using "positive discrimination" in a dubious way. This wasn't some fabricated argument meant to replace yours. I'm contrasting two similar actions, one of which you defend, while the other you condemn - yet you can't articulate why.

>We want to see women with skills and abilities hired in the same ratio as men.

Well, if an employer gets 30 male applicants for every female applicant, then by your standard they are now obligated to mass-discriminate against fully-qualified men for no other reason than their gender, while suffering a lack of staffing while they try to find as many technically-qualified women to fill their ranks.

This problem runs much deeper than sexual discrimination by hiring managers (which is actually quite rare). You're trying to put a band-aid on a nonexistent wound.

[JoeAltmaier]

Ok, thank you for the perfect straw man, right there in glorious living color. If an employer gets 30 male applicants for every female, then I suppose that fictitious situation would justify discrimination against women.

But there's no reason to assume that is the case. The evidence, in fact, is that women do apply for jobs and are not hired. Blind trials of anonymous resumes show that women would be hired, if only the reader didn't know they were women. That once hired, with nearly identical job histories for men and women, men are complimented for leadership qualities and promoted, while women are criticized for being bossy and demanding, and denied raises and promotion.

Willfully ignoring these well-documented issues is not the same thing as debating. Coming up with one anecdotal case (that 'constructive contrasting') and concluding that nothing should be done because there is no problem, is pretty much classic strawman argument.