Comment by Exenith | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Exenith | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't matter how many women there are in the field. If men and women are of equal worth, then why are you looking to get more women in? The men there aren't good enough for you?

Now, I understand that some women avoid working developer jobs because they get mistreated by some men. That is an issue. But it's not an issue limited to developers, and it's not an issue limited to women. If anyone is treating anyone else like shit, then they should be fired. Sex doesn't come into question -- being a decent human being does. If you're afraid to work a job because someone might mistreat you, then you're afraid of working every job.

Even if we eliminate cases like those of Github/Hovarth, it doesn't necessarily mean there will be a 50/50 split. And it doesn't matter. It's not important how many people of a certain gender there are -- what's important is that people are judged on their skills and character alone. If that means there is a gender divide, then so be it.

How do you know if your policy of equal opportunity is working, if you refuse to look at the end result?

Because the proportion of men and women is not a measure of how sexist the field is.

If you compare it with the expected values if you assume the field is non-sexist, then yes, actually, it is.

Equal opportunity does not necessarily mean equal interest. A complete lack of sexism does not necessarily mean equal interest. You are following the assumption that there would be 50/50 proportions of interest (and therefore skill, and therefore employment) just because a field meets all your criteria of "not sexist". This is an unfounded assumption. No matter what the situation, there is never a guarantee that equal amounts of men and women will be interested in a particular field -- and this is not necessarily a product of a flaw in the field, but could be indicative of societal inertia (things go in and out of fashion with different groups), biological differences, or just random variation.

The first question we must ask is -- if there is a gender divide, why is there a gender divide? The second question we must ask is, is the reason for it actually problematic? do we have evidence that it is sexism? If it is a problem, we must ask can we solve it without causing bigger problems?

It seems we have missed most of these questions, assuming the reasons for the gender divide, assuming that it is sexism, and not considering if our solutions will just cause more problems. This is simply irresponsible. It makes us prone to unnecessary disruption, and our inclination to jump to sides -- either side -- doesn't help.

>You are following the assumption that there would be 50/50 proportions of interest (and therefore skill, and therefore employment)

No I'm not. I never said any such thing. Perhaps a non-sexist distribution would be 80:20 male:female. You can still compare that to the actual distribution and see how they compare.

Your first question is: "if there is a gender divide" but how can you possibly answer that if you don't look at the actual numbers?

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