Are you suggesting that these facts one of the reasons that you were looking for female developers? If so, that is discrimination.
Is that not what was taking place here? Females being hired, because they were female?
No man here has been passed over for a job because “he might have children soon.”
I have seen this happen to women. Behind the scenes, of course, and not at my current company, where we stamp the hell out of that kind of nonsense.
If you don’t perceive the systemic privilege that males (and especially white males) have in this industry, then your powers of perception haven’t matured yet to where you can conceive that it’s true.
I thought exactly like that, in the past. I know where you’re coming from! I was less clued into what actually goes on, and had less experience, and wished the best for everyone myself, so clearly there’s no real problem, right?
Also probably because I grew up in a much less male-privileged northern European country, and then moved to the US, where I perceive it’s much worse.
The above incident is one of several things I observed that made me realize that this is much more of a problem than we’d wish it were.
In the best of worlds, we hire. promote, and give credence to people entirely based on aptitude. We’re not there, as a whole, as an industry, or as a society.
To get there, a bunch of currently privileged people will have to become uncomfortable. This is how society changes. Change is not comfortable, and doesn’t happen when people close their eyes and cover their ears.
Note that I didn’t say “trust me.” I said “read the actual science on the topic” (which is fairly convincing,) and I also suggested “get more experience of what actually happens in real business.”
And, even if you are too much inside your box to take this to heart, hopefully someone who reads, but doesn’t necessarily posts, get curious enough to actually examine the problem, which would be a win overall.
Finally - the best privilege analogy I know of for this audience is this.
You’re playing a game. When you start, it has different difficulty settings - easy, normal, hard, insane. No matter which setting you play on, there are challenges and pitfalls, even easy isn’t just a cakewalk, there are bosses to beat, quests to do, whatever.
Privilege is like that - playing the game on easy. It doesn’t mean that every white man, or even every man has an easy time of life. There are also other things that affect your privilege - like being born into poverty, which even as a white man, makes the game harder. But what it does mean is that for as hard as you may experience life as a white man, people without the same privilege have it just as hard - only they’re ALSO playing the game on insane level - e.g. a black, trans female lesbian? That’s a level of difficulty that it’s hard to even process.
When it comes to the game industry, if we’re going to be people who create products for everyone, then everyone should have equal opportunity to also be creators. That’s not the case at this point in time.
And for the record once more, since SO many of you repeatedly mis-state my position, I am not talking about hiring unqualified women vs. qualified men. I’m talking about things like removing gender from the application process completely (e.g. blind interviews). I’m talking about increasing the opportunities for stem education for women. I’m talking about changing the visible culture around games and tech, so that panels are interesting and diverse and contain people with different opinions, rather than homogeneous.
Once again, those of you who are stating your opinions here - I understand where you’re coming from, but please, educate yourselves, because, well, frankly you’re wrong.
Yep, ok, I’m crazy. Oh wait, can I back up what I said with science? Yes I can. Can you?
Right. If 6 white individuals, and 2 black individuals apply for a job, they should each have equal opportunity. Wanting to ‘Give opportunity’ to one of the black individuals because they are a minority is not giving equal opportunity to everyone, but just the opposite.
Once again for the millionth time, this was an UNPAID panel discussion, and nobody was hired in preference of anyone else, but rather we were looking for women to balance out a heavily male panel.
NO
What you are doing is encouraging discrimination and nepotism by specifically selecting people based on gender rather than merit. What you are doing is also illegal in many parts of the world. You seem to just not understand that equality means hiring based on merit and you are discriminating by seeking a woman rather than taking applications from everyone regardless of their race or gender.
What you are doing is the complete opposite of positive role model, I can’t possibly see how discrimination is positive role model well now I know why the other guy said people like you believe what you are doing is “Positive Discrimination” and how right he was, but continue drinking the crazy juice on the crazy train lady. I just pray that the actual HR manager is aware of the laws regarding discrimination and besides that, I hope he or she is aware that the company will only benefit from hiring based on merit rather than race or gender.
After all you said in your own crazy words “It is a FACT that women write better code than men”
Specifically criticizing members, and not the ideas their presenting, isn’t a great way to get your point or perspective across.
And this is the only way equality can occur, but then what about diversity?
That is hiring in preference.
Except that the black team members will likely have a greater impact on the end product, partly because they have a different perspective. With equal paper qualifications, diversity actually improves team outcomes across many industries, so hiring the black team member will have a greater benefit to the company than hiring another white man who is probably a lot like the other white men at that company. But the truth is that they’re much less likely to be hired. They don’t have equal opportunity.
Look at it this way - if a company was 98% female, would you think that’s balanced? How about 70% female?
So why is it that tech which is around 85% or higher (depending on specific industry) male, seen as balanced?
Once again, perhaps educating yourself on the science that shows diversity has myriad benefits for everyone involved would be good. I’m not here to teach diversity 101, though apparently many here need it.
The panel is over, there’s no more reason for me to continue here. Maybe I’ve managed to educate a few of you, maybe you’ve dug your heels in and your head in the sand and won’t be budged (more likely). That’s ok, change is coming any way, one way or another, you’re going to have to deal.
Can you not read? This was one solo event panel which was unpaid. That’s not illegal, not even slightly. I don’t understand why you seem to think that wanting to find someone qualified who would have different opinions which would make them MORE qualified, for a panel which already had more than enough male representatives is discrimination, but as we’ve already established, comprehension not your strong suit.
So long as the cause behind that ratio was due to their qualifications, absolutely.
The researchers looked at approximately 3m pull requests submitted on GitHub, and found that code written by women was approved at a higher rate (78.6%) than code written by men (74.6%).
haha and you actually believe that is an accurate representation of the total number of women and men in the industry and all the codes written? of which there is a 4% difference between men and women writing code?
Is THIS what you are speaking about? Is THIS your argument about women writing better code than men? a 4% difference from 3M pull request on GitHub? You actually believe 3M requests submitted to GitHub represents all the men and women in the tech industry?
Is THIS how you have concluded that women write better code than men?
I don’t see how any team could create great games with strong black, lgbt, female, latino, asian, etc characters without some diversity in their teams. I wouldn’t feel comfortable having an transgendered character in a game I made if I didn’t heavily rely on involving multiple transgendered people in the creative process.
EXACTLY!!!
This is what you call EQUALITY!!! It could be 100% of men and still be equality so long as they were hired based on merit, their qualifications. Looks like some people have no idea what is equality and discrimination. And this suggests we have a problem in the school system.
Here is a quote from the article you linked:
Hmm…
Out of context quotes are amazing aren’t they?
The cause behind the current lack of equality in the industry is NOT due to qualifications and merit, though. It’s due to a whole lot of other factors, merit not being one of them. Please educate yourselves.
They can be 