ChickTech Brings Hundreds of Young Women To Open Source 158
ectoman writes: Opensource.com is running an interview with Jennifer Davidson of ChickTech, a non-profit organization whose mission is to create communities of support for women and girls pursuing (or interested in pursuing) careers in tech. "In the United States, many girls are brought up to believe that 'girls can't do math' and that science and other 'geeky' topics are for boys," Davidson said. "We break down that idea." Portland, OR-based ChickTech is quickly expanding throughout the United States—to cities like Corvallis and San Francisco—thanks to the "ChickTech: High School" initiative, which gathers hundreds of young women for two-day workshops featuring open source technologies. "We fill a university engineering department with 100 high school girls—more girls than many engineering departments have ever seen," Davidson said. "The participants can look around the building and see that girls from all backgrounds are just as excited about tech as they are."
many girls are brought up to believe that (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:many girls are brought up to believe that (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. I keep hearing this stated as a fact, over and over. It's like a lie that becomes the truth if repeated enough.
Maybe because all the females in my engineering department were women, and not girls or chicks?
Mod parent up.
Re:many girls are brought up to believe that (Score:5, Informative)
http://xkcd.com/385/
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:many girls are brought up to believe that (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a "skills gap" present in Math aptitude tests that appears in countries where the status of women is worse [apa.org]. There are countries where the gap is lower or even reversed -- which seems to suggest culture rather than biology.
If you can find an alternative explanation beyond "American Culture", feel free to suggest it.
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This may be partially explained by the mistreatment. However, there is a giant elephant in the room of "sex equality": sports. The all-female teams are invariably weaker, than the all-male ones — and compete separately. Co-ed teams are required to have a certain number of women (2 players for a 6-member volleyball team, for example). Soccer World Cup just ended — did you see a single
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I'm really not sure how sports fits into this. Yes, testosterone gives better performance in sports. Barry Bonds was fined for it. As was the Chinese women's swim team.
As far as chess, first mandatory xkcd. [xkcd.com] Another good reason is how women are treated in mostly male fields. There's very few women who play Magic: The Gathering or chess for this reason (yes, I've been to the tournies). On the other hand, more women are interested in studying academic subjects -- there must be some reason more women go t [pewresearch.org]
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So, you are trying to explain the entire disparity with mistreatment by males. I don't buy it...
That may be because of the numerous programs like the one being described in TFA. That such programs are deemed necessary, reflects badly on the fair sex...
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So, you are trying to explain the entire disparity with mistreatment by males. I don't buy it...
I follow the data. In numerous other countries, this is not the case. Again, if you have better data, please share (as I did in GP). Otherwise -- buying into the idea of female inferiority with no data to support your assertion -- is precisely the kind of prejudice I'm talking about and you are the perfect example.
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Could you share a link to the data, so I can follow it too? Do those countries have a better number of female Grandmasters? Nope...
You've already conceded, that men are stronger: "testosterone helps". Why would not they also be, no, not smarter — able to concentrate deeper on a single problem, for example?
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>There's very few women who play Magic: The Gathering
What a bunch of bullshit. I know at least half a dozen girls in my town alone who regularly play this game. If they exist here, I'm certain they exist all over. Your idea of what young women participate in these days is outdated.
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It's not about numbers. And it's not about validity. It's about manufacturing PC/media panics and distracting the public from real problems by fomenting pointless opposition on non-issues.
Where's BroTech? (Score:5, Insightful)
"In the United States, many boys are brought up to believe that 'doing math makes you a nerd' and that science and other 'geeky' topics are for wusses," the_skywise said. "We break down that idea."
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To maintain consistency, BroTech was rebranded as D**kTech
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so true.
discrimination is discrimination, unless you're on the beneficiary side of the stick. But hey, isn't that what makes the US of A so special?
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Whoosh!
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Easy - the perpendicular timelines aren't nearly so similar.
Name (Score:2, Insightful)
The probably could've pick a name that wasn't so terrible.
Re:Name (Score:5, Funny)
I had a business called ComputerChicks. For $500 they'd come to your house, fix up your computer and then fix you up...any way you wanted.
