On Fri, May 6, 2016, at 11:43 PM, Gregory Ewing wrote: > Steven D'Aprano wrote: > > Who is setting and enforcing this quota, and given that only about 1 in 20 > > Python programmers is a woman, do you think men are seriously missing out > > on any opportunities? > > Suppose there are 100 people wanting to ask questions, and > there is only time to answer 10 questions. If the 1 in 20 > ratio holds, then 5 of those people are women and the other > 95 are men. > > Alternating between men and women means that all of the > women get their questions answered, and only 5/95 of the > men. So in this example, if you're a woman you have a 100% > chance of getting answered, and if you're a man you only > have a 5.26% chance. > > Whether you think this is a good strategy or not, > beliavsky is right that it's not "equal".
This is a pedantically and nonsensical definition of "equal", that ignores the many, many reasons why there are 1 in 20 women in that conference. Its looking at the end effect and ignoring everything that leads up to it, and deciding its instead special rights -- this is the great argument against minorities getting a voice, that their requests for equal *opportunity* are instead *special rights* that diminish the established majority's entrenched power. Those women are dealing with suppression, discrimination and dismissal on multiple levels that leave them in a disenfranchised position. Recognizing those faults and taking corrective action is fundamentally an act in the name of equality. Correcting for inequalities can not, itself, be a purely "equal" task done in pure blindness of the contextual reality of what is going on in the world. -- Stephen Hansen m e @ i x o k a i . i o -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list