I really agree with this. It has always disturbed me when a push for female developers is mentioned; a company should be focused on acquiring the best developers they can, not finding ones of a specific gender. This behaviour is literally an example of the problem it is trying to resolve. To the company I work for, I am a software engineer, not a man or woman.
>It has always disturbed me when a push for female developers is mentioned;
My initial reaction to hearing news like this is that more qualified candidates are going to be passed over in favor of more diverse candidates. This in turn can quickly turn into viewing minority candidates as diversity hires.
There is a lot of sexism, racism, and classism in our society. We need to hit it at the root where it occurs and realize that any other approach to correct it can end up being more costly. For example, many attempts to correct racism don't account for classism. This ends up creating resentment in class minorities who aren't racial minorities, which ends up perpetuating racism and creating groups who are opposed to the notion of social justice in general.
I don't think the fault lies at the employment level.
I think the societal biases are imprinted in people during their social development.
Girls are less likely to be given the equipment and backing to get into software development at an early age, and their peers would rarely understand such an interest.
The field and the associated character traits around it are viewed as nerdy or boring, the people who don't give a stuff about such judgements seem to be the people who do gain an interest in the field and consider working in it.
Biases are not just socially constructed - they're often rooted in biology. It might just be the case that for biological reasons, females (in general) aren't as interested in creating technology.
The gender imbalance in fields like programming and nursing is larger in the most "fair and evolved" societies (e.g. Denmark), because these societies allow biological gender differences to more freely assert themselves.
Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome is something I very strongly agree with, I would be mortified to be given handouts because of a particular box I fit in.
Affirmative action reeks of plastering over a bug instead of squashing it at the root cause.
> I don't think the fault lies at the employment level.
I think companies can take steps to improve outreach to excluded groups, and set up policies to help reduce exclusionary behaviour in the workplace. I don't really care if it's their fault or not.
Which reflects the existing industry placements + recent graduates, which reflects the university applications, which reflects the high-school graduations, which reflects the typical 50/50 gender split of the general population.
If women are self-excluding, what is causing the hostility in that environment? If they're systemically-excluded, how do we remove it?
> That is, most companies (regardless of conscious choice) are finding the best (young, white) male developers only.
The implication here is that earned (through training) software and programming skills are equally distributed among the entire population. This is simply not true just by looking at StackOverflow/CS major demographics.
They are finding the best female developers. There just aren't that many (for whatever reason)
> They are finding the best female developers. There just aren't that many (for whatever reason)
This sounds like you think companies don't have an obligation to improve their environments so that women feel included. Consider a developer that you would say is among the best: would she accept a position at your company? Why not?
A refinement would be that the company should focus on acquiring the developers who will provide the most marginal benefit. For an organization that values diversity but that currently has a non-diverse team, this could tip the scales toward a competent developer who exists outside that monoculture.
I understand your argument but it's taking a very narrow view of best. Specifically, you're usually making a very small selection from a small sample that responded to a specific job description.
Now the chances are that you haven't selected the best is some global absolute sense as that would be stunningly unlikely. So you've actually selected from a sample that is exceptionally biased in numerous ways. By having a drive for, say, female developers, you're just replacing one very biased sample with another very biased sample.
Now, if you're at a sufficiently small organisation and you're recruiting sufficiently few people, and you're only interested in the immediate needs of your organisation, it is reasonable to assume that a female biased cohort won't necessarily lead to better candidates due to the current heavy gender imbalance.
However, not everyone recruits with such constraints. For example, I work for a large, global organisation that recruits 100's of devs a year into a pool of 1000's of devs. Given the statistical significance, any gender imbalance is not because we recruited the best, it's because we recruited the best of a very badly skewed pool. The corollary is that, if we don't try to address this, we are deliberately ignoring a huge pool of potentially talented devs.
Now, it would be correct to argue that, if we were just to select women from the existing pool, it isn't likely to help things much. If an organisation is doing that then they're mostly doing it to appear diverse. But a drive for female devs that affects the pool absolutely can make a difference. It's not easy, it can mean planning for the long term i.e. going to universities, schools etc. but I strongly believe that it's worth it.
> a company should be focused on acquiring the best developers they can, not finding ones of a specific gender
I respectfully disagree. This position doesn't take into account how existing gender biases affect those who are choosing which field to enter. If a field is primarily composed of men, then young women may not feel welcome in the field and may go elsewhere, meaning there are fewer good developers in the pool to begin with. This leads to lower quality overall in the field than if there were no bias.
It becomes a tragedy of the commons situation: if everyone hires the best regardless of gender, then we continue to repel half of the population. But if one company biases towards hiring women even if they're somewhat less skilled, then they are at a disadvantage to companies that don't do this. This is why things like hiring quotas and other forms of affirmative action exist.
I don't follow. I was explaining why the "hiring only the best" strategy perpetuates a gender imbalance. If there is an 80:20 gender ratio in the industry, and assuming an equal skill distribution, then there will be about 4 times as many men as women in the "hiring only the best" work force. It's not hard to imagine that this could dissuade some young women from choosing this industry, regardless of their aptitude for it. As a result, we have fewer high quality candidates in the industry as a whole.
One way to change this is to correct the imbalance in industry, giving young women a more welcoming environment, role models, etc. However, this actively requires a different hiring strategy than "only the best." As I said, this gets into a "tragedy of the commons" situation, which can only be resolved through collective action, whether voluntarily within the industry like hiring quotas and outreach to women or enforced by the government through affirmative action-style laws.
I feel that any sort of quotas will be worked around by restructuring the employment relationship as a business-to-business contract - and there will be pressure on companies to do that if there's significant competitive advantage.