The authorities got really cranky about it.
But I did get meet a lot of really interesting guys over the course of 5 to 10 years with time off for good behavior.
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I actually had a business called "rent a nerd" in the early 90's when I was in my mid 20's and in great shape. I got lots of repeat calls from lonely divorced women to fix very simple "problems" with their computers. e.g. Problem: "My screen is blank!" Solution: "Turn up the brightness knob" | Problem: "My software won't load!" Solution: "You have to run the install.exe program, not the readme.txt"
If I hadn't had a girlfriend and/or a conscience at the time I would have made even more money. I did get
Here's a better name (Score:3)
Chick Squad
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Kuhscheisse. (Score:4, Interesting)
It means "Cow shit."
Looking around my cube farm:
3 rows of 9 cubes for a total of 27 cubes.
3 cubes are inhabited by boxes and spare equipment, the rest by people.
Out of 24 cubes with people, a solid half (13 to be precise) are filled with females, the rest, males.
So, no, there is not a "shortage of girls in tech." Now, there may be a "shortage of girls" in certain avenues of the tech industry, but I'll bet dollars against pesos that there's a perfectly reasonable, non-misogynistic reason for at least the majority of those shortages.
Re:Kuhscheisse. (Score:5, Funny)
You're a good statistician and sociologist. Strongly persuaded by the narrow anecdote you used to support your loosely worded presumptuous conclusion. This is the quality bullshit comment systems were invented for.
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You're a good statistician and sociologist. Strongly persuaded by the narrow anecdote you used to support your loosely worded presumptuous conclusion.
I know, right? Do you think CNN will hire me to do a show, or should I shoot more towards the ultra-partisan MSNBC/FOX News crowds? When it comes to BS I can make Ann Coulter look like a rank amateur.
'Course, were I to respond in a slightly less sardonic manner, I'd mention how if you're the sort of person who extrapolates someone's personal anecdote about their own officemates to imply a globally-viable statistic, well, that little bit o' idiocy is on you, not me.
Slightly less sardonic...
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Either you're implying that you really don't know how "so" works as a conjunction or you're backpedaling. I'd believe either at this point.
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Out of 24 cubes with people, a solid half (13 to be precise) are filled with females, the rest, males.
So, no, there is not a "shortage of girls in tech."
You made the extrapolation yourself.
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Were they in actual tech roles, or non tech roles?
My own experience says I've never seen more than about 10-15% female actually in tech roles. I've never worked at a place which didn't have women in tech roles, but there's always been a bit of a skewing towards males.
Heck, when I was in school, the ratio was about the same in my classes, and seemed to drop as you went to more a
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Were they in actual tech roles, or non tech roles?
Seems about 50/50 - half are either in management or administrative roles, the rest are either developers, project coordinators, or systems designers and installers. In my department, 2/3 of the managers are women.
My own experience says I've never seen more than about 10-15% female actually in tech roles. I've never worked at a place which didn't have women in tech roles, but there's always been a bit of a skewing towards males.
It does seem that tech jobs tend to have more men than women in them (sure, half the women are devs, but 80% of the men are too), but I don't believe the reasoning to be nearly as misogynistic as some of these "gurls up" organizations want us to think. It's just that most chicks don't dig coding,
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And what exactly are you doing? Does he have to give you the exact "dig coding" gene and explain why it's not expressed in women before you'll stop chanting "you're talking out of your ass"? It's not exactly outrages to say that two genders that often exhibit different preferences and interests might have different preferences and interests.
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Russians have the innate ability to code.
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So, no, there is not a "shortage of girls in tech.
Your survey of your immediate surroundings isn't very convincing in the face of much wider studies and larger data sets. Are you one of those people who doesn't believe in climate change because it's quite cool in your office?
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So, no, there is not a "shortage of girls in tech.
Your survey of your immediate surroundings isn't very convincing in the face of much wider studies and larger data sets. Are you one of those people who doesn't believe in climate change because it's quite cool in your office?
Unlike the author of TFA, who doesn't even bother with facts or statistics at all, but rather predicates their entire platform on the statement "Dur, we need more gurls in tech!"
