I don't understand why you think there is some sweet spot for a professional event where a sexist joke can be appropriate.
Problems with your rewrite: Women: Yes, we aim to make a welcoming atmosphere for women who want to participate in our hackathon. (And for those men still afraid of getting out-programmed by a girl, we've hired an all-female event staff to serve you cold beer.)
1. Boys and Girls are children. Men and Women are adults. The target audience for professional events are people.
2. You imply that being out-programmed by a woman will hurt a man's ego. This is outright sexist and perpetuates the idea that men should be better than women. It both degrades women and shames men.
3. It creates a hostile environment for a woman who programs well. By outing herself as capable she will create social strife with her male peers. There is a reason women do worse on math exams in the presence of men. Social pressures is a real thing that you, as a presumably straight white male, get to ignore.
4. Pointing out you hired an all female staff makes explicit you cater to straight men.
5. By prefacing it with "Women:" you are still listing the female servants as a perk. "Great Food" Is a perk. "Handed to by a woman" is not.
The entire concept literally uses breasts and vaginas as a lure for men. You keep trying to force the idea but it won't ever work in an inclusive way.
This reaction seems to be the result of some combination of my own social ineptitude, and your being sensitive about the issue. Either way I can see why it's not going to be that easy.
> 2. You imply that being out-programmed by a woman will hurt a man's ego. This is outright sexist and perpetuates the idea that men should be better than women.
The point was to make fun of sexism, really. It makes fun of the side of us that is intimidated by smart women, and encourages the more adult behavior of not being afraid of smart "girls".
> 4. Pointing out you hired an all female staff makes explicit you cater to straight men.
Well sure, I don't want to make a purely PC joke either, sortof defeats my point. Sexism mixed in with anti-sexism, I would hope, sortof diffuses things with some absurdity. If done right. Which I still have to figure out I guess.
> 5. By prefacing it with "Women:"
I guess a play on the fact that in the first version, women was a perk. Here it's directly about encouraging women to show up. I guess it doesn't work out of context. How about pretend that I didn't put it in the perks section.
> You keep trying to force the idea but it won't ever work in an inclusive way.
I don't know what you mean by keep, this was my first attempt. Any case, I think that with your attitude taken to its extreme, you take away all possibility of fun. It may seem forced because there's no hope for turning this particular "joke" into something viable. I wouldn't have tried it in real life. I'm remain unconvinced that there's zero room for humor related to gender, maybe it has to be made very carefully and mildly. A female friend of mine pointed out that it's going to be a bad idea altogether while women are still less than 5% of the scene. The idea of waiting until things are less tense, I can get behind, I just would hate for this whole thing to result in a permanent taboo.
Problems with your rewrite: Women: Yes, we aim to make a welcoming atmosphere for women who want to participate in our hackathon. (And for those men still afraid of getting out-programmed by a girl, we've hired an all-female event staff to serve you cold beer.)
1. Boys and Girls are children. Men and Women are adults. The target audience for professional events are people.
2. You imply that being out-programmed by a woman will hurt a man's ego. This is outright sexist and perpetuates the idea that men should be better than women. It both degrades women and shames men.
3. It creates a hostile environment for a woman who programs well. By outing herself as capable she will create social strife with her male peers. There is a reason women do worse on math exams in the presence of men. Social pressures is a real thing that you, as a presumably straight white male, get to ignore.
4. Pointing out you hired an all female staff makes explicit you cater to straight men.
5. By prefacing it with "Women:" you are still listing the female servants as a perk. "Great Food" Is a perk. "Handed to by a woman" is not.
The entire concept literally uses breasts and vaginas as a lure for men. You keep trying to force the idea but it won't ever work in an inclusive way.