> Hopefully we will eventually learn discrimination is a Bad Idea.
... including discrimination against boys/men - which quota regulation and "women only" programs are (imagine the outcry if one would replace "women only" by "white people only").
What are you on about? I'm a PhD student at one of the top German universities for CompSci. There are around 10% women in our bachelor's and master's programmes. The department is actively trying to get more women interested in studying computer science, because it very much is a boys' club.
The problem isn't about access to courses. It's that existing programmes don't appeal to women, and it's dumb to ignore half of the population when you need more qualified people. That's why we need to make getting into computer science more attractive to women. Acknowledging that the current system just doesn't work for them is a necessary first step towards making it work for everyone.
Nobody forces women to study a non-STEM subject - they decide it themselves. So doing promotional programs for women has the implicit implication "women are too stupid to get on their own what they should study (while men are smart enough to find this out on their own)" - something I would never ever claim.
No, nobody's claiming that. If that's your takeaway from outreach programmes, maybe you should talk to women about their experiences in computer science.
The reason for outreach programmes is that what's currently offered seems to appeal to men but not nearly as much to women, and that we should fix that. There's nothing patronising about admitting a problem and attempting to alleviate it. Some attempts might be misguided or based on incorrect assumptions, but that shouldn't discredit the entire endeavour.
(Since we're talking about computer science education, I'll disregard the entirely unrelated comment about quotas in businesses.)
People are free to study what they want.
If there are more men who want to study a STEM subject, this will of course lead to a majority of men. Indeed, typical STEM subjects have no limitation on your A-level mark (Numerus Clausus) for being allowed to study it. So there is clearly no selective barrier to entry (Numerus Clausus) [but I'm not a native speaker of English - so it can be that "selective barriers to entry" has a subcontext in English that I'm not aware of].
I don't think it can be demonstrated that women are systematically impeded from involvement in STEM fields and CS when there are many programs actively targeting women and girls. A skilled woman in CS appears to have a huge advantage in hiring, at least in any company I've been in.
Discrimination isn't just an idea, it's a material reality. Women are systematically disadvantaged on every level of tech, from the assumption that 'nerds' are boys, which seems to go back to IT marketing from the 1980s[1], to their being prevented from holding senior offices in the biggest tech corporations. They are discriminated against by a male-dominated industry and culture. Only when the systemic, material conditions of patriarchy are no longer in force will it make sense to no longer 'discriminate'.
Also, care to name one thinker from history who doesn't advocate discrimination of some sort? Seriously. Who is your model?
... including discrimination against boys/men - which quota regulation and "women only" programs are (imagine the outcry if one would replace "women only" by "white people only").