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She asks if quotas are marginalizing women's achievements. The function being used to evaluate speakers is broken - that much is clear from the rate of women be

She asks if quotas are marginalizing women's achievements. The function being used to evaluate speakers is broken - that much is clear from the rate of women being selected. A solid guess is that the specific way in which it is broken is that it is giving undue weight to men, topics men find interesting, and topics that exclude women. In a sense, this is "outsourcing" the discriminatory elements. This has an obvious correction: put a counterweight on it in the form of a quota. Does this fix the illness? No. It is a pill, medicine to manage the symptoms of the illness while the illness is fought. The malady is diffused, the remedy is not, so it is easy to pick on the remedy - but it's better than doing nothing. We have some guesses about what the "right" number would be, and a quota of 20% or 25% is hardly getting us there - it is ensuring a lower bound. How much injustice is really resulting from having a lower bound?

pifflesnort 13y ago
> The function being used to evaluate speakers is broken - that much is clear from the rate of women being selected. What numbers do you have to demonstrate that the function is broken? What percentage of our industry is made up of women, and what percentage of them are interested in presenting at a conference? > This has an obvious correction: put a counterweight on it in the form of a quota. Does this fix the illness? No. It is a pill, medicine to manage the symptoms of the illness while the illness is fought. The malady is diffused, the remedy is not, so it is easy to pick on the remedy - but it's better than doing nothing. Why do you believe that enforcing the selection of speakers on a basis other than their qualifications is better than doing nothing?
- bcgraham 13y ago
  When "their qualifications" results in a selection rate of men approaching 100%, I think that's prima facie case that one of the most important qualifications is being a man. Furthermore, (% of industry that is women) x (% of women interested in presenting at a conference) is exactly what I was referring to when I talked about "outsourcing" the discrimination - the filter was set upstream.
  - pifflesnort 13y ago
    > When "their qualifications" results in a selection rate of men approaching 100%, I think that's prima facie case that one of the most important qualifications is being a man. Why is this a prima facie case proof of sexist qualification requirements? What evidence do you actually have? At the 2012 American Academy of Nursing Conference, the expert panels were roughly 100% female. Is this prima facie evidence that one of the most important qualifications was being a woman? [1] http://www.aannet.org/assets/docs/ConferenceMaterials/2012/complete%20onsite%20program%2010-4-12%20low-res.pdf http://www.aannet.org/assets/docs/ConferenceMaterials/2012/c... > Furthermore, (% of industry that is women) x (% of women interested in presenting at a conference) is exactly what I was referring to when I talked about "outsourcing" the discrimination - the filter was set upstream. I fail to see the issue here. Conferences have to work with the pool of speakers that they have.
    - bcgraham 13y ago
      >At the 2012 American Academy of Nursing Conference, the expert panels were roughly 100% female. Is this prima facie evidence that one of the most important qualifications was being a woman? I think we'll have to agree to disagree, because yes, I easily read that as prima facie evidence that one of the most important qualifications is being a woman. I think it's a great example of the filter being set upstream - men face hurdles when trying to become a nurse, and face bizarre challenges when practicing as a nurse (although I believe they are still favored for promotions and prestigious placing).
      - pifflesnort 13y ago
        I can't comprehend why you're arguing that these complex "upstream" cultural issues should force me to evaluate conference papers on any other grounds other than their technical merit -- something that would be the to the detriment of speakers, attendees, our industry, and my own sense of ethics and fairness to others.
        amputect 13y ago
- dspeyer 13y ago
