this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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First off, that job fair didn't just spontaneously happen. It was thought up by, organized by, and run by women and enbys in tech, specifically to help women and enbys in tech. Those sponsors didn't just miraculously happen; they were researched, approached, courted, their concerns addressed and their needs accommodated. And yes, that effort too was put in by women and enbys in tech, for other women and enbys in tech.
These are people with limited time and resources, who spent thirty years working on this, who carefully nurtured and shepherded the few resources they could gather, in order to create one single thing to help with their specific needs and challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't other groups with their own needs and challenges - foreigners who need accommodations for their visas and maybe cultural or language help, disabled people who need sign language interpreters or low-vision accommodations, people with issues like ADHD or major anxiety who need supportive environments and some guidance or handholding. There are lots of groups who can benefit from a job fair organized around their specific needs. The fact is, if you aren't part of the group the fair is intended to help, you shouldn't just show up, insert yourself into a place you were never invited, and take resources away from those who those resources were intended for.
And honestly, one of my frustrations is this: if you make a resource for ... people living on Native American reservations, or blind or deaf people, or the mentally ill, or the homeless, or whomever, the resources generated get reserved for that community and no one blinks an eye. But as soon as a resource is designed to help women, there is an immediate and constant demand to expand that resource to other groups. The women and enbys who spent years and decades creating and nuturing this thing have the right to expend their limited time and energy creating resources that matter to them.
I’m highly sympathetic, but this thing didn’t go wrong in an instant. The organizers watched it go off the rails, and, AFAICT, didn’t intervene to fix it, as the problem revealed itself at scale.
Hard situations require hard thinking and decisive action.
I think this is the response that summarizes why someone would have an issue with this:
A class of men used their time and resources to build an old-boys-club to help each other. This is widely regarded as a bad thing. There are actual solutions that would address the underlying issue of special interests giving certain demographics an advantage, like anonymizing applications to circumvent discrimination and ensure the most qualified applicant gets the job regardless of demographic. Instead, the approach here is to make a new old-not-boys-club to give an advantage to different demographics.
That's the issue here. The response to gender discrimination isn't to take turns, it's to eliminate unfair discrimination entirely.
That can't be done without first leveling the playing field.
Yes, a level playing field is one where no one has an unfair advantage, not one where all the various unfair advantages balance out.
That's what leveling the playing field is, removing the unfair advantages. Like anonymizing applications.
As stated elsewhere, there are other hurdles besides gender Identity which obstruct applicants. Equality of opportunity by selectively advantaging demographics immediately devolves into absurdity. You have to accurately quantify the exact degree of historical disadvantage and precise proportionate counter-advantage for every demographic, normalized by demographic, and accurately combined to address intersectionality. Every attempt at which obviously creating ripples of advantage and disadvantage to infinitesimally complicate the calculus, not to mention how you even quantify any of these values accurately in the first place.
And you must do all of this, because otherwise you're just making a new tier of privilege to join in on oppressing the minorities who slip through the cracks and don't have advocacy groups to devote time and money to give them a helping hand.
Or, like I said, you could focus on stripping away existing advantages instead of starting new ones, so your efforts benefit everyone disadvantaged.
It's more like acknowledging that under such a system of selective advantages, many underprivileged demographics slip through the cracks because they're not one of the vogue disadvantaged demographics. You're left with towering historic advantages, surrounded by a hierarchy of new trendy advantages, rising in proportion to the power of their advocacy groups. That's not a level playing field, it's a city skyline.
A step in the right direction for those with well-funded advocacy groups. For those without, it's a further step in the wrong direction. Either demographic-based discrimination by private entities is a problem or it isn't. You don't get to morally vindicate selective bias because it was biased in your favor this time. Eliminate the bias.