Seriously, go read TFA. It's not so much an article as an advertisement for the organization.
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But were they young, cute girls?
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But were they young, cute girls?
No...
OK, suddenly I have a "good" reason to support this ChickTech idea...
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They say that almost 20% of the world's population is Chinese. However there are no Chinese people working in any of the offices on the same floor of the building as me. Therefore I conclude that all these so-called experts are wrong and there are in fact no Chinese people.
This is sexually racist (Score:1)
I abhor the use of personal resources to aid any specific group of people for any reason. People should spend their money only in ways that further my own interest, I'm too insecure to have it any other way.
People trying to help others overcome inequality makes me sick.
hmmm... (Score:1)
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Hear hear...
In my experience it's not that they can't be programmers it's that they don't WANT to be programmers. The smartest women in my family is a bio-engineer. The second smartest got an MBA (well.. y'know...we love her anyway. ;) ) I've known women physicists, astro-physicists, doctors (the MD kind), veterinarians, and psychiatrists. (None in a professional capacity) All of them geeks in one way or the other but all of them HATE computers and only use them as a necessary evil. I work in IT and ha
Peer pressure? (Score:2)
My completely anecdotal non-scientific evidence is that girls interested in math, science, and tech were mostly discouraged by their peers. Communities to support girls and women pursuing tech are great and all, but I feel like for a lot of girls it's going to come down to one very simple question: do I get new hobbies, or do I get new friends? It wouldn't surprise me if a majority of girls choose the latter.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe things have changed since the decade or so since I was a high school student.
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I found this interesting: http://www.washingtonpost.com/... [washingtonpost.com]
Re:Peer pressure? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to question the analysis after this:
"These STEM majors, as with economics, begin with few women enrolling and end with even fewer graduating. This “leaky pipeline” has been somewhat puzzling, Arcidiacono said, because women enter college just as prepared as men in math and science. On average, women more eagerly spend time studying than men do, a trait that should theoretically attract women to STEM fields, which generally assign more homework."
More homework? Women should be attracted to STEM fields because they "generally assign more homework"?!
Well... THERE'S YOUR PROBLEM.
F- that... That's not at all why I wanted to go into "STEM" fields. I wanted to build s**t.
geek stuff is for pimple-faced, socially awkward (Score:2)
BS on anyone thinking "geek is for boys". Everyone knows geek work is for both pimple-faced, socially awkward boys AND fat girls too.
Which doesn't explain why my boss is so good at it, nor why my mom was an awesome programmer and analyst - neither of them are fat.
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Open Source Women (Score:2)
Oink
Feel good kumbaya (Score:4, Informative)
a) there's nothing special about Open Source
b) being excited about something is not tangible
c) self-esteem is not the point
d) being a career non-profit means that you never created value
e) Oregon is full of hipsters and douches
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And where does that refute his point? Despite the fact that society pats women on the head by passing them a largely useless piece of paper (it's still mostly your social network that determines advancement, not your degree), we still get politicians like Akin, and the Hobby Lobby decision.
Quite frankly, GP is right, and the Troll mod is probably the work of yet another pimply MRA type.
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Again I ask, what does that single stat do to refute the multiple points brought up by its parent post?
Shameless Plug (Score:1)
Also see:
The Ada Initiative [adainitiative.org].
Selective Service (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake me up when women are required to register for Selective Service, and qualify to be shot or blown up against their will.
https://www.sss.gov/fswho.htm [sss.gov]
WHO MUST REGISTER
Almost all male U.S. citizens, and male immigrants living in the U.S., who are 18 through 25, are required to register with Selective Service.
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How about instead of forcing women to fight against their will you just stop forcing anyone of any gender? Most first world countries don't have any kind of mandatory service.
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Because they rely on ours. It would be interesting to see the change if we pulled all protective forces back.
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How about instead of forcing women to fight against their will you just stop forcing anyone of any gender? Most first world countries don't have any kind of mandatory service.
I think you're getting confused by differences of terms.......in the US, no one is forced to fight. We have to register, but it is something that will not be used until emergencies (of course, the definition of emergency is flexible).
