[rfnslyr]

What if I started a company, and all good candidates were male, and the women weren't on par? What if no women applied at all? I don't get this whole gender thing. If statistically less women apply to a STEM degree, or tech related job, how is it the fault of "white males"? White male guilt at it's finest if you ask me.

If you actively see discrimination, do something about it. I actually work with a team that is 90% women, it just happened that way. The male applicants sucked, the women were great. My friends teams however, are only male, because they had no female applicants.

Why try to force equality? Am I missing something?

What if the person doing the hiring silently disregards all female applicants? How would you tackle that problem?

OP if you had a company would you hire a less qualified woman than a more qualified man in the name of equality?

This movement seems counter-intuitive. If the applicant is good, hire them, male or female, young or old. Our team consists of elder women, young fresh grads, interns, and working class middle aged women as well, all across the spectrum. We all mingle just fine and still shoot the shit.

Hiring GOOD people is the only thing that should matter. Throw out all this ideology and affirmative action nonsense.

[rayiner]

Your viewpoint is predicated on an assumption: that equality is the equilibrium state of human society. In such a world where this equilibrium exists, there is no need for "ideology and affirmative action" because any affirmative actions to create inequality will be erased through the passage of time as the world returns to the equilibrium of equality.

The problem with this attitude is that it is utterly unwarranted, unsubstantiated, and totally Panglossian. It is irrefutable that for generations American society took "affirmative action" to suppress women, to pigeonhole them into an impoverished gender role concerned only with housekeeping and child rearing. You don't even have to go back that far to see this "affirmative action" (http://www.boredpanda.com/vintage-ads). Even if you believe that there is no continuing discrimination,[1] what on earth makes you believe that past discrimination will simply be erased through the history of time?

The solution to gender inequality issues is to simply hire women. Hire women and promote women. Once your organization and industry isn't perceived as male-dominated, once qualified and ambitious women don't turn away from the field to pursue others where being a woman is less likely to be a career liability,[2] the qualified applications will materialize.

One of the greatest success stories of gender equality is, in my opinion, are professional services firms, law in particular but also accounting and consulting. The legal industry went from 95%+ male in the 1950's and 1960's to almost even today, even at large corporate law firms. While tech companies are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to get any women in the door, law firms are under fire because "only" 1/3 of new partners each year are women. "Only" 15% of Big 4 accounting firm partners are women and its a source of constant consternation for women.[3] While any discussion of trying to get women into tech is clouded by the specter of "affirmative action" law firms, at least at the lower levels, no longer even need to take explicit steps to recruit equal numbers of women. Professional services firms are proof that when you hire women and promote women, equalized gender ratios become self-perpetuating. There are still major challenges faced by women today in the professional services industry, but these firms are operating in a whole different century than the tech sector.

[1] Which is itself a ridiculous belief in the face of studies proving that older men are, say, less likely to mentor younger women than younger men, and that employers tend to treat similar resumes with male versus female names differently.

[2] Who wants to, as a woman, invest themselves in a career in tech when there is a decent chance your boss will be this guy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6875311 ("there are differences in the way men and women think, with men more naturally drawn to STEM fields...")

[3] At what tech company are the most senior engineering roles even 15% women? Marissa Mayer estimated about 15-17% for women engineers in Silicon Valley across the board. For comparison, Big 4 accounting firms are 45-50% women across the board, with 15-20% at the partner level.

[philwelch]

Law is a high status profession so of course feminists were interested in training more women lawyers. Now there are a lot of qualified women graduating from law school, and an overall oversupply of people with law degrees anyway, so it's easy to make gender equality a priority.

Look at the gender ratios getting CS degrees, consider how extremely competitive the hiring situation for programmers is, and then tell me it makes sense to put an emphasis on hiring women in particular when you can hardly hire anyone qualified at all.

[rayiner]

The gender equalization in law happened through the 1980's and 1990's, at a time when salaries at large law firms were dramatically increasing due to the limited supply of graduates from which large law firms source their entry-level hires. The key difference is that law schools, being generally very progressive places, took aggressive steps to fill their classes with approximately equal numbers of men and women. And the field, being very progressive itself, embraced that trend.

