That's the problem though. Sometimes you need to give special attention to a group to ensure that their abilities and accomplishments are seen. You may not personally have this problem, but there are members of the "old guard" that do. I surmise solely from this comment that you do your best to ensure that members of your team are the best regardless of physical differences. Again, this is why you aren't inherently the problem.

The problem is people like a professor I had. He has published papers, an incredible work history, and he has rubbed elbows with a few CS people renown for their work. He made off-handed comments like, "First exam is in two weeks. Ladies, please don't wait until the day before to cram." He probably doesn't mean anything malicious by the comment, but that its an off-putting comment nonetheless. Another parallel would be the military. There are lots of females in the military, but one of the gross sentiments among males when encountering staff NCO females is, "How many people did she have to blow to pick up staff?" It's comments like those, some of the "bro culture", and general "CS is for guys" attitude that gives reason for women's conferences.

The majority is always in focus on a grand scale. It's easy to feel like certain people are getting special treatment when Group-X Conference specifically targets a group. The purpose, though admittedly they can miss the mark, is to avoid systematic exclusion or opposition that prevents entry or ignores their contribution.

But this would imply that they actually possess these abilities and are accomplishing things with them. The problem isn't that we have droves of women programmers who are being systematically overlooked by potential employers - it's that there simply aren't very many women even interested in becoming programmers in the first place.

In my 10 years of software development I've never been in an environment where anybody cared about someone beyond how their code was written and how well they communicated with others. Women, at every place I've worked, have always been treated as equals. I personally wish there was more women in Tech but for completely selfish reasons - I like interacting with women. But as I mentioned down below, I just wish we had more people in tech in general, regardless of who they are.

For whatever reason, though, women 10-20 years ago weren't very interested in tech. The medical field and the hard sciences, sure, where they are actually very well represented. But not tech. But I'm guessing that's going to change on its own because of the one great equalizer - money.

I personally feel like the lack of women due to the culture is more of an engineering thing than a CS thing. I could be wrong, of course, but my experience compared to peers in engineering agrees with your sentiment. Regardless, I think the initiative exists to ensure that the same exclusionary culture doesn't propagate in an already male-dominated field. This may not be the correct execution, but I at least applaud the efforts to make women feel welcomed.

As for these "women" conferences, I have a colleague who has attended 3 conferences in the past year (on the University's dime) just because of her gender (she was not presenting). I have attended 0 conferences. I was not even able to attend a conference in which my paper was accepted (my advisor presented in my place) because there was not enough funds for travel.

And yet, when I speak out, I'm the bad guy...

I take it from this comment that you don't work in nursing or know anyone who does. There is an active movement to get more men into nursing, though I don't follow nursing statistics closely enough to characterize its success.

Correct

> or know anyone who does

Incorrect

> There is an active movement to get more men into nursing, though I don't follow nursing statistics closely enough to characterize its success.

Enlighten me.

American Assembly for Men in Nursing: http://aamn.org/

Census report on men in nursing fields: https://www.census.gov/people/io/files/Men_in_Nursing_Occupa...

An article from Men In Nursing magazine: http://www.nursingcenter.com/journalarticle?Article_ID=65843... (admittedly on the second page)

The Male Nurses Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/MaleNurses/

I just thought male nurses was a particularly poor example, as people are interested in increasing the number of male nurses, and looking at the census report they have been having steady success.

Want more men in nursing? Discourage them from being competitive and choosing to become doctors. Male doctors outnumber female doctors nearly 2 to 1. Men become physicians and surgeons. Women become obstetrics and pediatrics. As a general rule of thumb, most fields that show a gender difference lean heavily towards social bias and differences between gender preferences than discrimination against anyone. I don't know when it became so socially unacceptable to have different preferences than someone else.

Disclaimer:

I don't work in nursing. My grandmother was a nurse for 35 years. I'd hardly call it an "active movement". I don't closely follow the statistics (frankly, I don't care) but it is easy to see that it has not been successful by any significant margin.

Matriculation in US med schools was ~47% female this year.

This is seriously your argument? That's so fatalistic: this is the way things are, so this is the way things will be. You're also arguing a very "us" vs "them" mentality, which is what makes professions gendered to begin with.

>CS is intriguing to me precisely because it's such a great equalizer

You're ignoring the social aspect. Women are often discouraged from tech early on, which makes the profession more male-dominated, which makes women feel less comfortable, etc.

Yeah, seriously. It's my argument. Did I not sound serious enough? Are you addressing the content within my argument or the tone of my argument?

