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> Why ... are large companies such as Google deliberately targeting specific groups? Large companies are judged by the diversity of their employees. They want

> Why ... are large companies such as Google deliberately targeting specific groups? Large companies are judged by the diversity of their employees. They want to hire more women. In order to hire more women, there needs to be more qualified women applying for jobs. In order for there to be more qualified women applying for jobs, there needs to be more qualified women. In order for there to be more qualified women we need to be teaching more girls how to program. > What will be in the girls-only code program that might be inappropriate for boys? It's more about what won't be in those classes, specifically: inappropriate boys. One school of thought about why there are less girls in computer science classes is that the environment/culture? of the currently self-selected students can sometimes (seem) abrasive and uninviting. Maybe that is just a stereotype, but offering classes specifically for underrepresented demographics is at least a method to test that theory.

titraprutr 10y ago
> Large companies are judged by the diversity of their employees And here is the problem - diversity has become a goal rather than a natural consequence of everyone having equal chances. It's not the lack of diversity that those companies should focus on - much more important is an elimination of any kind of discrimination based on gender/race/religion etc.
- hdctambien 10y ago
  I see it as more of a temporary compensation for earlier gender based biases. In a world where boys and girls are given the same opportunities at (even) younger ages, you wouldn't need something like this. As it stands right now, it is intimidating for a girl to sign up for her first computer science class knowing that it will be full of boys that have been encouraged to do computer sciencey things from an earlier age. There is the perception that the girl will come in at a disadvantage. Allowing a them to sign up for a class with the perception that they all have equal footing/previous knowledge could give them the confidence they need to join the classes with boys that are perceived to have more experience. When the time comes that girls are signing up for computer science classes at the same rate as boys, then classes like this would no longer be necessary. That being said, public schools cannot create X-only classes. There is no discrimination in which students can signup for my computer science classes and I have unfortunately low female enrollment.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - sh_tinh_hair 10y ago
    Apologetics only gets you so far. In this case I don't care for the attempt. Let those who have an interest take advantage and the rest catch as catch can. This marketed approach is badly conceived.
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    of boys that have been encouraged to do computer sciencey things from an earlier age. YMMW but IIRC my experience has been a bit different :-/ Edit: added IIRC
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > I see it as more of a temporary compensation for earlier gender based biases. So you tolerate that a complete sex shall be punished for former sins. Clearly not my sense of justice. > In a world where boys and girls are given the same opportunities at (even) younger ages, you wouldn't need something like this. Everybody can use the internet to learn coding. But at least to me it seems that mostly boys (with few exceptions) seem to love doing this - in particular from young age on.
    - hdctambien 10y ago
      > So you tolerate that a complete sex shall be punished for former sins This is not a zero-sum game. Creating a new opportunity for girls does not remove an existing opportunity for a boy. > But at least to me it seems that mostly boys (with few exceptions) seem to love doing this - in particular from young age on Maybe you should try talking to more girls and asking them what they are interested in.
      - wolfgke 10y ago
        > > So you tolerate that a complete sex shall be punished for former sins > This is not a zero-sum game. Creating a new opportunity for girls does not remove an existing opportunity for a boy. Not when quotas are involved. In Germany, where I live, every few years serious attempts to introduce women quota for companies are attempted to pass as a law (which typically are only prevented in the last moment because of massive protests of business associations).
- NetStrikeForce 10y ago
  > And here is the problem - diversity has become a goal rather than a natural consequence of everyone having equal chances. And here is the problem - people think diversity is a goal per se, while it is actually a competitive advantage.
  - RUG3Y 10y ago
    It's a wrong assumption that diversity of demographics is the same as diversity of thought. It's also wrong to assume that a lack of diversity in demographics automatically equates to a lack of diversity in thought. A competitive advantage would be gained through diversity of thought. Making gender, skin color or any other superficial characteristic into a numbers game in order to look diverse is in no way a competitive advantage.
    - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