It's also interesting to note that when it comes to LSAT scores, men outnumber women 2:1 in the top percentile. This is very similar to the gender gap in the top percentile of the Math SAT. Law schools tend to simply ignore that slight distinction, relying on the fact that women tend to have higher GPAs, so an index combining GPA and LSAT tends to result in roughly equal numbers of men and women. And in practice, it's a theoretical difference that has basically zero impact in the real world. Yet, people repeatedly hold up differentials in the Math SAT to justify gender gaps in STEM more extreme than the differentials in the Math SAT itself, as evidence that men are somehow more suited for STEM jobs.

[philwelch]

And if CS programs set aside 50% of their slots for women as well, you might see similar results. There remains very little that employers can do about it though.

[rayiner]

Law schools would not make a change like that without buy-in from the employers that allow them to justify their tuition. If tech companies bought in the same way, I think you'd quickly see a change in how schools fill their classes.

[rfnslyr]

Sorry I have to disagree with this. I abide by one rule: if the candidate is good, they get hired. I am not a sexist nor do I discriminate, nor am I guilty of putting women down in any way, shape, or form, especially since before my time so I fail to see how the burden is on my shoulders, and why I should hire someone purely based on their genitalia. I am in no way responsible for what happened before my time.

The reality is both men and women suffer from different things, and it's ill to make blanket assumptions based entirely on gender.

What if the male I'm hiring is less experienced, but extremely poor and almost homeless. What if the the woman I'm interviewing right after is stable, but a woman? How do I evaluate this case?

I think the best we should do is treat both equally, as that's equality and we should all strive to eliminate discrimination amongst each other, not specifically and artificially target one demography that has been oppressed, because there are tons of other causes better suited for awareness than women. What about black people? I very rarely see black people in the tech sector. Maybe we should stop hiring asians and hire blacks instead to level out that inequality? Where does it stop?

Discrimination in the face of equality doesn't change the fact that it is still discrimination, even if it in favour of hiring women. Someone will always end up getting hurt, it's always a trade off.

I have loads of developer friends who are female and they have absolutely no problem getting hired, because they are GOOD. Just statistically, there are less women in this field.

Instead of sacrificing someone else's opportunities in the name of purely gender, offer everyone the same opportunities.

What I do think needs to be done is have more communities focused on the STEM fields to make women feel more comfortable ENTERING it, not EXITING it, they've already committed to the field.

----

See my other post as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6875633

[natch]

Presumably when you say GOOD you mean good for the position. If you take a holistic view, that metric should encompass things like how they will work on the team, whether they will fit in, and even whether they will be good for the company.

If your company gets measured (as it will) by future prospective job candidates beyond just this one hire, one thing they will look at is the health of the company (see the article).

A lack of diversity in a company does not say anything conclusive, but it can be a red flag.

As a very low level hiring manager (which it sounds like you may be, very low level) you don't have to think about this much. As you ascend to higher levels, the environment you are providing for employees, and consideration of how each employee you choose contributes to that environment, becomes more of a consideration as to whether someone is not only GOOD at what they do, but also GOOD for the company.

And if someone with an overwhelming advantage in the job marketplace gets edged out in a tie-breaker amongst equal candidates, cry me a river; they will be just fine.

[hacker789]

> It is irrefutable that for generations American society took "affirmative action" to suppress women, to pigeonhole them into an impoverished gender role concerned only with housekeeping and child rearing.

It is irrefutable that for generations American society took "affirmative action" to suppress men, to pigeonhole them into an overworked, hyper-stressed, diseased, prematurely fatal gender role concerned only with selfless providing for and protecting the women and children in their lives.

Feminists look at the 0.1% of men at the top of society throughout history, and willfully ignore the 99.9% of men at the bottom. Those men at the top of society are useful for shoring up sympathy for women; those men at the bottom of society are not.

