Mentoring and diversity for Python [LWN.net]

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 23, 2018 17:03 UTC (Sat) by bobbytables (guest, #65908)
Parent article: Mentoring and diversity for Python

There are no more women in coding because women don't want to code, they prefer to do something else. And guess what, that's fine.

What is stopping women from starting their own open source projects?

These social experiments are going to end badly for the open source projects that take them "seriously". Anyway I'm not concerned as the best developers will quit toxic environments and move on to something else where it is still a true meritocracy, as it should be.

Code / PR should be blind, no-one cares if you're a woman or a minority. If you belong to one of those groups and are concerned about some possible bias, why don't you submit code under pseudonym like Jack Kelso?

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Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 23, 2018 18:06 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (5 responses)

Not long time ago there were very few female orchestra conductors. After all, women just don’t have the required hearing and sense of rhythm. Everybody knows this!

Well, now around 30% of graduating conductors are female.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 23, 2018 22:53 UTC (Sat) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

When will the madness of this social experiment end!?!?

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 24, 2018 1:49 UTC (Sun) by bobbytables (guest, #65908) [Link] (3 responses)

Being a conductor is a very public role where you cannot hide your gender, plus we are talking about a centuries old profession where men ruled. Obviously there were fossilised dinosaurs against it. Can you really say the same about the tech industry, which is barely 40 years old? Additionally as I said before you can easily hide your age, gender and sexual orientation behind a computer.

There are literally hundreds of scholarships and support programmes to get women to code, and have been for the last ten years. Almost every European government gives grants for hiring women in tech companies.

Look, I'm all for creating new opportunities for people, getting more people to code, etc. But not at the expense of a true meritocracy or enforcing positive discrimination over something which can be done anonymously.

At some point people will realise that it's ok to have preferences and being a woman. Do you want to be a powerful tech industry magnate? Go ahead! Want to be a stay at home mum? That's fine too!

If you want to code and you are good, no-one will really care if you're a woman. If you're bad, you're going to get roasted, no matter what is your gender.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 25, 2018 8:16 UTC (Mon) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (1 responses)

> If you want to code and you are good, no-one will really care if you're a woman.

This is simply not borne out by reality.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 25, 2018 13:46 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

There is, for example, this study showing that having a visibly female name reduces the chances of getting a pull request accepted.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 25, 2018 9:58 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

My direct experience is that people do care if the person coding something is a woman, not a man, and treat exactly the same code from me differently to the code from my co-workers.

It would be lovely if this was false, and people did not care about the gender of a coder, but that's not the case today.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 23, 2018 20:48 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (8 responses)

> If you belong to one of those groups and are concerned about some possible bias, why don't you submit code under pseudonym like Jack Kelso?

Among other reasons, people are proud of their work and want to be recognized for it, sometimes this is a step to building a career as a programmer. People also want to attend conferences or speak at a event etc.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 24, 2018 1:40 UTC (Sun) by bobbytables (guest, #65908) [Link] (7 responses)

That's shouldn't be a problem, it should be easy for the author to prove who he / she is under a pseudonym.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 24, 2018 1:47 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (6 responses)

> That's shouldn't be a problem, it should be easy for the author to prove who he / she is under a pseudonym.

How? Resumes are reviewed only for seconds. A link with your name is obvious. Also, how would you present in a conference while hiding under a pseudonym?

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 24, 2018 1:53 UTC (Sun) by bobbytables (guest, #65908) [Link] (5 responses)

And who uses their real name as a github user? It's incredibly easy to make up a gender neutral sounding handle.

If you have reached the stage where you should be presenting, there should be no need any more to have the pseudonym, you can go public from then on as your value as been proved, women, minority or not.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 24, 2018 2:04 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

> And who uses their real name as a github user?

Lots and lots of people including me

> It's incredibly easy to make up a gender neutral sounding handle.

Why should some people be forced to do that?

>If you have reached the stage where you should be presenting, there should be no need any more to have the pseudonym

Why do you want people to hide their identity in the first place?

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 24, 2018 2:12 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

> If you have reached the stage where you should be presenting, there should be no need any more to have the pseudonym

Have you read https://lwn.net/Articles/417952/

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 24, 2018 9:03 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (2 responses)

If you have reached the stage where you should be presenting, there should be no need any more to have the pseudonym, you can go public from then on as your value as been proved, women, minority or not.

That is not how things actually work out in Real Life™. There are women who are at the top of their respective areas of expertise but they still get hit on and/or belittled by (male) sleazebags at conferences (and elsewhere).

Also, there's an obvious incongruity in saying that in a free-software “true meritocracy”, women should just adopt pseudonyms in order to ensure that their work will be judged on its merits because nobody knows they're women. In an actual meritocracy, people's work would be judged on its merits no matter what name they're using for themselves. A “true meritocracy” where half of the potential participants must disguise themselves in order to be able to play on a level field is not a meritocracy at all.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 27, 2018 10:34 UTC (Wed) by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604) [Link] (1 responses)

Having bad experiencres with other people is just a fact of life, whether it's at a conference or anywhere else. This isn't a problem unique to women.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 27, 2018 12:43 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

It is when people target a woman in a manner that they would not have, had she been a man – and that unfortunately happens all too often. Male software developers don't tend to get harrassed for being male software developers (see, e.g., Gamergate).

Also, if “that problem isn't unique to women” is a true statement it should, if anything, be interpreted as a call to action, to try to minimize bad experiences for everyone including women. Unfortunately it is, more often than not, interpreted as an excuse for doing nothing at all (“it's just a fact of life”) – in effect a form of whataboutism.