New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene • Hacker News Board

Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene

#21

Post by johnleppings » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 5:01 PM UTC

jacobian wrote: post #10

johnleppings wrote: post #7

I don't understand why the gender of a programmer is relevant to anything. You are concerned that there are no enough women. Why? Why do you want more women? Why is the particular sexual organs that someone has of interest to you?

Well, I could talk about social justice and basic fairness, but the tone of your question implies that you don't see it that way. So instead, let's look at the question from a coldly calculating point of view. Let's say I have a open source project, and it's got 100 contributors (or community members, users, whatever -- the it's all the same). If my project follows today's averages, that group will be on the order of…

I think that's totally illogical. How many members of your community are gay? Have red hair? Are left handed. You have no idea, and you wouldn't recruit based on those characteristics. So why recruit based on gender?

Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene

#22

Post by rmc » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 5:07 PM UTC

johnleppings wrote: post #7

I don't understand why the gender of a programmer is relevant to anything. You are concerned that there are no enough women. Why? Why do you want more women? Why is the particular sexual organs that someone has of interest to you?

During many debates about gender (or race or sexuality etc.) in a group that lacks a lot of diversity, someone will come along and try to claim the high horse by claiming to be less sexist (etc.) because there don't care about gender, with the imitation that if you want equality, we should not focus on any group.

We do not live in that utopia yet. At the moment women in tech and men in knitting circles need more help (seriously I (a cis male) went to a local craft night and felt out of place). We should focus on people who need help. If people need more medical help (i.e. are sick), we give them more medial help than healthy people. Same with gender & tech.

Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene

#23

Post by ecoffey » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 5:18 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #2

> A good percentage of the attendees had some exposure to HTML/CSS and several had experience in PHP, Java, C and Python. Two of our students had worked as developers for mainframe computers, writing PL/I and IBM assembler. Cool initiative and I'm all for introducing more programming to everyone...but I wonder whether Rails is the best way to do it. There are many, many moving parts, least of which is the concept of…

I participated in one here Boulder, CO as a TA, and yes there were a lot of moving parts, but what I think was important was not deep diving into any particular thing, but getting to the point where they have pushed a "real" app.

I have a few apps of negligible utility that run out on Heroku, and they are no different than the apps Railsbridge participants built.

They got to make something real, and got exposed to real tools and infrastructure.

Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene

#24

Post by jacobian » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 5:25 PM UTC

typicalrunt wrote: post #13

jacobian wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I could talk about social justice and basic fairness, but the tone of your question implies that you don't see it that way. So instead, let's look at the question from a coldly calculating point of view. Let's say I have a open source project, and it's got 100 contributors (or community members, users, whatever -- the it's all the same). If my project follows today's averages, that group will be on the order of…

Now, in practice, I work on diversity because I care about basic fairness. Get down from the ivory tower please. Where do you get off saying that he doesn't believe in fairness? In fact, the original commenter could be seen as being more fair by simply stating that gender shouldn't matter. At the same time, you're looking at one statistic. The race or religion of project contributors could be looked at, but they aren…

> [...] charging dissenters with misogyny.

Where, exactly, did I do that?

Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene

#25

Post by king_jester » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 5:27 PM UTC

typicalrunt wrote: post #13

jacobian wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I could talk about social justice and basic fairness, but the tone of your question implies that you don't see it that way. So instead, let's look at the question from a coldly calculating point of view. Let's say I have a open source project, and it's got 100 contributors (or community members, users, whatever -- the it's all the same). If my project follows today's averages, that group will be on the order of…

Now, in practice, I work on diversity because I care about basic fairness. Get down from the ivory tower please. Where do you get off saying that he doesn't believe in fairness? In fact, the original commenter could be seen as being more fair by simply stating that gender shouldn't matter. At the same time, you're looking at one statistic. The race or religion of project contributors could be looked at, but they aren…

> In fact, the original commenter could be seen as being more fair by simply stating that gender shouldn't matter.

We don't live in a vacuum, so even if we feel that gender shouldn't matter it already does in fundamental ways.

> At the same time, you're looking at one statistic. The race or religion of project contributors could be looked at, but they aren't because IT IS NOT IMPORTANT.

Actually this is really important. If projects are systematically excluding people of certain races or religions, we have a discrimination problem.

> For some reason, this topic has been rehashed so many times on HN and each time someone tries to look at the argument from a gender-less perspective, people like you -- jacobian -- jump out from the bushes to make statements, charging dissenters with misogyny.

Nobody called anyone a misogynist in this discussion.

> Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc].