> Who wants to, as a woman, invest themselves in a career in tech when there is a decent chance your boss will be this guy

What a sophomoric, hand-wavy thing to say. Who wants to, as a man, invest themselves in a career in tech when there is a decent chance your boss will be this guy, who is actually, literally a powerful boss who says bullying things toward men who don't toe the third-wave feminist line:

http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun

Plus, the man you're trying to ridicule is correct, as a recent large study shows beyond all reasonable doubt ("Penn Medicine Brain Imaging Study Helps Explain Different Cognitive Strengths in Men and Women"):

http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2013/12/verma/

When in life do men's and women's brains diverge? Not during their youngest, most plastic years. Nope. During the surge of sex hormones in puberty. It doesn't mean men or worse or women are worse. It just means that like all other intelligent species, humans have different psychological tendencies between sexes.

> The solution to gender inequality issues is to simply hire women. Hire women and promote women.

This is a terrible idea, unless you only care about ensuring that every company has at least one vagina for every penis. History (and the present) shows us that this sort of widespread coddling is guaranteed to help privileged, connected women at the expense of underprivileged, unconnected men.

Hyper-privileged, connected, powerful men like yourself will have no issues finding a job either way. But young men—who are already out-educated and out-earned by young women—are badly affected, especially those without connections. Considering the lack of personal repercussions, it's little surprise that it's trendy for old, rich men to throw young, poor men under the bus. It's par for the course for history, in fact.

> employers tend to treat similar resumes with male versus female names differently.

Why shouldn't they, especially in the world you want?

[tptacek]

Gender issues thread on HN? Requisite /r/MensRights post. It's like an iron law of the universe or something.

[selmnoo]

Why do you feel the need to diminish a counter viewpoint (however misguided it may be) in such a confrontational way? By reducing it to a buzzwordy opponent identity, you've pretty much nullified any chance of constructive discussion there was.

Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe the MensRights folks are the way they are because they felt discriminated against at some point in their life? And now they've found support by being there for each other? Who are you to mock them?

tptacek, you've been in the IT industry long enough, you should know by now that there actually are a considerable amount of men in this field who were made fun of when they younger, who were rejected by their peers and made to feel that no women would ever want them. They've lived their childhood, their adolescence thinking they're nerdy and unattractive, and there was no hope. Try and understand where they might be coming from.

I'm reasonably certain your intentions are good, but please understand that your insensitive demeanor on gender issues threads is more polarizing and inflammatory than anything that's likely to bring people together in any sort of conciliatory way. I implore you to really take a moment and reflect on this. Think about what you can do to really bring people together, rather than pushing them away and antagonizing them.

[tptacek]

I did think about it. I thought about it briefly. Then I decided that the idea that men are somehow oppressed by feminism (or, really, by any other kind of force directed solely at men) is fucking ridiculous and unworthy of point-by-point debate.

You show me the startup that carefully considers whether or not to hire 20-something men for fear that they might have children and need to take time off or work less than 60 hours a week. That happens, and I'll carefully consider the notion that men are oppressed in our workforce.

Good luck.

[Ygg2]

Why is it impossible? Nothing about women oppressing men, doesn't sound as ludicrous than vice-versa? Human capacity for evil is evenly distributed between genders.

Don't forget that there was a thing like matriarchy. I'm pretty sure that oppression on some level occurred even then, but since there was little written evidence, its just hard to prove.

As for hiring someone that might have children, and need to take time off, that part should be handled by the state. If someone leaves, the state pays employer and/or women caring for her 1year child. You are effectively down a one person but they are not to blame for things running their course.

That thing shouldn't come into equation at any point.

[hacker789]

If my post came across as a generic "men's rights" post, rather than a direct response to the parent, then I didn't do a good enough job of tying it together.

Western culture's hypersensitivity toward women's issues, combined with its blindness toward men's issues, create an environment in which it's socially acceptable (even socially rewarded) to propose draconian measures that further throw young men under the bus that's carrying young women.

We should aim to help people who are suffering in society, rather than aim to help people with vaginas. And we absolutely shouldn't continue obsessing about leveling evening every single predominately male field without doing something to help the young men who are increasingly being left behind.

[tptacek]

Not helping.

[Tzunamitom]

> Why try to force equality? Am I missing something?

OP here. Good question. A long time ago I thought in a very similar way because I was strongly opposed to discrimination in all forms and because I think that there is often a backlash effect against affirmative action.

