Outreachy Summer 2019 Applications Open With Expanded Eligibility

[schmidtbag]

First question, why wouldn't the program only target the groups who are underrepresented? You just said yourself "a lot of these groups" which implies they also give preferential treatment to groups which are nor underrepresented which very much does not seem to make a lot of sense.

I think they did at first. But, people started complaining about discrimination against "sufficiently represented" groups, so I'm guessing that's your answer.

See, here we have the main problem I have with this program. While I agree that woman are underrepresented in tech for what ever reason (and depending on your argumentation having a program for that might be good), trans people are not. While they are hard to come by, that is not because they are underrepresented but because they are rare in general.
Something between 0.2% and 0.6% of the people in the US are trans while 2-3% of tech employees report being trans. They are over represented in tech by a mayor factor.
So if the goal of the program is to help underrepresented groups, trans people would not be part of it. Yet they are for some reason (and cynical as I am I would argue that is due to PR).

Honestly, I have no idea what the statistics are for trans people in tech, or their employment in general. I don't have any compelling reason to doubt you.
I personally am mostly focused on women, blacks, and Latinos, since they have the lowest representation in tech fields and are commonly known to be discriminated against (with evidence).

[brent]

It's definitely good to see that the program is opening up instead of just focusing on some specific groups of people that are perceived to be at a disadvantage by the organizers.

Shouldn't the critics here welcome the change?

[ZeroPointEnergy]

That goes back to my climate change denier example. The equivalent of what you said is "it's snowing where I am so surely it's not a real problem".
Yes, lack of interest is a MAJOR contributor. But, that lack of interest is also deliberately encouraged by many (but of course, not everyone).

I did not say it isn't a problem everywhere, I said it does not happen where I work but the outcome is exactly the same. We even have so called "future days" where we invite dozens of young girls to show them our IT jobs, build and program some robots, etc. in the hopes that this sparks their interest. Still doesn't help.

There is no singular reason for women being uncommon in tech fields and there doesn't have to be a singular reason. Not everything is so black and white. Some of the known reasons are problems, some of them aren't. Discrimination, although declining, does still exist, and it is a problem. The general lack of interest is arguably more wide-spread, and is not necessarily a problem.

The lack of interest is the MAJOR contributing factor here. There are fields where this is completely inverse of course and men are the minority.

I'm not convinced by the discrimination narrative. I have never seen any evidence that this is a widespread problem. All the arguments I have seen are always about pay gap and representation which have both been analyzed in great detail and are not do to discrimination but a wide variety of other circumstances that have nothing to do with discrimination.

[moilami]

You need to redesign education. Engineers should not study mathematics, physics, and chemistry, because those are damn annoying, boring, hard, and difficult to understand while being totally useless sciences. Or so I have heard, and that is anyway why women don't want to study engineering. They want to be engineers, because it is still bring them above average status, but they don't want to study hard sciences, especially mathematics.

One way to solve this problem is by making hard sciences subjective, so that any opinion is as good as any other opinion, and no opinion can be wrong.

[valici]

You need to redesign education. Engineers should not study mathematics, physics, and chemistry, because those are damn annoying, boring, hard, and difficult to understand while being totally useless sciences. Or so I have heard, and that is anyway why women don't want to study engineering. They want to be engineers, because it is still bring them above average status, but they don't want to study hard sciences, especially mathematics.

One way to solve this problem is by making hard sciences subjective, so that any opinion is as good as any other opinion, and no opinion can be wrong.

That's a nice bait you have there.

[Wojcian]

I want outreach for total noobs who want to help improving software.

[torsionbar28]

Discrimination, although declining, does still exist, and it is a problem.

Any program that provides opportunities based on race or gender, to the exclusion of others, is discrimination and is a problem. That includes this disgusting Outreachy program.

[schmidtbag]

The lack of interest is the MAJOR contributing factor here. There are fields where this is completely inverse of course and men are the minority.

Yes... I just said that.
As for men who are the minority, that's also due to lack of interest, but, most men looking for such jobs aren't typically rejected. That's the big difference here.
However, even for boys, they regularly encounter the same issues as girls, where as a child they express an interest in something and are told "you can't/shouldn't do this" for reasons like "that's not manly enough" or "that's a girl's job". It's a 2-way street.
So, in terms of the discrimination issue at hand, males start out with the same problem. The only difference is the jobs men are told they shouldn't do typically don't pay as well, so they're not as inclined to follow through with them in the long run.

I'm not convinced by the discrimination narrative. I have never seen any evidence that this is a widespread problem. All the arguments I have seen are always about pay gap and representation which have both been analyzed in great detail and are not do to discrimination but a wide variety of other circumstances that have nothing to do with discrimination.

Claiming to not see evidence while using that as your basis to not be convinced of the "discrimination narrative" is what compares you to the climate change deniers. I trust that you rarely encounter it; most men don't. But just because your sphere of reality may be in good shape, that doesn't make it universal. Meanwhile, the inverse can be true, where you and many people you know have problems that don't exist elsewhere.
As for wage gap, for the most part, I don't believe that exists at all (when comparing apples to apples). Sure, of course there are scenarios where a woman might be paid disproportionately to her male counterparts, but that's rare. So all that being said, wage gap can't be part of the discrimination narrative, because it doesn't really exist.

[ZeroPointEnergy]

As for men who are the minority, that's also due to lack of interest, but, most men looking for such jobs aren't typically rejected. That's the big difference here.

What evidence do you have that women in tech are typically rejected? Are there studies that show this or is this just an opinion or anecdotal?

However, even for boys, they regularly encounter the same issues as girls, where as a child they express an interest in something and are told "you can't/shouldn't do this" for reasons like "that's not manly enough" or "that's a girl's job". It's a 2-way street.

So, in terms of the discrimination issue at hand, males start out with the same problem. The only difference is the jobs men are told they shouldn't do typically don't pay as well, so they're not as inclined to follow through with them in the long run.

Actually in more egalitarian societies like the Scandinavian countries where they try to raise children as gender neutral as possible the gap in this fields gets even bigger. Looks to me like if people have the choice they go for the thing that interests them the most.

Claiming to not see evidence while using that as your basis to not be convinced of the "discrimination narrative" is what compares you to the climate change deniers.

A climate change denier argues against an existing overwhelming amount of scientific evidence. You don't exactly presented such evidence to bolster your claims to make that comparison. You actually didn't present anything at all besides an opinion about women in tech being discriminated "somewhere".

The main issue I have with such programs is that it creates the appearance that women need extra help to do the same as men do. This is pretty sexist. It also tries to address a non-existing problem with a tone that is borderline racist.

[starshipeleven]

You need to redesign education. Engineers should not study mathematics, physics, and chemistry, because those are damn annoying, boring, hard, and difficult to understand while being totally useless sciences. Or so I have heard, and that is anyway why women don't want to study engineering. They want to be engineers, because it is still bring them above average status, but they don't want to study hard sciences, especially mathematics.

One way to solve this problem is by making hard sciences subjective, so that any opinion is as good as any other opinion, and no opinion can be wrong.

This is so beautiful.