This is absolutely true. However, why there aren't more women in tech isn't just about project maintainers. Women in general are not going into or are finding spaces in which they can participate as developers and programmers. This is the whole point of this particular RailsBridge workshop.

Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene

#26

Post by king_jester » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 5:30 PM UTC

johnleppings wrote: post #7

I don't understand why the gender of a programmer is relevant to anything. You are concerned that there are no enough women. Why? Why do you want more women? Why is the particular sexual organs that someone has of interest to you?

Sexual organs != gender. Gender is relevant because of the micro- and macro-level issues the programming community has in regards to letting women be a part of that community. That you get defensive when someone does good work to try and help women be a part of the programming community speaks a lot as to why women don't feel that many spaces are not safe for them in tech.

Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene

#27

Post by jacobian » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 5:32 PM UTC

johnleppings wrote: post #21

jacobian wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I could talk about social justice and basic fairness, but the tone of your question implies that you don't see it that way. So instead, let's look at the question from a coldly calculating point of view. Let's say I have a open source project, and it's got 100 contributors (or community members, users, whatever -- the it's all the same). If my project follows today's averages, that group will be on the order of…

I think that's totally illogical. How many members of your community are gay? Have red hair? Are left handed. You have no idea, and you wouldn't recruit based on those characteristics. So why recruit based on gender?

> How many members of your community are gay? Have red hair? Are left handed.

The data I've seen suggests that the penetration of these minorities in technology closely tracks their representation in society as a whole. Further, there isn't a history of discrimination against redheads and lefties in open source. Discrimination against gay people is a real problem, though it doesn't seem to have prevented equivalent representation of gay people in tech.

But you could make a similar argument about representation of other minorities -- African Americans, say, or Hispanics, or whatever. And it's true, that's a problem too; we should be working towards diversity of all sorts. It's true that I'm focusing my attention of gender diversity, but I'd love to learn more about efforts towards diversity along other axes. Have any pointers?

Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene

#28

Post by johnleppings » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 5:38 PM UTC

jacobian wrote: post #27

johnleppings wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's totally illogical. How many members of your community are gay? Have red hair? Are left handed. You have no idea, and you wouldn't recruit based on those characteristics. So why recruit based on gender?

> How many members of your community are gay? Have red hair? Are left handed. The data I've seen suggests that the penetration of these minorities in technology closely tracks their representation in society as a whole. Further, there isn't a history of discrimination against redheads and lefties in open source. Discrimination against gay people is a real problem, though it doesn't seem to have prevented equivalent r…

The problem is - should we follow this argument all the way? Do you precisely work out the proportion of people of every conceivable group in every team, and cause a fuss when it isn't right? If you don't, what is the reason for that? Why worry about some groups, but not others.

I genuinely think the main reason that people worry about gender, over any other groups, is that it's normally so clear what group people are a member of. And that's not a sound reason to do anything.

I also genuinely think that some men cause a fuss about proportion of women in tech groups, simply because they'd like to meet and be able to hit on more women.

Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene

#29

Post by johnleppings » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 5:41 PM UTC

tomwalker wrote: post #20

jacobian wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I could talk about social justice and basic fairness, but the tone of your question implies that you don't see it that way. So instead, let's look at the question from a coldly calculating point of view. Let's say I have a open source project, and it's got 100 contributors (or community members, users, whatever -- the it's all the same). If my project follows today's averages, that group will be on the order of…

Should we allow male only events?

Yes, we should allow male only events.

Why not?

Or do you mean should we prevent women turning up? No we should not allow events that prevent women turning up. But if an event happens to have no women turn up, then so the fuck what?

Are you going to challenge woman-kind why they aren't going? Why would one woman know why every other woman didn't want to attend?

Re: New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene

#30

Post by johnleppings » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 5:45 PM UTC

king_jester wrote: post #26

johnleppings wrote: post #7

I don't understand why the gender of a programmer is relevant to anything. You are concerned that there are no enough women. Why? Why do you want more women? Why is the particular sexual organs that someone has of interest to you?

Sexual organs != gender. Gender is relevant because of the micro- and macro-level issues the programming community has in regards to letting women be a part of that community. That you get defensive when someone does good work to try and help women be a part of the programming community speaks a lot as to why women don't feel that many spaces are not safe for them in tech.

I get defensive, if you want to call it that, because I think any attempt to specially encourage one involuntary group is patronising. If a individual woman doesn't want to attend then that's her business. You can't ask woman-kind why none of their group aren't attending because she has nothing to do with the rest of her group.

It's also the grouping that confuses me. You want more women in the community, and so you are encouraging someone to join your community based on an entirely irrelevant property. You only want them because of their gender. You look at them, and see a woman - just that one property. It's objectification, de-humanisation.