It's fairly well known that they're problematic at best, in that they epitomize the practices of an industry obsessed with exploiting younger workers, crunch time, and gender imbalance.
From my experience, I see that usually hackathon events have more male attendees than female. I am sure there might be hackathons where that's not the case but I don't think it would be very inviting for any female to go to an event that's full of the opposite gender. Just imagine if you were one of 5 males in an event of 100 attendees and the rest were females. I think you would be a bit uncomfortable/out of place even though that's not the case.
That is one of the the general theory to explain why the work force becomes more gender segregated when people has more freedom to choose. Why would someone choose to feel out of place if they have the option to choose a line of work where they can be part of a majority rather than minority.
And thus we get a work force in places like Sweden where 85% of both men and women choose to work at places which is classified as severely gender segregated. Gender imbalance is the norm.
they are also problematic in that they discriminate against people who don't have a bunch of time and energy to spend on something that isnt guaranteed to have a payoff.
e.g. people who are struggling to make ends meet and need actual work that pays cash, or people who have a bunch of responsibility with very little time (family to look after)
that said, such people are also disadvantaged in the workforce generally as they may lack the free time and money to be able to pursue opportunities for better jobs to help bootstrap into better circumstances, so it ain't something hackathon specific.
Exactly! Very well said. I wish more people realized that and stopped encouraging such events because people who are entering the field tend to think this is the norm.