[jwomers]

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).

[n4r9]

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.

[scott_s]

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.