[peterwwillis]

What about grants for black people? There's arguably even less black people in technology than women. We don't seem to talk about that though, as women-in-tech always seems easier to argue about ("are they being sexist?" is easier to talk about than "are they being racist?" or "do low-income and/or poorly-educated and/or resource-starved people deserve more help getting into the field?")

"Last September, three out of 96 employees in Engineering and Operations at Etsy were women, and none of them were managers"

How many of the 96 employees were black, and how many of the employees were black women? Should we be concerned if it was lower than the stats about women in general? If not, why?

You talk about "gender balance" as if somehow there's an argument there that is more valid than "race balance."

In terms of engaging specifically females into more tech subjects, i'll relate something i've seen here in DC. I work with Knowledge Commons DC which offers lots of free classes, some of which are tech related (Object Oriented Programming with Java, for example). That class was 75% women last time. Why? One reason might be that most of the volunteers/organizers are women, and their social circles reach out to even larger groups of women. As people seek out similar people it may make it easier for them to gravitate to subjects which might normally be perceived as male-dominated or otherwise not as open for women. Just a thought.

[bitops]

Definitely a valid point and deserving of an entirely separate thread of discussion.

That said, I don't think talking about gender imbalance in software development takes away from discussing racial imbalance in software development.

And I do think underrepresentation is an issue on all sides. In my career so far, I think I've met a total of 5 black programmers. The fact that I can remember the exact number is a problem, because I definitely can't, and don't, keep track of the number of asian/latin/etc. programmers. But meeting somebody black in tech is so rare, it always stands out.

So yes, it is a concern. But they are all valid concerns. And talking about women doesn't take away from talking about blacks. All are valid issues.

[peterwwillis]

Of course they're all valid issues. That doesn't answer anything i've asked, though. I want to know why support is only being given to women and not people who probably have a harder time getting into the field. This doesn't need a separate thread, it speaks exactly to the topic which is Etsy giving grants to only women.

[wladimir]

It seems that overall, "race balance" is harder to define than "gender balance" because the gender balance is about 50% in every country, whereas the race balance can vary wildly.

That doesn't make it less important or valid of course. Race discrimination is a serious issue in many countries.

[mjvandenbergh]

This isn't about broader balance issues, though. This is about matching their workforce to their customer base. If they had an overwhelmingly black user base, then I'm sure that they would focus on that, but they don't so they won't.