[fruchtose]

Their apology is even worse than the original flyer text.

Getting super worked up about this idiocy and saying "THIS is why there are few women in tech", as some tweeters did, is not constructive either and trivializes the problem of women (and minorities) in tech.

I would argue that pointing out the sexism of the ad doesn't trivialize the problem of women in software. It's a multi-part problem. Society primes girls not to go into technology as it is ("Math class is tough!" says Barbie). When college-admitted students begin the process of choosing a career and choosing a major, society will weigh heavily on their choice.

Some women remain interested in technology despite this. And when they make this choice, the industry has to be ready with open arms to embrace women. If society does not make female programmers feel welcome, and neither do their peers and mentors, we see low numbers of women in our field. We have to do our part to eliminate the feeling of otherness in what is currently a male-dominated field, or female participation will continue to remain low. Sexist ads set back the entire industry by saying to talented potential engineers that they are not taken seriously.

[Jun8]

You're right, it's a multi-part problem. I don't quite agree with "society primes girls not to go into technology" part; although it does have some truth to it, I don't think all the gender gap in the filed can be attributed to societal factors. I can give two arguments:

(i) Not all technical fields have the gender gap, e.g. in biological and agricultural studies 51% of PhDs were awarded to women in 2009, whereas it was 22% in engineering and 27% in math and computer science (so engineering is worse but people usually don't tackle, say, the gender gap in civil or electrical engineering) (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/14/doctorates);

(ii) It's a widely popularized finding that, when adjusted for gender equality in the country, the gender gap in sciences, e.g. math, disappears (http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/32949/title/Math_...). This fits in with your society influence theory. Yet, AFAIK (the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo aside) the hacker cultures for those top (generally Scandinavian) countries are still dominated by males (can't point to a study, anecdotal evidence, will be happy to retract if given convincing evidence to teh contrary).

[briancurtin]

> Their apology is even worse than the original flyer text.

Agreed. To me, the apology boils down to "We thought this was funny and harmless, but not everyone agreed. In order to keep people interested in our event, we changed the text."

[fruchtose]

You hit the nail on the head. It's placing the blame on the people who were offended, rather than taking responsibility. And not only that, there's no mention of them actually changing the event. Presumably, the hired event staff will still be female. Everything just points to Sqoot being clueless about how to handle themselves in the public sphere.

[einhverfr]

I think we have to be careful about defining "in tech." If it means founding employees of technology startups, that's very different from working in technical fields. The latter is approaching gender parity albeit slowly.

[fruchtose]

In many cases, this distinction is unnecessary. Even big companies like Microsoft have a long ways to go; their workforce is 76% male.

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/inside_ms.mspx

[einhverfr]

So you are talking about "in tech" as "working for tech companies" rather than doing "technology-related work" right?

According to the Department of Labor, Microsoft is doing worse than the field as a whole.....

Source: http://www.dol.gov/wb/factsheets/hitech02.htm

[fruchtose]

Yes, I'm talking about companies "in tech." You defined "in tech" as employees of technical startups, and I'm saying that even larger technical companies have these same issues, so restraining "in tech" to mean startups is not a necessary distinction. Sorry I was not clear on that.

[einhverfr]

So to be clear, your concern is not that women aren't writing software but that they aren't working for software houses, correct?

[fruchtose]

No, I merely think software houses reflect the gender makeup of the industry fairly accurately. Hell, I would be surprised if it turned out that that anywhere near half of software workers in general are women; this would imply that the majority of female software engineers work independently. I find that extremely unlikely, given how few women enroll in computer engineering degrees at universities. My point is that Microsoft, a mature and established software company, has a hard time finding female engineers, and this reflects the state of the industry as a whole.