On the flip side, there is an equally powerful emotional appeal to support an event like this when wife, daughter, girlfriend, female friend would like to attend. Though that might be more about the relationship of you and the person and less about the merits of the event.

Since when is that a bad thing?

On the flip side, there is an equally powerful emotional appeal to support an event like this when wife, daughter, girlfriend, female friend would like to attend.

That's a very Christian take on the subject and one that more people need to get rid of. A woman is not "made of man"; a woman's worth does not come from her relationship to a man. No one's worth comes from someone else's existence.

I wouldn't say it's Christian as in, Christian and only christian, I'd say its a traditional male view, Chivalric leanings are common in a lot of other societies as well.

A strict Judaic interpretation of a woman's value is not what I was trying to get across (not sure if this is more a reflection of your confirmation bias, or my ignorance of my biases).

It was more of a: 'I know you, and here's an event catered for you and your interests, thus I support it vicariously through you'. I am using these pronouns to emphasize that they are female because this event is related to gender and the intended audience being male, and to demonstrate relationship proximity. Swap out the event from female to black, and change it to black wife/husband, son/daughter, boyfriend/girlfriend, friend and I guess it would read a lot less like your interpretation.

As for worth, that's really in the territory of belief and philosophy, i.e. Trolley Problem. Your actions in the events of picking between people to support demonstrates your projection of worth which some would say is the same as worth.

shrug

What is a "Christian take", here?

- Refering to people by their role in your life? That is an incredibly common way to refer to people, whether that person is man or woman.

- It having an appeal because it supports people in one's life? That is possessive? Being encouraging because people that you care about, care about it? I'm at a loss.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/it/2013/03/29/when-i-moved-abroad/

Always sticking with your own lot and never completely opening up to a new culture (in my opinion) isolates you and makes you look standoffish.

I don't really have a problem with women-only 'spaces', anyway, as long as they don't interfere with my schedule - like going to the gym and finding out that they are having a women-only day/evening.

(When I lived abroad I didn't know anyone in that city who was from my own country, during that whole stay. There were people from my own country, but I didn't bother to seek them out. The closest I got was other foreigners.)

My personal experience is that there are fewer Black and Hispanic high tech workers than pretty much any other demographic, including women, if you get out of the big cities.

I wish the answers were clearer, but all I can say is that if women are actually discriminated against, then giving them their own space is OK.

For those who hire, do you pay women developers less than male developers of the same skill level?

I'd wager the answer is "no".

...and it might not be. Still completely irrelevant to this event or these speakers.

Skill level perception is influenced by gender, even for experts. [1] [2] Unless hiring managers are blinding the process by which they determine skill and/or pay, then they could well be paying women less even if they think they aren't.

[1] http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full [2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903

Otherwise in tech, it's just so foreign to me. I take the time to try and learn about each person and don't generally see their gender at all, unless I'm trying to date them. Perhaps it's because I have a daughter and a sister who are both into tech.

Or maybe I secretly think my daughter and sister are less competent than their male peers... In truth, my sister appears to me more competent than her bf who is in the same field and it's nothing to do with gender. My daughter always compares herself to those who are better so it's frustrating, to say the least. "YOU'RE GOOD!" "NO, NOT AS GOOD AS <OTHER PERSON WHO IS BETTER>". Argh.

I guess all this female discrimination just hasn't existed for my own personal interaction with others, not to say that women haven't experienced it. I suspect when they get into mothering age, they have to make a decision to further their career or their family which is probably where a lot of the "gap" comes from.

Interestingly, my daughter's school tries to indoctrinate certain lines of thought into them and hearing her opinion on it is always enjoyable to me. Generally, she is of the opinion that men and women are different, make different decisions based on their personal experience and as such, are responsible for their outcomes. I'm sure a lot of that comes from me, but I'm glad she is a critical thinker. She specifically says she doesn't understand why there is a "girls who code" and refuses to go there, even though I've encouraged her to go.