  The number being that low is suspicious. In my vague, personal experience, the upper tiers of computing are about 10% female. The odds of 1 in 23 are 0.315. Plausible, but worth investigating. Are the speaker selectors favoring men? That should be possible to test for. If so, it needs to get clamped down on hard. Are women less inclined to try to speak at these conferences? If so, why? It's likely that making presenting more female-friendly would be worth it. Is this subfield just that male? If so, it's not the conference-organizers' place to deal with it, but someone should sniff around for active biases. In short, this is suspicious enough to justify a real investigation, and I'd be very interested to read the results of one.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    The odds of 1 in 23 are 0.315. Plausible, but worth investigating. That doesn't sound like something to reject the null hypothesis over.
    - dspeyer 13y ago
      Not reject, but kind of squint suspiciously at.
joyeuse6701 13y ago
I disagree. The function being used to evaluate speakers serves is NOT to achieve an arbitrary percentage split on genders of speakers, but to select the best speakers for a particular topic. If that happens to render a 100% female panel, so be it. Having said that, a human bias in gender does need to be removed if it exists. If this bias is for or against the inclusion of women, it should be removed. Applying a counterweight to achieve some superficial quota based on a societal demand just degrades the quality of the function and it's integrity. How ironic it would be to apply such a fix for a 'tech' conference.
dsrguru 13y ago
We can't propose effective solutions to the conference imbalance until we accurately identify the source. Your post assumes that the problem is with the function being used to evaluate speakers. That's far from certain. An arguably much likelier explanation is that, due to the huge gender imbalance in computing, the percentage of female applicants to speak at a conference is much lower than 20%. Therefore, the percentage of qualified applicants who are female is presumably much lower than 20%. Let's assume for the sake of this line of reasoning that the function for evaluating a speaker's ability is accurate. If you are looking to invite ten speakers to your conference and there is only one woman among the top ten speakers, it would make perfect sense if you only invited one woman. That makes you good at your job, not sexist. Now how do we go about changing this? Well, one approach is what you're suggesting--affirmative action. There are certainly pros and cons to introducing such a minimum quota, but I find the article's assessment that the cons seem to substantially outweigh the pros to be very persuasive. Inviting inferior speakers in an effort to increase the representation of a specific group at a conference is problematic for two main reasons: (1) it results in a conference that is expected to be worse quality and (2) it deprives women who actually are evaluated to be in the top ten speakers from knowing, and from having other people know, that their value to the conference came from their speaking ability rather than their second X chromosome. Additional ways in which the quota approach is problematic are that (3) it discriminates against the many other groups that are under-represented at tech conferences, as well as the oft-debated argument that (4) inviting a worse female speaker over a better male speaker is unfair for the man. If we suppose the quota system does more harm than good, what alternatives do we have? That's the million dollar question! The only answer I've got is to focus our efforts on addressing the sources of women's under-representation in computing in general, such as encouraging female students to study computer science, getting schools to examine whether their classroom environment discourages female students from pursuing CS, and help software companies identify whether their workplace atmosphere discourages women and what steps they can take to address that. Forcing conferences to invite more women or businesses to hire more women is a highly problematic and very short-term hack. Identifying and fixing the structural barriers to women in computing is a highly difficult but very long-term solution.
- Evbn 13y ago
  Your assumption that a total ordering of paper quality exists, that is holding you back.
SPSteinbeck 13y ago
You're bad at thinking.

