Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Education Programming

Etsy Hacker Grants Support Female Programmers 211

samazon writes "Online retail shop Etsy announced a living-expenses grant program for women interested in attending the free Hacker School 3-month programming course. The program is hosted in various New York locations (NYU and Spotify have both hosted sessions) and not only is Etsy offering $5,000 grants to ten women who are accepted into the program, they're also hosting the summer course, and have offered enough space to double the class size to 40 students."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Etsy Hacker Grants Support Female Programmers

Comments Filter:
  • So... (Score:4, Funny)

    by XPeter ( 1429763 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @06:25PM (#39651185) Homepage

    Can they teach my girlfriend how to play Starcraft?

    • by Taco Cowboy ( 5327 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @07:22PM (#39651931) Journal

      Why only the women are getting the benefits?

      What about the men?

      Etsy doesn't care about their male customer any longer, does it?

      • by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

        They're obviously misandrists. If it was a men-only scholarship the feminists would be burning the place down.

        Do these yokels realize that the world's first high level language was written my a woman named Grace Hopper, and the world's first programmer was a woman named Ada Lovelace?

        This is just wrong. It should be illegal.

      • While I agree with you in principle, saying "why are you favoring women/blacks/gays/etc? What about men/whites/heterosexuals/etc?" I feel is a bad way to express what is wrong with things like this.

        Instead, we should be offering the following question to others. If people should be judged by the content of their character rather than their gender/race/sexual-orientation/etc, how does having special months set aside for groups of people, and special scholarships set aside for groups of people, and other
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Hey I've been out of work for 6 months and I'm not above going tranny

    • It is surprising because IT skills are Hot now. I can't go by 2 weeks without getting a Job offer out of the blue, at least by some head hunter.
      IT isn't about Technical Skills. Techies are a dime a dozen. You need to learn how to work with a team, and show that to your interviewer.
  • Sexism (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AntiBasic ( 83586 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @06:30PM (#39651275)

    Who cares what sex the code comes from? I want the best possible, not because it's from a woman.

    But such is the way of "progressives"

    • Re:Sexism (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @06:39PM (#39651417)

      Having women in science/tech/engineering/math (STEM) programs is good for the women and their long-term job prospects and incomes, which currently suffer relative to men due partially to lower levels of interest and education in STEM fields. Believe it or not, not everything is about what's best for YOU.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Why would you have it be what's best for only another, then? We can reach a situation that's best for all of us, but it won't be found through this kind of sexism.
        • by HunsV ( 2615715 )
          I'm glad my high school lit teacher had us read Animal Farm. This corresponds nicely with the part where the pigs start walking upright. They adopt all the mannerisms of the human farmers they were supposedly trying to get away from, while changing their society's motto from "Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad" to "Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better."
      • Re:Sexism (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LordLucless ( 582312 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @07:11PM (#39651799)

        So if it's good for them, why are they not flocking to those fields? Why is it you who gets to decide what's best for women (the tradeoff of higher salary, for working in a field you don't enjoy) instead of them making that decision for themselves? Or are you saying there's some sort of problem women have where they can't make rational choices, and need to be enticed towards them instead?

        • Or are you saying there's some sort of problem women have where they can't make rational choices, and need to be enticed towards them instead?

          Just because a *market is free does not mean it is rational or optimal.
          So yes, sometimes people need to be enticed towards rational choices.

          *In this case, the market for programming jobs

          • And just because a job is rational and optimal for the market as a whole, doesn't mean it's enjoyable or desirable for the individual.

    • Re:Sexism (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @06:43PM (#39651475)

      Everyone deserves equal access. A person should not apply for this grant and be denied because of the way they were born. It's revolting and I'm glad to see other people have the same opinion.

      They will deny people access to this grant because of their sex. That is discrimination. Someone who meets every criterion they lay out for eligibility will be treated as unworthy because they haven't got the grantor's favorite chromosomes.

      • Re:Sexism (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @07:54PM (#39652259) Journal

        A person should not apply for this grant and be denied because of the way they were born. It's revolting and I'm glad to see other people have the same opinion.

        You are an idiot.
        There are thousands of grants that are amazingly specific in their requirements.
        Some are based on country of origin or last name, others are for redheads, left handers, skateboarders, tall people,
        short people, club affiliation, weight, religious affiliation, skin color, academic achievement, and so on.

        They will deny people access to this grant because of their sex. That is discrimination.

        Breaking News: Private citizens can choose who they want to give money to.
        Ric Romero with more at 11.

        • I dont GP was arguing about legality of the grant. Just that it is discriminatory and sexist. Learn to read before calling others idiots.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They are offering the grant to encourage and promote the participation of women in the field. It's not like they decided, "let's give this money to folks who want to do CS" and then later "...but just women". As you all know, historically the number of women in CS has been very low. You can argue about why this is all you like. If you think the field doesn't suffer by not tapping into such a large demographic of human potential, you're kidding yourself. Medicine and Law shared the same kind of low numbers d

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Lots of people care what gender the code comes from. Not consciously, not overtly, but they care. We're not in an ideal world where no one cares about these things. It's a bias, and it's slowly getting better, but it's not without effort.

      You want the best possible code. I want the best possible code. Great.

      Except society has trained most people to believe that the best code is written by men. And by the sheer number of men in the field, it sure seems like the best code is written by men. It's a bad feedback

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        What the fuck are you on?

