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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

#51

Post by mcv »

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…

I'm absolutely for helping the poor, providing everybody with affordable (preferably free) quality education, programs that help unemployed people get jobs, that help homeless people get their life back in order, etc.

But those problems aren't specific for the IT industry. They're society-wide, and need to tackled on a much broader scale.

And in society at large, women are doing increasingly better. They are surpassing men in education (so it's definitely a good idea to take a good look at if there's anything that causes boys to fall by the wayside in the educational system), but that doesn't change the fact that there are still some industries that are remarkably sexist and/or inaccessible to women. And that's just not acceptable.

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

#52

Post by ceol »

nailer wrote: post #40
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…

> We should consider this as a high-priority bug in our industry. Why? Primary education is overwhelmingly female, for example, but female schoolteachers do not consider the lack of men to be a problem with their industry which they should be ashamed of. One should always judge the individual, and no person should ever be stopped from doing anything on the basis of their race, gender, or anything else. However part o…

> but female schoolteachers do not consider the lack of men to be a problem with their industry

Source? Because I'm sure if you talked to any teacher, they'd tell you they would prefer a more balanced selection of primary school teachers. The least you could do is a simple Google search,[0] which would show there is a movement to get more men into teaching.

> after looking at the individuals, more of them may belong to one group than another.

What does this mean? That men "belong" to programming and women "belong" to primary school teaching? (Not college teaching, of course! That's still heavily dominated by men, because they evolved to prefer teaching college-level classes or something. It's biology, you see. There's a "professor" gene inside all men.) That line of thinking inevitably leads to saying men's brains are "wired" to "think a certain way", which has been proven false each time it's brought up.

[0]: https://www.google.com/search?q=men+in+teaching

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

#54

Post by leoedin »

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…

This is a good comment. It's easy to forget that the proportion of people "above the glass ceiling" is tiny, regardless of gender. Girls outperform boys consistently through school and, as you've said, admissions to university have a significant gender skew. With the decline of many of the more traditional blue collar male-dominated industries, our system is quietly failing a high proportion of boys.

It's hard to discuss this stuff without verging dangerously close to the rather toxic "mens rights" movement, but I think there needs to be more recognition that the male dominated glass floored executive club is not just a "boys club", but an "old boys club". It's not particularly welcoming to women, but it's also not particularly welcoming to men from the wrong class or background. Our organisations may have a male dominated executive, but the middle layer is rapidly becoming skewed the opposite way.

When we talk about "equal opportunities" only in the context of gender, I think we miss the less obvious inequalities in our industry. Walk into an office of software engineers and it's immediately obvious that there's a significant gender imbalance. What isn't obvious without asking questions is that there's also a significant imbalance in socioeconomic background.

I should add that I'm not aiming to detract from efforts to see greater gender equality in our industry. My first comments apply more to broader society than tech, and I'm definitely an advocate for equal opportunities regardless of gender. This challenge is, however, much less black and white than it's sometimes portrayed in the media.

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

#56

Post by ceol »

belorn wrote: post #33
enneff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a man and I would judge a woman just as I judge a man: by their actions.

While a noble view, its is obviously not shared by Google. They would rather judge a woman on the basis that she is a woman.

They aren't just letting any and all women in while telling the droves of men to shove it. They're saying that if you are a woman who already qualifies for Hacker School who cannot pay for expenses while attending, then they will give you some money to help out. They aren't some bouncer at a club pulling the velvet rope back for everyone who checks the "I am a woman" box on the application.

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

#57

Post by belorn »

ceol wrote: post #45
belorn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gende…

Are you defining preferential treatment as outreach? Thats not only a very odd definition, but also creates the idea that glass ceilings is some form of outreach for male leaders.

The definition of "Outreach", is an method that are used to fill in the gap in the services provided by mainstream means, to the purpose of reaching groups who otherwise would not be aware of existing services (In this case, education). This doesn't do that. Mozilla mentor program for example is one that does. Compare and see the difference.

women-exclusive classes do not work, and are indeed counter-productive. Any research of this has proven this point. When the Sweden government body tried it, it was found to be ineffective, counter-productive (created more separation between sexes), and declared illegal in the last years. Sadly, given the current gender politics, little money has been spent to answer why it failed, as it is easier to simply ignore the fact that it failed.

So to reiterate, This is not one of the solutions, its a illusion of an solution that do harm rather than good. It is worthless, because it do not work and causes harm. It is lazy, because other groups has shown (like Mozilla) how to do it right. In the real world, thats how progress work. You discard what is a step backward, and only use what is a step forward. Small step backwards are still backward steps.

What is baffling is how people keep disregarding any sense of scientific method. Just because a previous theory is thought to be working, one should not be ignorant to new information.

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

#58

Post by nailer »

ceol wrote: post #52
nailer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should consider this as a high-priority bug in our industry. Why? Primary education is overwhelmingly female, for example, but female schoolteachers do not consider the lack of men to be a problem with their industry which they should be ashamed of. One should always judge the individual, and no person should ever be stopped from doing anything on the basis of their race, gender, or anything else. However part o…

> but female schoolteachers do not consider the lack of men to be a problem with their industry Source? Because I'm sure if you talked to any teacher, they'd tell you they would prefer a more balanced selection of primary school teachers. The least you could do is a simple Google search,[0] which would show there is a movement to get more men into teaching. > after looking at the individuals, more of them may belong…

>> but female schoolteachers do not consider the lack of men to be a problem with their industry

> I'm sure if you talked to any teacher, they'd tell you they would prefer a more balanced selection of primary school teachers.

That's a different matter. One may wish there to be more male teachers, but that does not mean one considers the lack of male teachers a problem with the industry.

>> after looking at the individuals, more of them may belong to one group than another

> What does this mean?

I thought this was self explanatory but obviously not: after evaluating each individual on the basis of their merits, one may discover that many of the individuals who have been found to excel may belong to the same group.

> That line of thinking inevitably leads to saying men's brains are "wired" to "think a certain way", which has been proven false each time it's brought up.

Pardon? Male and female brains have massive differences in the amount of gray and white matter for one thing [1], connectivity [2], and size [3]. Sex is a biological construct that is very much a real thing.

[1] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050121100142.ht...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/02/men-women-bra...

[3] http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Helmuth-Nybor...

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

#59

Post by rimantas »

jrs99 wrote: post #46
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.

In my opinion it is not a problem at all. But some want to see it as a problem. I wonder if the same people consider underrepresentation of females in garbage disposal or plumbing as a problem too.

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

#60

Post by tomp »

ceol wrote: post #41
1qaz2wsx3edc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This comment would be OK if we were talking about the profession of lawyers, or doctors, or investment bankers, but programmers?!

Programming is an ideal career for the introverted and "socially awkward". You don't need formal education, you don't need to talk to people, all you need is a computer and a book or internet connection, and most importantly, curiosity and desire to explore and learn about computers. You can't blame the lack of any of those on "boys' club" or "glass ceiling"; the best programmers are self-made, and nothing is stopping women from becoming top-notch hackers.

I think you are focusing on the wrong problem. Yes, it's true that men outnumber women in the field of programming, but guess what: non-programmers outnumber programmers much much more! Less than 5% of the people I know are programmers, and I work as a programmer. Why don't we try to make this profession more interesting to everybody, instead of focusing on just 50% of the people?

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