[metajack]

“If your system of finding worthy students or speakers to promote is to have them come to you and ask, but a solid body of research shows that women won’t do so, you’ve institutionalized a gap”

This applies just as much to finding employees. The resumes don't just appear out of thin air usually, and it's no excuse to say you just didn't get any from women.

I myself used this excuse in the past, but I hope not to make any excuses in the future.

[belorn]

If one want to enforce a policy to include demographics in ones recruitment process, the following large demographics should also be considered:

People of color.

Immigrants.

Those of young age.

Those of old age.

While women is clearly the largest demographic in that group, each listed group is commonly put in an disadvantage when applying for work. Outreaching to each of those groups is also the only way to get a work place that includes a fair portion from each demographic, as they are used to being denied and thus do not apply for as much work as white middle aged men.

One should also want to consider people previously convicted of a crime, as that is a very large demographic in the US and is one which also have a very hard time finding jobs. Many have given up on ever finding a good job, and do not apply for higher paying jobs even if they got a higher education that would qualify them for hire.

[fatbird]

What you're doing is called "appeal to ridicule", but I can think of worse things than reaching out to all those communities, seeking greater participation. Ex-convicts might be at a disadvantage in expertise, and so fail to get selected in blind judging. But old grey unix neckbeards would probably be really interesting, and in every Aaron Swartz thread it gets mentioned that he was meaningfully involved in the RSS process at 14.

[belorn]

You can try to call it an appeal to ridicule, but I too would like to see more companies and conferences trying to reach out to communities which are used to be denied and thus do not actively seek as much opportunities for the risk of failing. Reaching out is a positive thing to do to society. Its altruistic and can bring positive rewards in return. While I would not want to claim that other people must do it, the reaching out that the author did has an positive net effect on society and I assume the conference itself.

I did not include ex-convicts as a joke. Many people get locked up falsely, and even more get locked up because they enter a plea barging that they shouldn't have. Many of those has some kind of higher education, but is put in an disadvantage because of some real, or imaginary mistake in their past (like downloading a song at age 9). Assuming that those people can't do work beyond sweeping floors, or that they have nothing to contribute to a conference is discrimination without basis.

As to the young and old, I too would like to see less agism in the work place and conferences. Old grey unix neckbeards tend to only be acceptable in some places. In regard to the type of conference the article discuss, game developer conferences, I think old grey unix neckbeards and 14 year old developers are a rare sight and clearly underrepresented.

Pointing out that there is more than one form of group under discrimination is not an appeal to ridicule, and it does not lessen the acts done by the author in the article. Rather, the method used by the author is an effective method to address discrimination without causing further discrimination by the act of exclusion.

[yourcelf]

Indeed. A good way to increase diversity in hiring is to set a rule: your hiring process isn't done until you've received a minimum number of applications from various demographics that are underrepresented.

You still pick the best applicant from all submissions, but it forces you to make sure that news of your position spreads into more than just the usual communities.

[smokeyj]

Investing time to target a certain demographic seems discriminative to the excluded demographics. If equality is the goal, this seems hypocritical.

[fatbird]

Not when the targeted demographic is historically under-represented. Making an effort to include those who wouldn't be is not the same as reducing submissions from those who are normally included.

[smokeyj]

How does a demographic become a)targeted, and b) under-represented? It comes across as arbitrary. Especially in the context of running a business to deliver value.

I think if you see all people as just people, a notion like "targeting a demographic" comes across as racist / sexist / and plain old discriminative. But that's just one opinion.

[fatbird]

A demographic gets targeted just because it's under-represented. Women are under-represented in STEM for historical reasons that amount to widespread sexism.

You suggest gender-blindness is the solution. I don't disagree that such blindness is a worthwhile goal, but to simply say "let's all be gender blind now" without addressing an existing under-representation just cements the imbalance. Demographics realities have inertia. Women don't go into STEM just because that's not something 'that women do'. It's only appropriate to be blind once the imbalance is wiped out.

