> If you're a 10 to 1 ratio, then you need to diversify, and you would discriminate against men the same way you discriminate against accountants. The enlightened individual realizes very quickly that diversity is the goal because it works better.
In a professional work environment, how does gender diversity work better? In over 30 years of programming, dealing with a wide range of types of code and many languages, I've yet to run into a situation where having female-written code would have made any difference.
I can see it making a difference in a non-professional environment where work and social life are heavily intertwined. That's why, for instance, it is important at schools where most students live at the school and the school is where most of their social activity occurs. Things get uncomfortable when you have 15-20% females in an environment where people are both colleagues and boyfriend/girlfriend candidates.
That was the situation at Caltech when I was there. Since then, they have balanced things more, and are now something like 40% female. They did this without discriminating. What they did was work hard on getting qualified females to apply. The actual admission process, though, was kept gender blind.
In a professional work environment, how does gender diversity work better? In over 30 years of programming, dealing with a wide range of types of code and many languages, I've yet to run into a situation where having female-written code would have made any difference.
I can see it making a difference in a non-professional environment where work and social life are heavily intertwined. That's why, for instance, it is important at schools where most students live at the school and the school is where most of their social activity occurs. Things get uncomfortable when you have 15-20% females in an environment where people are both colleagues and boyfriend/girlfriend candidates.
That was the situation at Caltech when I was there. Since then, they have balanced things more, and are now something like 40% female. They did this without discriminating. What they did was work hard on getting qualified females to apply. The actual admission process, though, was kept gender blind.