[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]

> The problem is that the imbalance is what's discouraging women from entering STEM careers

I hear this quite a bit, but it always seems to be asserted without substantiation. What evidence is there that it's true?

And, more importantly, if we're going to make distinctions between individuals based on their membership in putative demographic categories, why not also distinguish between those who internalize that demographic category as part of their identity, and those who do not? It would seem that an inhibition to pursue one career or another due to demographics would likely indicate that one is part of the latter category; but would we not be more likely to prefer the former category, and want to work people who assert their own ambitions without allowing themselves to be constrained by internalized abstractions?

[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?