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[edited for typos and grammer] Anecdotally, I've run a couple of tech conferences and know others who have as well fairly recently. We've made a point to hold

[edited for typos and grammer] Anecdotally, I've run a couple of tech conferences and know others who have as well fairly recently. We've made a point to hold workshops for under represented groups, had the Codes of Conduct, make a lot of extra effort to reach out to women as speakers etc.. In the end, we would get 5 to 10 times as many talk submissions from men, accept nearly all of the talks by women (often turning down higher quality talks from men) trying to get diversity numbers and have a much higher cancellation rate form the women for various reasons, especially money. If we were lucky we would get 20-30% women speakers when all of that was done. I've also been told by some diversity activists that, in order to get women to speak and to get higher percentages of women as speakers etc., unlike most of the men, you need to pay for their travel etc., offer free tickets for women attendees, consider offering stipends for women who speak etc.. Others, organizing other conferences have shared similar experiences. It's one thing to fight against blatant sexism which I'm for, but this is turning into something else.

nwienert 8y ago
I’ll repeat points that aren’t my original ideas, but are painfully obvious here. It’s very simple what it’s become: sexist against men. This is what happens when you aim for equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity. I believe we’re in a Kantian second stage. We were sexist against women. Now, we’re sexist against men. The hopeful third step
- AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
  Kantian second stage For those who slept through the philosophy class, what these stages are?
  - jkaptur 8y ago
    Thesis, antithesis, synthesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic
    - scarmig 8y ago
      Kant and Hegel are... different.
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        And the Marxian dialectic is supposed to be different still.
      - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > Kant and Hegel are... different Hegel, when discussing his dialectic, ascribed it to Kant. Presumably to keep philosophy majors on their toes.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- chc 8y ago
  > This is what happens when you aim for equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity. People throw this accusation around all the time, but it doesn't make much sense. Outcomes are the only holistic way to measure opportunity. If you're seeing one group getting lesser outcomes, there are only two possibilities: Their opportunities are being artificially limited somewhere, or one of the groups is simply better than the other. So if you really believe this is a meaningful distinction to draw — that measuring outcomes can't tell us about opportunity — what you're really saying is, "The groups who haven't traditionally been in power are in that position because they are innately less capable."
  - leereeves 8y ago
    There's a third possibility: men and women really do have different interests. Further evidence for this comes from the observation that: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...
    - chc 8y ago
      That doesn't seem like a third possibility — it sounds like the same thing as "The groups who haven't traditionally been in power are in that position because they are innately less capable." It's theoretically possible that women just generally suck at computers, but if that's someone's argument, I'd prefer they come out and actually make the argument instead of throwing around smokescreens about "equality of outcomes vs. equality of opportunity."
      - leereeves 8y ago
        Capable isn't the same thing as interested. I know many smart people who have no interest in programming (and wonder why I enjoy it). As The Atlantic said: > Then again, it could just be that, feeling financially secure and on equal footing with men, some women will always choose to follow their passions, rather than whatever labor economists recommend. And those passions don’t always lie within science [or technology].
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  I think I prefer dynamic systems view. We're oscillating. We've been under the target, overcorrected, and we're above the target now. Like always in (widely-understood) politics, this will be met with another overcorrection; all we can hope for is that there's dampening in the system, so that we'll converge on target at some point.
  - whiddershins 8y ago
    I don’t really like being accepting of oscillation. Forward movement, progress, shouldn’t be defined as updating who we discriminate against. Progress would be to stop discriminating. Optimizing for equality of outcome seems to be causing discrimination. That doesn’t look like progress to me.
    - kuzehanka 8y ago
      It is not progress at all. The pendulum of who to discriminate against has been swinging back and forth for hundreds of years. And every time a new group is targeted, it is to the cheers of some other group. It's difficult to have a factual debate around workplace discrimination because anyone who suggests that women are being favoured, is instantly attacked by social justice activists who rely more on moral outrage rather than facts or logic. A lot of the discussion on this thread today would not be something that people would say out loud near coworkers.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      I agree with you strongly. This isn't progress. This is essentially the same shit on a different day, and amplified by social media. I'm by no means accepting of it, I just feel this analogy is more accurate. I brought up dynamic systems to point out that this isn't and won't be a three-step process of "the extreme, the other extreme, the golden middle". This phenomenon is continuous and oscillating; more than that, it can be dampened, stable or runaway, and which of those it is, depends on a lot of factors. If we manage to dampen it down, then we'll have made progress.