This summer, she will be joining a programming class with 17 year olds, and she is 13. To say I'm proud of her would be understating it. My opinion on this topic may change, depending on her experience there, since this would be the most likely equivalent to her future working life experience.

For what it's worth, I coach a kid's sports team and the only girl there constantly complains about the boys calling her names. Here's the thing: the boys call each other names and fart on their faces too. What should I be doing? I told her parents that I don't think I should baby her and over the period of a few weeks, she actually became more confident to the point where she was a star player in a recent game.

Before anyone chides me for being off-topic, the reason I say this is to explain why my opinions are the way they are.

So, can we hear from women who are actually IN TECH, who are provably competent (link to github?) and who can demonstrate that they experience discrimination? Because, so far, all I've heard is speculation from journalists and eavesdropping evangelists who can't take a joke. I remember being quite impressed with a security hacker who has been posted here before and I did not see any blog posts by her bemoaning discrimination.

I have a vested interest in getting at the truth, for reasons I hope are obvious. I want my daughter to be happy in tech and if she won't be, then I need to help her find something else she enjoys!

I've talked to plenty of women who have experienced discrimination. But I doubt any of them would post here.

Why? Well, look at your criteria. They have to "prove" themselves competent. And then they have to "demonstrate" discrimination. You've set yourself up as some anonymous internet judge of their qualifications. And of whether their discrimination is real enough. And who's the audience? A bunch of mostly-anonymous mostly-privileged mostly-dudes on a site where there is plenty of previous sexism. Gosh, sounds fun.

It is exactly nobody's job to prove this stuff to you. Sexual discrimination is pervasive in our society. No need to take my word for it; go read Everyday Sexism or Project Unbreakable. Or the many, many women publishing on this, both in tech and elsewhere. And if you'd like to question your own biases, go take the tests at Project Implicit and see how you do.

If you'd like to believe with no hard evidence that tech is the one special, magical place that is different, I'm not doing to try to talk you out of it. But if you're serious about preparing your daughter to work in tech, and preparing tech for your daughter, then I think you should question the assumption that, as we undo the effects of millennia of societal gender discrimination, the space around you just happens to be the one that has totally cleared that.

Can you talk about this every day discrimination some more?

History definitely shows women as being subjugated to men. But how is it possible then that a woman philosopher was so sought after both for her intelligence as well as her charm? How did Cleopatra come to be such an iconic figure in history? Clearly some women were able to make their marks on history.

Perhaps women were "subjugated" because technology didn't allow the literally weaker sex to leave the household as it does now. Having kids must have meant that one of the parents had to choose to care for the home since technology did not allow the household efficiency that it does now.

http://everydaysexism.com/

http://projectunbreakable.tumblr.com/

Also, read the biography of any pioneering female in any profession at all.

And consider educating yourself a little further before floating hypotheticals. If I say, "Perhaps Microsoft dominated for so long just because they made a really awesome product that everybody loved," or "perhaps the intelligence agencies are really only collecting the data they need to keep us safe", people here on Hacker News would mock me for not having done the slightest homework. Yes, those are reasonable questions to ask. But they aren't good ones to offer in the middle of a serious discussion. At best, it forces other people to spoon-feed you basic facts if they want useful dialog. At worst, it makes you look like a troll.

Nobody owes you a conference without the word "female" in the name, or one not featuring female founders speaking about their successes and failures. Get over it.

Unbunch your panties, Internet person. I suspect they will give you a heart attack.

"I'm an ardent supporter of the effort" is in specific reference to the conference, not an invitation for you to play topic-association and share your musings on what male/female ratio is appropriate in the tech industry.

It's irrelevant, but more importantly it's a fucking farce to try to hide behind a professed search for "truth" while turning an exploration of actual female experiences in the tech industry into a discussion of your thoughts on whether or not we should encourage more women to enter the tech industry. Own up to it and move on.

I always thought it was that they wanted a 50/50 split which never made sense to me. After reading the recaps of the female attendees, it hit me.

Carry on.

As for the on-topicness of the initial post, guilty. I had just read the "no gender pay gap in software" and so my mind was in that mode.