[wolfgke]

> 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").

[shuntress]

You seem to be worried about over-correction where there is clearly none.

If we had a CS field dominated almost entirely by women then the "women only" programs would be undesirable.

This is a man in a boat protesting that a drowning woman is being helped out of the water but he is receiving no such equivalent assistance.

[wolfgke]

> You seem to be worried about over-correction where there is clearly none.

I live in Germany - and there the situation is IMHO different.

[lorenzhs]

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.

[wolfgke]

> What are you on about?

The laws for women quota: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13551798

Otherwise:

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.

[lorenzhs]

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.)

[wolfgke]

> (Since we're talking about computer science education, I'll disregard the entirely unrelated comment about quotas in businesses.)

There are also (more implicit) women quota in the university laws (Landeshochschulgesetzen) of Germany's federate states e.g. for casting professors.

[mcguire]

The majority of high skilled tech jobs aren't held by men? There are no selective barriers to entry?

[wolfgke]

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].

[shuntress]

Have you ever been somewhere where it was clear everyone noticed you didn't 'fit in'?

[wolfgke]

> Have you ever been somewhere where it was clear everyone noticed you didn't 'fit in'?

There are multiple ways to answer the question:

1. I often don't fit in - and don't consider this as a problem.

2. I have yet to see a woman studying a STEM subject who is very skilled at it and made such complaint.

3. Saying one does not study, say, computer science because one does not fit in means that "fitting in" is more important to you than the things you learn in computer science. In other words: You don't consider CS as something really important to you. This is clearly not the inner urge for the subject that I expect from people studying it.

[a_j_c]

> "Have you ever been somewhere where it was clear everyone noticed you didn't 'fit in'?"

Yes, being an actual liberal in SV and not just a Dem apologist...

[FT_intern]

That's not possible in the tech field because the tech field is very diverse. With the high immigrant %, most people do not fit in because there is no majority/in-group. The demographic is fragmented with the immigrant groups clustering by native language and country of origin. You end up with maybe 30-40% Americans in an engineering team.