Addressing women directly and showing them successes of other women in the field is likely to be a successful approach in the long term to change demographics.

Like, I'm all for more people of whatever demographic feeling welcome in technology (and any other industry, natch). It's not clear to me whether this kind of PR actually accomplishes that, or does nothing because it's not addressing the more important yet more illegible things ultimately that keep women less interested in going into tech, or actively harms the cause through the sexist implication that it's so special and noteworthy for women to be interested in technology.

This project is a dialogue between women. What anyone else thinks of it is irrelevant.

I use to live not caring, having been told to not care what others thought about you. Then I realize just how much it does matter.

Also, I was talking about grandparents comment of "laser-focus on Women Can Program Too", not this project specifically.

Hm. :\

Phrase policing tends to be a tactic to distract being that it is easy to find phrases in English that can be presented to mean something different.

Take the "I expected the car to be washed." It means something different when talking about visiting someone who loves washing their car and does so most every sunny day vs. buying a car and finding it dirty. It can easily be made to sound demanding even when there was no such intention.

EDIT: The natural British English syllabification, where 'wog' is a derogatory racial slur.

Obviously this name is every bit as bad as the execrable "brogrammers".

Do we really need a word that exists purely to make the distinction between male and female programmers? Seems to me you're just a programmer, sex doesn't matter.

Usually, you see these things not as an individual effort, but some sort of corporatized outreach program, and then it is just awful. In the process of supposedly trying to celebrate diversity, it just only further serves to paint it as "The Other", the non-default.

But it's basically just an interview series that a few people are putting together, specifically to treat the subject normally, not continue to differentiate.

Show me what other women are achieving - FANTASTIC - but quit with the bloody ridiculous nicknames. (Don't even get me started on "mumpreneurs"!)

Can we invent words for Atheist programmers, for asian transgender programmers, for black programmers who identify as dolphins?

And I won't even comment on the whole "wow! Women programmers! They are all awesome!! xoxo". Some female programmers are great, some are terrible, most are average. Just like male programmers. Stopping this pedestalizion is the first step towards true equality.

As soon as people stop using it as an excuse to abuse, berate, degrade and discriminate against people. These words, and the intent behind them, are not the problem - they are a reaction to the problem. Rather than get annoyed with people who invent words like 'wogrammers', why not direct your anger toward the employers who refuse to hire women, or pay them less, or ignore sexual harassment. Those people are the problem.

Did the manager have a bias against women because they feel women are worse workers? What caused that bias and how can it be fixed (sadly, in some cases it can only be fixed in the younger generations... or maybe this is a bias I have against older individuals... and why would I have that).

Did the manager have a bias against women because a previous project was massively delayed when a woman took maternity leave and the temp replacement took so much onboarding work that they might have been better being a person down? How about changing culture so a later delivery cue to someone taking medical leave is 100% as acceptable as an earlier delivery (including the same end of year bonuses).

Did the manager have a bias against women because some of their male employees fear an instance similar to Donglegate and as such would be far less open to forming the same sort of comradeship that enables the team to run smoothly? What caused the employees to feel this way?

Did the manager have a bias against women because they are male and they fear for their own professional safety when conducting private one on one meetings with the opposite set? Why do they fear such and can that fear be removed.

Do you have any data, which controls for the appropriate variables, to support that?

It's shooting in the dark.

I take that to mean you don't have those facts? Because it would be easier and more trustworthy to simply put them on the table than berate the gp for posting a reasonable question.

That's what is being done right here, right now.

I find that pretty much every woman in the tech industry who I've spoken to has at least one example of how they feel they've been discriminated against at some point.

Then sharing some concrete examples should be easy!

> Thats the most sexist word ever

Are you even aware that this project was started and is being done by women in the tech field and is aimed to communicate at women? You're probably a man. You're not being asked to change, or do anything. All they're doing is showing learning women that other women are having fun and success in the tech industry and so could they. If having a silly name helps in that then what you think about the name does not matter.

In the specific case of women in CS/CE, I think it's fair to say that the lack of women is rather troubling, and has roots in prejudice. So yeah, who knows. Maybe recognizing the success of women in this field might help restore some balance and one day make this positive discrimination unecessary. Then we won't need any special terms and all programmers will be called programmers.

How do you define 'balance' in this scenario?

Trying to correct this at the college level or later is like trying to bend a paper clip back into a straight wire.

http://www.aacn.nche.edu/aacn-publications/issue-bulletin/ef... http://www.aacn.nche.edu/media-relations/fact-sheets/enhanci... http://www.rwjf.org/en/library/articles-and-news/2011/09/mal... http://www.aamn.org/choosenursing.shtml

That said some of the socialists parties here in Denmark made ending that kind of discrimination part of their election reform.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

> Edit: for the clown who accused me of "fallacy of relative privation

edit: sorry, no. It's easy to work out, but as a matter of policy I don't enter into serious debates with people who casually throw around words like "clown". I find that it's not usually worth the attempt.

Please don't do this on HN. Stock snide responses, like this one or LMGTFY, are a way of insulting someone while ostensibly answering them. That violates the HN call for civility.

> sorry, no. It's easy to work out, but as a matter of policy I don't enter into serious debates with people who

Obviously dudul was wrong to call you names, but these comments were worse. Subtle insults do more damage to the discourse than crude ones do. Please reply respectfully.

The difference is:

Fallacy: "What about Y. X isn't a big deal as long as Y is an issue."

Not Fallacy: "What about Y. Y isn't a big deal because A, B, and C. A, B, and C also apply to X, so shouldn't that mean X isn't an issue as well."

The problem comes in that the second sentence in each scenario is left shortened if not completely left out, making it hard to tell which version of 'What about' a person is using.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tone_argument

The vast majority of people are emotion based creatures. Logic tends to be used after the fact to justify their emotional stance. Women are socially more allowed to express their emotions, and thus the stereotype that they are more based on emotions arises, but while men express their emotions less due to social pressures, I've seen no evidence they are ruled by their emotions less.

So these groups are important. They allow for people to advocate for themselves and to be heard as something more than a lone voice in the wilderness.

Interesting, any data to support that?