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Google sponsors over $150k of grants for female programmers

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Re: Google sponsors over $150k of grants for female programmers

#41

Post by ceol »

1qaz2wsx3edc wrote: post #23
hingisundhorsa wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a “ programmer”, I've always been uncomfortable with race based or gender based or orientation based policies. Google would have been better off taking the time evaluating each participant and then making a judgement on whether that person would benefit from additional help. That would be better for everyone rather than blindly assuming every female needs assistance or every "insert ethnicity here" needs assistanc…

It's perplexing that to avoid gender discriminations, the solution is to discriminate against genders. I don't like these, I think they further the stigmatism that is native to our industry about gender discrimination. Specifically I'm bothered by direct benefits due to gender, I have no issue with educational programs as long as they remain open to all. I don't want to end up in a workforce where people are working…

If I have ten apples, and you have five apples, giving us both five apples doesn't make us equal. Likewise, giving both men and women grants (which are readily available anyway for both genders) doesn't suddenly fix the imbalance of women. It requires a targeted solution.

> I don't want to end up in a workforce where people are working because it was a good financial decision from yesteryear.

Well then you're barking up the wrong tree, because there are plenty of men who got into computer science because it's lucrative. On the other hand, if you told a woman, "Hey! Want to earn an upper-middle class income? All you have to do is spend every work day of your life dealing with crude jokes at your expense, boys' club mentalities, and an industry that has little more than contempt for you!" I doubt many would jump at the opportunity.

The problem with sorting by how "truly excited" they are is that some women might not know how interesting programming is to them. They were never given the opportunity, and every time they got close, they were shunned or pushed back because of their gender.

If you truly, honestly cannot see these grants as anything more than "reverse gender discrimination", I'd have to say you're part of the problem.

Re: Google sponsors over $150k of grants for female programmers

#43

Post by cdurr »

xiaoma wrote: post #25

What about men who have financial need? This isn't an academic question. The tech industry is one of the very few left where large numbers of men from diverse backgrounds are doing well. For many who are struggling, it's the best shot they have. Men receive less financial aid for college and graduate with more debt... if they graduate. Women now outnumber men 3 to 2 in current graduating classes in the US. Far more m…

If you're a man, you're on your own because you obviously have privilege. Strong empowered wymyn need these grants because patriarchy. /s

Women complain about the glass ceiling but they also have the glass cellar which keeps them from going to the bottom. More men may be at the top but they also over-represent the bottom of society and no one talks about that.

What Google's doing here is a social engineering experiment. They don't just want equal opportunity, they want equal outcome. Because biological differences of the sexes don't real and every kid deserves a medal for participation. And people wonder why businesses are moving their manufacturing away from America.

Re: Google sponsors over $150k of grants for female programmers

#44

Post by sanxiyn »

belorn wrote: post #35
lclarkmichalek wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that this is for an institution called `Hacker School`, and I have a feeling that your stats aren't P(x | studying CS), I don't really see how this is particularly relevant. The grant isn't give as part of a `help women in financial need` project, it's given as part of a `help increase the proportion of people in the tech industry who are women`.

If you want to increase the proportion of people in the tech industry who are women, do out reach, eliminate glass ceilings in management, and sponsor research into industry causes of gender bias. Doing gender discriminations to "counter" gender discriminations is neither a good or effective way. It's lazy, and only causes more harm.

As I understand this is an outreach program, isn't it?

Re: Google sponsors over $150k of grants for female programmers

#45

Post by ceol »

belorn wrote: post #35
lclarkmichalek wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that this is for an institution called `Hacker School`, and I have a feeling that your stats aren't P(x | studying CS), I don't really see how this is particularly relevant. The grant isn't give as part of a `help women in financial need` project, it's given as part of a `help increase the proportion of people in the tech industry who are women`.

If you want to increase the proportion of people in the tech industry who are women, do out reach, eliminate glass ceilings in management, and sponsor research into industry causes of gender bias. Doing gender discriminations to "counter" gender discriminations is neither a good or effective way. It's lazy, and only causes more harm.

