[metajack]

She knew the issue was the lack of submissions, so she worked hard to get lots of talk submissions from women. When she actually selected the talks, she did so without knowledge of the person's gender. She got the ratio she wanted by encouraging submissions, not by enforcing a quota.

[Narkov]

"She got the ratio she wanted"

That's my issue - the ratio she wanted just perpetuates this gender discrimination. Unless the gender ratio of expert speakers in this industry is somehow exactly 50/50, she has discriminated against one gender just to satisfy her magical ratio.

Whether she did this blind to the applicants gender is of no consequence - she thinks it was a win when IMHO, is just gender more discrimination.

[fatbird]

Her blind judging produced an even gender split. How are men discriminated against?

[betterunix]

Is it unfair to point out that discrimination is evident if the proportion of women speakers at the conference is not equal to the proportion of female experts in the field? That the general population is a little over half women does not imply that every profession's demographics are 50/50. Before claiming that the true problem is that women are less likely to apply and therefore a system based on people applying of their own accord must be flawed, perhaps we should first take a look at the demographics of the field itself (and eventually we'll have to go all the way back to middle school, when girls with a talent for math or technical subjects seem to suddenly lose interest).

[fatbird]

In this (and other similar) case(s), we can conclude that there's no difference between male and female speakers, since the gender ratio resulting from blind judging matches the submission pool. In other words, there's no essential gender difference in technology, there's just a demographic artifact of sexism.

So if the larger demographic continues to mirror that artifact, that's not an argument for reproducing that artificial split in the conference. Indeed, taking care to mix the submissions pool to reflect the larger gender split does nothing but perpetuate an artificial and historical and culturally driven imbalance, when we can clearly see that no essential difference between the sexes exists. It's not discriminatory to balance out a contingent happenstance that doesn't accurately reflect essential differences.

A bit shorter: There's nothing discriminatory about the removal of undeserved advantage.

[betterunix]

"It's not discriminatory to balance out a contingent happenstance that doesn't accurately reflect essential differences."

It is when you are doing something that gives people a career boost, and being a speaker at a conference is definitely a career boost. If you keep targeting a minority in some field to speak at conferences, then the members of that minority will have an advantage in advancing their careers -- they are being given more of a voice than other people. If the imbalance in the field itself is large, which is the case in technical fields, then that minority is getting more of a boost.

In other words, what you are doing is trying to hide the fact that you are giving an advantage to a particular group. It is no different than asking GRE questions about polo.

"A bit shorter: There's nothing discriminatory about the removal of undeserved advantage."

That is not what happened here. Nobody had an undeserved advantage in the conference admissions process; the problem lies elsewhere. Conference speakers are a surface-level problem.

If you start in a field where women and men are equally represented, but where men dominate conferences, this sort of thing might make sense. You are starting in a field where that is not the case, painting a "fix" on the surface of it, and calling it a victory. It's not a victory, it is discrimination, and the effort spent on this farce should have been spent on solving the broader demographic problem (but I suspect that the author of the article has run out of ideas on how to solve that problem, and has instead chosen something easier to work on).

[fatbird]

If you're saved from competing against a certain number of potential competitors in getting accepted to a conference, you have an advantage. If you're saved from such competition because of historical demographic imbalances, you have an undeserved advantage, and removing that advantage is not discriminatory, any more than forcing the conference organizer's nephew to go through the blind judging process is discriminatory. Or do you think systemically mitigating nepotism is discriminatory to those with familial connections?

Perhaps a different question is in order: If men have an advantage in getting selected for conferences because they're men, then do you think the blind judging is discriminatory? After all, it removes an advantage they have.

I've responded elsewhere about how diversity at conferences assist in addressing the root cause of the imbalance. I would observe here that your prescription to address it in middle school rather than at conferences is too cute by half: lack of female participation at conferences is part of the lack of participation in STEM generally that serves to dissuade girls in middle school from continuing in STEM.

[Gormo]

> Is it unfair to point out that discrimination is evident if the proportion of women speakers at the conference is not equal to the proportion of female experts in the field?

It's not unfair to point that out; it's merely wrong to "point that out".

Any number of contingencies could yield a distribution of speakers at a conference whose sex ratio doesn't neatly align with the corresponding ratio in the population of experts, however that's defined. The existence of such a distribution of speakers is not in itself evidence of discrimination on the basis of sex.

Discrimination on the basis of sex is, however, present in any situation in which the sex of applicants was in any way considered as a criteria of their admission to the conference. This is the definition of discrimination.

In other words, by considering individuals' sexes at all, one is actively engaging in sex-based discrimination. It's absurd to suggest this as the remedy to a situation that isn't necessarily the result of discrimination.

The only way to ensure that no discrimination takes place is to stop looking at the sex ratio of conference attendees in the first place, as it's no more relevant than distribution of shoe sizes among attendees.

[Narkov]

Selecting the best person for the job isn't discrimination but IMHO, celebrating a 50/50 split is discrimination if that isn't the natural gender split.

[neumann_alfred]

WTF is a "natural gender split"? This is a cultural problem, and that culture like to hide behind a supposed nature which in large parts really just is learned behaviour, resulting from that culture.

[Narkov]

"WTF is a "natural gender split"?"

When I said "natural gender split" I meant the real gender split amongst the population of capable speakers and not the wider (world) population.

[neumann_alfred]

And I'm saying that's based on culture more than nature. One can't suppress women more or less worldwide for millenia, then say "equal rights, voting rights, go!" (in some parts of the world), and then take time shortly after, without looking at all the power and role training that has been accumulated and is still in effect (it's not like feminism got through to every last one even in "the west", is it), and explain the remaining inequalities as "just the way it is" or whatever. "We" owe "them" a lot more than that, and not little of that is centuries, millenia of genetic selection. Now that smart women don't get burned at the stake so easily, and can choose their partners freely, we'll see if they won't catch up.. I kinda have my hunches ^^

[fatbird]

As this case and others (c.f., GoGaRuCo, which uses the same method) shows, the natural gender split is 50/50. When the submissions pool is 50/50, and they do a blind judging of the submissions, they end up with a 50/50 split in speakers. In other words, they keep demonstrating that there is no essential difference in technology based on gender. When they hide from themselves the gender of the speaker, they end up choosing equally from men and women.

[azakai]

> She knew the issue was the lack of submissions, so she worked hard to get lots of talk submissions from women.

This is a complex issue, there isn't a single root cause. Lack of submissions is just one factor among many.

[metajack]

I didn't mean to imply there was. Sorry.

It does seem to be the lowest hanging fruit.

[CJefferson]

The fact she selected the talks without looking at the gender is great, and I missed on my first read (woops, I blame HN encouraging fast replies for more karma).

[jimzvz]

With only 18 applications and with her specifically encouraging people that she knew to apply it must be very likely that she knew who the individual was when going through the applications. So even though she claims that it was gender blind, it wasn't really.