    - roguecoder 8y ago
      If you aren't just hiring every person who walks through the door, you are discriminating. The question is whether you are hiring on relevant characteristics or irrelevant bullshit, and whether your job is more appealing to people on the basis of protected characteristics in ways that end up with an overwhelmingly-male workforce of people willing to be treated unfairly. Being thoughtful and taking responsibility for which people you are choosing to include is at least honest, unlike accepting a sexist status quo as magically "neutral".
- radicalbyte 8y ago
  It's this kind of thing which gets abused in politics. You see the same thing with a certain countries in the Middle East. So, you're a boring white male who works in one of these industries. You're told constantly that you benefit from "white male privilege". Your experience, the statistics, clearly show this to be bullst. What do you do? Do you trust anything that other authority figures tell you? Of course not. So you stop your kids getting vaccinated and vote for your country to leave the EU because it means 350 million a week more for your National Health Service.. This is the trap progressives - whose number I count myself in - must do better to avoid if they want to progress towards a fairer and better world.
  - pas 8y ago
    There are a lot of clueless "progressives" out there. Usually more focused on their ideology/dogma, than on actual problems and solutions.
- sizzle 8y ago
  I'm genuinely curious how we might factor in the differences between genders in occupation selection and that women and men may innately value different types of work e.g. women are more empathic than men and dominate the nursing field etc
  - pas 8y ago
    By keeping an open mind. It's ok if 90% of women want to just play with kids all day, and 90% of men want to play with guns all day. But telling, suggesting, stopping the other 10% from trying the other side is the problem. It's inherently hard. After all, statistically 9 out of 10 will match your expectations, but you should embrace the outliers, help them understand, that they're perfectly okay, and capable of doing whatever they think they want, be it guns, C++, teacher, nurse, etc.
- pas 8y ago
  I'm interested in what you think of actions that aim to correct entrenched issues by forcing them. eg affirmative action.
tonyob 8y ago
Reminds me of Electroconf. A GitHub conference where they did blind selection in an effort to avoid biases. Everyone selected ended up being male. Someone complained on Twitter and they had to cancel the whole event.
solidsnack9000 8y ago
It's one thing to fight against blatant sexism which I'm for, but this is turning into something else. Maybe it's the result of individuals asynchronously but collaboratively acting to get the most for their class of people. Since there isn't a "council of women in technology" that meets bi-weekly to decide what each speaker should do for each conference, the women speakers act independently much of the time. To get the best for women they know they have to ask for stuff: fees, travel, tickets for other women. Men are not going to just give it to them. They try to do their level best there every time they get an invite. Every so often -- through casual conversation, meet-ups, online communities, articles in magazines, letters to the editor -- there is a chance to communicate about what worked and what didn't. There isn't an easy way for communication to happen about the net effect of speakers' actions for a particular conference when it's happening, or even afterward. There is a ratchet effect and in, addition, a general sense that "there is still more to be done" for women in technology. When the next conference rolls around, still more is attempted...
- solidsnack9000 8y ago
  What are the downvotes about?
onetimeusename 8y ago
That's interesting. I have seen a number of female tech personalities being pretty critical of being asked to speak for free. I have never been paid by a conference I spoke at, speaking as a male. I never connected that maybe having that expectation of getting remuneration discourages people from speaking since most conferences probably don't. That said, I have come to see some pushes for diversity in tech as being extortionist. Some of the tactics used by some specific women who push for diversity in tech are blatantly self-serving like offering workplace diversity consulting but also naming and shaming corporations and individuals for lack of diversity.
- roguecoder 8y ago
  If conferences were built by men for men and are, in some inadvertent way, less rewarding for women to attend, it would make sense that women substitute monetary compensation for the non-monetary compensation they don't get.
  - pas 8y ago
    Is there a fairness issue if the conf is not gender diverse enough? (but does blind speaker selection, and offers the same compensation to any prospective speaker) If it seems like a literal boys club, maybe it's ok if organizers don't cajole women to attend, who don't seem to want to.

