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> To argue that women can't make it as hackers is like arguing, post-Jackie Robinson, that blacks can't develop professional baseball skills. You might want to
by ZoFreX 13y ago
> To argue that women can't make it as hackers is like arguing, post-Jackie Robinson, that blacks can't develop professional baseball skills.
You might want to reword that last part slightly, maybe? winces
I feel I should warn you that if you use that argument, you may in some cases get a "Bell Curve" inspired response to do with average ability or performance of the genders / races. To enter the merit argument is to risk being bogged down in it unnecessarily: Even if women were 10% as likely as men to be good programmers, one still should not and should not be allowed to discriminate programmers on the basis of gender. Instead they should have their actual ability assessed, without anyone taking probabilistic short-cuts in thinking. (In other words, equality of opportunity)
- danso 13y agoWe don't even have to speculate whether x% of women can be as good as men. We know that for some time, women have been among the elite in computer science. You argue that it's as simple as just doing merit-based analysis, which implies that because women are so scarce in the field, it's because they've failed these impartial merit based tests. I'm arguing that it's quite possible that these impartial merit based tests don't exist. They don't even exist for men -- i.e. "it's not what you know but who you know".
- ZoFreX 13y ago> You argue that it's as simple as just doing merit-based analysis, which implies that because women are so scarce in the field, it's because they've failed these impartial merit based tests. I'm arguing that it's quite possible that these impartial merit based tests don't exist. Sorry, this isn't what I meant to imply at all. That was very much a "how things should be" rather than what things are like right now.