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That's a straw man. "Audition via github/coding tests/open source contributions" is not equivalent to a "blind audition" for musicians. GitHub/OSS already have

That's a straw man. "Audition via github/coding tests/open source contributions" is not equivalent to a "blind audition" for musicians. GitHub/OSS already have lower participation rates from women and minorities than the technology industry as a whole precisely because the OSS "meritocracy" fails to address discriminatory behavior and is not blind: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/women-considered-better-coders-hide-gender-github https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/women-con... Blind coding tests would come the closest to the equivalent of a blind audition, but coding tests as hiring criteria have their own problems in general.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
The conclusions of the actual study don't support your claims. From Scott Alexander's review of it: A non-peer-reviewed paper shows that women get more requests accepted than men. In one subgroup, unblinding gender gives women a bigger advantage; in another subgroup, unblinding gender gives men a bigger advantage. When gender is unblinded, both men and women do worse; it’s unclear if there are statistically significant differences in this regard. Only one of the study’s subgroups showed lower acceptance for women than men, and the size of the difference was 63% vs. 64%, which may or may not be statistically significant. This may or may not be related to the fact, demonstrated in the study, that women propose bigger and less-immediately-useful changes on average; no attempt was made to control for this. This tiny amount of discrimination against women seems to be mostly from other women, not from men. http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-excited-about-that-github-study/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-exci... Most of the results of that study suggest open source is friendlier to women than to men. But the study isn't really that high quality, and the results aren't that strong, so I wouldn't draw a very strong conclusion from this. When that study came out I asked the authors for their data set and analysis scripts. They categorically refused. Also not a strong indication of quality.

yummyfajitas 10y ago

The conclusions of the actual study don't support your claims. From Scott Alexander's review of it: A non-peer-reviewed paper shows that women get more requests accepted than men. In one subgroup, unblinding gender gives women a bigger advantage; in another subgroup, unblinding gender gives men a bigger advantage. When gender is unblinded, both men and women do worse; it’s unclear if there are statistically significant differences in this regard. Only one of the study’s subgroups showed lower acceptance for women than men, and the size of the difference was 63% vs. 64%, which may or may not be statistically significant. This may or may not be related to the fact, demonstrated in the study, that women propose bigger and less-immediately-useful changes on average; no attempt was made to control for this. This tiny amount of discrimination against women seems to be mostly from other women, not from men. http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-excited-about-that-github-study/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-exci... Most of the results of that study suggest open source is friendlier to women than to men. But the study isn't really that high quality, and the results aren't that strong, so I wouldn't draw a very strong conclusion from this. When that study came out I asked the authors for their data set and analysis scripts. They categorically refused. Also not a strong indication of quality.