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ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

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Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#241

Post by tkel »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #70
macspoofing wrote: post #32

Isn't it a slap in the face of speakers that took time to send in their proposals for presentations? "Your talk is great but your ethnicity or gender just isn't quite right"

Totally. Were I accepted and later dumped like this, I'd feel I was subject to actual gender/race discrimination. The whole thing is ridiculous. To fight perceived discrimination, those people are doing even more direct and overt discrimination.

So you would have gotten a minute taste of what it's like to be a woman in today's society.

In order to lift women up, yes it's necessary to push men aside to make room. But women are being and have been pushed aside every day by men for almost all of history.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#242

Post by leereeves »

selllikesybok wrote: post #240
macspoofing wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the "structural inequality" in this case? That there are more men than women in tech? If so, what is the 'structure' that causes this inequality?

Turtles, all the way down. ---- Or to be less glib, that's a great question, and like many, not simple to answer well. Mostly, it seems like a lack of positive reinforcement and role models (leading to self selection out at early ages), mixed with sexism in a a variety of forms (leading to lack of opportunities, or hostile environment and self selection out at later ages). But that's an oversimplification.

If women don't choose to go into tech, that's their own choice.

It's not as if men went into tech because of positive social reinforcement for being a nerd.

There's still a social stigma attached to it, which I'd love to see change, but it affects both men and women.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#243

Post by awa »

nojvek wrote: post #235
TeMPOraL wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally. Were I accepted and later dumped like this, I'd feel I was subject to actual gender/race discrimination. The whole thing is ridiculous. To fight perceived discrimination, those people are doing even more direct and overt discrimination.

I see this from another point of view. Suppose a female new grad goes to Electronconf and sees all male speakers. Suppose she goes to other conferences and it's the same story. She feels there's no way she'll be able to break ground and be recognized as successful. She slowly drops out and leaves the industry and goes somewhere where she can make friends like her. Now suppose she sees plenty of female speakers and sh…

You can generalize this in any way.

Height: Hey, all the conference speakers are really tall, there's no way I a 5'4" male be a conference speaker.

College: None of the conference speakers are from my university hence there's no way I from an unknown university can make it in the industry.

There are already a ton of female only events including conferences happening in the tech industry and if most cutting-edge stuff in a narrow field/tech (electron) is being done by male counterparts (or they are more interested in speaking about it) that shouldn't be a bad thing.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#244

Post by [deleted] »

selllikesybok wrote: post #236
mst wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's equality of outcome though, which is often terrible. I want a society where everybody gets an even shot, at which point I find it highly unlikely we'd end up at 50/50 - given programming has been both male-majority and female-majority over time I'm damned if I know in which direction it'd fall, but 50/50 usually means "you have forced people to be here who would've been better/happier somewhere else" and my fe…

Why is equality of outcome terrible, per se?

[deleted]

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#245

Post by rayiner »

mst wrote: post #233
rayiner wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between superficial equality and structural equality. Consider a society where 50% of tech CEOs and programmers were women, but it was socially acceptable to deny any given woman or man a job based on his or her gender. Such a society would have structural equality but not superficial equality. What you're talking about is superficial equality. Your point is correct within that narrow context, b…

That's equality of outcome though, which is often terrible. I want a society where everybody gets an even shot, at which point I find it highly unlikely we'd end up at 50/50 - given programming has been both male-majority and female-majority over time I'm damned if I know in which direction it'd fall, but 50/50 usually means "you have forced people to be here who would've been better/happier somewhere else" and my fe…

The equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity distinction is a cop-out. If you have real equality of opportunity then you should expect equality of outcome,[1] unless there is biological reason why women/black people/etc want to be left out of well-paying secure careers, or can't hack it in those careers. Maybe that's true, but it's an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof.

The fact that programming has been both male-majority and female-majority at different times proves my point, and undermines yours. There is nothing inherent about it that makes women select into or out of it. Society pushed women into it back when it was a low status profession and now pushes women out of it now that it's a high status profession.

[1] When people say equality of opportunity they really mean something well short of that. Equality of opportunity means that's if you take a sample of say 1,000 kids, they should experience extrinsic forces over their lifetime that aren't correlated with race/gender/etc. I.e. some kids might have it easier because they have rich parents and some kids might have it harder because they have poor parents, but there shouldn't be a systematic pattern to those forces. But when people invoke "equality of opportunity" I am skeptical they mean doing something about the fact that statistically a random black kid is going to grow up in a household that only makes 60% as much as the one a random white kid would grow up in.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#246

Post by smoyer »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #45

As a European, I keep getting baffled about how out of hand these things seem to be in the USA. I live in the Netherlands, a very open-minded country with same-sex marriage, equal rights and were women seem to me to be even slightly more dominant over men (but this is just my perception). All this without safe spaces, forced quotas at conferences, codes of conduct and people that police every word you say. There are…

I agree 100%. If I'm paying for a conference I want the best speakers and content - if you can deliver that with diversity I'm all for it. If you're number one priority is diversity and it means your content and speakers are sub-par, I'm going to stop coming.

