You know this makes me sick. Time and time again, articles pop up here on HN talking about some organization trying to promote and encourage women in technology and the comments explode with privileged boys whining about about how "it's not fair"
You know what's not fair? A Teacher telling a 12 year old girl that she needs a backup plan because girls getting an engineering degree, well, that's hard. Getting one from MIT, girls just don't do that. With the very next breath telling the boy standing next to the girl that she (the teacher) knows he can get into MIT if he works hard.
I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of my little girl coming home crying because some idiot crushed her dream of an engineering degree from MIT because girls don't do that. I'm sick of the privileged idiots here, complaining that women are getting some kind of advantage because they get a free github account. I'm sick of cluelessness.
The barriers for women in the workplace are difficult enough, it's worse in tech. The sooner we accept that, and accept that some organizations really are try to make a difference, the better off we'll be. How many times have we read stories about women who are alienated by their peers because their interests align with something that isn't "girlie." Please!
I've fought hard to teach my girls that society's barriers are there to be knocked down, that they shouldn't get discouraged and that they can do what ever they want. 18 years later, I'm proud that my oldest has ignored the criticism, the "you can't do that, it's a man's job" BS and is on her way to the Coast Guard where she will train as a rescue swimmer (there's only 7 women rescue swimmers now). I'm proud that my youngest stood up to that teacher and told her: well, perhaps MIT isn't the place for her. After all, MIT engineers ask UIUC engineers for help of the real difficult problems, though MIT will make a fine backup plan.
My point is, boys, get over it. I'm sorry you didn't get something for free. Oh wait, you did. You got to be male, a much bigger advantage than a free private github repository.
How will a private repository will change anything?
We are on the internet, most of the time we have no idea which genre you are. Any women will get the same treatment as a men. I understand the issue in "real life" and it must be really awful to have to live that. However the internet should be considered safe for them and for me this action just give them a reason to doubt that they are accepted here too. Giving them the opportunity to hide their code doesn't solve any issue, it just create more issue. We could easily take any argument agaisn't code folding or commit rebase in version control and they would fit perfectly here.
You can't solve anything by hiding it.
EDIT:
Do you think that by removing every girl in engineering classrooms and giving them a private teacher that would help too? It's the same on the internet. Show them that they can be accepted, not that they should be separated.
Please don't conflate people being ignorant of their privilege with legitimate criticism of The Ada Initiative.
The Ada Initiative is a destructive and notorious concern-troll organization that is reviled by many feminists of both genders. They hurt all real initiatives for resolving inequality and bias in technology. Supporting them is destructive.
That last paragraph is exactly the reason i hate this sexist talks, it doesn't matter if its the boys or girls that are complaining..
I don't know if that's the case in the place you are living right now but, if you think that being a boy or a girl its an advantage then you are part of that problem..
Boys will always be boys, ignore them and move on.
You will agree when I say that being a male or a female is not really an advantage or disadvantage. And that either gender should be allowed to pursue whatever they like. If the teacher, society and everyone else in the world says to your little one that she cannot do it, you say to her she can. Because she can and your gender doesn't matter. And when you start telling your daughter that she can, that is one less person in the "society" who says she can't or shouldn't. When you tell your daughter that there is nothing that a girl or a boy cannot do, your daughter will grow up to be one more impartial member of the society.
And I think you will agree with me when I say that it is better to have a public repository, if you want to learn(unless ofcourse github wants female programmers to become closed source programmers). By handing out a freebie to the girls, you are telling the boys the exact same thing which your daughter's teacher told her.
We don't want girls/boys to become programmers, we want them to become whatever they want to. Having promotional activities for females may send a wrong impresion about a particular field to boys - who are also as human and as impresionable as the girls are in school. How many boys do you think take up engineering, just because it is seen as a manly branch and the society expects them to? I would argue many and that is a massive disadvantage to the boys who want to pursue something else.
We should aim at leveling the field instead of providing some people a helping hand at the cost of others. If helping girls take up CS is done by having girls-only CS colleges, free tuition for female CS students or free course material or as in this case free services based on gender, I will say stop. Because boys who are thinking of taking up CS will cry foul. What did your neighbour's son do to not deserve a free github private repo?
Instead, try changing the society. Tell your sons and daughters they can do anything. Tell your students that gender means nothing. Tell the teachers at your daughters school to back off and complain about her to the school authorities.
To be honest, I have no idea if that will work. But what I do believe is if you start handing out freebies to someone based on gender, it will poison the well for the boys, who will cry foul. It wasn't their fault they were born as boys. Equality - yes. Preferential treatment - no.
