Etsy Hacker Grants: Supporting Women in Technology

What about grants for black people? There's arguably even less black people in technology than women. We don't seem to talk about that though, as women-in-tech always seems easier to argue about ("are they being sexist?" is easier to talk about than "are they being racist?" or "do low-income and/or poorly-educated and/or resource-starved people deserve more help getting into the field?")<p><i>"Last September, three out of 96 employees in Engineering and Operations at Etsy were women, and none of them were managers"</i><p>How many of the 96 employees were black, and how many of the employees were black women? Should we be concerned if it was lower than the stats about women in general? If not, why?<p>You talk about "gender balance" as if somehow there's an argument there that is more valid than "race balance."<p>In terms of engaging specifically females into more tech subjects, i'll relate something i've seen here in DC. I work with Knowledge Commons DC which offers lots of free classes, some of which are tech related (Object Oriented Programming with Java, for example). That class was 75% women last time. Why? One reason might be that most of the volunteers/organizers are women, and their social circles reach out to even larger groups of women. As people seek out similar people it may make it easier for them to gravitate to subjects which might normally be perceived as male-dominated or otherwise not as open for women. Just a thought.

"No feigning surprise" or anything of the sort can be important. Years ago, I was in a college math class where the teacher used an analogy and mentioned John Elway. Yes, this class was being held in Colorado.<p>Anyway, one of the other women in the class asked who that was -- she needed context to better understand this guy's analogy. He was just flabbergasted, and could not believe that anyone could not know who he was.<p>It didn't help that this particular student had only been in the state a short time, was from New England, and probably knew nothing about football. This prof couldn't make heads or tails of that and proceeded to tear into her as if she was doing it on purpose.<p>There were many tears and a lot of bad feelings all around. I doubt she got much out of that day in class. I know I sure didn't.<p>Stuff like this can make or break a system.

I think it's great to look into why your organization doesn't have more women represented across its divisions. I even think outreach in the form of awareness about this 'problem' is great. I dislike the implicit message being sent by offering money specifically to women to go into engineering/computer science. At best it says, we know you know that engineering is not a field your interested in because your a woman which is why we're focusing on the fact that you're a woman in our recruiting pitch, and so we're offering you a 'bonus' of $Xk. I was aghast when the NYT article ( dave-to-girl ratio ) linked mentioned that "Most women think, 'I'm going to be in a cubicle at Microsoft typing next to some guys who smell funny." if they go into computer science. Because clearly all women make decisions on whether to enter a field based on some absurdly gross overgeneralization of that field. And even if every engineer in the world smelled like a sewer rat, to list that as the first/most important/first mentioned reason women don't want to become engineers is disgusting in the first order.<p>Here's an idea. Why don't we do real research into what cultural factors influence men and women into going into different fields, and then decide to act on those cultural factors. Rather than say, I don't know, do what we do now, which is tantamount to, here lets fix this symptom of a much wider societal problem, and trample on the 'self-worth' and 'competency' of the very minority we're trying to 'save' in the process.<p>/rant.

If someone gives less money to women, -because they are women- it's sexism.<p>How giving money to women -because they are women- isn't sexism?<p>A more honest approach would be to hire the most qualified person, regardless of your current male/female ratio.

Getting more women into tech* isn't just about the money<i></i>...<p>1.) Not encouraged in early years: If you are a tech-savvy female, "soft" tech careers (Graphic Design etc.) are generally recommended as career paths.<p>2.) It's a Boy's Club: If you make it past the college classes (with a 20:1 M-to-F ratio), you enter the workforce with (mostly) the same ratio. This means that unless you have thick skin &#38; a good sense of humor, you'll never make it.<p>3.) You're Wrong: Even if you are right. And no one will hesitate to tell you why.<p>* Speaking for a professional career in Tech.<p><i></i> In my experience, a lot of these actually provoke you to strive to over-achieve &#38; prove yourself. But I can see how it can seem off-putting for a new-comer.

Again and again, criticism comes up against affirmative action to get more women in computing. How can this possibly be unfair? How many of you know what it is really like to be a woman in computing? Can you imagine what it is like to go to a tech conference and be judged on your gender? To be approached as if you must be someone's girlfriend because why else would you be here, or otherwise be some freak of nature? To have to excel a thousand times over among your peers because otherwise you feel you are not good enough? To not want to use the computer room during your free time in highschool because if you don't socialize with other girls at that age you'll be completely cut out of the social-ladder loop?<p>Are you also feeling somehow ostracised because of your minority genetic dispositions or lifestyle? Then welcome more women into the field, because acceptance welcomes more acceptance. We rage about what happened to Turing, but I wonder how many of us in that day and age, if we were his peers, would have fought for him publicly. And yes, I put Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper on a pedestal. I put Ada's mother on a pedestal for pushing Ada into mathematics. Without a role model, every person of minority must make the fight to be the first, and why use that energy fighting to be the first when that energy is better spent innovating in the field.<p>I ask you all please, look to a future 20-30 years from now, when there is more of a balance, as it happened in the fields of medicine, law, architecture.. There was a time when being a woman professional was unimaginable and resisted. It took courage and fearlessness, and it happened. It can happen in our field too, just don't keep blocking it (unwittingly or no) with constant criticism, it's tiring.<p>I cannot wait until the day a post on HN about achieving a balance in our technical fields has zero comments wondering why this could possibly be a good thing.

I am skeptical that there are few women in tech primarily due to sexism or any bad behavior on the part of the men in the field. But regardless of the source of the imbalance, I am also strongly in support of efforts to correct the imbalance, as I think that women have a lot to offer the field that it desperately needs. I firmly support "sexist" efforts to create artificial incentives to lure women into the field, however unfair they may be to men, since by my estimation there is real wealth that will be created by getting them there.<p>Though I support that ideal, I question whether approaches like this are effective ways to achieve it, or even push things towards it at all - Etsy is basically throwing reasonably large amounts of money ($5k apiece) to get people that have already expressed a strong interest in tech to...continue expressing their strong interest in tech.<p>It's like the customer has already started entering their credit card number as the final step of a purchase, and you're spending all your development time optimizing the wording of your product description on that final page because you <i>really</i> want to make sure they finish entering that credit card number. <i>You've already made the sale</i>, spend your time worrying about something else!<p>What I'd much rather see is a focus further up the funnel, where you can actually affect people's behavior and choices in some meaningful way. Spend that 50 grand by offering, at a select set of good schools, $100 apiece to the first 500 freshman girls that enroll in a real CS course, and I'll cheer the effort - $100 bucks is a small price to pay to know that a smart girl at a good school is taking a programming class, but it just might be enough so that you actually see an increase in enrollment. If it's not and nobody bites, bump it to $200 the next semester, see if it changes. Keep the sample of schools small enough, and you'll at the very least be collecting some interesting data on how much money it actually takes to convince college girls to take CS classes. [I suspect even a $100 incentive would be enough to get female enrollment on par with male for intro classes, since at most schools an intro CS class will satisfy some sort of distribution requirement anyways]<p>If we can get girls into first-year CS classes, we <i>will</i> see more women enter the field, I guarantee that. Not all of them, but some, and some of them will be fantastic. It might be crass, but I have no problem with bribing them. I'd happily contribute a few thousand to the effort if there was a sizable one set up.<p>But if we're going to resort to bribery, let's at least make it cost effective. Bribing a tiny set of people that are already going to do what you want anyways is not a smart approach, not when there are so many more creative options.