Between then and writing the linked article, what changed? Well 2 things:

1. Increasingly studies have shown that diversity or equality in itself contributes to the performance of a team more than just having lots of GOOD homogeneous employees - as per Natch's excellent comment (by GOOD here I'm using the study's metric of IQ. Link: http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea...

2. I have come to the realisation that some of these societal norms have a far more insidious effect of us than we often realise or accept. That is to say we will often judge "GOOD" through our own very polarised perception. Thus women are often told that if they want to succeed in business they are told that they need to act "more like men", just like how black people were (are?) told that they need to act "more like white people". The dominant culture creates the societal norms, but this has a negative impact on my first point because we lose the balance and discourse that comes from having a diverse organisation, so we miss an opportunity to improve the performance of our teams. To combat this there needs to be an artificial effort to challenge dominant norms and see greater diversity.

Finally notice how my article refers to gender equality, not Women's Rights. I believe the case for gender equality is as equally valid in Tech as it is in Consulting and HR.

[voidr]

So we should hire people because they are women and/or not white and not because they are good at what they do?

[mewwts]

You shouldn't force equality, but actively work towards it. There's a huge difference.

[rfnslyr]

I totally agree, and OP went about this the dumbest way. Didn't go through with a job because it's all white males... so he's going to be replaced with another of the type he's actively trying to avoid.

Why not volunteer at some womens development workshops/conferences/classes/groups? I've seen them around.

[Tzunamitom]

Perhaps it was dumb. Perhaps not. I made a judgement call that I'd be able to make more of a difference to the company culture by sending a blunt email to the senior management team than I would by joining the company's middle management where I'd have very little influence anyway.

My hope is that they will implement some changes based on a. concern about their public image, and b. evidence that they are losing qualified candidates as a result of their imbalance. It is often the case with companies like this that many people on the inside would like to see a change but lack the evidence and support necessary to gain widespread support for it.

If it doesn't work it doesn't work, and yes I am involved in other activities to promote gender equality (both men and women's equality), both inside and outside work.

[rollo_tommasi]

Clearly you ought to parcel out the women on your team to the other teams until you've reached parity across the board. Change begins with you!

[xd]

I hope you're joking .. what if they are happy on their team and don't want to be moved?

[Ellipsis753]

That would be kind of mad. The teams might not even be doing the same things!

[bmelton]

My daughter's in STEM, along with a few other girls, though it seems that the class is mostly male. I would wager that, at least at the middle-school level my current daughter's in, STEM involvement has more to do with the parents and less to do with the child's natural inclinations.

That isn't to say that kids don't have free will, obviously, or that they can't effect their own preferences in their lives, but I'd wager that my daughter's inclination for math and science has more to do with both of her parents having that inclination, and hence, her more frequent exposure to it.

While I tend not to worry about these sorts of things, and/or how big a deal they are, I would wager that much of this is self-perpetuating. Mothers who aren't inclined towards technology aren't able to impart technical inclination to their daughters. I couldn't swear to whether my daughter's interest in tech comes from me or my wife, but if we assume that daughters often take after their mothers, and their mothers aren't technically inclined, it's easy to say that the problem is not self-healing.

[ForHackernews]

> What if I started a company, and all good candidates were male, and the women weren't on par? What if no women applied at all?

Then it's pretty clear you've done a bad job of advertising your job openings. Did you, perhaps, just ask for referrals among your own personal network?

[rfnslyr]

I'm sorry am I supposed to go out of my way to directly extend a hand to women as well? Are they part of some other entirely exclusive development network that I haven't specifically advertised to? I reckon if we're all on the same page of development, we're frequenting the same communities, forums, and job listings.

Why not look at majors where there are nearly no men. We should start actively making men seek fashion degrees.

[ForHackernews]

> I'm sorry am I supposed to go out of my way to directly extend a hand to women as well?

In a word? Yes.

Women are seriously under-represented in the tech community, so if your recruiting effort only extends to your friends and their friends. (And this kind of 'hey, do you know a good ____ dev?' search is pretty common for small firms) then it's statistically unlikely you're going to get many good female candidates.

