4 ms·

> "Only 11% of all engineers in the U.S. are women, according to Department of Labor. The situation is a better among computer programmers, but not much. Women

> "Only 11% of all engineers in the U.S. are women, according to Department of Labor. The situation is a better among computer programmers, but not much. Women account for only 26% of all American coders." - Wired and > Track the gender of your applicants, not just the hires. > "You need to be aiming for a 50/50 men-to-women ratio." - Allison Sawyer, The Wall Street Journal > *NOTE: aim for this ratio in these early days, as we try to build towards a more equitable system. This pretty much invalidates itself. You can't have a 50/50 ratio if only 26% of the population of programmers is women. You, at best, can hope for a 74/26 split. Also? Gender bias in hiring is illegal, regardless of direction. In fact, employers are generally make the "gender identification" and "race identification" portions optional for liability reasons in this regard. If your objective is 50/50, you need to encourage more women to enter the field [programming] rather than complain it isn't 50/50. 74/26 makes it mathematically impossible for every company to hire a 50/50 split.

arrrg 12y ago
Literally no one was arguing to not hire based on qualification. Why is it that, whenever this comes up, everyone starts babbling incomprehensibly about qualifications as if that’s relevant? The link presents several non-qualifications-based ways of not hiring more women. Another one I think might work (that has already been very successful in increasing the number of women speakers at conferences) is to actively approach women and ask them to apply and talk to them about the job if they say they are not sure whether they are qualified. The actual selection process between those applications can and probably should still be blind, but the pool of applications will be a better mix. Yeah, it’s more work, but nobody says this is easy.
- epochwolf 12y ago
  Because there are places that will loosen qualifications to attract people of a specific race or gender because they can't find enough qualified candidates of that race. One of the universities I attended had a lower set of requirements and scholarships for those that identified as "black". (The region was 96% white at the time so not really a surprise. Diversity was lacking and the admissions department was desperate.)
  - arrrg 12y ago
    The education situation is not symmetric and should not be treated as such.
  - darthgoogle 12y ago
    Some commentators like Thomas Sowell, who is himself black, believe that "affirmative action" is in fact bigoted because it basically says that a certain group of people are not capable of getting a job or an education unless they are given special help.
    - omegaham 12y ago
      More nastily, it leads to the actually competent people of that group being forced to "prove" themselves. Additionally, it leads to increased failure rates of people who get into the program / position. Advocates like to think that it's just these racist old meanies in admissions and hiring positions who are dictating unfair requirements, and it's bullshit. Often, requirements, especially very selective ones, are well-founded. Saying, "If they get in, they'll succeed" is a bad idea.
      - darthgoogle 12y ago
        Looks like advocates of identity politics aren't going to stop until they bring back discrimination based on race and not merit: March 2014 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303802104579449522929568060 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230380210... "In 1996, California voters approved Prop. 209 to block public institutions, notably state universities, from discriminating by race. Asian-American freshman enrollment at the University of California's 10-flagship universities has since climbed to 40.2% from 36.6% and to 47% from 39.7% at Berkeley." Prop. 209's ban on racial preferences has helped Asian Americans by forcing admissions officers to focus on such academic qualifications as high-school grades and test scores. Liberals argue that race-based admissions are necessary to increase black and Hispanic representation, but minority enrollment has increased since 1996 at the University of California. Hispanics now make up 28.1% of the UC system's freshman class, up from 13.8% in 1996, while black enrollment has ticked up to 4% from 3.8%." ...the U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on Michigan's Prop. 2, which is based on Prop. 209, and liberals hope this will provide grounds for a new lawsuit to overturn California's ban on racial preferences. ...Democratic Attorney General Kamala Harris and Governor Jerry Brown have both argued for its repeal."
- nedwin 12y ago
  Exactly. And if you're actively seeking out more candidates who are women you're likely to get a better gender ratio than companies who aren't as proactive.
- opendais 12y ago
  > Literally no one was arguing to not hire based on qualification. Why is it that, whenever this comes up, everyone starts babbling incomprehensibly about qualifications as if that’s relevant? Let us say someone does what you and the OP suggest. We have a pool of 76 men and 24 women [using the original percentages here from the OP]. The end result is a 50/50 [20 men, 20 women] ratio in Company X. Company Y & Z have a pool of 56 men and 4 women to choose from. Let us say they both put the "normal" level of effort into the process. Company Y ends up with 28 men and 2 women. Company Z ends up with 28 men and 2 women. How is pushing down the ratio of women in less progressive companies a good solution? To me, that seems like a significantly worse situation for the women who end up in the less progressive companies. The situation with women speakers in conferences is completely different. The ratio of speakers to audience allows you to do that. If you have 10 people in the audience [seems reasonable for a minimum] at a talk, you only need 10% of people in the field to be women to fulfill demand for conference speakers on a 50/50 basis.
