Hack of The Sexes

I do agree, but also feel like ANYTHING AT ALL to encourage more women to join in on things like this is a good thing.

Sometimes people need a sense of competition to step up to the plate.

But yea... This is a little too close to being distasteful, considering the way things are. Its a slippery slope though.

Its like you took the words out of my fingers.

Okay, sit down, and let me elaborate on why this is a bad idea.

I was going to post a kneejerk reaction, namely "This idea is bad and you should feel bad", but that wouldn't help the discussion.

So let me assume you mean the best. Let me assume you want to encourage a better gender balance. And let me tell you that this is a terrible way to go about it.

Aside from the points elaborated in other comments -- and let me stress the "industry rife with sexism, inequality, and bro-culture rudeness" -- this flies in the face of the hacker ethic. To wit:

* Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position

Now, I can hear the defense mechanism riling up right now: "But wait," you say, "we're not judging participants based on their gender, we're just teaming them up that way. The judging will be fair!" And I believe you believe that, with the best of intentions. Nonetheless, you've automatically broken the blindness and impartiality of the judges, simply because they know that it's an uneven distribution. Think of it like a scientific experiment where everyone knows where the placebo is. It doesn't matter who wins; everyone loses, because one side will claim the other got some special consideration. Imagine if you did the same thing, only with college-grads vs. self-taught hackers. If the judge is from Stanford, you lose.

At best, this will fizzle, or go off unremarkably. At worst, you're actively making worse exactly the problem you're trying to fix. At best, this is a trite idea ('boys vs girls' is overdone, schoolyard, and simplistic). At worst, it's actively discriminatory.

Be more creative. You recognize a problem, but this isn't the answer.

A predictable response, but while I see the point regarding the "tone-deafness" of the message, I think it's also indicative that the attitude behind our "culture" has gone too far towards "holy crap anything that could possibly make anyone feel left out or even appear discriminatory to even the most oversensitive individuals must be utterly terrible and unconscionable."

Your research, to me, makes that a pretty safe bet. A woman who's big on females in tech helps organize it, and without bothering to find this out, everyone screams horrible endemic life-ending sexism at the sight of it. Oops.

I'm not suggesting we shouldn't decry discrimination. I am suggesting we should think and ask before we decide to burn people at the stake for attempting to have a little fun at the expense of a topic some people can't seem to deal with in a moderate and rational manner.

Even assuming the best of intent w.r.t. to tech gender relations, promoting (cis) women in tech at the expense of intersex/genderqueer people in tech is simply not cool.