It's exactly "the teacher" telling an adult woman that she needs a private repository because learning coding is hard, and she needs extra protection from having it open sourced. Women just can't go ahead and do open source, period, they need a backup plan. How exactly is it encouraging and fair to women? You completely missed the point that it wasn't about the free repos. On a top of it, it's Ada Initiative giving their own space on GitHub (upon you emailing them, sigh), not GitHub itself. I myself wouldn't sign up to them, they sound quite toxic and politicized... (for the reference, I'm a woman, a software developer).
> This reluctance has good reasons behind it: fear of being told they are bad programmers, fear of being publicly mocked or harassed, and even fear of losing job opportunities. All of these are greater risks for women on average than men.
[Citation needed]
Edit, to expand on the kneejerk reaction: I find it difficult to accept the premise that this is a female-only problem. I've been reluctant to post my code before as well, and I'm male. The sometimes ruthless mockery of code isn't confined to code written by females.
> I find it difficult to accept the premise that this is a female-only problem.
It doesn't need to be a woman-only problem. It just needs to affect women disproportionately.
Scratch that, it doesn't need to be _anything_. Giving free repos to _anyone_ does no harm to anyone who's not getting them, so the only thing this does is help a group of people.
Now, you may argue that GitHub should be helping a specific group of people over another one, but they've chosen to help who they've chosen to help.
I'm actually pretty angry about this. A much better plan would have been to offer free private repositories to any not-for-profit entity. Offering exclusively to women seems, to me, discriminatory.
Edit: Reading the article more closely, I'm not as bothered as as I was. Technically, Github granted unlimited private repositories to the Ada organization, who (I suppose) delegates their use to its members. It's not as though you can go to github.com and say, "I'm a woman, give me free private repositories."
IANAW, but this almost seems sexist in and of itself. Is Github shielding the delicate female programmers from the merciless wrath of internet trolls? I guess the assumption is that big strong male programmers don't need this kind of coddling.
HN often takes the collective position that businesses should be able to discriminate as they see fit, to do business with whom they see fit, and to set prices (e.g. other threads about "price gouging") as they see fit.
Perhaps Github is merely a business doing as they see fit?
The fact that they partnered with the destructive and notorious Ada Initiative is disappointing. They are little more than concern-trolls, and they are doing far more to hinder equality than promote it.
GitHub is full of great people and poor choices like this are incongruent.
PS: This isn't male privilege speaking - The Ada Initiative is disliked (for very good reason) by feminists of both genders.
I fully support GitHub's right to do whatever they want, but I can't help but find this slightly distasteful. This is affirmative action, which I disagree with in principle.
FWIW, it seems like this will not give you private repos under your own Github Account, but just a private repo under the Github "organization" for the Ada Initiative.
Go take a look at the amount of men in the business of midwifing, it's even worse.
Is there anything that prevent a men to work in this field ? I know a guy who did, so I can tell you: Nothing.
If we lack of women in CS it's mostly because women themselves thinks it's not attractive, just like they don't see trucker, or construction worker as attractive jobs.
For the same reason teaching, widwifing, etc lack of mens.
IHMO: It's the culture that drive the inbalance in a given field, and the inbalance that create some macho mens, not the other way.
I don't personally believe this discrimination exists on the scale that it is touted. I think it starts much earlier. As far back as college, women were more interested in Nursing, Acting, Business, English, Philosophy, etc., but rarely would I sit at the advisement panel and hear "Well, I really do like computers!" from a young woman.
That's not every woman, but a very big chunk that I witnessed.
Our school began participating with various groups to secure funds to help encourage women to come into the CS, MIS, or SE programs. I can count on my hands how many additional women joined. Nowhere near enough to call the effort a success. More women chose the classical major choices instead of the various computer fields, even if they didn't show a lowered cost of attendance. Why?
Through it all, I'd have to blame the culture. You don't fix the problem by throwing money at it. You fix it by showing that Penny is just as comfortable around computers as Sheldon is to Theoretical Physics. A field doesn't have to be stylish, and a playing with a computer doesn't have to make you a nerd.
I assure you there's no concerted force working to eschew women from the sciences. If the culture fits and is likened by its followers, I'm sure the numbers will grow to equal measure of the men. If you start from the root, you can fix many of the problems we see today.
You haven't demonstrated sexism, simply numbers. This is like saying child and youth workers (or any other female dominated roll) is sexist towards men.