I'm not being fatalistic, I'm genuinely asking those questions. I have a lot of male friends who didn't go into tech or nursing who are really struggling. One might go as far as to say they were "actively discouraged from nursing early on" while my female acquaintances happily slid into comfy and lucrative nursing positions. Yet, not once have I heard of or seen advertisements for Men in Nursing conferences or groups. I'm not making this "us" vs "them" as much as you want to frame my argument that way, and even if I did you'd have to explain why you think that leads to gendered professions.

> You're ignoring the social aspect. Women are often discouraged from tech early on, which makes the profession more male-dominated, which makes women feel less comfortable, etc.

Again, I could make the same (bad) argument by replacing "women" with "men" and "tech" with "nursing". Unless you're also willing to admit the problem exists there and needs to be dealt with, then I'm not sure we have much more to discuss.

If however, you do think the gender imbalance in the field of nursing is a problem, then I need to be educated as to why it's a problem. I've heard arguments about why we need to get more women in tech, but they've never made a whole lot of sense to me.

You know what we need more of in tech? People. Period. Far too few people chose CS as their field of study and as such there's a huge mismatch between supply and demand. If your mission is to increase the volume of people in tech, regardless of their race, gender, age, or creed, then count me in and how can I help?

edit: accidentally a word

>You know what we need more of in tech? People

Lowest hanging fruit: actively do something about the fact that half the population isn't going into tech. And this is what you're arguing against, even though you may not realize it. Those conferences and reach-out efforts are explicitly active attempts at solving the problem in a positive way. They aren't meant to exclude men (I was a member of the women in tech club in college), they're usually meant to undo harmful biases in society.

As long as we're pointing out fallacies, you're attacking a straw man here. I'm not saying two wrongs make a right; I'm saying neither wrong is actually a wrong. They are simply outcomes, neither negative nor positive. The overarching point I'm trying to make is that if we both agree we need more nurses, and we both agree we need more techies, and we both agree that men tend toward tech and women tend toward nursing, and operating under the assumption that it's a zero sum game (hint: it's not), then there's nothing wrong with women staying in nursing to keep the overall number of nurses high and men staying in tech to keep the overall number of techies high.

I simply do not see the need for the fields of nursing and tech to swap genders until they both hit some gender equilibrium. The goal should be to increase the overall volume of both nurses and techies (and decrease, perhaps, the number of lawyers ;-).

And by the way, the other day my 3 year old daughter told me she wants to be a nurse when she grows up. It would feel wrong to discourage her by pushing her toward a career in programming, but maybe that's just me.

edit: grammar and added the bit about increasing overall volume of nurses and techies

Convincing more people who have good nurse-aptitudes that becoming a nurse is worthwhile is a legitimate strategy for increasing the number of nurses. Same for people who have good programmer-aptitudes and have been discouraged from playing with computers and stuff because of their gender.

You may say, "But why doesn't more women goes into tech?"

Well, let me ask this then, "So 80% of women goes into nursing. Why don't MORE women goes into nursing? Why not 90%? Why not 97.2% Or heck, why NOT less women? Why not some other arbitrary number?"

There are many fields out there. Each fields has it's own arbitrary number of men and women working in it. Why must a specific field have a specific quota of women?

You would say, "Because there's not enough women in tech."

And I would say, "Why is that not enough? What would be consider enough for women in tech? For women in other fields? For women in each and every fields? Why must there be 50% women and 50% men in tech? Why must there be 50% women and 50% men in any field? In every fields? How can there even possible be 50% men and 50% women in all fields?"

So you see, when you really start thinking about it, all these quotas just become nonsensical. In fact, I remember in history, a form of government where the government enforced quotas. And it's call Communism.

How many potentially brilliant female computer scientists are we missing out on as a society because our media and culture barrages them with images of male programmers? It's in my selfish interest as a white male to promote CS among underrepresented groups -- because one of them might come up with the next innovation that changes my life. But they don't get the chance, because they're told they can't be programmers.

That's why I think outreach focused on young minorities & girls is important.

I was not given "the focus" by default. My Jr. High and High School did not have a CS program at all. I taught myself how to program (Pascal and Assembly) by READING BOOKS, because we lived in a rural area and dial-up internet is slow!

Is it so wrong to believe that if I can do it, so can others, regardless of their gender? Maybe I have a higher confidence in women than they do!

Anyway, Acid Burn and Trinity are iconic Hollywood hacker characters.

Something very wrong with this. Why do those potentially brilliant computer scientist have to be female? Why can't they be male? Are you saying that males are not as brilliant as females? In fact, why does the gender of those potentially brilliant scientists even matter? As long as those scientists are brilliant, why does their gender matter?

Say's law does not apply to CS, which is largely a demand-side field with strictly ordinal utility functions and evaluation criteria that are not necessarily technical. As such, what you produce is not innately "the great equalizer".