That's not to say that affirmative action as previously imagined is the right way to address the imbalance--it's been shown not to be for a variety of reasons. But as this shows, and as GoGaRuCo shows, when you eliminate gender advantages for men, women are selected equally in blind judging, so there's no essential difference between men and women, just an historical artifact worth eliminating.

[smokeyj]

I don't accept the notion of a demographic being "under-represented". I think it's arbitrary and you haven't addressed it. There is no "correct" amount of representation, and trying to offset workforce statistics due to some misplaced sense of morality is hardly altruistic. If people are discouraging women from STEM, address that. If people are racist, address that. You feel there's too many white people in your office? The answer isn't affirmative action, it's to quite being a racist. There's no such thing as too much of a race (unless, you're a racist).

To say more women should be in STEM is sexist. I mean, if more women get into STEM, great. But to say an entire sex should do something is nonsensical. It's entirely possible they don't want to study stem. It's possible they value other knowledge that is equally important. To say that they're under-represented is to belittle what individuals choose to do with their lives.

[fatbird]

The problem is that the imbalance is what's discouraging women from entering STEM careers; addressing it just means doing things like this conference is doing to increase female participation.

But to say an entire sex should do something is nonsensical. It's entirely possible they don't want to study stem.

You realize these two sentences contradict each other, I hope. You say that it's non-sensical to discuss what the entire sex should do, then try to talk about what the entire gender may or may not want as a reason for (or against) acting.

To say that they're under-represented is to belittle what individuals choose to do with their lives.

No, it doesn't, because it doesn't require any individual to do anything, or to give an individual responsibility for what the entire gender does.

When I talk about "under" represented, I mean that absent the historical injustice of sexism, you would see a different gender balance. And as this conference and GoGaRuCo demonstrate, when you control for the historical imbalance, women and men are selected equally to speak in a blind process, thus showing equal ability, if not interest; it's reasonable to assume that after correcting the historical artifact, gendered participation ratios would be much closer.

I've already agreed that affirmative action isn't the answer, but this--community outreach, basically--isn't affirmative action in any sense.

[Gormo]

> A demographic gets targeted just because it's under-represented.

How are these demographic categories themselves not entirely arbitrary? How is analyzing a demographic category as though the definition of that category were preemptively relevant not an exercise in question-begging?

If you conducted a study that indicated that people with odd-numbered shoe sizes were "under-represented", would you begin targeting that "demographic"? Why would you have been looking at people's shoe sizes in the first place?

[Mystitat]

If acceptance decisions were made based on gender, that would be discrimination.

The article doesn't say that.

"To keep the selection process fair, Courtney chose applicants based on their pitches only, without looking at the speaker’s identity or gender. The result was a 50/50 split between male and female speakers, which she counted as a success."

It baffles me how you can consider men an "excluded demographic" in this scenario.

[geofft]

The goal is fairness, not equality.

[betterunix]

How is disproportionate representation fair?

[davekinkead]

> How is disproportionate representation fair?

Disproportionate representation is fair (only) if the criteria of discrimination is justifiable.

An obtuse example: Gifted & hardworking athletes are disproportionally over-represented at the olympics, vice gifted + lazy, non-gifted + lazy, and non-gifted + hardworking ones.

[Gormo]

How is it fair to treat human beings as instances of abstract categories rather than as individuals who possess their own agency?

[betterunix]

In either case, how is what the woman did with this conference a good thing? On the one hand, she categorized people as "male or female" and on the other she created a situation where there were a higher proportion of women speaking at the conference than were even in the field.

[jb17]

I suppose you are not talking about disproportionate representation of women in tech here?

[betterunix]

No, I am talking about the disproportionate representation at the conference itself, because the field itself is what lacks diversity. Fix the diversity problem within the field, and if after that the conferences lack diversity, we can fix that problem too.

[theorique]

“If your system of finding worthy students or speakers to promote is to have them come to you and ask, but a solid body of research shows that women won’t do so, you’ve institutionalized a gap”

It's also a worthy goal to find out (1) why women don't ask and (2) work to encourage women to do that asking.

The more forward momentum is built, through efforts such as this, the less of a problem this is in the future.

[brennenHN]

Well said.