Similar to how companies used to advertise job openings seeking a "girl Friday" for secretarial work. It sure was tough cracking the sexist, women-dominated secretary industry.
I get five free private repos for being a university student (for as long as I'm a student) - I don't see why we can't just extend something like this to people who are learning how to program / use github, and not just women/students
I'm a paying github user, and I love github but I can't believe github allowed this. Firstly they are not helping open source if the code is private and secondly it should be for everyone. We hear a lot of people women nowadays complain about inequality and shit, if they are honest they should know this is utterly wrong and should do something to change it, else it's a bit hypocritical. no?
All in all, I think (well, hope) this is a Good Thing. To the extent that (some?) women face different (or more severe) problems in getting started in programming and contributing to F/OSS projects, if this helps ease that process, then it's a win for the world.
Now, I can understand some of the reactions, from both men and women. On the one hand, I can see why guys might say "isn't this just a different form of sexism?" and I can see how even some women might be offended (the same kind of women who freak out if a man holds a door open for them, probably). But despite all that, this has a chance to get more people involved in, and contributing to, the F/OSS world. For that, I think we can accept a small measure of "reverse sexism", given the context, and I think the radfem types can like it or leave it, while their female peers are busy writing code.
Yeah, it would be nice to live in a world which is more or less totally gender-blind, but we're not there yet and this move may at least help level the playing field a little bit.
If you'd like to get your local Scouts group to work on code within the safe measures of private repos, I'm sure you'd also find sponsors. It's not a breach of Equality when you aren't stopping other people from doing something. I'm sure Github would love sponsorship from all over the place.
A benefit of this is clever on Ada and Github's part: a lot of women don't participate in code sharing because of reasons that are discussed here enough. So women will get to find each other and work on code together and hey, the world gets software, and Github makes some happy new customers. I, for one, am signing up even though I barely have the time - I'm eager to meet other women coders in a working environment and I'd like to find a small way to pay back the massive debt I have to the open source community.
How do female programmers differ from male programmers? I find this offensive. There are better ways to help promote programming among women. Equal salaries for starters could be a real equaliser.
Yes, I too am offended that an organization would dare donate anything to the Ada Initiative. Since we obviously live in a post-sexist egalitarian society, any sort of donation to one organization is clearly discriminatory against those not part of or benefitting from the organization!
</sarcasm>
I'm pretty damn sure GitHub can't affect the salaries of women that aren't direct employees of them. In what way does GitHub doing what it can do, which is donate to an organization like the Ada Initiative, cause offense?
What are the data about salary balance between male and female programmers doing the same job / same team? I wonder if anyone has any research, data, or links.
(And please no one post that tired old $0.73 number that is averaged over all jobs, all roles, all hours-per-week!)
I've been answering emails along with other Ada Initiative folks all afternoon!! A lot of women all over the world are very happy and excited to get to try things out on github. The Systers list was so helpful in distributing the link to a diverse worldwide group of women in the field and students just starting out. I think this will have a very positive result and bring many more women into fully contributing to F/LOSS.
Since so many times, people in open source projects wonder what they can do to help, and given the incredibly positive response I've seen so far today from women who've read the blog post and who say it is going to help them, I'm feeling hopeful -- and proud to be part of TAI's efforts to contribute.
I love supporting anyone's learning, especially in free/open tech and culture, and spend a lot of my time trying to do exactly that. Some of that time, I make sure to focus on supporting other women. Taking the time to support other women is often something that has to be a deliberate act, because it is all too easy to just pay more attention to men, who expect and to some degree demand it, so, I have tried for many years to make that an essential part of my life.
An advocacy group for other minorities in tech probably just got a great idea of something they can lobby for themselves, and are very thankful to the Ada Initiative for the idea.
[+] [-] jmj42|13 years ago|reply
You know what's not fair? A Teacher telling a 12 year old girl that she needs a backup plan because girls getting an engineering degree, well, that's hard. Getting one from MIT, girls just don't do that. With the very next breath telling the boy standing next to the girl that she (the teacher) knows he can get into MIT if he works hard.
I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of my little girl coming home crying because some idiot crushed her dream of an engineering degree from MIT because girls don't do that. I'm sick of the privileged idiots here, complaining that women are getting some kind of advantage because they get a free github account. I'm sick of cluelessness.
The barriers for women in the workplace are difficult enough, it's worse in tech. The sooner we accept that, and accept that some organizations really are try to make a difference, the better off we'll be. How many times have we read stories about women who are alienated by their peers because their interests align with something that isn't "girlie." Please!