I think the more important issue is to make sure you selection committee is not biased. While it might be nice to have a selection committee made up with the front-page names in the start-up industry, you'd probably be better off skipping those that act more like fraternities.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#247

Post by Sacho »

nojvek wrote: post #235
TeMPOraL wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally. Were I accepted and later dumped like this, I'd feel I was subject to actual gender/race discrimination. The whole thing is ridiculous. To fight perceived discrimination, those people are doing even more direct and overt discrimination.

I see this from another point of view. Suppose a female new grad goes to Electronconf and sees all male speakers. Suppose she goes to other conferences and it's the same story. She feels there's no way she'll be able to break ground and be recognized as successful. She slowly drops out and leaves the industry and goes somewhere where she can make friends like her. Now suppose she sees plenty of female speakers and sh…

This relies on some sort of implied theory that women require female role models in order to be encouraged to break into an industry(and vice versa, probably).

I don't know if it's true or not, but I find way more in common between me and the nerdy girl studying programming in my class than between me and the tall athlete playing football. I would have thought that our shared love for programming and geeky stuff would be a sign that this is a space with shared values, more than the gender of the speakers.

Of course, this may be a skewed perspective since there have always been men in the hobbies that I picked; but I would also think that a woman breaking into programming would be aware of the existing gender disparity, just like I am aware I would be a "gender minority" if I pursued teaching or psychology(things I was actually interested in due to great female role models in my youth!)

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#248

Post by macspoofing »

selllikesybok wrote: post #236
mst wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's equality of outcome though, which is often terrible. I want a society where everybody gets an even shot, at which point I find it highly unlikely we'd end up at 50/50 - given programming has been both male-majority and female-majority over time I'm damned if I know in which direction it'd fall, but 50/50 usually means "you have forced people to be here who would've been better/happier somewhere else" and my fe…

Why is equality of outcome terrible, per se?

Because it is ambiguous goal which under any reasonable interpretation has massive consequences and major unintended side-effects. My favorite sport is basketball. What is the 'equality of outcome' in the context of the NBA? Is it that players are evenly distributed across gender lines? Across economic lines? Across national lines? Across racial or ethnic or religious lines? In our society, it would probably be understood that NBA should be proportionally represented by each identity group. So you should see 70% white players, 15% hispanic players, 12% black players, 5% asian players. Is that the right solution? But is the fact that black Americans dominate the league actually a problem? And what the heck are you supposed to do to fix it?

The other point is that in a free society, you cannot guarantee equality of outcome because people are going to make personal choices that will be magnified and influenced by whatever sub-culture they are immersed in. Professional basketball in the early days was over-represented by Jews, because it just so happened that interest in the game went viral in that sub-culture.

Tech has an over-representation of men because it grew out of a particular nerd sub-culture. There's nothing wrong with doing outreach to get non-traditional sub-groups developing an interest in programming, just like there's nothing wrong with the NBA running clinics in China to get Chinese kids into basketball. But it's not racism that the demographics are the way they are! In a free society you should expect that!

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#249

Post by macspoofing »

selllikesybok wrote: post #240
macspoofing wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the "structural inequality" in this case? That there are more men than women in tech? If so, what is the 'structure' that causes this inequality?

Turtles, all the way down. ---- Or to be less glib, that's a great question, and like many, not simple to answer well. Mostly, it seems like a lack of positive reinforcement and role models (leading to self selection out at early ages), mixed with sexism in a a variety of forms (leading to lack of opportunities, or hostile environment and self selection out at later ages). But that's an oversimplification.

Really what I'm getting at, there is no 'structural racism' in this case. You cannot point at a law, or mandate, or policy that actively discriminates against an ethnicity, race, or gender. The best you can do is give some hand-wavy argument that 'unconscious biases' are driving racist actions without knowledge of the person - but what is a person supposed to do with that? They are racist in such a secret way that even they are unaware of it? Total garbage.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#250

Post by selllikesybok »

leereeves wrote: post #242
selllikesybok wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turtles, all the way down. ---- Or to be less glib, that's a great question, and like many, not simple to answer well. Mostly, it seems like a lack of positive reinforcement and role models (leading to self selection out at early ages), mixed with sexism in a a variety of forms (leading to lack of opportunities, or hostile environment and self selection out at later ages). But that's an oversimplification.

If women don't choose to go into tech, that's their own choice. It's not as if men went into tech because of positive social reinforcement for being a nerd. There's still a social stigma attached to it, which I'd love to see change, but it affects both men and women.

There is not a stigma against "in tech". There was never a stigma against it, really.

And yes, men largely do get into stem fields because there is huge positive reinforcement and many positive role models.

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