Most countries have some kind of registration, or provision that will allow conscription when it becomes necessary. Some countries, like Russia, South Korea and Switzerland, require actual military service. That is something different, and not what happens in the US.
Not the way to do it.... (Score:3)
Except, of course, for the fact that by trying to focus attention on how males and females are being treated differently where gender should be irrelevant, they are, in fact, treating the different genders differently when the notion of gender should be irrelevant, which only perpetuates the problem
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So the best way to deal with the problem is to pretend that it doesn't exist?
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Stop treating people differently sounds good, but it simply isn't going to work in almost all cases.
Assume that everybody decided to try treating people differently based on gender. There'd still be all sorts of perceptions built in, and all sorts of blind spots. There was a study of teachers in California that found they tended to call on boys a lot more than girls, and that this behavior continued (although lessened) after they'd been told about the initial results.
Sometimes treating people differe
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If it doesn't work, then study *WHY* it doesn't work.... *WHY* are people treated differently based on gender when there is no need to? Address that issue, and you solve the problem. Treating them differently to somehow compensate for how they may have already been treated differently is *STILL* treating them differently.
Instead of trying to compensate for a past that may have been less than ideal, people should concentrate on trying to make the future better than yesterday was.
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Well, yes. That's what things like Chicktech are - experiments. We don't know everything that's going on.
Compensating for a less-than-ideal past is worthwhile in many cases. The only people currently without a past aren't going to hit the technical workforce an any numbers for twenty years now.
The feministas win again... (Score:2)
Perhaps not the best start (Score:2)
"ChickTech Brings Hundreds of Young Women To Open Source"... where they encounter Richard "THAT'S FREE SOFTWARE TO YOU" Stallman , Linus Torvalds, and Theo De Raadt and vow never to touch a computer again.
Typical. (Score:2)
Where exactly is the funding to get free education for my son? Why exactly is it that he has to be disadvantaged for not having a vagina?
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I agree kind of,....
An organization entirely run by women and doesn't accept men.
Because segregation is the key to integration and tolerance right?
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whoops i thought i was replying to the post by the_skywise, begin troll with my blessing
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I will leave this right here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem... [dailymail.co.uk]
And this more controversial one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.u... [huffingtonpost.co.uk]
I will say I'm a fan of female scientists, there are some with biochemical and chemical degrees in my family (who have long since abandoned the field for hearth and home, a decision of their own choosing), but I see a lot of men who are promoting it simply trying to make women in their own image. Maybe they are dads with only one child, daughters, which is very common now or what n
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Promoting access based on sex is sexually discriminating. Whether it's men or women, for or against, it doesn't matter. Building bias into the system under the guise of promoting 'diversity' and/or 'equality' is even worse than the original discrimination it claims to fight because it adds hypocrisy to the pile.
The reality is that 'diversity' and 'equality' are mutually exclusive. To feminists, it should be the ('empowered' female run) state that decides how and when one trumps the other, building privile
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Really? The women-hating Daily Fail is your source. Literally the last place you would go to find any reliable, balanced information on women's issues. Even the photo in the story was selected to show the maximum amount of boob.
How about I just leave this here: http://youtu.be/r9dqNTTdYKY [youtu.be]
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I joined SWE, Society for Women Engineers. Never had to take a DNA test or anything.
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I forgot that "Marcus" was a female name. My mistake. [chicktech.org]
Bald faced liars make for the best threads.
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The token male who suddenly appeared on the internet in April of this year, with no information to back up "his" existence, other than the listing on that page and a single article toeing ChickTech's party line? That Marcus?
Also: https://web.archive.org/web/20130529232614/http://www.chicktech.org/about-us. You'll note that doesn't go to the "Leadership Teams" page, because, according to that page's source, it was created 5/23/2014 (and updated this morning).
So, the AC claimed the leadership was 100% female
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So, now it's a grand conspiracy to fabricate fictional men in order to discredit internet commenters.
Yep. That's sane.