  - skybrian 12y ago
    Your implicit assumption is that supply is inelastic. But why should that be the case? Better benefits and working conditions result in more women being attracted to tech. To assume otherwise means that you don't think women respond to incentives. (Admittedly, there will be a lag here since reputations take a while to change.) Sure, the "less progressive" companies are going to have to compete with that, but I don't see the downside in companies competing to treat their employees better.
    - opendais 12y ago
      > Your implicit assumption is that supply is inelastic. But why should that be the case? I don't think a large percentage of women completely 100% refuse to enter tech because it isn't using more gender neutral wording and companies don't aim for a 50/50 ratio of applicants and/or hires. You even admit that it is mostly inelastic and unlikely to change except in a span of years. Things like pay equality and directly encouraging women to enter Tech [rather than targeting employers hiring practices] makes more sense to me. > Better benefits and working conditions result in more women being attracted to tech. (Admittedly, there will be a lag here since reputations take a while to change.) Except, the OP seeks to create those at the expense of women who work in less progressive companies. This leads to a pool of women of whose lives are improved and a separate pool whose lives are negatively impacted. I'm not seeing that as an improvement. Pay equality and more education would be more productive. > Sure, the "less progressive" companies are going to have to compete with that, but I don't see the downside in companies competing to treat their employees better. They actually wouldn't have to even try to compete. They'd simply hire more men because it requires 0 effort on their part. The supply of men isn't going to magically change just because you encourage women. If everything is equal [pay, benefits, etc], they'd be interchangeable regardless of gender.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> This pretty much invalidates itself. You can't have a 50/50 ratio if only 26% of the population of programmers is women. They are Department of Labor statistics which, I believe you will find, measure not the people qualified to be employed in a particular role, but the people currently employed in that role. So, contrary to your position, if the current numbers on that are 74/26, it is not a logical contradiction that every company in the industry could get closer to 50/50, without either reducing the total number of employed programmers or convincing anyone who doesn't already prefer to work as a programmer to "enter the field". You are confusing the population of people employed as programmers with the population of people available to be employed as programmers. (I'm not saying that the latter population, without changes earlier in the pipeline, would necessarily support a 50/50 split either, I'm saying you can't draw conclusions about it from the former population.)
- opendais 12y ago
  > You are confusing the population of people employed as programmers with the population of people available to be employed as programmers. http://cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CS_Degree_and_Enrollment_Trends_2010-11.pdf http://cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CS_Degree... If between 11 and 14% of CS graduates are women, I think its a pretty reasonable number to work with 26% are available to be employed as programmers and that unemployment is roughly equal between genders. Maybe you are right and the real number is 30% or whatever. It certainly isn't 50% which leads to the same mathematical limitation. I also highly suspect given the ratio is heavily lopsided in university education that it is pretty close to 26%. I can see how people might disagree, I'm just voicing my opinion which is backed up by the available facts [ratio of CS majors, ratio of those currently employed, etc]. To me, it seems to make more sense to concentrate effort on: 1) Pay equality. 2) Encouraging women to enter the field via education. Those two are solvable problems. Trying to encourage 50/50 ratios in "progressive companies" and leaving the women unlucky enough to end up in "other companies" is simply going to make the situation worse, not better. How would you feel if you were the only gay/female/black/[insert minority person here] in a relatively conservative workplace? I highly suspect the answer to that question is some combination of "isolated" and "vulnerable". Tbh, the only way I'd accept your argument as valid is if you could show the population of female programmers is significantly underemployed compare to the population of male programmers. Even then, it'd have to be a truly noticeable and significant gap.
FedRegister 12y ago
>If your objective is 50/50, you need to encourage more women to enter the field [programming] rather than complain it isn't 50/50. 74/26 makes it mathematically impossible for every company to hire a 50/50 split. It's not mathematically impossible. You'll just have the "excess" 48% of the population working in fields that have the opposite gender balance. (Whether or not this is desirable is an exercise left to the reader.)
- opendais 12y ago
  That isn't how a hiring process works. You don't get to arbitrarily redistribute labor across industries & fields with a magic wand.