      > It's a wrong assumption that diversity of demographics is the same as diversity of thought. It's also wrong to assume that a lack of diversity in demographics automatically equates to a lack of diversity in thought. > A competitive advantage would be gained through diversity of thought. Making gender, skin color or any other superficial characteristic into a numbers game in order to look diverse is in no way a competitive advantage. Well, not really. I mean, not at all. I appreciate you took your time to tell me I'm wrong, but you might want to support it with something more solid. Diversity of thought is not just what happens when you get two people together. If those people have a very similar upbringing, chances are they think in a similar way. They might reach different conclusions and one of them might reach the right one, but they might be missing points of view that could increase their accuracy when making decisions. Your upbringing shapes how you think, what you fear, what you wish. Of course even inside the same communities very similar people might have completely different trains of thought, but what you call "superficial characteristics" as gender or skin colour it is (unfortunately) not superficial in many places. Many men can't even imagine the things a woman has to endure at the workplace, or your skin colour when you're a minority. Even things like being a native speaker of a foreign tongue shapes how you think. The culture of your hometown, province, region, country defines you, too. If you've lived a different life because of your gender, ethnicity, passport, disability, country of birth or even family wealth chances are you can bring quite different points of view than people with different gender, ethnicity, passport, disability, country of birth or even family wealth. There are studies that show correlation between higher diversity and better performance (Forbes, McKinsey). P.S.: I suspect you're the one that downvoted me (just above 500 karma, only reply to my comment). I appreciate you followed up with a comment, but downvotes are not "I disagree" signals. Please learn to be a bit more tolerant with people that does not think like you, instead of trying to shut their voice down.
- mcguire 10y ago
  You cannot stop an object in motion without applying a force in the direction opposite the motion. And you cannot eliminate a large scale social trend by declaring it over.
pdyck 10y ago
> can sometimes (seem) abrasive and uninviting Well that's just discriminating against nerds
- tehwalrus 10y ago
  Politeness and intelligence/knowledge are not mutually exclusive traits.
- pliptvo 10y ago
  > Well that's just discriminating against nerds This is exactly the problem. You've assumed that 'nerds' -- people who are skilled and passionate about tech things -- are male. It's that kind of assumption which enforces a massive mental barrier for women to be able to consider themselves legitimately passionate and skilled about tech, and also for men to recognise them as such too. Until the association of nerds with masculinity is broken up, boys and men will dominate tech at the expense of others. And until that that point, programs like Google's which foster different ('minoritean') associations with being passionate and skilled with tech will be needed.
  - reader5000 10y ago
    "Stereotypes" come from patterns in empirical reality. They are not created and administered by some Evil White Male committee as you seem to think. Women are in no way discriminated against in tech, nor have they ever been. Passionate and skilled women in tech certainly exist, they are just relatively rare. Withholding resources from boys because of their gender actually is discrimination, and should not be encouraged.
    - macintux 10y ago
      > Women are in no way discriminated against in tech, nor have they ever been. I don't even.
    - digler999 10y ago
      > Passionate and skilled women in tech certainly exist, they are just relatively rare. exactly. I dont agree with you that women have "never been" discriminated against, but I do agree that vocational fields are not homogeneously populated (and that is not the result of discrimination). * I dont see very many women police officers * (this was mentioned on HN last week) not very many oil-rig workers are women * I dont see many heterosexual men working as hair dressers or bridal shop/wedding planners/fashion designers/makeup artists ("this is clearly a glass door organized by the Gay Male Establishment to prevent heterosexual men from breaking into this field. Such abuse of privilege" /s). * I don't see many women working as bouncers at night clubs * I don't see many women working as commercial pilots. But you know, for all the "I don't see"'s , when I do see one that defies the norm, I dont think much of it. They're people just like anyone else, free to pursue whatever they want. But it's not automatically discrimination when groups of people gravitate to certain fields.
NoodleIncident 10y ago
> Large companies are judged by the diversity of their employees. As the one judging the ones doing the judging, it's fun to imagine that the judgement is what motivates the corporation's actions. I don't think that's actually what happens though. The motivation I've actually seen corporations act upon, is that diversity in employees has direct benefits to the company's bottom line. For example, googling "facebook diversity" gets me this paragraph: >"Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. In order to achieve that mission, we need an employee base that reflects a broad range of experiences, backgrounds, races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, abilities and many other characteristics." You can assume that they're all lying to virtue signal if you want, it's impossible to stop anyone from assuming such things. But if you're proposing an alternative to their stated motivations, you should probably explain why that motivation isn't actually true.
pgbovine 10y ago
N=1 personal anecdote: A few years ago I spent a day visiting Wellesley College's CS department (all-women's school) to give a talk and to meet with professors and students. And one of the main vibes I got was that students felt way more comfortable there just focusing on hacking, understanding, debugging, struggling, etc. with the hard parts of CS/programming without worrying about the tons of well-documented implicit biases, stereotype threats, and issues that are commonly-found in regular CS classrooms. It wasn't that they somehow wanted special treatment as "women studying CS" (they didn't) -- they just wanted to be able to focus on CS without all the other external crap that their peers in traditional CS programs need to deal with. See Unlocking the Clubhouse for a comprehensive study of this phenomenon.