pifflesnort 13y ago

> The function being used to evaluate speakers is broken - that much is clear from the rate of women being selected. What numbers do you have to demonstrate that the function is broken? What percentage of our industry is made up of women, and what percentage of them are interested in presenting at a conference? > This has an obvious correction: put a counterweight on it in the form of a quota. Does this fix the illness? No. It is a pill, medicine to manage the symptoms of the illness while the illness is fought. The malady is diffused, the remedy is not, so it is easy to pick on the remedy - but it's better than doing nothing. Why do you believe that enforcing the selection of speakers on a basis other than their qualifications is better than doing nothing?

bcgraham 13y ago
When "their qualifications" results in a selection rate of men approaching 100%, I think that's prima facie case that one of the most important qualifications is being a man. Furthermore, (% of industry that is women) x (% of women interested in presenting at a conference) is exactly what I was referring to when I talked about "outsourcing" the discrimination - the filter was set upstream.
- pifflesnort 13y ago
  > When "their qualifications" results in a selection rate of men approaching 100%, I think that's prima facie case that one of the most important qualifications is being a man. Why is this a prima facie case proof of sexist qualification requirements? What evidence do you actually have? At the 2012 American Academy of Nursing Conference, the expert panels were roughly 100% female. Is this prima facie evidence that one of the most important qualifications was being a woman? [1] http://www.aannet.org/assets/docs/ConferenceMaterials/2012/complete%20onsite%20program%2010-4-12%20low-res.pdf http://www.aannet.org/assets/docs/ConferenceMaterials/2012/c... > Furthermore, (% of industry that is women) x (% of women interested in presenting at a conference) is exactly what I was referring to when I talked about "outsourcing" the discrimination - the filter was set upstream. I fail to see the issue here. Conferences have to work with the pool of speakers that they have.
  - bcgraham 13y ago
    >At the 2012 American Academy of Nursing Conference, the expert panels were roughly 100% female. Is this prima facie evidence that one of the most important qualifications was being a woman? I think we'll have to agree to disagree, because yes, I easily read that as prima facie evidence that one of the most important qualifications is being a woman. I think it's a great example of the filter being set upstream - men face hurdles when trying to become a nurse, and face bizarre challenges when practicing as a nurse (although I believe they are still favored for promotions and prestigious placing).
    - pifflesnort 13y ago
      I can't comprehend why you're arguing that these complex "upstream" cultural issues should force me to evaluate conference papers on any other grounds other than their technical merit -- something that would be the to the detriment of speakers, attendees, our industry, and my own sense of ethics and fairness to others.
      - amputect 13y ago
dspeyer 13y ago
The number being that low is suspicious. In my vague, personal experience, the upper tiers of computing are about 10% female. The odds of 1 in 23 are 0.315. Plausible, but worth investigating. Are the speaker selectors favoring men? That should be possible to test for. If so, it needs to get clamped down on hard. Are women less inclined to try to speak at these conferences? If so, why? It's likely that making presenting more female-friendly would be worth it. Is this subfield just that male? If so, it's not the conference-organizers' place to deal with it, but someone should sniff around for active biases. In short, this is suspicious enough to justify a real investigation, and I'd be very interested to read the results of one.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  The odds of 1 in 23 are 0.315. Plausible, but worth investigating. That doesn't sound like something to reject the null hypothesis over.
  - dspeyer 13y ago
    Not reject, but kind of squint suspiciously at.

joyeuse6701 13y ago

I disagree. The function being used to evaluate speakers serves is NOT to achieve an arbitrary percentage split on genders of speakers, but to select the best speakers for a particular topic. If that happens to render a 100% female panel, so be it. Having said that, a human bias in gender does need to be removed if it exists. If this bias is for or against the inclusion of women, it should be removed. Applying a counterweight to achieve some superficial quota based on a societal demand just degrades the quality of the function and it's integrity. How ironic it would be to apply such a fix for a 'tech' conference.

dsrguru 13y ago

We can't propose effective solutions to the conference imbalance until we accurately identify the source. Your post assumes that the problem is with the function being used to evaluate speakers. That's far from certain. An arguably much likelier explanation is that, due to the huge gender imbalance in computing, the percentage of female applicants to speak at a conference is much lower than 20%. Therefore, the percentage of qualified applicants who are female is presumably much lower than 20%. Let's assume for the sake of this line of reasoning that the function for evaluating a speaker's ability is accurate. If you are looking to invite ten speakers to your conference and there is only one woman among the top ten speakers, it would make perfect sense if you only invited one woman. That makes you good at your job, not sexist. Now how do we go about changing this? Well, one approach is what you're suggesting--affirmative action. There are certainly pros and cons to introducing such a minimum quota, but I find the article's assessment that the cons seem to substantially outweigh the pros to be very persuasive. Inviting inferior speakers in an effort to increase the representation of a specific group at a conference is problematic for two main reasons: (1) it results in a conference that is expected to be worse quality and (2) it deprives women who actually are evaluated to be in the top ten speakers from knowing, and from having other people know, that their value to the conference came from their speaking ability rather than their second X chromosome. Additional ways in which the quota approach is problematic are that (3) it discriminates against the many other groups that are under-represented at tech conferences, as well as the oft-debated argument that (4) inviting a worse female speaker over a better male speaker is unfair for the man. If we suppose the quota system does more harm than good, what alternatives do we have? That's the million dollar question! The only answer I've got is to focus our efforts on addressing the sources of women's under-representation in computing in general, such as encouraging female students to study computer science, getting schools to examine whether their classroom environment discourages female students from pursuing CS, and help software companies identify whether their workplace atmosphere discourages women and what steps they can take to address that. Forcing conferences to invite more women or businesses to hire more women is a highly problematic and very short-term hack. Identifying and fixing the structural barriers to women in computing is a highly difficult but very long-term solution.

Evbn 13y ago
Your assumption that a total ordering of paper quality exists, that is holding you back.

SPSteinbeck 13y ago

You're bad at thinking.