nwienert 8y ago

I’ll repeat points that aren’t my original ideas, but are painfully obvious here. It’s very simple what it’s become: sexist against men. This is what happens when you aim for equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity. I believe we’re in a Kantian second stage. We were sexist against women. Now, we’re sexist against men. The hopeful third step

AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
Kantian second stage For those who slept through the philosophy class, what these stages are?
- jkaptur 8y ago
  Thesis, antithesis, synthesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic
  - scarmig 8y ago
    Kant and Hegel are... different.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      And the Marxian dialectic is supposed to be different still.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > Kant and Hegel are... different Hegel, when discussing his dialectic, ascribed it to Kant. Presumably to keep philosophy majors on their toes.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
chc 8y ago
> This is what happens when you aim for equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity. People throw this accusation around all the time, but it doesn't make much sense. Outcomes are the only holistic way to measure opportunity. If you're seeing one group getting lesser outcomes, there are only two possibilities: Their opportunities are being artificially limited somewhere, or one of the groups is simply better than the other. So if you really believe this is a meaningful distinction to draw — that measuring outcomes can't tell us about opportunity — what you're really saying is, "The groups who haven't traditionally been in power are in that position because they are innately less capable."
- leereeves 8y ago
  There's a third possibility: men and women really do have different interests. Further evidence for this comes from the observation that: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...
  - chc 8y ago
    That doesn't seem like a third possibility — it sounds like the same thing as "The groups who haven't traditionally been in power are in that position because they are innately less capable." It's theoretically possible that women just generally suck at computers, but if that's someone's argument, I'd prefer they come out and actually make the argument instead of throwing around smokescreens about "equality of outcomes vs. equality of opportunity."
    - leereeves 8y ago
      Capable isn't the same thing as interested. I know many smart people who have no interest in programming (and wonder why I enjoy it). As The Atlantic said: > Then again, it could just be that, feeling financially secure and on equal footing with men, some women will always choose to follow their passions, rather than whatever labor economists recommend. And those passions don’t always lie within science [or technology].
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
TeMPOraL 8y ago
I think I prefer dynamic systems view. We're oscillating. We've been under the target, overcorrected, and we're above the target now. Like always in (widely-understood) politics, this will be met with another overcorrection; all we can hope for is that there's dampening in the system, so that we'll converge on target at some point.
- whiddershins 8y ago
  I don’t really like being accepting of oscillation. Forward movement, progress, shouldn’t be defined as updating who we discriminate against. Progress would be to stop discriminating. Optimizing for equality of outcome seems to be causing discrimination. That doesn’t look like progress to me.
  - kuzehanka 8y ago
    It is not progress at all. The pendulum of who to discriminate against has been swinging back and forth for hundreds of years. And every time a new group is targeted, it is to the cheers of some other group. It's difficult to have a factual debate around workplace discrimination because anyone who suggests that women are being favoured, is instantly attacked by social justice activists who rely more on moral outrage rather than facts or logic. A lot of the discussion on this thread today would not be something that people would say out loud near coworkers.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    I agree with you strongly. This isn't progress. This is essentially the same shit on a different day, and amplified by social media. I'm by no means accepting of it, I just feel this analogy is more accurate. I brought up dynamic systems to point out that this isn't and won't be a three-step process of "the extreme, the other extreme, the golden middle". This phenomenon is continuous and oscillating; more than that, it can be dampened, stable or runaway, and which of those it is, depends on a lot of factors. If we manage to dampen it down, then we'll have made progress.
  - roguecoder 8y ago
    If you aren't just hiring every person who walks through the door, you are discriminating. The question is whether you are hiring on relevant characteristics or irrelevant bullshit, and whether your job is more appealing to people on the basis of protected characteristics in ways that end up with an overwhelmingly-male workforce of people willing to be treated unfairly. Being thoughtful and taking responsibility for which people you are choosing to include is at least honest, unlike accepting a sexist status quo as magically "neutral".
radicalbyte 8y ago
It's this kind of thing which gets abused in politics. You see the same thing with a certain countries in the Middle East. So, you're a boring white male who works in one of these industries. You're told constantly that you benefit from "white male privilege". Your experience, the statistics, clearly show this to be bullst. What do you do? Do you trust anything that other authority figures tell you? Of course not. So you stop your kids getting vaccinated and vote for your country to leave the EU because it means 350 million a week more for your National Health Service.. This is the trap progressives - whose number I count myself in - must do better to avoid if they want to progress towards a fairer and better world.
- pas 8y ago
  There are a lot of clueless "progressives" out there. Usually more focused on their ideology/dogma, than on actual problems and solutions.
sizzle 8y ago
I'm genuinely curious how we might factor in the differences between genders in occupation selection and that women and men may innately value different types of work e.g. women are more empathic than men and dominate the nursing field etc
- pas 8y ago
  By keeping an open mind. It's ok if 90% of women want to just play with kids all day, and 90% of men want to play with guns all day. But telling, suggesting, stopping the other 10% from trying the other side is the problem. It's inherently hard. After all, statistically 9 out of 10 will match your expectations, but you should embrace the outliers, help them understand, that they're perfectly okay, and capable of doing whatever they think they want, be it guns, C++, teacher, nurse, etc.
pas 8y ago
I'm interested in what you think of actions that aim to correct entrenched issues by forcing them. eg affirmative action.

