> as long as we continue to perpetuate diversity practices that emphasize sex and race in any way, some classes of people are going to be harmed
The whole reason diversity practices exist is because "some classes of people" are already being harmed. Without "diversity practices", we already have practices that emphasize and discriminate sex and race, except they happen to be the status quo.
Attacking diversity for harming "some classes of people" misses the point, because any change to the status quo is necessarily going to harm certain classes and benefit other classes.
I think class divisions are intertwined with race and gender divisions. You can't ignore the effect of being hired at, say, Google will have on your class.
But 'intertwined' means correlation, not causation. Being a woman is correlated with not doing software dev. in a tech company. It does not mean that tech discriminate against women, because correlation ≠ causation.
Sure, I'll accept the basic logic that the lack of women in tech does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that tech discriminates against women.
But you're also ignoring evidence that suggests tech actually does discriminate against women. Just to scratch the surface, we've just seen some high profile cases like the scandal at Uber and Google's court case on its wage gap.
As someone working in tech, I find it somewhat offensive that Uber had some real twats working for it, and now I am categorized together with Travis as "tech discriminating against women".
The problem is that reverse discrimination does justify the discrimination they [cl]aim to fight. If HR considers the results of my technical interviews to be biased for the benefit of people who look like me and compensate accordingly, I then have to discriminate as I'm supposed to in order to achieve overall fairness of the recruitment process. How is that supposed to reduce biases ?
Reverse discrimination is the easy way, but it is actually counterproductive in term of reducing biases. As case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law imo, of optimizing the easy metric of enrollment ratio instead of the hard goal of fairness.
> The whole reason diversity practices exist is because "some classes of people" are already being harmed. Without "diversity practices", we already have practices that emphasize and discriminate sex and race, except they happen to be the status quo.
Citation needed and it needs to be relevant in a liberal tech company environment.
> The whole reason diversity practices exist is because "some classes of people" are already being harmed. Without "diversity practices", we already have practices that emphasize and discriminate sex and race, except they happen to be the status quo.
Wrong. Everybody has an equal opportunity. Equal results are not guaranteed, nor should be guaranteed.
This is specifically about why women leave engineering, with a number of incidental measures about the egalitarian qualifications across gender (for the studied population).
Of course, next up is arguing about the epistemology of what "everyone" means, which is how you would have started if you weren't trolling. -1
That doesn't seem to support "everybody has equal opportunity" at all.
It's pretty well established [0] that the circumstances of ones birth - race, wealth and, yes, gender are a key determining factor in your expected life outcomes. Equal opportunities are emphatically not available to all.
First, I'm aware that there is a concerted effort in industry & politics to promote "Gender Equality" measures; with the end-game quotas, legal statutes, government power over individuals, intervention, etc.
Second, any policy intervention to correct "discrimination" is itself discrimination. The alternative is freedom & liberty (which benefits everybody). There are countermeasures to correct the "bad actors" & reward the "good actors". Many people who will choose to not give a certain company business if the company is perceived to be against one's values.
> This is specifically about why women leave engineering, with a number of incidental measures about the egalitarian qualifications across gender (for the studied population).
My responses to the "Key Findings" on the report:
> Nearly half said they left because of working conditions, too much travel, lack of advancement or low salary.
I don't have a study handy, but this is not a situation unique to women. Too much travel, lack of advancement and low salaries are a symptom of corporate culture & the inverted leadership pyramid. Being on the bottom is not as good as being on the top & there's less room at the top. Having quotas does not help the people at the bottom nor does it necessarily create better cultural dynamics.
> One-in-three women left because they did not like the workplace climate, their boss or the culture.
I didn't like the workplace climates of several of my jobs. Didn't like all of my bosses or all of the cultures as well. If there is harassment toward women in a workplace, it's probably indicative of deeper issues where others are not being respected as well (in ways related to the characteristics of that person). The solution is not to put certain politically ordained "victim" characteristics on a pedestal; in fact it's an anti-solution because it discourages organizations/people to explore root causes.
> One-in-four left to spend time with family.
Understandable as this has been a more traditional pattern for women. Having a child means focusing more on family & less on the profession.
> Those who left were not different from current engineers in their interests, confidence in their abilities, or the positive outcomes they expected from performing engineering related tasks.
The map is not the territory. Models are an imperfect distillation of reality; especially models aggregating the complexity of many different lives.
While I agree that there are different outcomes in gender, culture, race, etc. The point is everybody (as in all people) has the legal ability to succeed in a profession. If you want certain people to succeed more, address the tools that they have & work to give them better tools so they can succeed. The wrong thing to do is to encourage a victim mentality & a autocratic culture that enforces a certain predetermined outcome; that is the opposite of freedom & liberty.
> It's pretty well established [0] that the circumstances of ones birth - race, wealth and, yes, gender are a key determining factor in your expected life outcomes. Equal opportunities are emphatically not available to all.
The source you provided assumes unwarranted prejudice as a reason. There are other determining factors related to the circumstances such as ability, temperament, education, culture, intelligence.
Let me clarify. Everybody has equal opportunity but not everybody is equally fit to take advantage of the opportunity. The best way to improve everybody's situation is to make the participants more fit for the job.
The whole reason diversity practices exist is because "some classes of people" are already being harmed. Without "diversity practices", we already have practices that emphasize and discriminate sex and race, except they happen to be the status quo.
Attacking diversity for harming "some classes of people" misses the point, because any change to the status quo is necessarily going to harm certain classes and benefit other classes.