I don't think you're morally obligated to hire a woman just for the sake of diversity--you should hire whoever's best for the role. But I do think you're obliged to at least consider qualified women. And I find it laughable to suggest that there simply don't exist good female candidates. They are numerically fewer; you have to make an effort to find them.

[rfnslyr]

Why do we actually care about inequality in professions? Humanities studies are greatly dominated by women, tech is dominated by men, and so is every other field out there dominated by either/or.

[ForHackernews]

> Why do we actually care about inequality in professions?

At an individual level, it's unfair if people are discouraged or denied the opportunity to peruse their interests because of their demographic characteristics.

At a societal level, we'll all benefit by having more people working in fields where they're most productive.

> so is every other field out there dominated by either/or.

That's not true at all. Some fields are near parity. Med schools are basically 50/50 these days.

[rfnslyr]

At an individual level, it's unfair if people are discouraged or denied the opportunity to peruse their interests because of their demographic characteristics.

If the simple existence of a statistic (men dominating tech) puts you away, then that's your own fault.

Med school is 50/50, great, that's an extremely difficult pursuit, clearly women are capable of handling it.

I really truly think it's because IT is not interesting. 90% of it is boring as fuck, working with legacy code at corporations.

How many tech jobs do you honestly think exist in this brand new javascript-scale-haskell everything small company fantasy wonder world? How many of those people, that even know this niche exists, are women? I casually talk about the scene to outside people and 99% of people have no idea what silicon valley is, or what a startup is. To them, computers are just a super boring corporate job, and they don't really know what's required.

This field really just isn't as intrinsically interesting as others. If you're interested in bits and bytes and numbers and problem solving and code and all the other great things that come with this field, good for you. None of this is lodged in the natural world, it's all virtual. Objectively, anything to do with the natural world (medicine, most sciences (life sci/bio/chem) are far more interesting). I think another part of the problem is schooling. In schools you get a PROPER science education, so it's easier to see the merits, versus being in a programming class taught by someone who really doesn't know the first thing about programming. What do you think the women will choose?

It takes a very special kind of person to get hooked on computers and programming.

Look at the field from an external point of view. You can't honestly tell me it looks like the most interesting thing in the world given peoples experience and exposition to it.

I'm really not surprised that there is a gender gap in this field because I really don't see anything that could draw a casual outside observer in unless they already have their foot in the door, which will probably be of their own accord anyways.

[fantnn]

>Then it's pretty clear you've done a bad job of advertising your job openings. Did you, perhaps, just ask for referrals among your own personal network?

That is pure conjecture, there are differences in the way men and women think, with men more naturally drawn to STEM fields, and to attempt to legislate equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity would be reverse sexism. Notice there is no mention of paid paternity leave, or other ways that women are blatantly given an advantage over men.

[ForHackernews]

You're reading things into my comment that I didn't write.

The parent I was responding to suggested that he might have openings at his company for which there aren't any "good" (or even any at all) female applicants. I find it absurd to suggest that there are zero qualified women existing in the world, so the problem is one of finding and recruiting them to apply.

[fantnn]

You are still suggesting that firms are somehow obligated to go out of their way to hire females due to some misguided sense of morality. Putting in extra effort to find a female developers would cost money that smaller firms may not have.

[ForHackernews]

Above, you agreed with the statement "You shouldn't force equality, but actively work towards it."

EDIT: My mistake, that was a different user.

Making the effort to consider qualified women is part of actively working towards it.

Maybe it does cost some small amount of extra money, but if you refuse to make even the minor effort of, say, posting to a women's tech board[0] then you are part of the problem.

[0] e.g. http://www.pyladies.com/

[rfnslyr]

That's fair and I agree. When we near the point where we're throwing out perfectly good candidates in favour of female candidates strictly because of gender, then we have another problem.

We should work towards being more fair individuals and looking at both genders with the same criteria in mind, gender aside while also tapping into female development resources like the one you mentioned.

I also believe we should introduce tech at an earlier age, say in high school, because right now tech is grossly misrepresented versus the other sciences which women have no problem going into.