tonyob 8y ago

Reminds me of Electroconf. A GitHub conference where they did blind selection in an effort to avoid biases. Everyone selected ended up being male. Someone complained on Twitter and they had to cancel the whole event.

solidsnack9000 8y ago

It's one thing to fight against blatant sexism which I'm for, but this is turning into something else. Maybe it's the result of individuals asynchronously but collaboratively acting to get the most for their class of people. Since there isn't a "council of women in technology" that meets bi-weekly to decide what each speaker should do for each conference, the women speakers act independently much of the time. To get the best for women they know they have to ask for stuff: fees, travel, tickets for other women. Men are not going to just give it to them. They try to do their level best there every time they get an invite. Every so often -- through casual conversation, meet-ups, online communities, articles in magazines, letters to the editor -- there is a chance to communicate about what worked and what didn't. There isn't an easy way for communication to happen about the net effect of speakers' actions for a particular conference when it's happening, or even afterward. There is a ratchet effect and in, addition, a general sense that "there is still more to be done" for women in technology. When the next conference rolls around, still more is attempted...

solidsnack9000 8y ago
What are the downvotes about?

onetimeusename 8y ago

That's interesting. I have seen a number of female tech personalities being pretty critical of being asked to speak for free. I have never been paid by a conference I spoke at, speaking as a male. I never connected that maybe having that expectation of getting remuneration discourages people from speaking since most conferences probably don't. That said, I have come to see some pushes for diversity in tech as being extortionist. Some of the tactics used by some specific women who push for diversity in tech are blatantly self-serving like offering workplace diversity consulting but also naming and shaming corporations and individuals for lack of diversity.

roguecoder 8y ago
If conferences were built by men for men and are, in some inadvertent way, less rewarding for women to attend, it would make sense that women substitute monetary compensation for the non-monetary compensation they don't get.
- pas 8y ago
  Is there a fairness issue if the conf is not gender diverse enough? (but does blind speaker selection, and offers the same compensation to any prospective speaker) If it seems like a literal boys club, maybe it's ok if organizers don't cajole women to attend, who don't seem to want to.