In the Open Source community, most interactions are online through forums, issue queues, etc. Gender is rarely implied. In this situation, all that matters is what you produce.

In academia, publishing does not rely on gender. Many times, the reviews of your work are double-blind, so that there is no identifying information at all.

Therefore, I stand behind my statement, that CS is the great equalizer, and the only thing that matters is what you produce.

However, I encourage you to understand why women attend these conferences. It's easy to write off everyone else as being irrational, but that just makes us narrow minded.

For some reason the gender gap in technology is way more important then any other gender gap but no one ever gives a reason as to why.

I don't care about clothing styles, but if you dress very strangely, I'll judge you just the same. You know why? It's because dressing strangely means you do care about style, and even though I don't care about style, I do care about priorities, and I might find your prioritizing of style to be counter-productive and off-putting.

So yeah, I actually do care about style, because it matters.

>What I can't stand are these "Women in technology" conferences and workshops to "close the (gender) gap". Why? Because if you focus on one group, then you are actively not focusing on another. Given the dichotomy defined by their stated purpose, they are actively dismissive of men (boys). That is wrong.

And right now, you are not focussing on technology, but on gender issues. So you're a hypocrite. You care enough about gender to voice an opinion, but only to lash out at others who dare to have an opinion?

People have different priorities from you. Some people want a safe, encouraging work/hobby community. Some people want role models. Who are you to say they shouldn't work to create those, and instead work to get what you want?

And what do you care that someone holds a conference you wouldn't even go to?

>If I say this publically, then I, too, will be ostracized.

Have you considered the possibility that you are actually wrong about what you believe? How do you know you're not rationalizing where your feet are by measuring where your shoes are?

That is a direct contradiction. You acknowledge as much right after. What's even the point of writing this and posting it?

>And right now, you are not focussing on technology, but on gender issues. So you're a hypocrite. You care enough about gender to voice an opinion, but only to lash out at others who dare to have an opinion?

You either ignored his point or completely misunderstood it. I can't tell which. Then you also made a strawman.

>People have different priorities from you. Some people want a safe, encouraging work/hobby community. Some people want role models. Who are you to say they shouldn't work to create those, and instead work to get what you want?

Ok, I'm wondering if maybe English isn't your first language and something is getting lost in translation here. Your points just...make absolutely no sense. It's like you're responding to a fictitious argument that you've constructed in your mind.

Anyways, responding to that bit: So different priorities means, to you, that it's fair to disenfranchise a group? You think that it's preferable to raise one group up at the expense of another, as opposed to striving for equality? I get very serious "your rights end where my feelings begin" vibes from your way of writing.

>Have you considered the possibility that you are actually wrong about what you believe?

Have you?

Umm... to SHOW that it's a contradiction. To demonstrate the absurdity of making statements that betray one's behavior. It's easier to know how dumb you're being if you see someone else doing it.

Let me rephrase this for you.

I don't care about anime. When someone throws an anime conference, I don't care. I won't be going. What I'm not going to do is jump on the internet and start saying "I have a problem with anime conferences!"

I might have a problem with, say, a Nazi conference; their goals and premises are fundamentally objectionable to me. What is fundamentally objectionable about a women in tech conference? More women in tech?

> >Have you considered the possibility that you are actually wrong about what you believe? > Have you?

Yes. All the time. You see, I'm not complaining about people ostracizing me for my stupid ideas. They are free to do that, and I deserve it when it happens. That's how stupid ideas die.

Apples and oranges, you're allowed to go to anime conferences.

This is literally what you think:

"You're opposed to gender-exclusive conferences, and you think that the prioritization of one gender over another is counter-intuitive in regards to attaining gender equality, that means that you object to women in tech".

There is something horribly wrong with your way of thinking if that is your interpretation.

B. If you think my English is so poor that I'm unable to properly express myself, then maybe you shouldn't pretend to know what I'm thinking. You only have access to a few of my words, and you've already (actually, literally) indicated that you don't understand them.

So don't be an ass. And maybe take a step back and look at how your behavior supports your broader point.

1. I care about people, and believe that they have unlimited potential. If anything, this fundamental belief is the core of all of my interactions with my students.

2. I do not believe in bias against someone else because of something they cannot control. We call that discrimination.

3. What, then, do we call bias in favor of someone, also because of something they cannot control? By definition, it is equally a bias against everyone else who does not have that same attribute (again, something that they cannot control). Therefore, it, too, is discrimination.

4. I abhor discrimination, because it invalidates the accomplishments of everyone involved. This is true both those whose achievements were marginalized by the discrimination, as well as those whose achievements were enhanced by it.

