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On the surface your thought might seem valid, but it is not. The reason a community like WomenMake is valid and important while something like MenMake is not,

On the surface your thought might seem valid, but it is not. The reason a community like WomenMake is valid and important while something like MenMake is not, is because women have and still do face systemic discrimination in society, and in the workplace (and especially tech workplaces). You referenced this yourself (Global Gender Gap Index) so I assume you’d agree with that. So women have a much harder time breaking into and progressing in the tech community, either systemically or even more explicitly through direct discrimination or abuse. WomenMake provides a valuable place for women to help each other through these issues that are specific to them, support each other in general and try to improve this imbalance. Men do not face these issues (although of course race, ethnicity etc are also issues, so many men face discrimination, but not because they are men, for other reasons). Once women face no structural societal discrimination in the workplace, then something like MenMake and WomenMake might be equally valid, but until then you are not correct to make this comparison. (And at current rates this won’t be true for a very very long time).

Raugharr 7y ago
How can you say men do not face discrimination for being a man when the website we are talking about explicitly discriminates against men?
- scott_s 7y ago
  A charitable interpretation of what jwomers meant is that overall, when looked at in the aggregate of our society, men face less harmful discrimination against their gender than women do.
  - Raugharr 7y ago
    I disagree as jwomers made it pretty clear with what they meant. > Men do not face these issues (although of course race, ethnicity etc are also issues, so many men face discrimination, but not because they are men, for other reasons).
  - serf 7y ago
    > A charitable interpretation of what jwomers meant is that overall, when looked at in the aggregate of our society, men face less harmful discrimination against their gender than women do. What I don't understand is how adding more discriminatory rules/events/companies/club reduces overall discrimination. >The reason a community like WomenMake is valid and important while something like MenMake is not, is because women have and still do face systemic discrimination in society, and in the workplace (and especially tech workplace The defense is always "Women are treated terribly, so what of it if men receive some abuse.", I don't agree with the logic. Creating animosity, which things like this generally do (just given the comments..), doesn't seem ultimately useful for ending sexism; it just reinforces it the other way. I don't want to think of what the swing-back will be like, and that's what it seems we're setting ourselves up for as a society.
    - akiselev 7y ago
      How does a community support organization/forum meant to help an underrepresented group of people participate in an industry increasing the discrimination of that industry? They're not stopping you from applying for the same jobs or committing to the same open source projects. Might as well bark up the AARP tree for discriminating against people under 55.
      - celticmusic 7y ago
        it's like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound, it does nothing to fix the underlying problem. Why do we need a society of black engineers when we already have a society of engineers? Willingly Segregating yourself off from the rest of the engineering community does nothing to help the general engineering community to accept black engineers. That was the other posters point. You may not agree with it, but don't act as if there's no validity to it.
    - scott_s 7y ago
      Creating a new community with the purpose of helping a set of people who experience harm in the wider community is not abusing people of the wider community.
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    That depends upon the metric used to measure it. If one were to use life expectancy, college attainment, or judicial bias the metrics show a bit different of a response. Granted, this does differ greatly in some countries, but the 'our society' in general usage is meant on a society by society basis and not to take the world wide average of all societies. Our society does have a significant glass ceiling in place, but there is also a significant glass floor which seems to be often given far less attention in these sorts of discussions.
jakogut 7y ago
> Men do not face these issues (although of course race, ethnicity etc are also issues, so many men face discrimination, but not because they are men, for other reasons) Couldn't it be argued that being excluded from a community such as this based solely on sex is the exact discrimination you're claiming doesn't happen? Should Hacker News exclude entire classes of people based on how the statements of a few make others feel? Wouldn't it be more effective to moderate the behavior of the community, rather than discriminating based on sex?
bbrree66 7y ago
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
manfredo 7y ago
> So women have a much harder time breaking into and progressing in the tech community, either systemically or even more explicitly through direct discrimination or abuse. WomenMake provides a valuable place for women to help each other through these issues that are specific to them, support each other in general and try to improve this imbalance. Men do not face these issues (although of course race, ethnicity etc are also issues, so many men face discrimination, but not because they are men, for other reasons). At my previous company, women & URM applicants for tech roles were permitted two attempts to pass phone interviews while men were only allowed one. Men were only extended offers when teams needed a role to be filled, whereas women who passed the onsite are given offers regardless and new roles were created for them as necessary. Recruiters were also assigned specific percentage targets for recruiting women candidates (As of 2019 this target was 33%, when using the same criteria the industry average is 20%) and received larger recruitment bonuses for recruiting candidates of those demographics. We also had a set number of slots in our recruiting headcount reserved for women & URM hires. And we're not the only companies doing things like this. Intel tied bonuses to reaching diversity quotas [1], and Microsoft has also adopted the practice of discriminatory hiring incentives [2]. These blanket statements that men do not face discrimination when some of the largest tech companies have explicitly discriminatory polices targeting men is not indicative of an informed perspective. 1. https://www.payscale.com/compensation-today/2019/03/tie-bonuses-to-diversity-goals https://www.payscale.com/compensation-today/2019/03/tie-bonu... 2. https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/19/18508013/microsoft-pro-diversity-hiring-inclusion-employee-criticism-claims https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/19/18508013/microsoft-pro-di...
n4r9 7y ago
I agree with this although I think you don't even need such strong claims to justify the existence of such a community. All you need is the simple fact that there are a lot less women in tech than men, and that men and women face different challenges or experiences in society. Given these two indisputable facts, it makes a lot of sense to have a space where women can feel welcome and have their needs prioritised. To give an analogy, I think that a community aimed at people in tech less than 5 feet tall, which prioritises contributions from those people, is equally justified. A community for people over 5 feet tall just... doesn't make sense... it would seem like it was just making fun of or excluding short people.