        If I go to github or sourceforge or kernel.org and download some source code, I have no idea who wrote it. I don't know whether they're male, female or some wondrous Thai intermediate state.

        I don't care either.

        More to the point, if I need to recruit a developer, I'm going to explore their programming ability, look for signs of interest in programming and also make sure that they'll fit with my company culture and our ways of working. I want technical skills, personal interest, stron

    • You comment would be more compelling if women were not underrepresented in the field due to sexism. But they are. It's not accidental that the first computer programmers were women -- it's hard work, and why should men do that? -- until business realized how powerful this stuff was, and poof, out go the women. See ya, Ada, we got it from here.

      • by sFurbo ( 1361249 )

        You comment would be more compelling if women were not underrepresented in the field [...]

        So far, so good.

        [...] due to sexism. But they are.

        Citation needed. How do we know that it is because of sexism?

        [...]it's hard work, and why should men do that?

        Yes, because men did not work hard in the mid 1800's. We all learned that from the unbiased history book "How men has always oppressed womyn". No man has ever worked.

    • and/or it could also be a marketing/pr move for a web site that predominantly markets to women in the first place.

    • Your chances of getting good code improve when there's more talent to draw from.

      See "Unlocking the Clubhouse" for information about how many obstacles are still in the way of women in technical education.

      We're losing bright high-achieving types.

  • Having females at all in the hacker college is good, for some reason? I don't see how there's any inherent higher value of an woman versus an equally-skilled man; why not make this a merit/financial circumstance based grant?
    • I mean to say, "having females specifically", I hate left-behind editing errors.
    • by Aeonym ( 1115135 )
      If I were part of the otherwise all-male enrollment I'd consider it inherently good, but not for the reasons Etsy does...
  • by Anonymous Coward

    100 years ago, in New York, there were signs on Italian businesses which read, "Micks need not apply." ("Mick" is a slur against the Irish, for those of you who are not well read.)

    50 years ago, angry white people held up signs exhorting black people to stay out of their neighborhoods.

    Now that racism is almost completely socially unacceptable (except against Asians, who for some reason are still unjustly and openly targeted,) people who like to blame their failure to relate on those with whom they cannot rel

  • Nice Slashdot. Way to be, you know, journalistic.

  • here's my contact info... just feed it to your favorite compiler and run the executable to generate a QR code that lets you bypass the 7 proxies to my linkedin profile. btw, your packets smell like roses. you wanna get out of here?
  • Because, for a "meritocracy", there's a whole lots of sexist bullshit going on in tech, and I'm not just talking about management.

    Part of the reason that women aren't more prevalent in tech, is that as soon as it becomes known that a female is present in a discussion (on-line, or in-person), the tone of the discussion changes radically. Women have a much harder time getting people to accept their ideas, even controlling for level of experience. And, you can't tell me inexperienced females come up with stu

    • by Cederic ( 9623 )

      I hear stuff (both in the discussion and afterwards) about such-and-such being "weak" or "avoiding talking" or similar.

      It's called being an introvert. It's not gender specific.

      I'll commonly see that the topic switches from "which idea is best", to "make sure that girl's idea doesn't win"

      I can happily admit that I've never seen this. Ever.

      The primary problem here is not just a small minority of males being the jerk, but that the majority of males present give them a pass on it, and don't call them on their crap. That's just aiding and abetting the problem.

      What the fuck makes you think that other men like this? If a woman in that situation can't speak out in her own defence, how the fuck is a man meant to? Who's going to speak out to defend the man getting similarly jerked on?

      Pay attention when women are trying to comment, and tell the assholes to shut their mouths when they start in with the sexist comments.

      I hear more sexist comments from female managers than I do from almost every man I work with. The one male exemption is the guy that can walk into a lift, wink at one girl, grab t

  • This is great (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @07:14PM (#39651829)

    If we accept the premise that gender is in no way related to programming abilities, the current gender distribution in the field means that we're missing out on a lot of great talents. So why is that, and what can we do about it? Sticking our heads into the sand and pretending that there is no problem sure as hell hasn't worked so far. I think we need to realize that there is a feedback loop going here. Getting more women into programming helps in creating role models and a less hostile environment.

  • by zbobet2012 ( 1025836 ) on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @11:20PM (#39653871)

    1) Environments with a good mix of men and women are more productive

    2) 20% of all long term relationships start at work. I am all for improving my odds and so should you be. Its not sexist or objectifying to actually want to interact with the opposite sex daily.

    This is acceptable to me because, its not necessarily "affirmative action", but rather it is attempting to attract another demographic. Lets be clear here, this program is:

    a) Free.

    b) Not terribly competitive.

    • Starting a romance at work is a very bad idea. Both for you, your spouse, your boss and colleagues.

      Also, in my experience, environments with a good mix of men and women are less productive, exactly because of flirting, hidden jealousy and dick measuring.

  • This is not about denying men their rights, nor is it about elevating women over men.

    This is one of those attempts to encourage young women to become more involved in areas that they have tended to avoid.

    I've been involved in some of these attempts to foster more women into technical fields before I retired. The overlying issue is that there are many more women in the workplace than years past, and many of them are professionals. But they appear to be shunning many of the technical fields. Other fields

A bug in the hand is better than one as yet undetected.

Working...