5. I do not argue that people come from unequal backgrounds. What I am arguing, however, is that CS is the equalizer, based on your accomplishments, and your accomplishments ARE NOT limited by your starting position. This is true regardless of gender, race, sexuality, disability, or familial history.

6. Any single-issue outreach (like gender) is insulting, in that it ignores the rest of the person. It reduces them to a number as it relates to that issue. It is demeaning to the individual, and I refuse to participate in it. It is not just that I dislike it, but that I fundamentally disagree with the nature of its being.

When I praise my students, it is because they earned it and they deserve it. If I were to suggest that perhaps CS is not right for them (which I have never done to any of the ~200 students that I have taught), it would also be because that was the right advice for that individual.

This is why I disagree with these types of conferences. And yet, still, I am perceived as the bad guy...

But discrimination is not inherently a problem, it is only a problem when it leads to bad decision-making, especially in the long term. If I were very short (a factor I cannot control) and I was responsible for reaching high places, it would be discriminatory to deny me the position, but it wouldn't be a problem. There's no mistake reaching such a rational decision, if it is in fact, rational. Which in this case, would imply there is no access to height-boosting equipment or reach-extending tools.

>What I am arguing, however, is that CS is the equalizer, based on your accomplishments, and your accomplishments ARE NOT limited by your starting position.

CS can be an equalizer, but your accomplishments ARE limited by your starting position. Discrimination invalidates accomplishments precisely because it limits your starting position.

>Any single-issue outreach (like gender) is insulting, in that it ignores the rest of the person.

I don't see how that follows. If I build a ladder for short people, am I insulting tall people? Am I ignoring them? Am I reducing them to a number? Or would a tall person be reducing themselves to a number by objecting (needlessly) to the construction of ladders?

The problem is that, you're not just building a ladder. You're purposely not hiring the tall peoples. Instead, you purposely hire the short people, because you perceived the short people to have a disadvantage in height. Then after you hired them, you build each and everyone of them a ladder, to make them as tall the the tall people in the first place, who, you could have hired in the first place, and wouldn't have needed the ladder in the first place if you hired the tall peoples in the first place. And not only that, the short people understands that this job require reaching high places, so most of them have already decided to go for another job, a job that they love that doesn't required them to reach high places with their hands. And then you're wondering, why don't short people comes for hire? I must enforce quote and force all jobs that require tall peoples to hire short peoples, instead of just letting things fall where they fall, naturally.

"My goal is to hire competent people. Technically competent and socially competent people. That means getting along with others and understanding their perspectives and priorities. I don't care how well you know some piece of software; you can learn that in a book. I can buy you a book. You can't learn basic human decency from a book.

As someone who presumably cares about this company, I'm aware that we do not only sell products, but also culture, and if you cannot produce valuable culture, then you will not serve this company well. I will not hire you. Not because I have some quota to meet, but because I have standards to meet, and you do not meet them. If you want to be so myopic as to ignore gender issues (or any other issue that actually matter to people in this world,) then go do that on your own time."

All workers need to be treated the same (aka, professionally) no matter the gender. I don't need my workers to go around making decision based on whether the other work is male or female. That's sexist.

People need to stop treating people differently base on their gender, and need to start treating all people the same, no matter their gender. When you do something because of a specific gender, that's sexism.

When two unrelated fields clash (say science and religion to illustrate the point with different topics), you have to "take a stand" on both even if you want to care only about one of them.

In the specific case of the previous poster, I think that what he means is that he wants the most important criteria to be about technology. Inevitably, that means that gender ratios are only secondary considerations to those.

Maybe that stance is to focus on gender issues in your view. But in that case, what would a stance that focuses only on technology?

HTTPS was invented to solve a security problem -- a completely social issue that wouldn't exist if people just could be trusted with your data. Unicode was invented to solve the problem that not everybody writes with the Latin alphabet, a problem caused only because people don't agree to fix it. Neither of those would have meant anything if someone didn't convince everybody to use them -- another purely social problem. In fact, almost all computer science issues are attempts to solve or make irrelevant certain classes of social problems. They're not unrelated fields at all. Communication and technology are practically the same thing.

>I think that what he means is that he wants the most important criteria to be about technology

The most important criteria for what? For what conferences people should have? For establishing what a given human wants out of life? For determining whether an industry is prejudiced?

But it is possible to not "care" about these issues: either by working on solutions to other problems or by focusing only on making the technology better.

That is what I meant by "unrelated", maybe I should have used "independent".

> The most important criteria for what? For what conferences people should have? For establishing what a given human wants out of life? For determining whether an industry is prejudiced?

The most important criteria for technological pursuits, not social ones. People who disagree on political issues can still pursue technology progress together on issues that don't involve those political issues for example (not that this is the case here, I'm speaking generally).