Raugharr 7y ago

How can you say men do not face discrimination for being a man when the website we are talking about explicitly discriminates against men?

scott_s 7y ago
A charitable interpretation of what jwomers meant is that overall, when looked at in the aggregate of our society, men face less harmful discrimination against their gender than women do.
- Raugharr 7y ago
  I disagree as jwomers made it pretty clear with what they meant. > Men do not face these issues (although of course race, ethnicity etc are also issues, so many men face discrimination, but not because they are men, for other reasons).
- serf 7y ago
  > A charitable interpretation of what jwomers meant is that overall, when looked at in the aggregate of our society, men face less harmful discrimination against their gender than women do. What I don't understand is how adding more discriminatory rules/events/companies/club reduces overall discrimination. >The reason a community like WomenMake is valid and important while something like MenMake is not, is because women have and still do face systemic discrimination in society, and in the workplace (and especially tech workplace The defense is always "Women are treated terribly, so what of it if men receive some abuse.", I don't agree with the logic. Creating animosity, which things like this generally do (just given the comments..), doesn't seem ultimately useful for ending sexism; it just reinforces it the other way. I don't want to think of what the swing-back will be like, and that's what it seems we're setting ourselves up for as a society.
  - akiselev 7y ago
    How does a community support organization/forum meant to help an underrepresented group of people participate in an industry increasing the discrimination of that industry? They're not stopping you from applying for the same jobs or committing to the same open source projects. Might as well bark up the AARP tree for discriminating against people under 55.
    - celticmusic 7y ago
      it's like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound, it does nothing to fix the underlying problem. Why do we need a society of black engineers when we already have a society of engineers? Willingly Segregating yourself off from the rest of the engineering community does nothing to help the general engineering community to accept black engineers. That was the other posters point. You may not agree with it, but don't act as if there's no validity to it.
  - scott_s 7y ago
    Creating a new community with the purpose of helping a set of people who experience harm in the wider community is not abusing people of the wider community.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  That depends upon the metric used to measure it. If one were to use life expectancy, college attainment, or judicial bias the metrics show a bit different of a response. Granted, this does differ greatly in some countries, but the 'our society' in general usage is meant on a society by society basis and not to take the world wide average of all societies. Our society does have a significant glass ceiling in place, but there is also a significant glass floor which seems to be often given far less attention in these sorts of discussions.

jakogut 7y ago

> Men do not face these issues (although of course race, ethnicity etc are also issues, so many men face discrimination, but not because they are men, for other reasons) Couldn't it be argued that being excluded from a community such as this based solely on sex is the exact discrimination you're claiming doesn't happen? Should Hacker News exclude entire classes of people based on how the statements of a few make others feel? Wouldn't it be more effective to moderate the behavior of the community, rather than discriminating based on sex?

bbrree66 7y ago

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

manfredo 7y ago

> So women have a much harder time breaking into and progressing in the tech community, either systemically or even more explicitly through direct discrimination or abuse. WomenMake provides a valuable place for women to help each other through these issues that are specific to them, support each other in general and try to improve this imbalance. Men do not face these issues (although of course race, ethnicity etc are also issues, so many men face discrimination, but not because they are men, for other reasons). At my previous company, women & URM applicants for tech roles were permitted two attempts to pass phone interviews while men were only allowed one. Men were only extended offers when teams needed a role to be filled, whereas women who passed the onsite are given offers regardless and new roles were created for them as necessary. Recruiters were also assigned specific percentage targets for recruiting women candidates (As of 2019 this target was 33%, when using the same criteria the industry average is 20%) and received larger recruitment bonuses for recruiting candidates of those demographics. We also had a set number of slots in our recruiting headcount reserved for women & URM hires. And we're not the only companies doing things like this. Intel tied bonuses to reaching diversity quotas [1], and Microsoft has also adopted the practice of discriminatory hiring incentives [2]. These blanket statements that men do not face discrimination when some of the largest tech companies have explicitly discriminatory polices targeting men is not indicative of an informed perspective. 1. https://www.payscale.com/compensation-today/2019/03/tie-bonuses-to-diversity-goals https://www.payscale.com/compensation-today/2019/03/tie-bonu... 2. https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/19/18508013/microsoft-pro-diversity-hiring-inclusion-employee-criticism-claims https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/19/18508013/microsoft-pro-di...

n4r9 7y ago

I agree with this although I think you don't even need such strong claims to justify the existence of such a community. All you need is the simple fact that there are a lot less women in tech than men, and that men and women face different challenges or experiences in society. Given these two indisputable facts, it makes a lot of sense to have a space where women can feel welcome and have their needs prioritised. To give an analogy, I think that a community aimed at people in tech less than 5 feet tall, which prioritises contributions from those people, is equally justified. A community for people over 5 feet tall just... doesn't make sense... it would seem like it was just making fun of or excluding short people.