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“get as many women on stage as I possibly could.” Isn't enforcing a gender ratio just more gender discrimination? How is "we need more $x" any less discriminat

• metajack 14y ago
  She knew the issue was the lack of submissions, so she worked hard to get lots of talk submissions from women. When she actually selected the talks, she did so without knowledge of the person's gender. She got the ratio she wanted by encouraging submissions, not by enforcing a quota.
  • CJefferson 14y ago
    The fact she selected the talks without looking at the gender is great, and I missed on my first read (woops, I blame HN encouraging fast replies for more karma).
    • jimzvz 14y ago
      With only 18 applications and with her specifically encouraging people that she knew to apply it must be very likely that she knew who the individual was when going through the applications. So even though she claims that it was gender blind, it wasn't really.
  • Narkov 14y ago
    "She got the ratio she wanted" That's my issue - the ratio she wanted just perpetuates this gender discrimination. Unless the gender ratio of expert speakers in this industry is somehow exactly 50/50, she has discriminated against one gender just to satisfy her magical ratio. Whether she did this blind to the applicants gender is of no consequence - she thinks it was a win when IMHO, is just gender more discrimination.
    • fatbird 14y ago
      Her blind judging produced an even gender split. How are men discriminated against?
      • Narkov 14y ago
        Selecting the best person for the job isn't discrimination but IMHO, celebrating a 50/50 split is discrimination if that isn't the natural gender split.
        • neumann_alfred 14y ago
          WTF is a "natural gender split"? This is a cultural problem, and that culture like to hide behind a supposed nature which in large parts really just is learned behaviour, resulting from that culture.
          • Narkov 14y ago
            "WTF is a "natural gender split"?" When I said "natural gender split" I meant the real gender split amongst the population of capable speakers and not the wider (world) population.
            • neumann_alfred 14y ago
              And I'm saying that's based on culture more than nature. One can't suppress women more or less worldwide for millenia, then say "equal rights, voting rights, go!" (in some parts of the world), and then take time shortly after, without looking at all the power and role training that has been accumulated and is still in effect (it's not like feminism got through to every last one even in "the west", is it), and explain the remaining inequalities as "just the way it is" or whatever. "We" owe "them" a lot more than that, and not little of that is centuries, millenia of genetic selection. Now that smart women don't get burned at the stake so easily, and can choose their partners freely, we'll see if they won't catch up.. I kinda have my hunches ^^
        • 14y ago
  • azakai 14y ago
    > She knew the issue was the lack of submissions, so she worked hard to get lots of talk submissions from women. This is a complex issue, there isn't a single root cause. Lack of submissions is just one factor among many.
    • metajack 14y ago
      I didn't mean to imply there was. Sorry. It does seem to be the lowest hanging fruit.
• CJefferson 14y ago
  I agree. However, the majority of speakers end up being male, white, able bodied. The question is, are these the best people for the job, or just the easiest to get to fill your slots? It is unfortunately hard to know the answer to that question. Possibly the only way to find out is to get more speakers outside this group and see how well they are received.
• wollw 14y ago
  The most interesting part of the article for me was this: To keep the selection process fair, Courtney chose applicants based on their pitches only, without looking at the speaker’s identity or gender. Based on this it doesn't look like she was discriminating.
  • betterunix 14y ago
    She went out of her way to convince a particular demographic group to make submissions. That is where the discrimination lies. Let's put it this way: if I went around giving extra encouragement to white men to apply, and then proudly announced that I had a blind review process, would you deny that there was discrimination? What exactly is the difference?
    • marquis 14y ago
      I recently attended 2 birthday parties for young kids, one on a weekday and one on a Saturday afternoon. The first, was mostly mothers, immediate family and their kids. For the second, the couple went out of their way to make sure that men could come to the birthday party. They send out adult invites encouraging alcohol beverages to be brought, and called all their women friends and asked them firmly to bring their boyfriends. I brought mine, who was begrudgingly included because of his perception it would be full of kids and women but he ended up having a wonderful time talking to other men (as well as hanging out with kids and their toys and of course some classic kids party food). Is this discrimination on the couple's part to try and reach past a culture of birthday parties full of just mothers and their kids?
      • betterunix 14y ago
        See, the difference there is that the kids parents are already half men, half women. Professional technology workers are not half women, and unlike a child's birthday party, being invited to speak at a conference is a career-boosting event. If disproportionate representation is not discriminatory, what exactly is it?
• coryrc 14y ago
  Define "best person".
  • Narkov 14y ago
    My definition of "best person" has nothing to do with gender. This article is suggesting getting a gender balance is a win when selecting people to speak.
• fatbird 14y ago
  Correcting an imbalance is not the same as unbalancing something. Looking to increase X at Y's expense is only discriminatory against Y if Y's current state is deserved. Unless you're prepared to argue that men deserve all the slots at a tech conference, it's not discriminatory to enlarge the applicant pool to seek greater female representation. GoGaRuCo famously achieves high female participation with blind judging of submissions, simply by making sure that the applicant pool has a large number of women through efforts to reach out to, and evangelize in, female tech communities. Is that discriminatory against men?
• oftenwrong 14y ago
  >How is "we need more $x" any less discriminating than "we need less $y"? If $x already experiences discrimination that is beyond the control of the organizer, the organizer discriminating against $y merely helps to balance things out. Also, in this case gender was not considered in candidate selection.
• geofft 14y ago
  The selection process was gender-blind. At no point did she enforce a gender ratio; it just worked out that way. It is entirely fair to count that a 50/50 split as a win if you have a theory that gender is irrelevant to whether they are the best person for the job. (If you have a theory that the split ought not to be even, well....)
  • betterunix 14y ago
    "(If you have a theory that the split ought not to be even, well....)" Well...what? My theory is that the demographics of speakers at a conference should be equal to the demographics of the field itself. If the field is 95% men and 5% women, just how many women should we expect to see on a panel of ten speakers? "The selection process was gender-blind" Sure, but so what? She went out of her way to convince women to apply and did not do so for men. Masking that sort of discrimination with a gender-blind selection process is just as dishonest as masking the bias towards white upper-class men in university admissions by pointing to a blind review process.