titraprutr 10y ago

> Large companies are judged by the diversity of their employees And here is the problem - diversity has become a goal rather than a natural consequence of everyone having equal chances. It's not the lack of diversity that those companies should focus on - much more important is an elimination of any kind of discrimination based on gender/race/religion etc.

hdctambien 10y ago
I see it as more of a temporary compensation for earlier gender based biases. In a world where boys and girls are given the same opportunities at (even) younger ages, you wouldn't need something like this. As it stands right now, it is intimidating for a girl to sign up for her first computer science class knowing that it will be full of boys that have been encouraged to do computer sciencey things from an earlier age. There is the perception that the girl will come in at a disadvantage. Allowing a them to sign up for a class with the perception that they all have equal footing/previous knowledge could give them the confidence they need to join the classes with boys that are perceived to have more experience. When the time comes that girls are signing up for computer science classes at the same rate as boys, then classes like this would no longer be necessary. That being said, public schools cannot create X-only classes. There is no discrimination in which students can signup for my computer science classes and I have unfortunately low female enrollment.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sh_tinh_hair 10y ago
  Apologetics only gets you so far. In this case I don't care for the attempt. Let those who have an interest take advantage and the rest catch as catch can. This marketed approach is badly conceived.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  of boys that have been encouraged to do computer sciencey things from an earlier age. YMMW but IIRC my experience has been a bit different :-/ Edit: added IIRC
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > I see it as more of a temporary compensation for earlier gender based biases. So you tolerate that a complete sex shall be punished for former sins. Clearly not my sense of justice. > In a world where boys and girls are given the same opportunities at (even) younger ages, you wouldn't need something like this. Everybody can use the internet to learn coding. But at least to me it seems that mostly boys (with few exceptions) seem to love doing this - in particular from young age on.
  - hdctambien 10y ago
    > So you tolerate that a complete sex shall be punished for former sins This is not a zero-sum game. Creating a new opportunity for girls does not remove an existing opportunity for a boy. > But at least to me it seems that mostly boys (with few exceptions) seem to love doing this - in particular from young age on Maybe you should try talking to more girls and asking them what they are interested in.
    - wolfgke 10y ago
      > > So you tolerate that a complete sex shall be punished for former sins > This is not a zero-sum game. Creating a new opportunity for girls does not remove an existing opportunity for a boy. Not when quotas are involved. In Germany, where I live, every few years serious attempts to introduce women quota for companies are attempted to pass as a law (which typically are only prevented in the last moment because of massive protests of business associations).
NetStrikeForce 10y ago
> And here is the problem - diversity has become a goal rather than a natural consequence of everyone having equal chances. And here is the problem - people think diversity is a goal per se, while it is actually a competitive advantage.
- RUG3Y 10y ago
  It's a wrong assumption that diversity of demographics is the same as diversity of thought. It's also wrong to assume that a lack of diversity in demographics automatically equates to a lack of diversity in thought. A competitive advantage would be gained through diversity of thought. Making gender, skin color or any other superficial characteristic into a numbers game in order to look diverse is in no way a competitive advantage.
  - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
    > It's a wrong assumption that diversity of demographics is the same as diversity of thought. It's also wrong to assume that a lack of diversity in demographics automatically equates to a lack of diversity in thought. > A competitive advantage would be gained through diversity of thought. Making gender, skin color or any other superficial characteristic into a numbers game in order to look diverse is in no way a competitive advantage. Well, not really. I mean, not at all. I appreciate you took your time to tell me I'm wrong, but you might want to support it with something more solid. Diversity of thought is not just what happens when you get two people together. If those people have a very similar upbringing, chances are they think in a similar way. They might reach different conclusions and one of them might reach the right one, but they might be missing points of view that could increase their accuracy when making decisions. Your upbringing shapes how you think, what you fear, what you wish. Of course even inside the same communities very similar people might have completely different trains of thought, but what you call "superficial characteristics" as gender or skin colour it is (unfortunately) not superficial in many places. Many men can't even imagine the things a woman has to endure at the workplace, or your skin colour when you're a minority. Even things like being a native speaker of a foreign tongue shapes how you think. The culture of your hometown, province, region, country defines you, too. If you've lived a different life because of your gender, ethnicity, passport, disability, country of birth or even family wealth chances are you can bring quite different points of view than people with different gender, ethnicity, passport, disability, country of birth or even family wealth. There are studies that show correlation between higher diversity and better performance (Forbes, McKinsey). P.S.: I suspect you're the one that downvoted me (just above 500 karma, only reply to my comment). I appreciate you followed up with a comment, but downvotes are not "I disagree" signals. Please learn to be a bit more tolerant with people that does not think like you, instead of trying to shut their voice down.
mcguire 10y ago
You cannot stop an object in motion without applying a force in the direction opposite the motion. And you cannot eliminate a large scale social trend by declaring it over.