arrrg 12y ago

Literally no one was arguing to not hire based on qualification. Why is it that, whenever this comes up, everyone starts babbling incomprehensibly about qualifications as if that’s relevant? The link presents several non-qualifications-based ways of not hiring more women. Another one I think might work (that has already been very successful in increasing the number of women speakers at conferences) is to actively approach women and ask them to apply and talk to them about the job if they say they are not sure whether they are qualified. The actual selection process between those applications can and probably should still be blind, but the pool of applications will be a better mix. Yeah, it’s more work, but nobody says this is easy.

epochwolf 12y ago
Because there are places that will loosen qualifications to attract people of a specific race or gender because they can't find enough qualified candidates of that race. One of the universities I attended had a lower set of requirements and scholarships for those that identified as "black". (The region was 96% white at the time so not really a surprise. Diversity was lacking and the admissions department was desperate.)
- arrrg 12y ago
  The education situation is not symmetric and should not be treated as such.
- darthgoogle 12y ago
  Some commentators like Thomas Sowell, who is himself black, believe that "affirmative action" is in fact bigoted because it basically says that a certain group of people are not capable of getting a job or an education unless they are given special help.
  - omegaham 12y ago
    More nastily, it leads to the actually competent people of that group being forced to "prove" themselves. Additionally, it leads to increased failure rates of people who get into the program / position. Advocates like to think that it's just these racist old meanies in admissions and hiring positions who are dictating unfair requirements, and it's bullshit. Often, requirements, especially very selective ones, are well-founded. Saying, "If they get in, they'll succeed" is a bad idea.
    - darthgoogle 12y ago
      Looks like advocates of identity politics aren't going to stop until they bring back discrimination based on race and not merit: March 2014 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303802104579449522929568060 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230380210... "In 1996, California voters approved Prop. 209 to block public institutions, notably state universities, from discriminating by race. Asian-American freshman enrollment at the University of California's 10-flagship universities has since climbed to 40.2% from 36.6% and to 47% from 39.7% at Berkeley." Prop. 209's ban on racial preferences has helped Asian Americans by forcing admissions officers to focus on such academic qualifications as high-school grades and test scores. Liberals argue that race-based admissions are necessary to increase black and Hispanic representation, but minority enrollment has increased since 1996 at the University of California. Hispanics now make up 28.1% of the UC system's freshman class, up from 13.8% in 1996, while black enrollment has ticked up to 4% from 3.8%." ...the U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on Michigan's Prop. 2, which is based on Prop. 209, and liberals hope this will provide grounds for a new lawsuit to overturn California's ban on racial preferences. ...Democratic Attorney General Kamala Harris and Governor Jerry Brown have both argued for its repeal."
nedwin 12y ago
Exactly. And if you're actively seeking out more candidates who are women you're likely to get a better gender ratio than companies who aren't as proactive.
opendais 12y ago
> Literally no one was arguing to not hire based on qualification. Why is it that, whenever this comes up, everyone starts babbling incomprehensibly about qualifications as if that’s relevant? Let us say someone does what you and the OP suggest. We have a pool of 76 men and 24 women [using the original percentages here from the OP]. The end result is a 50/50 [20 men, 20 women] ratio in Company X. Company Y & Z have a pool of 56 men and 4 women to choose from. Let us say they both put the "normal" level of effort into the process. Company Y ends up with 28 men and 2 women. Company Z ends up with 28 men and 2 women. How is pushing down the ratio of women in less progressive companies a good solution? To me, that seems like a significantly worse situation for the women who end up in the less progressive companies. The situation with women speakers in conferences is completely different. The ratio of speakers to audience allows you to do that. If you have 10 people in the audience [seems reasonable for a minimum] at a talk, you only need 10% of people in the field to be women to fulfill demand for conference speakers on a 50/50 basis.
- skybrian 12y ago
  Your implicit assumption is that supply is inelastic. But why should that be the case? Better benefits and working conditions result in more women being attracted to tech. To assume otherwise means that you don't think women respond to incentives. (Admittedly, there will be a lag here since reputations take a while to change.) Sure, the "less progressive" companies are going to have to compete with that, but I don't see the downside in companies competing to treat their employees better.
  - opendais 12y ago
    > Your implicit assumption is that supply is inelastic. But why should that be the case? I don't think a large percentage of women completely 100% refuse to enter tech because it isn't using more gender neutral wording and companies don't aim for a 50/50 ratio of applicants and/or hires. You even admit that it is mostly inelastic and unlikely to change except in a span of years. Things like pay equality and directly encouraging women to enter Tech [rather than targeting employers hiring practices] makes more sense to me. > Better benefits and working conditions result in more women being attracted to tech. (Admittedly, there will be a lag here since reputations take a while to change.) Except, the OP seeks to create those at the expense of women who work in less progressive companies. This leads to a pool of women of whose lives are improved and a separate pool whose lives are negatively impacted. I'm not seeing that as an improvement. Pay equality and more education would be more productive. > Sure, the "less progressive" companies are going to have to compete with that, but I don't see the downside in companies competing to treat their employees better. They actually wouldn't have to even try to compete. They'd simply hire more men because it requires 0 effort on their part. The supply of men isn't going to magically change just because you encourage women. If everything is equal [pay, benefits, etc], they'd be interchangeable regardless of gender.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> This pretty much invalidates itself. You can't have a 50/50 ratio if only 26% of the population of programmers is women. They are Department of Labor statistics which, I believe you will find, measure not the people qualified to be employed in a particular role, but the people currently employed in that role. So, contrary to your position, if the current numbers on that are 74/26, it is not a logical contradiction that every company in the industry could get closer to 50/50, without either reducing the total number of employed programmers or convincing anyone who doesn't already prefer to work as a programmer to "enter the field". You are confusing the population of people employed as programmers with the population of people available to be employed as programmers. (I'm not saying that the latter population, without changes earlier in the pipeline, would necessarily support a 50/50 split either, I'm saying you can't draw conclusions about it from the former population.)

