[katherineparker]

Making sure a certain % of speakers are women is ridiculous. I'm a woman and a programmer and I'd be offended they just threw a few women on to even it out vs. to make sure the best of the best speakers are there. If some happen to be women - great! If not, who cares. Women are not being excluded, so what's the problem? Why include women who may be mediocre just for the score? Too much sensitivity these days...

[colmvp]

Indeed. I'm Asian. There's a lot of Asian men in tech. I don't see many Asian men on speaking panels. And I don't really care.

[sliverstorm]

In that case, I will take it upon myself to be offended on your behalf. No need to thank me.

;)

[pwang]

This is a point I wish more people would make. There are a huge number of Asians in tech, and we are grossly underrepresented at tech conferences. But no one even thinks to look at diversity numbers there. I've seen discussion about racial diversity for black and even Hispanic people, but nobody thinks twice about Asians (which are even fewer in number in the general population).

Such is life.

[mtext]

Actually...You should care...Americans are fucking racist, but they think being racists with asians it's not trully racism. ( just look at movies like gran torino )

[krisroadruck]

Agreed. This women 2.0 thing has been super annoying. Meanwhile every women I know who kicks ass at their craft doesn't have any problems with "marginalization". People who are competitive and competent tend to just fine in competitive careers. I never knew anyone who deserved to be at the top who got their by asking someone to make some rules so they could get there instead of you know... just being awesome.

[Evbn]

You may be interested in research into how some groups are more productive when they work collaboratively rather than competitively, and how women are disproportionately better in collaborative environments.

I don't want a team full of the best indiviual performers. I want the best performing team.

[obviouslygreen]

This is the same quota issue we deal with in all sorts of fields for all sorts of minorities. In my opinion the only effective course of action is to continually improve equality of opportunity, not by promoting some people at the expense of others because of minority status, but by concentrating and encouraging/requiring others to concentrate on qualifications to the exclusion of ethnic, sexual, etc. factors.

Yes, definitely, too much (over)sensitivity. There will always be people who discriminate, and there will always be someone out there -- no matter who you are -- that will actively discriminate against you given the opportunity. Those people will never change. For the rest of us, what the world needs is to lighten up and give things some time: In the grander scheme of things, all this equality talk started up relatively recently. People don't change overnight, and the institutions we build change far more slowly.

Patience, people. Patience, tempered expectations, and realism. Not all of this will ever be "fixed," and that which is will pretty much asymptotically approach our best case expectations, so learning to be happy with what we get and work to improve things without pissing everyone off all the time seems like a pretty reasonable goal to me.

[soup10]

The only people that complain that there aren't enough women in tech are men. Women complain about female unfriendly work environments and conferences. But tech people don't understand the difference between "female unfriendly" and "needs more women". All there needs to be is a smart woman whose input is taken seriously when organizing conferences and establishing workplace culture.

[katherineparker]

I essentially agree with you.

Here's my input on the "need more women"/"female unfriendly" work environment in IT debate:

There's nothing wrong with working with and coding with only men. That's been my only experience so far as a noob who's had two programming internships.

I think most men are easy to get along with and I enjoy their friendships. The only female unfriendly experiences I've had on the job have been due to sexual harassment (as in someone actively trying to sleep with a person, not a stupid off-handed joke). In class it's been the more condescending "you only got that job because you're a girl and you look like this". I think that needs to stop. It's completely fucked up behaviour. But being on an all male team is fine. I think to say we need to get tech to a completely even score is pointless. Most nurses are women and a few are men and they carry on fine? Not a lot of girls are into coding (at least as of yet) and that's fine too. They're being influenced at a younger age to have an interest in tech now by different organizations and that is great, but if after campaigns such as those are completed and women still don't get to 50% of IT - meh, who cares. Given most women who get into tech enjoy tech related hobbies (video games etc.) it's easy to be friendly to coworkers and others in the industry. It's not like women in tech all feel completely disconnected from the men. The women in my class and I have spoke about this and we generally have all had the same experience (unfortunately that includes the sexual harassment too though).

tdlr; most women are not overly sensitive like Adria Richards and we'll be fine. We're too busy coding up stuff to care about this (minus the sexual harassment - which is commenting on boobs and trying to sleep with the girl etc., not dongle jokes lol but actual serious stuff)

/rant

[katherineparker]

I want to add too that sexual harassment happens in all industries and it's a separate issue. Most guys in IT are not like that. I have dealt with this problem prior to IT as well. Certain men need to learn how to take a hint... if someone wants to sleep with you in return you'll know, in the mean time, relax about it and take the option of acting like a friend/coworker more than a sex deprived p.o.s.

[Evbn]

This is not true, in practice. Women report having better experiences when there are many women around, vs being the only one in the group.

[soup10]

It's the same thing in practice. It's harder to have a female friendly workplace when its a brofest.

[wyclif]

That's correct, as is the author. People are advocating for affirmative action for women instead of advocating for the best speaker pitches and letting the chips fall where they may. Don't make women tokens, expect the same excellence you do from men and they will rise to the occasion. I have no doubt that the visibility of women will rise at conferences while they are competing successfully in tech jobs and representing a greater share of programmers and engineers.