> If Google would say that teams that only consist of men, or white people would get $2K extra everyone would explode.
Surely you can understand why? The industry is already dominated by white men. They (we, in fact) don't need extra support to enter and get accepted by the industry. We don't suffer lots of subtle forms of harassment and discrimination, simply for being different from the norm.
I don't think money by itself is the solution, but in order to make the industry more accepting of women, it helps if people get used to women in the industry, which means there need to be more women in the industry, which means some additional encouragement is probably necessary. Addressing the sexism in the industry in the absense of women doesn't seem to work very well. We need more women in order to become more accessible to women.
That said, I do think it's odd to do this through larger prizes for women in a contest. Encouragement programs and networking events seem like a better way to do this. Then again, in sports, it's generally male competitions who tend to have far more prize money.
Yeah. I'm sure women will "get accepted in the industry" much more if every man who looks at them is thinking "she's being given $2K extra for winning the same prize as me" or "I wonder if she's working here for her merits or because she took advantage of one of those positive discrimination programs". Brilliant idea.
They aren't just letting any and all women in while telling the droves of men to shove it. They're saying that if you are a woman who already qualifies for Hacker School who cannot pay for expenses while attending, then they will give you some money to help out. They aren't some bouncer at a club pulling the velvet rope back for everyone who checks the "I am a woman" box on the application.
Why would that matter? Surely, only those with expenses for attending hacker school can ask for a grant that repays expenses for attending hacker school.
Those with expenses for attending a chocolate factory visit can not ask for this grant. That should not be considered when judging who should be granted money regarding expenses for attending hacker school. The chocolate factory has nothing to do with this grant.
The grants are not merit based, so Google is not judging these women at all. The grants are to help restore the gender imbalance in software engineering. You seem to be having trouble understanding this.
But the point everyone is making is that there is a white male out there that is poor and doesn't have the resources, time, and educational background, but has the intelligence, work ethic, and desire to learn more and get a job as a programmer.
But this guy out there will never be helped. There simply will never be a program for this person to get out of the rut that he's in.
But a woman with a Stanford degree may be able to get into these programs with a grant.
I'm not saying it's wrong or right, but that seems to be the complaint, that there is probably a better way to spend that money to help people.
my opinion is that when you start looking at individuals' situations in order to give that grant money out, then that's just going to much more complicated and cost much more money.
I'm absolutely for helping the poor, providing everybody with affordable (preferably free) quality education, programs that help unemployed people get jobs, that help homeless people get their life back in order, etc.
But those problems aren't specific for the IT industry. They're society-wide, and need to tackled on a much broader scale.
And in society at large, women are doing increasingly better. They are surpassing men in education (so it's definitely a good idea to take a good look at if there's anything that causes boys to fall by the wayside in the educational system), but that doesn't change the fact that there are still some industries that are remarkably sexist and/or inaccessible to women. And that's just not acceptable.
The point is that a poor, uneducated man will still be ahead of a poor, uneducated woman when attempting to learn how to program; likewise, a man with a Stanford degree will have many more resources available to him than a woman with a Stanford degree. You can't pull examples from opposite ends of the spectrum, because of course it's not going to be equal.
Surely you can understand why? The industry is already dominated by white men. They (we, in fact) don't need extra support to enter and get accepted by the industry. We don't suffer lots of subtle forms of harassment and discrimination, simply for being different from the norm.
I don't think money by itself is the solution, but in order to make the industry more accepting of women, it helps if people get used to women in the industry, which means there need to be more women in the industry, which means some additional encouragement is probably necessary. Addressing the sexism in the industry in the absense of women doesn't seem to work very well. We need more women in order to become more accessible to women.
That said, I do think it's odd to do this through larger prizes for women in a contest. Encouragement programs and networking events seem like a better way to do this. Then again, in sports, it's generally male competitions who tend to have far more prize money.