I agree that it's a problem. But I'm not convinced that merely attracting more women to web development is the solution.

As you said, the problem is that women are discriminated against in the industry. I don't think attracting more women will necessarily solve that problem. The problem is with the attitude of many of the men. Attracting more women might even make it worse. Men might start resenting them.

Fixing the attitude problem might attract more women--or it might not.

This is a good example of why I think "diversity" initiatives are missing the point. The point isn't to have equal proportions of races/sexes/nationalities/etc., the point is to ensure that they are all treated equally and justly. Many diversity movements do the exact opposite and treat people differently based on their sex or skin color. I think this is unjust and can often make problems worse, not better.

Back to the topic: I love the welcoming attitude, though. The intention is good, if a bit misguided. If more men adopted the same attitude as Dev Bootcamp, "Women, we value your contributions and will treat you as equals," then the problem would be solved.

Getting more representation from people being kept out due to sexism isn't mutually exclusive with talking about sexism critically within tech industry. They go hand in hand with making sure that people who want to program and be a part of tech aren't kept from doing so.

> This is a good example of why I think "diversity" initiatives are missing the point. The point isn't to have equal proportions of races/sexes/nationalities/etc., the point is to ensure that they are all treated equally and justly. Many diversity movements do the exact opposite and treat people differently based on their sex or skin color. I think this is unjust and can often make problems worse, not better.

To begin with, the people who are underrepresented in tech are already treated differently on the basis of gender, race, etc. Knowing that and aiming to make sure that you include those people at some ratio isn't unjust. In the case of dev bootcamp chicago, they knew it would be easy to sell seats to the wider dev community that consists mostly of men, so they made a conscious effort to get the word out in spaces that inhabited mostly by women before going to their usual sources. That is most certainly fair considering that had they not done so, it was likely that men would greatly outnumber the amount of women attending.

> I think this is unjust and can often make problems worse, not better.

The status quo is what's unjust. Do you agree? If so, how can correcting for that be unjust?

Having a discriminatory policy is unjust. So changing who you discriminate against is not less unjust.

> So changing who you discriminate against is not less unjust.

I disagree. Discrimination is not always unjust depending on the motivation and the outcomes of it. If the motivation is to correct for existing systemic discrimination, and if it is successful in doing so, I do not see the injustice.

This is the argument in favor of "Affirmative action". Minorities have been discriminated against for 100 years, and so we need a period of time where they are discriminated for to make up for it.

I can see both sides of that. But ideally, you want to fix the systemic issue not just try to correct for it, because your correction is almost guaranteed to add more unfairness to the system not reduce it.

Outside of the fact that there have been studies that show having more women on a team increases productivity and communication, I don't think just knowing a change needs to happen is enough for a lot of people. A few men I've worked with have been completely oblivious to women's issues and wouldn't otherwise make an effort to do anything about that. Just having a woman on the team can adjust perceptions about capability as well as make some of the issues we deal with more "real".