Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't disagreeing with what you said here. What I was suggesting is that you got 50/50 balance by a technique you didn't mention in your blog post: limiting male enrollment as a percentage of the whole. I don't think there is anything wrong with that, but it is unlikely that someone doing only the things you mentioned in your post would achieve the same gender balance you got by doing something else all together.
Except that it's mentioned on the very first line: > About a month ago, Hack’n Jill organized a hackathon with a simple goal: get 50 men and 50 women in a room to build something to improve their summers.
How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)
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Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that it's mentioned on the very first line: > About a month ago, Hack’n Jill organized a hackathon with a simple goal: get 50 men and 50 women in a room to build something to improve their summers.
Having a 'goal' of 50 women is quite different from having a quota of 50 men.
Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)
#103Awesome a hackathon that is run by a product person(blog owner), marketing/pr woman, banking analyst and one front end dev. Where do I sign up?
I think that the founders came from heterogenous backgrounds is, in fact, a positive thing. Part of the point of the hackathon was to create an environment that values different perspectives. The fact that the organizers have experienced the tech scene from avenues other than coding gives them different perspectives, which, all other things being equal, is probably a good thing.
Perhaps all else is not equal, but I'm not convinced. I volunteered at the hackathon. The hacks were quite good and--possibly more importantly--the atmosphere was phenomenal. People worked and played well together, and a number of individuals made comments to me along the lines of the following: - I feel really comfortable working at this hackathon. - This hackathon is really well-organized. - I appreciate that this hackathon doesn't require me to do unreasonable things like sleep in this office, or not sleep at all, or expect me to do tequila shots like other hackathons.
I'm sure a team of 4 back-end devs or 4 startup CEOs could have put together a similarly great hackathon. But is that sort of team composition a necessary condition for the event to have been a success? No.
Reladtedly, how funny/sad/appropriate is it that in a discussion involving the exclusion of females from the tech community, someone would protest that teams composed of non-developers should be excluded from organizing hackathons?
Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)
#104Change the genders and you see how fucking ridiculous it is. 'How we got 50 men to go to our [stereotypically female activity]. Have fun with stereotyping yourselves... "Feed People Well: Offer vegetarian-friendly options, salad, fruit, and wine in addition to the usual beer/pizza/redbull. We got at least a dozen thank-you’s specifically for having fruit with breakfast. Everyone likes healthy food – so why not go the…
There are so many other demographics in tech that are also under-represented. African American men. Latinos. Heck, even though Asians are highly represented in engineering/comp-sci at top tech schools in the U.S. very few are in leadership positions in major North American tech companies. Every week on Twitter or HN I see great stories about people trying to advance women's presence in tech. I don't disagree with tha…
http://www.npr.org/2012/07/23/156555402/silicon-valley-boot-...
Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)
#105Change the genders and you see how fucking ridiculous it is. 'How we got 50 men to go to our [stereotypically female activity]. Have fun with stereotyping yourselves... "Feed People Well: Offer vegetarian-friendly options, salad, fruit, and wine in addition to the usual beer/pizza/redbull. We got at least a dozen thank-you’s specifically for having fruit with breakfast. Everyone likes healthy food – so why not go the…
I don't see anything ridiculous to a post titled "How we got 50 men to go to our craft fair" or "How we got 50 men to our nursing career fair" or even "How we got 50 men to stop being sexist assholes".
Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)
#106From an evolutionary psychological standpoint I find this ridiculous: Traditional standpoint is that men go to places where women are (e.g. bars) and hit on them. This requires a combination of various skills on the part of men, including resource acquisition (to be able to buy drinks for women), social skills, and the ability to be aggressive in a non-threatening way (e.g. to approach an attractive woman and chat he…
Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)
#107From an evolutionary psychological standpoint I find this ridiculous: Traditional standpoint is that men go to places where women are (e.g. bars) and hit on them. This requires a combination of various skills on the part of men, including resource acquisition (to be able to buy drinks for women), social skills, and the ability to be aggressive in a non-threatening way (e.g. to approach an attractive woman and chat he…
Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who said anything about lowering the bar for anyone? Cletus, in the post you replied to. As for using gender as a predictor in admissions, you'd also need to penalize high scoring women (and reward the low scoring ones). I have no particular objection to any of this. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/08/variance-induce.html
Mean SATs, not their variance. I don't think that overcomingbias link is really adding anything to the discussion. The paper that roguecoder referenced is just pointing out that SAT scores are not a perfect predictor, and adjusting the intake based on gender is probably a good idea if you want to maximise the real effect (academic performance), rather than the predictor (SAT scores).
If you want to use gender as a predictor, it could be positive or negative.
Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)
#109If they hadn't done all of the other stuff it may have been the case they sold 50 male tickets and zero female tickets.
People seem to assume that if tickets are there then women show up. It takes a lot of encouragement to get that to happen.
Also I'd like to add I'd be more encouraged to join a 50/50 style hackathon than a female only one. I think they did a great job.
Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the fact that programmers don't go to "hackathons" that are 8 hours long, have no set purpose, and are run by marketing weasels who say things like "build awesome hacks".
I wish I were surprised that this sort of hostility is only shown when attracting women is one of the main goals of an event. But I'm not. I'm not.