What do you think this is if not outreach? Any sort of outreach will be targeted. I can only imagine you would be in those threads complaining about "gender discrimination" because Company X created women-focused programming classes or the like.

There's plenty of research into "industry causes of gender bias." This is one of the solutions. You're basically claiming that because this doesn't completely solve the gender divide, it's lazy and worthless. Well, sorry, but that's not how the world works. This is one of many small steps into getting more women interested in programming, which then eliminates the glass ceilings and discrimination.

How you and the others in this thread don't see this is just baffling.

Re: Google sponsors over $150k of grants for female programmers

#46

Post by jrs99 »

evincarofautumn wrote: post #5

Nice to see a simple story of encouragement. My peer group is fortunately pretty diverse in terms of culture and country of origin, but it misses out on a realistic distribution of sex, which I think is important as well. As a “white male programmer”, I’ve always been uncomfortable with an imbalanced group; now, being in a relationship with a female programmer, I’m exposed to a lot more of the actual iniquities. We s…

In my opinion, it's not an industry problem. It's a SOCIETY problem.

Re: Google sponsors over $150k of grants for female programmers

#47

Post by barry-cotter »

xiaoma wrote: post #25

What about men who have financial need? This isn't an academic question. The tech industry is one of the very few left where large numbers of men from diverse backgrounds are doing well. For many who are struggling, it's the best shot they have. Men receive less financial aid for college and graduate with more debt... if they graduate. Women now outnumber men 3 to 2 in current graduating classes in the US. Far more m…

What about men who have financial need?

To a first approximation no one cares.

Does Hacker School and its sponsor's "need based" help truly discriminate against the very group—poor, non-degreed men—that society treats so callously?

Sure, why not? They will receive nothing but praise for making it easier for women to do Hacker School.

Put on your cynic's Thinking Hat for a moment. The fundamental question of politics is "Who? Whom?" Who's doing and who's being done to. Feminism is an "in" political movement. It has power and positive pr. Why would any of the companies sponsoring these grants choose to spend their pr dollars less effectively by letting undifferentiated men apply? Some day there will be bursaries for other groups polite society is in favour of helping. If the group is in fact over represented in CS/programming already, say Indians, the justification will be changed and no will say anything.

TL;DR All politics is coalition politics. Feminism has positive pr, the closest male equivalent, men's rights are seen as a bunch of bitter, shrill, misogynistic losers. Why waste your PR dollars?

Re: Google sponsors over $150k of grants for female programmers

#48

Post by jrs99 »

knowitall wrote: post #20
wiradikusuma wrote: post #9

Google also give significantly more (+$2000) to female winners in Google Cloud Developer Challange 2013. https://www.google.com/events/gcdc2013/about.html

I must admit things like that make me angry because of the implied "women are victims" message.

women ARE victims. They are victims of society, and their parents who grew up with rigid rules of what a woman should be and raised their daughters with those rules in mind.

Re: Google sponsors over $150k of grants for female programmers

#49

Post by ceol »

jrs99 wrote: post #39
mcv wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Google would say that teams that only consist of men, or white people would get $2K extra everyone would explode. Surely you can understand why? The industry is already dominated by white men. They (we, in fact) don't need extra support to enter and get accepted by the industry. We don't suffer lots of subtle forms of harassment and discrimination, simply for being different from the norm. I don't think money by…

But the point everyone is making is that there is a white male out there that is poor and doesn't have the resources, time, and educational background, but has the intelligence, work ethic, and desire to learn more and get a job as a programmer. But this guy out there will never be helped. There simply will never be a program for this person to get out of the rut that he's in. But a woman with a Stanford degree may b…

The point is that a poor, uneducated man will still be ahead of a poor, uneducated woman when attempting to learn how to program; likewise, a man with a Stanford degree will have many more resources available to him than a woman with a Stanford degree. You can't pull examples from opposite ends of the spectrum, because of course it's not going to be equal.
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