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"I don't care, but let me rationalize this out-of-nowhere accusation that makes no sense"
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There absolutely was the accusation of a conspiracy theory there.
"I can't prove to myself he exists" is directly implying the assertion that he doesn't and thus is fabricated. It's literally crazy.
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"Why would there be self selection for jobs on women's rights"
--an abject moron.
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The litmus test is in applying the opposite logic. What would the situation be if they were promoting boys instead, and someone like yourself came along and answered feminist criticism with "but see they accept women too!" Even if they did, their primary discriminator is still the sex of the student instead of relevant discriminators, like aptitude and interest. The bottom line is you (or some other feminist) would have called someone out for saying
"While they're overwhelmingly male in structure, you're absolutely wrong in your made up assertion that they don't accept women."
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Oh, no, I wouldn't say that's a problem for a reversed situation either. The society of male nurses is mostly male, for example, because they're specifically addressing concerns of male nurses. There's a natural and not-fundamentally sexist reason for that divide to have some degree of existence.
People do have a need to be concerned with their own interests.
You accuse me of hypocrisy, when the reverse you assert is entirely within acceptable bounds of anyone who isn't a tremendous misandrist. The fact th
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The issue is that male focused groups are criticized for it while female groups are lauded. Sure, the society for male nurses might be mostly male, but try building a society specifically for male engineers. What happens? The SJWs come out in droves clamoring for the death of the 'patriarchy.' Meanwhile the last 50 years of new laws and social reforms lobbied for by feminists force organizations to select for women because of their sex and not their accomplishments.
Criticism of feminism's hypocrisy is of
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Why would you need a group to help get more people who are already overrepresented into an industry.
This. Makes. No. Sense.
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NBA is granted permission to be gender segregated by the US congress. I don't really approve, but it is the law.
We do have programs to work on gender ratios in Nursing, [minoritynurse.com] teaching [menteach.org], and Salons aren't exactly a career people aspire to, as if that were equivalent.
The difference is feminists don't come whining about people trying to make progress in these areas because they feel threatened. They welcome the break in stigmatized job roles.
MRAs, on the other hand, just love to pretend any attempt at social progre
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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So by creating an environment only welcoming to one group is the way to the solution?
take any 2 groups any 2 groups separate them and have them work exclusively with people from their own group... then see how well they integrate when you combined them together... do they seem to have a prejudice against the other group? do they flock together or intermingle freely?
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Seems to me to be a poor way to be taken seriously. It screams "we cannot compete with men so we must create our own exclusive clubs." Fear of getting an education because someone might disapprove is just pathetic.
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It seems the stereotype threat theory is a myth:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
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Those aren't "prejudices and preconceptions" any more.
Maybe they're just your prejudices and preconceptions.
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TFA claims that "The participants can look around the building and see that girls from all backgrounds are just as excited about tech as they are." If that is true then clearly there is a problem because girls are interested but put off for some reason. At the very least it blows the argument that girls just don't like engineering out of the water.
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If I'm talking about the national budget in some advertised talk, and I look around during my lecture and see people very interested in the topic, should I say the majority of the population loves studying economics?
What kind of fucking logic is that?
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Actually, this is not accepting diversity. It is trying to force sameness.
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That's because they pretend to like diversity, but come to work everyday dressed as Pennywise, or respect "Talk like a Pirate Day".
Shoot I've been harassed at work for using fountain pens with purple ink, working with my office light off, and a bunch of other stuff.
They wanmt their token diversity, but when it comes ot real diversity forget it.
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When there's a statistically significant imbalance between the sexes, sometimes it's because of discrimination, and sometimes it's because there are actual statistically significant difference physical and psychological difference between men and women,.
They could distinguish between the two, of course, but that would require thinking.
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Actually, distinguishing between discrimination and actual systematic differences requires experimentation. We know that women do not do a great many athletic things as well as men, as a general rule, because lots of people have tried.
The fact that there are lots fewer women than men in tech suggests to me that there's likely discrimination going on, and that it would be worthwhile to find out. I keep remembering my son's middle school math club, which was something over half girls. From what I heard,
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tl;dr: Both genders have their share of incompe