opendais 12y ago
> You are confusing the population of people employed as programmers with the population of people available to be employed as programmers. http://cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CS_Degree_and_Enrollment_Trends_2010-11.pdf http://cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CS_Degree... If between 11 and 14% of CS graduates are women, I think its a pretty reasonable number to work with 26% are available to be employed as programmers and that unemployment is roughly equal between genders. Maybe you are right and the real number is 30% or whatever. It certainly isn't 50% which leads to the same mathematical limitation. I also highly suspect given the ratio is heavily lopsided in university education that it is pretty close to 26%. I can see how people might disagree, I'm just voicing my opinion which is backed up by the available facts [ratio of CS majors, ratio of those currently employed, etc]. To me, it seems to make more sense to concentrate effort on: 1) Pay equality. 2) Encouraging women to enter the field via education. Those two are solvable problems. Trying to encourage 50/50 ratios in "progressive companies" and leaving the women unlucky enough to end up in "other companies" is simply going to make the situation worse, not better. How would you feel if you were the only gay/female/black/[insert minority person here] in a relatively conservative workplace? I highly suspect the answer to that question is some combination of "isolated" and "vulnerable". Tbh, the only way I'd accept your argument as valid is if you could show the population of female programmers is significantly underemployed compare to the population of male programmers. Even then, it'd have to be a truly noticeable and significant gap.

FedRegister 12y ago

>If your objective is 50/50, you need to encourage more women to enter the field [programming] rather than complain it isn't 50/50. 74/26 makes it mathematically impossible for every company to hire a 50/50 split. It's not mathematically impossible. You'll just have the "excess" 48% of the population working in fields that have the opposite gender balance. (Whether or not this is desirable is an exercise left to the reader.)

opendais 12y ago
That isn't how a hiring process works. You don't get to arbitrarily redistribute labor across industries & fields with a magic wand.