[dijit]

I think we’re weaker for not including someone because of those traits either.

Why focus on women now?

Because there’s a lot of women in the world and they seem to not like this field.

I don’t really have a good answer, I thought Damores memo was pretty good and I thought it might provoke the powers that be to approach the distribution of underrepresented factions a little better.

For instance, if you want to hire blind people (and you should want to hire a few blind people) then offering accessibly tools to them is a no-brainer.

And if you’re not getting any applicants, maybe you should look at why. Maybe your job board can’t be read by blind people. (To keep the analogy going).

[searchableguy]

> Because there’s a lot of women in the world and they seem to not like this field.

Source. I have seen few and they do show women working in the field not liking it. The problem with that is it could be those women are outliers given the gender ratio in some CS fields (I will ignore non biological genders), the field could be attractive but don't have good working conditions for women, women don't have much interest etc.

All of those can be true and change your steps to make the field more attractive.

As an example, you can look into construction field which is heavily dominated by men and women in the field feels the same but outside, it's a different story in terms of interest.

How do you make construction work more attractive for women?

I am curious to hear your opinion about below too. What are the problems do you see with this approach? -

You vote with your job. If you don't like things, quit. Either the people working at the company are discriminatory and don't care or you are the problematic one. If you think you are right that a big company discriminates openly, then wouldn't you have to admit that most people at your company don't care about discrimination as much as their paycheck or they are discriminatory themselves. If a company can easily replace employees, then the society doesn't value equality.

If we had UBI, wouldn't discrimination of any kind be detrimental given that workers wouldn't be forced to work for low wages and companies which discriminate based on pseudoscience be at a disadvantage because they won't get talent that other companies can. Is there any reason why this wouldn't work? Why are people not pursuing UBI for gender equality?

[dijit]

> Source.

Well, what I mean is that we're not even close to a gender parity, it would be fine at 35-40% female in my opinion but the industry is closer to 14-25% (depending on country) and to me that indicates a problem.

I think quota's and the extreme bias towards education programs that favour women is problematic though, in my opinion it infantilises Women which I dislike because I really believe women are just as capable as men in this field.

That's why I liked Damores memo, it spoke to the idea that instead of having quotas we should seek to bring in a more human centred approach to asking the question: what do women bring uniquely to the table and how can we ensure that women know that this is desirable and that they're welcome.

Killing the trope that Tech work is isolationist was one example from the memo that would likely cause some traction.

> As an example, you can look into construction field which is heavily dominated by men and women in the field feels the same but outside, it's a different story in terms of interest.

> How do you make construction work more attractive for women?

I think drawing a parallel to construction is a fine one, but I would argue instead for Architecture.

Construction doesn't need a diverse set of views, neither does nursing or mining. But Architecture does because the consumers of architecture is everyone.

And I think that's the crucial difference here: things that are designed for everyone should have a diverse set of eyes on them.

[searchableguy]

I am not sure if you intentionally ignored it because I said the same - that women in tech is a minority - outlier. The problem with accessing whether the field is unattractive to women is asking women not in the field why they don't like the field which I haven't seen done much. This is the reason why I compared construction.

Secondly, I don't understand why it has to be CS. A product requires more roles than a CS graduate. UX/UI, design, support, marketing, management, documentation, etc.

There can be more women in any of those roles and there seems to be in some.

A team of CS graduate wouldn't pull off a global product even if they are diverse because they are CS graduates.

[dijit]

> I am not sure if you intentionally ignored it because I said the same - that women in tech is a minority - outlier. The problem with accessing whether the field is unattractive to women is asking women not in the field why they don't like the field which I haven't seen done much. This is the reason why I compared construction.

Sorry, I thought we were still discussing the James Damore memo, because he said and backed up the assertion that women seemed to not _want_ to join compsci programs or join the associated industries in aggregate when compared to men.

I think you're assuming that I am the poster child for diversity and inclusion; I am really not. I just make my own decisions I'm definitely on nobodies side and I'm not going to go down the path of defending other industries.

I can just see a value in diversity in teams that work on products we all use, and I think I communicated that effectively enough in previous comments.

[searchableguy]

No, I didn't assume anything. Sorry if I came off that way.

And I wasn't talking about damore memo.

I like the idea of diversity and support it but it depends on what cost. My country suffers from reservation (quota) and it's wrecked.

Although I wanted to talk more about organisational diversity. Whether organisations as a whole have 50/50 gender ratio at scale. Whether roles are "diverse".

Because that would be more interesting.

[dijit]

Incidentally that's exactly what Damore was saying;

Quotas are terrible no good bad and ugly hacks which will cause a lot of harm and the reasons why are controversial.

I think 50/50 gender parity is a stupid goal too, I think more representation but if it's not 50:50 then it doesn't mean that there is sexism, 60:40 is fine even 70:30 is ok, wether it skews more to women or men, it doesn't matter, the point is that women, men, blind, black- everyone needs to have their voices heard on teams that design global products.

The closer you try to force it to 50:50 the worse and much harder it'll be, bureaucrats will love you though, at what point do you stop breaking down societal boundaries? I'd argue that getting a few voices from each are is a good thing but I don't think exactly defining the distribution of the country is a good goal.

Instead of quotas, we should investigate what would make the industry more appealing to those under-heard voices.

Damore says that women tend to favour flexible working hours, that's great Tech can support that.

Damore says that women tend to favour jobs that have a high emphasis on collaboration, excellent, tech can support that.

This is why I dislike the overwhelming criticism of Damores paper, because it's the quintessential attack on the author for daring to insinuate that women are different, instead we should boulder through the idea that Women == Men, and anything other than that is sexism, but also we want 50:50 gender parity... and why isn't it happening! sexism! therefore men are bad and we should hire women over men using quotas! that will fix it!.

It's egregious, and stupid, and harmful. And a conversation about why and trying to actually improve the situation is more fruitful than shit slinging because the only people to let Damore speak are right-wingers.

If you're left-wing (as I am) you should want him to speak, he's promoting equality and compassion.

[pinkfoot]

> things that are designed for everyone should have a diverse set of eyes on them.

Teaching, especially pre-school teaching, is going to be tough to make attractive for men.

And for a lot of parents too.

[dijit]

I agree, this needs to be fixed also. But teaching isn't my industry.

One of the teachers I most learned from was male, he actually sparked my interest in computers because he ran an after school computer club for 20 pence.. which for a poor household such as mine was affordable..

[pinkfoot]

Wait until we try insist on parents hiring male au pairs for their daughters. Especially if they are bald, short, and plump.

Then you will see gender bias. :)

[dijit]

What? How is anything you just said relevant?

I think I missed something.