I've fought hard to teach my girls that society's barriers are there to be knocked down, that they shouldn't get discouraged and that they can do what ever they want. 18 years later, I'm proud that my oldest has ignored the criticism, the "you can't do that, it's a man's job" BS and is on her way to the Coast Guard where she will train as a rescue swimmer (there's only 7 women rescue swimmers now). I'm proud that my youngest stood up to that teacher and told her: well, perhaps MIT isn't the place for her. After all, MIT engineers ask UIUC engineers for help of the real difficult problems, though MIT will make a fine backup plan.
My point is, boys, get over it. I'm sorry you didn't get something for free. Oh wait, you did. You got to be male, a much bigger advantage than a free private github repository.
Edit: Spelling/grammer
[+] [-] dwild|13 years ago|reply
We are on the internet, most of the time we have no idea which genre you are. Any women will get the same treatment as a men. I understand the issue in "real life" and it must be really awful to have to live that. However the internet should be considered safe for them and for me this action just give them a reason to doubt that they are accepted here too. Giving them the opportunity to hide their code doesn't solve any issue, it just create more issue. We could easily take any argument agaisn't code folding or commit rebase in version control and they would fit perfectly here.
You can't solve anything by hiding it.
EDIT:
Do you think that by removing every girl in engineering classrooms and giving them a private teacher that would help too? It's the same on the internet. Show them that they can be accepted, not that they should be separated.
[+] [-] sneak|13 years ago|reply
The Ada Initiative is a destructive and notorious concern-troll organization that is reviled by many feminists of both genders. They hurt all real initiatives for resolving inequality and bias in technology. Supporting them is destructive.
[+] [-] raganwald|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cosmez|13 years ago|reply
I don't know if that's the case in the place you are living right now but, if you think that being a boy or a girl its an advantage then you are part of that problem..
Boys will always be boys, ignore them and move on.
[+] [-] anoncow|13 years ago|reply
And I think you will agree with me when I say that it is better to have a public repository, if you want to learn(unless ofcourse github wants female programmers to become closed source programmers). By handing out a freebie to the girls, you are telling the boys the exact same thing which your daughter's teacher told her.
We don't want girls/boys to become programmers, we want them to become whatever they want to. Having promotional activities for females may send a wrong impresion about a particular field to boys - who are also as human and as impresionable as the girls are in school. How many boys do you think take up engineering, just because it is seen as a manly branch and the society expects them to? I would argue many and that is a massive disadvantage to the boys who want to pursue something else.
We should aim at leveling the field instead of providing some people a helping hand at the cost of others. If helping girls take up CS is done by having girls-only CS colleges, free tuition for female CS students or free course material or as in this case free services based on gender, I will say stop. Because boys who are thinking of taking up CS will cry foul. What did your neighbour's son do to not deserve a free github private repo?
Instead, try changing the society. Tell your sons and daughters they can do anything. Tell your students that gender means nothing. Tell the teachers at your daughters school to back off and complain about her to the school authorities.
To be honest, I have no idea if that will work. But what I do believe is if you start handing out freebies to someone based on gender, it will poison the well for the boys, who will cry foul. It wasn't their fault they were born as boys. Equality - yes. Preferential treatment - no.
[+] [-] marquis|13 years ago|reply
The backstory: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16029337/goldieblox-the-...
[+] [-] whiterabbit2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archon|13 years ago|reply
[Citation needed]
Edit, to expand on the kneejerk reaction: I find it difficult to accept the premise that this is a female-only problem. I've been reluctant to post my code before as well, and I'm male. The sometimes ruthless mockery of code isn't confined to code written by females.
[+] [-] steveklabnik|13 years ago|reply
It doesn't need to be a woman-only problem. It just needs to affect women disproportionately.
Scratch that, it doesn't need to be _anything_. Giving free repos to _anyone_ does no harm to anyone who's not getting them, so the only thing this does is help a group of people.
Now, you may argue that GitHub should be helping a specific group of people over another one, but they've chosen to help who they've chosen to help.
[+] [-] clintonc|13 years ago|reply
Edit: Reading the article more closely, I'm not as bothered as as I was. Technically, Github granted unlimited private repositories to the Ada organization, who (I suppose) delegates their use to its members. It's not as though you can go to github.com and say, "I'm a woman, give me free private repositories."
[+] [-] qntmfred|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnewser1|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sergiotapia|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woah|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raganwald|13 years ago|reply
Perhaps Github is merely a business doing as they see fit?
