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work toward what should be Ay, there's the rub: what should we work toward? This issue almost never gets discussed, except by implication. We hear over and ove

work toward what should be Ay, there's the rub: what should we work toward? This issue almost never gets discussed, except by implication. We hear over and over how we "need more women in tech". But even if everyone agreed that we do, how much more is enough? Should we stop after reaching 33% women? 50%? 60%? Often we hear the vague assertion that the percentage of women in tech should be close to the percentage of women in the general population—you can hear it echo every time the word "underrepresented" gets uttered—but this assertion is rarely justified. And indeed we can see how potentially absurd this criterion is by applying it to cases that don't serve the same political ends as "more women in tech"—i.e., by observing that women are "underrepresented" in prison, men are "underrepresented" in the daycare industry, etc. (Putting more women in prison isn't often offered as a way to stick it to the Patriarchy.) The assumption that increasing the percentage of women in tech is virtuous—quite a different goal, mind you, from encouraging all interested parties (female or not) to pursue the subject—pervades our discourse, to the point where "improve the percentage of women in tech" and "increase the percentage of women in tech" have become synonymous. To see through this trick, simply consider the similar case of the percentage of college graduates who are female. Women currently constitute approximately 57% of college graduates; i.e., women are overrepresented by a gap of around 14% vs. men. The question then arises: what would it mean to "improve" this percentage? We see in a flash that "equality" has nothing to do with it—I have never seen any mainstream source call for "improving the percentage of women among college graduates" by decreasing that percentage—unless, of course, by "equality" we mean that having women overrepresented among college graduates will help address other inequalities, such as the preponderance of male CEOs, male professors, and male billionaires. In this case, we simply return to the beginning: what should we work toward? Should we strive for proportional gender representation in every field of human endeavor? Unless men and women (and, indeed, all people) are perfectly identical, this is a prescription for eternal conflict—a fair characterization, I'd say, of our lamentable status quo.

pron 13y ago
Ay, there's the rub: what should we work toward? The first thing is, as always, to think about the current situation, and analyze its politics. See who the parties are. What their interests are. Whether their interests are authentic, or merely a result of many years of social pressure. What power is in question? Who has it? Who doesn't? Why? Once you understand the politics (which isn't easy because we often confuse politics with authentic will, merely because we've been subject to that politics for so long that we don't know anything else), then you can have people argue over values and how they believe things should be.
- pron 13y ago
  I'd like to add one more thing: you question whether having more women in tech is virtuous. I don't know if it is, but I can say this: the tech industry (unlike prison) yields a lot of power in our society. And when a certain group of people i largely excluded from a source of power, it stands to reason that there's a problem here.
  - lexcorvus 13y ago
    And when a certain group of people i[s] largely excluded from a source of power, it stands to reason that there's a problem here. This is one of the great unexamined claims of our time. It assumes that members of Group X are the best (or even good) advocates for the welfare of Group X. But if Group X is underrepresented in the halls of power, it does not follow that Group X would be better off if they had more influence. This is easy to see by setting Group X to minor children, whose representation in powerful positions is negligible, and indeed whose members are ineligible even to vote. But extending the franchise to five-year-olds isn't (to my knowledge) a top political priority, and rightly so. "Children's suffrage" would generally make children worse off, not better. Rather than a dog-eat-dog free-for-all that pits Group X against Group Y and Group Y against Group Z, a sounder principle is this: for responsible government, the responsible must rule. Responsible rulers can balance the inevitably competing interests of different groups, using the time-honored but curiously unfashionable virtue of human wisdom. And while it is certainly the case that there are many wise and responsible women—and, indeed, not a few wise and responsible children—the assumption that all human subgroups are on average equally wise and responsible is completely unjustified. The trickery implicit in the phrase "excluded from a source of power" is thus revealed: just because a group is underrepresented in the halls of power, it does not follow that they are being "excluded" by anything. How then to ensure that the responsible will rule? We arrive now at the key question. It is as yet unanswered. But it seems like a question worth working on...

pron 13y ago

Ay, there's the rub: what should we work toward? The first thing is, as always, to think about the current situation, and analyze its politics. See who the parties are. What their interests are. Whether their interests are authentic, or merely a result of many years of social pressure. What power is in question? Who has it? Who doesn't? Why? Once you understand the politics (which isn't easy because we often confuse politics with authentic will, merely because we've been subject to that politics for so long that we don't know anything else), then you can have people argue over values and how they believe things should be.

pron 13y ago
I'd like to add one more thing: you question whether having more women in tech is virtuous. I don't know if it is, but I can say this: the tech industry (unlike prison) yields a lot of power in our society. And when a certain group of people i largely excluded from a source of power, it stands to reason that there's a problem here.
- lexcorvus 13y ago
  And when a certain group of people i[s] largely excluded from a source of power, it stands to reason that there's a problem here. This is one of the great unexamined claims of our time. It assumes that members of Group X are the best (or even good) advocates for the welfare of Group X. But if Group X is underrepresented in the halls of power, it does not follow that Group X would be better off if they had more influence. This is easy to see by setting Group X to minor children, whose representation in powerful positions is negligible, and indeed whose members are ineligible even to vote. But extending the franchise to five-year-olds isn't (to my knowledge) a top political priority, and rightly so. "Children's suffrage" would generally make children worse off, not better. Rather than a dog-eat-dog free-for-all that pits Group X against Group Y and Group Y against Group Z, a sounder principle is this: for responsible government, the responsible must rule. Responsible rulers can balance the inevitably competing interests of different groups, using the time-honored but curiously unfashionable virtue of human wisdom. And while it is certainly the case that there are many wise and responsible women—and, indeed, not a few wise and responsible children—the assumption that all human subgroups are on average equally wise and responsible is completely unjustified. The trickery implicit in the phrase "excluded from a source of power" is thus revealed: just because a group is underrepresented in the halls of power, it does not follow that they are being "excluded" by anything. How then to ensure that the responsible will rule? We arrive now at the key question. It is as yet unanswered. But it seems like a question worth working on...