pdyck 10y ago

> can sometimes (seem) abrasive and uninviting Well that's just discriminating against nerds

tehwalrus 10y ago
Politeness and intelligence/knowledge are not mutually exclusive traits.
pliptvo 10y ago
> Well that's just discriminating against nerds This is exactly the problem. You've assumed that 'nerds' -- people who are skilled and passionate about tech things -- are male. It's that kind of assumption which enforces a massive mental barrier for women to be able to consider themselves legitimately passionate and skilled about tech, and also for men to recognise them as such too. Until the association of nerds with masculinity is broken up, boys and men will dominate tech at the expense of others. And until that that point, programs like Google's which foster different ('minoritean') associations with being passionate and skilled with tech will be needed.
- reader5000 10y ago
  "Stereotypes" come from patterns in empirical reality. They are not created and administered by some Evil White Male committee as you seem to think. Women are in no way discriminated against in tech, nor have they ever been. Passionate and skilled women in tech certainly exist, they are just relatively rare. Withholding resources from boys because of their gender actually is discrimination, and should not be encouraged.
  - macintux 10y ago
    > Women are in no way discriminated against in tech, nor have they ever been. I don't even.
  - digler999 10y ago
    > Passionate and skilled women in tech certainly exist, they are just relatively rare. exactly. I dont agree with you that women have "never been" discriminated against, but I do agree that vocational fields are not homogeneously populated (and that is not the result of discrimination). * I dont see very many women police officers * (this was mentioned on HN last week) not very many oil-rig workers are women * I dont see many heterosexual men working as hair dressers or bridal shop/wedding planners/fashion designers/makeup artists ("this is clearly a glass door organized by the Gay Male Establishment to prevent heterosexual men from breaking into this field. Such abuse of privilege" /s). * I don't see many women working as bouncers at night clubs * I don't see many women working as commercial pilots. But you know, for all the "I don't see"'s , when I do see one that defies the norm, I dont think much of it. They're people just like anyone else, free to pursue whatever they want. But it's not automatically discrimination when groups of people gravitate to certain fields.

NoodleIncident 10y ago

> Large companies are judged by the diversity of their employees. As the one judging the ones doing the judging, it's fun to imagine that the judgement is what motivates the corporation's actions. I don't think that's actually what happens though. The motivation I've actually seen corporations act upon, is that diversity in employees has direct benefits to the company's bottom line. For example, googling "facebook diversity" gets me this paragraph: >"Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. In order to achieve that mission, we need an employee base that reflects a broad range of experiences, backgrounds, races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, abilities and many other characteristics." You can assume that they're all lying to virtue signal if you want, it's impossible to stop anyone from assuming such things. But if you're proposing an alternative to their stated motivations, you should probably explain why that motivation isn't actually true.

pgbovine 10y ago

N=1 personal anecdote: A few years ago I spent a day visiting Wellesley College's CS department (all-women's school) to give a talk and to meet with professors and students. And one of the main vibes I got was that students felt way more comfortable there just focusing on hacking, understanding, debugging, struggling, etc. with the hard parts of CS/programming without worrying about the tons of well-documented implicit biases, stereotype threats, and issues that are commonly-found in regular CS classrooms. It wasn't that they somehow wanted special treatment as "women studying CS" (they didn't) -- they just wanted to be able to focus on CS without all the other external crap that their peers in traditional CS programs need to deal with. See Unlocking the Clubhouse for a comprehensive study of this phenomenon.