[shlubbert]

> We believe that the history of the Lena image clashes with the extensive efforts to promote women undertaking higher education in science and engineering

This sounds pretty easy to understand to me, and like the main reason for the decision.

[friend_and_foe]

Does it? The words are grammatically correct. But the reasoning doesn't make sense. A pretty, successful woman takes a photo, women are somehow belittled because her career choice is sexualizing in nature? Different from theirs? I don't see any sense in the decision or reasoning, though I do acknowledge that the sentence can be read and made sense of.

[fvdessen]

One has to wonder how effective is that strategy given that the adult industry seems to have a much easier time recruiting women than tech

[hummingly]

That's an interesting thought. In high school I met many girls that were actually interested in informatics but had a hard time keeping up and thus did not pursue a career in tech. The women who did end up studying with me were either:

* extreme gamers

* close to parent with interest in tech (me)

* mocked by males as too stupid to learn informatics

* generally adventurous and did not care about appearance

* highly ambitious/great work ethics

In general, all did have a good amount of self confidence. Maybe it is just easier to end up in the adult industry if you are taught from an early age you are an sex object rather a human being with interests. This might sound extreme but I met males that pretended to treat me as a friend but never thought of me as a human. It is then freaking scary to be all alone in a course with them and without backup like other women.

[mort96]

Rather effective? There are still issues to work out but the gender balance is much better these days than back when, say, it was considered cool to use porn as the standard test image in the whole field of digital images

[remram]

Is that true?