4 ms·

Investing time to target a certain demographic seems discriminative to the excluded demographics. If equality is the goal, this seems hypocritical.

• fatbird 14y ago
  Not when the targeted demographic is historically under-represented. Making an effort to include those who wouldn't be is not the same as reducing submissions from those who are normally included.
  • smokeyj 14y ago
    How does a demographic become a)targeted, and b) under-represented? It comes across as arbitrary. Especially in the context of running a business to deliver value. I think if you see all people as just people, a notion like "targeting a demographic" comes across as racist / sexist / and plain old discriminative. But that's just one opinion.
    • fatbird 14y ago
      A demographic gets targeted just because it's under-represented. Women are under-represented in STEM for historical reasons that amount to widespread sexism. You suggest gender-blindness is the solution. I don't disagree that such blindness is a worthwhile goal, but to simply say "let's all be gender blind now" without addressing an existing under-representation just cements the imbalance. Demographics realities have inertia. Women don't go into STEM just because that's not something 'that women do'. It's only appropriate to be blind once the imbalance is wiped out. That's not to say that affirmative action as previously imagined is the right way to address the imbalance--it's been shown not to be for a variety of reasons. But as this shows, and as GoGaRuCo shows, when you eliminate gender advantages for men, women are selected equally in blind judging, so there's no essential difference between men and women, just an historical artifact worth eliminating.
      • smokeyj 14y ago
        I don't accept the notion of a demographic being "under-represented". I think it's arbitrary and you haven't addressed it. There is no "correct" amount of representation, and trying to offset workforce statistics due to some misplaced sense of morality is hardly altruistic. If people are discouraging women from STEM, address that. If people are racist, address that. You feel there's too many white people in your office? The answer isn't affirmative action, it's to quite being a racist. There's no such thing as too much of a race (unless, you're a racist). To say more women should be in STEM is sexist. I mean, if more women get into STEM, great. But to say an entire sex should do something is nonsensical. It's entirely possible they don't want to study stem. It's possible they value other knowledge that is equally important. To say that they're under-represented is to belittle what individuals choose to do with their lives.
        • fatbird 14y ago
          The problem is that the imbalance is what's discouraging women from entering STEM careers; addressing it just means doing things like this conference is doing to increase female participation. But to say an entire sex should do something is nonsensical. It's entirely possible they don't want to study stem. You realize these two sentences contradict each other, I hope. You say that it's non-sensical to discuss what the entire sex should do, then try to talk about what the entire gender may or may not want as a reason for (or against) acting. To say that they're under-represented is to belittle what individuals choose to do with their lives. No, it doesn't, because it doesn't require any individual to do anything, or to give an individual responsibility for what the entire gender does. When I talk about "under" represented, I mean that absent the historical injustice of sexism, you would see a different gender balance. And as this conference and GoGaRuCo demonstrate, when you control for the historical imbalance, women and men are selected equally to speak in a blind process, thus showing equal ability, if not interest; it's reasonable to assume that after correcting the historical artifact, gendered participation ratios would be much closer. I've already agreed that affirmative action isn't the answer, but this--community outreach, basically--isn't affirmative action in any sense.
          • 14y ago
• geofft 14y ago
  The goal is fairness, not equality.
  • betterunix 14y ago
    How is disproportionate representation fair?
    • davekinkead 14y ago
      > How is disproportionate representation fair? Disproportionate representation is fair (only) if the criteria of discrimination is justifiable. An obtuse example: Gifted & hardworking athletes are disproportionally over-represented at the olympics, vice gifted + lazy, non-gifted + lazy, and non-gifted + hardworking ones.
    • jb17 14y ago
      I suppose you are not talking about disproportionate representation of women in tech here?
      • betterunix 14y ago
        No, I am talking about the disproportionate representation at the conference itself, because the field itself is what lacks diversity. Fix the diversity problem within the field, and if after that the conferences lack diversity, we can fix that problem too.
    • Gormo 14y ago
      How is it fair to treat human beings as instances of abstract categories rather than as individuals who possess their own agency?
      • betterunix 14y ago
        In either case, how is what the woman did with this conference a good thing? On the one hand, she categorized people as "male or female" and on the other she created a situation where there were a higher proportion of women speaking at the conference than were even in the field.
• Mystitat 14y ago
  If acceptance decisions were made based on gender, that would be discrimination. The article doesn't say that. "To keep the selection process fair, Courtney chose applicants based on their pitches only, without looking at the speaker’s identity or gender. The result was a 50/50 split between male and female speakers, which she counted as a success." It baffles me how you can consider men an "excluded demographic" in this scenario.