8 ms·

I don't think any of us feel "threatened" by these identity politics articles. Just a little sad that we still patronise women and minorities in this way. Why

by cbeach 10y ago

I don't think any of us feel "threatened" by these identity politics articles. Just a little sad that we still patronise women and minorities in this way. Why do we see women and minorities as fair game to be tokens for our social engineering and clickbait? Have we stopped to ask any of these women if they want to be on our special-interest gendered side-shows, or whether they'd prefer to be part of the "main" competition instead? To me this is like entering female athletes into the paralympics on the basis of their gender. Without any evidence of their consent.

throwaway4891a 10y ago
There's a happier, less-dramatic sane-area leaving out overt misogyny and social-justice warrior cry-bully behavior. Also, in hiring there needs to be process removal of as many cognitive biases (ie blinding resume names/personal details) as possible to foster as fair of a messy ordeal as humanly possible. Another issue is the promulgation and veneration of taboo, protected groups as being automatically special proportional to an university-proscribed, identity/attribute(s) neoliberal caste system. Bollocks. I think such lists come from a positive intention for there to be less arbitrary discrimination and to motive likely-targeted/underrepresented individuals to succeed. I'm not sure how a special list helps motivate people with fundamental confidence, but instead may temporarily confer false confidence based on non-skill attribute(s) except by an inkling of almost getting on a generic list.
- UncleMeat 10y ago
  Note: the word "neoliberal" has nothing to do with social justice or even modern left wing movements and activism. It describes an economic policy that discourages regulation and government oversight.
tptacek 10y ago
We don't. We recognize that there is a significant gender imbalance in technology professions, markedly larger than that of any other cognitive non-routine profession, and are happy to acknowledge anything that might suggest a countervailing trend.
- cbeach 10y ago
  Do you have any evidence to suggest women are encouraged into our industry by this kind of tokenisation? And not discouraged by it?
  - tptacek 10y ago
    I don't accept the premise of your question, that noting female founders in the tech industry is "tokenization". A token is someone selected in order to represent a cohort of people. But that's not what this list is: presumably any successful female founder would be on it.
    - ori_b 10y ago
      > But that's not what this list is: presumably any successful female founder would be on it. Is your premise is that female founders are a fundamentally separate group from founders in general?
    - statictype 10y ago
      His question is still valid if you remove that word and replace it with something more accurate. FWIW, I think it's a great idea and a good way to encourage women to join a field that they perceive as not being welcoming to them but I don't have any hard data to support this (and don't think I need any)
- facepalm 10y ago
  So would you say sexism is the only thing that differentiates technology professions from other "cognitive non-routine professions", or is that criterion ("cognitive non-routine") perhaps handpicked to frame tech as anti-women?
  - tptacek 10y ago
    "Cognitive non-routine" isn't a term I made up. It's one of four broad classes of labor, one way economists use to divide up the working world. It's so broad a classification I'd have trouble seeing how it created biased framing. It's just a more precise way of saying "the professions" (in the traditional sense of medicine, the law, accounting, and engineering).
megablast 10y ago
> Have we stopped to ask any of these women if they want to be on our special-interest gendered side-shows, or whether they'd prefer to be part of the "main" competition instead? No, it is more like giving them separate awards, like the mens 400m and the womens 400m.
- cbeach 10y ago
  Your analogy breaks down due to the lack of a "men's 400m" event in technology.

by cbeach 10y ago

throwaway4891a 10y ago

There's a happier, less-dramatic sane-area leaving out overt misogyny and social-justice warrior cry-bully behavior. Also, in hiring there needs to be process removal of as many cognitive biases (ie blinding resume names/personal details) as possible to foster as fair of a messy ordeal as humanly possible. Another issue is the promulgation and veneration of taboo, protected groups as being automatically special proportional to an university-proscribed, identity/attribute(s) neoliberal caste system. Bollocks. I think such lists come from a positive intention for there to be less arbitrary discrimination and to motive likely-targeted/underrepresented individuals to succeed. I'm not sure how a special list helps motivate people with fundamental confidence, but instead may temporarily confer false confidence based on non-skill attribute(s) except by an inkling of almost getting on a generic list.

UncleMeat 10y ago
Note: the word "neoliberal" has nothing to do with social justice or even modern left wing movements and activism. It describes an economic policy that discourages regulation and government oversight.

tptacek 10y ago

We don't. We recognize that there is a significant gender imbalance in technology professions, markedly larger than that of any other cognitive non-routine profession, and are happy to acknowledge anything that might suggest a countervailing trend.

cbeach 10y ago
Do you have any evidence to suggest women are encouraged into our industry by this kind of tokenisation? And not discouraged by it?
- tptacek 10y ago
  I don't accept the premise of your question, that noting female founders in the tech industry is "tokenization". A token is someone selected in order to represent a cohort of people. But that's not what this list is: presumably any successful female founder would be on it.
  - ori_b 10y ago
    > But that's not what this list is: presumably any successful female founder would be on it. Is your premise is that female founders are a fundamentally separate group from founders in general?
  - statictype 10y ago
    His question is still valid if you remove that word and replace it with something more accurate. FWIW, I think it's a great idea and a good way to encourage women to join a field that they perceive as not being welcoming to them but I don't have any hard data to support this (and don't think I need any)
facepalm 10y ago
So would you say sexism is the only thing that differentiates technology professions from other "cognitive non-routine professions", or is that criterion ("cognitive non-routine") perhaps handpicked to frame tech as anti-women?
- tptacek 10y ago
  "Cognitive non-routine" isn't a term I made up. It's one of four broad classes of labor, one way economists use to divide up the working world. It's so broad a classification I'd have trouble seeing how it created biased framing. It's just a more precise way of saying "the professions" (in the traditional sense of medicine, the law, accounting, and engineering).

megablast 10y ago

> Have we stopped to ask any of these women if they want to be on our special-interest gendered side-shows, or whether they'd prefer to be part of the "main" competition instead? No, it is more like giving them separate awards, like the mens 400m and the womens 400m.

cbeach 10y ago
Your analogy breaks down due to the lack of a "men's 400m" event in technology.