[stuntgoat]

I'm reading a negative tone to your comment (ie "to hell with them", "throw money at them", "sexist garbage").

Do you think it's possible that rather than having negative, sexist motives for offering scholarships, they are simply going out of their way to be _supportive_ to minorities in the field?

[zallarak]

There's also a lot of evidence that bringing in more women into any group increases its performance [for example: http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea...].

EDIT: MaxGabriel pointed out this article claims more women in a group improves performance [not equal numbers]. Thanks for the correction.

[MaxGabriel]

Actually, that article concludes against equal proportions:

HBR: But gender does play a role?

Malone: It's a preliminary finding--and not a conventional one. The standard argument is that diversity is good and you should have both men and women in a group. But so far, the data show, the more women, the better.

Woolley: We have early evidence that performance may flatten out at the extreme end--that there should be a little gender diversity rather than all women.

[myf]

we want more women in this batch!

[kellyreid]

Yes, I'm quite negative on this because I feel that their methods are very poorly thought out. Good on them, as I said, I support their effort and their basic mission. That's not in question. You don't have to appeal to affirmative action or research; the concern is not their motive but their method.

Let me make sure I'm clear: I love the idea of female engineers being given incentives to enter a male-dominated field. There are a myriad of great benefits to everyone involved. The trouble is, the methods they are using are previous-level.

Seriously, a group of hackers can't figure out a more elegant process? They are literally saying "If you are a girl and ask us for money we will give it to you". That's absurd. Lets see them set up a special fund or something for female-friendly fields rather than just throwing money at women outright.

I stand by my assertion that their methods are amateurish but their intents are good. I'd like to see the people who designed this program at least speak to the topic; what else they tried, why it didn't get approved, why it didn't work, et cetera. I just want to hold other engineers to rigor and examine their methods, especially when I find the goal noble but the methods sophomoric.

[nicholasjbs]

They are literally saying "If you are a girl and ask us for money we will give it to you"

We never said that. This is what we said:

We're not going to lower the bar for female applicants. It frustrates us a little that we feel the need to say that, and we think it underlines the sexism (intentional and not) that so pervades the programming world.

But we want to say that now, so people don't have to waste time asking or debating the point. Women will be judged on the exact same scale as men. We think to do otherwise would be insulting and counterproductive. We care a lot about getting more women into Hacker School, but we won't do it at the expense of the quality of the batch.

[mythrowawayacct]

That's great that you won't lower the bar for female applicants. Does that mean you will remove gender-identifying information from applications before evaluation/processing? that could be a cool way to do things and a great experiment...

[nicholasjbs]

I agree it would be a fascinating experiment, but I don't think this would be possible, since interviews are an essential part of our process.

[indec]

My opinion is that "female-friendly fields" is (or should be) "software engineering". Thus "lets see them set up a special fund or something for female-friendly fields" reduces to the current state of the program.