Etsy Hacker Grants Support Female Programmers

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."

Re:Sexism

[Anonymous Coward]

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:I suppose...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should grant money be denied to a man who is otherwise eligible? By only giving this grant to women, they are establishing that they believe there is more value in women. You can't have it both ways. If you would turn down a man who applies for this, who is otherwise eligible, you are implying that his education and future are worth less to you than that of a woman.

But you shouldn't care about someone's sex. This is the message we have been hearing for decades. It's a good message. Unfortunately, it tends to get perverted by people who think that some genders are "more equal" than others.

Nice to see some sponsorship of women...

[trims]

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 stupider ideas than inexperienced males (if anything, I think it's the opposite, 'cause at least most women I know bother to listen for a bit before making a comment, where most young males just shoot off their mouth at the first opportunity).

No more are the comments about the technical correctness of ideas being discussed - nope, suddenly there's snide sexual innuendos that slide in. Women are being "bitches" if they fight for their ideas, but, hey, if I (a guy) strongly advocate my idea, that's just fine. And, that's just the start of it. I hear stuff (both in the discussion and afterwards) about such-and-such being "weak" or "avoiding talking" or similar. Not to mention the fact that during such discussions, I'll commonly see that the topic switches from "which idea is best", to "make sure that girl's idea doesn't win". It's annoying, to say the least, and I can understand why many women avoid tech - it's not fun to be constantly harassed or belittled simply due to being the only woman in the room.

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. DON'T GIVE THE JERKS A FREE PASS. Pay attention when women are trying to comment, and tell the assholes to shut their mouths when they start in with the sexist comments.

Tech is supposed to be about quality of ideas, not personal attacks. Don't be an enabler.

-Erik

Re:I suppose...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can have sex with the female programmer, of course. What an odd question. There are lots of good programmers out there and we don't really need to train up any more - but you can never have enough sex with enough women.

Maybe you're gay, or maybe people have become so twisted by political correctness that they resist the obvious when they feel they can't say it.

Re:Means != Ends

[samazon]

I wish you would all read the article. The reason they're offering this specifically to women is to INCREASE female applicants to the Hacker School - less than 5% of applicants in some rounds were from women, and GUESS WHAT - as a woman working in IT, I can tell you that I was NEVER encouraged to take computer classes and had several teachers discourage me from it. I was given pats on the head my whole life and because of my parents, it pissed me off enough to get to where I am today, but plenty of my peers didn't have amazing, supportive parents like mine and were never encouraged to excel in math, science or technology. Say what you want, but until you've grown up with a vagina and been told "that class isn't for you, dear" you need to really consider what you're saying about females in education. There IS a reason women are targeted for grants like this, and it's because when you get down to it, little girls are not encouraged to be scientists, programmers and physicists. A trip to the girl's toys section of walmart should be proof enough of that.