[+] [-] jcoder|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marquis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theorique|13 years ago|reply
Also, does a transwoman count?
[+] [-] jcoder|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pifflesnort|13 years ago|reply
Personally, I think the Ada Initiative is doing far more harm than good. They're pushing a strange brand of coddling and gender privilege.
[+] [-] reinhardt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|13 years ago|reply
GitHub is full of great people and poor choices like this are incongruent.
PS: This isn't male privilege speaking - The Ada Initiative is disliked (for very good reason) by feminists of both genders.
[+] [-] jubalfh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SeoxyS|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tedchs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rounak|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Voidkom|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] byroot|13 years ago|reply
Is there anything that prevent a men to work in this field ? I know a guy who did, so I can tell you: Nothing.
If we lack of women in CS it's mostly because women themselves thinks it's not attractive, just like they don't see trucker, or construction worker as attractive jobs. For the same reason teaching, widwifing, etc lack of mens.
IHMO: It's the culture that drive the inbalance in a given field, and the inbalance that create some macho mens, not the other way.
[+] [-] Posibyte|13 years ago|reply
That's not every woman, but a very big chunk that I witnessed.
Our school began participating with various groups to secure funds to help encourage women to come into the CS, MIS, or SE programs. I can count on my hands how many additional women joined. Nowhere near enough to call the effort a success. More women chose the classical major choices instead of the various computer fields, even if they didn't show a lowered cost of attendance. Why?
Through it all, I'd have to blame the culture. You don't fix the problem by throwing money at it. You fix it by showing that Penny is just as comfortable around computers as Sheldon is to Theoretical Physics. A field doesn't have to be stylish, and a playing with a computer doesn't have to make you a nerd.
I assure you there's no concerted force working to eschew women from the sciences. If the culture fits and is likened by its followers, I'm sure the numbers will grow to equal measure of the men. If you start from the root, you can fix many of the problems we see today.
[+] [-] bdg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] biot|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manacit|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steveklabnik|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lizzard|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lawnchair_larry|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobsicle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mindcrime|13 years ago|reply
Now, I can understand some of the reactions, from both men and women. On the one hand, I can see why guys might say "isn't this just a different form of sexism?" and I can see how even some women might be offended (the same kind of women who freak out if a man holds a door open for them, probably). But despite all that, this has a chance to get more people involved in, and contributing to, the F/OSS world. For that, I think we can accept a small measure of "reverse sexism", given the context, and I think the radfem types can like it or leave it, while their female peers are busy writing code.
Yeah, it would be nice to live in a world which is more or less totally gender-blind, but we're not there yet and this move may at least help level the playing field a little bit.
[+] [-] needacig|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwild|13 years ago|reply
We are on the internet, I can't see you, I have no idea who you are.
[+] [-] bencollier49|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marquis|13 years ago|reply
A benefit of this is clever on Ada and Github's part: a lot of women don't participate in code sharing because of reasons that are discussed here enough. So women will get to find each other and work on code together and hey, the world gets software, and Github makes some happy new customers. I, for one, am signing up even though I barely have the time - I'm eager to meet other women coders in a working environment and I'd like to find a small way to pay back the massive debt I have to the open source community.
[+] [-] anoncow|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eridius|13 years ago|reply
</sarcasm>
I'm pretty damn sure GitHub can't affect the salaries of women that aren't direct employees of them. In what way does GitHub doing what it can do, which is donate to an organization like the Ada Initiative, cause offense?
[+] [-] theorique|13 years ago|reply
(And please no one post that tired old $0.73 number that is averaged over all jobs, all roles, all hours-per-week!)
[+] [-] lizzard|13 years ago|reply
Since so many times, people in open source projects wonder what they can do to help, and given the incredibly positive response I've seen so far today from women who've read the blog post and who say it is going to help them, I'm feeling hopeful -- and proud to be part of TAI's efforts to contribute.
I love supporting anyone's learning, especially in free/open tech and culture, and spend a lot of my time trying to do exactly that. Some of that time, I make sure to focus on supporting other women. Taking the time to support other women is often something that has to be a deliberate act, because it is all too easy to just pay more attention to men, who expect and to some degree demand it, so, I have tried for many years to make that an essential part of my life.
Cheers, HN.
[+] [-] seivan|13 years ago|reply
So if this is a demographic Github wants to see an increase in, does this mean they don't care enough about others?
[+] [-] alxp|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blocking_io|13 years ago|reply