Gary Scarborough
Authored Comments
When I said "Maybe IT is just a field that men are more attuned with than the average woman", I was implying desire rather than ability. I fully believe that men and women are equally capable. I am sure there are many career choices that don't appeal to one sex or the other.
As for concluding that STEM outreach isn't having a big impact, I would like to see some results published. Maybe I just haven't seen them, but I wonder, working in education, whether or not what we are doing is working. In the 12 years I have worked at RIT, there has been only minor improvements in the computing programs. I do think that the engineering programs have had better results from what I have seen. Now its possible that the problem lies in the entrenched programs versus newer programs. Our Game Design and Development program has much higher female population than the rest of the college. It just seems to me that there are lots of efforts to push programs and not enough evaluation of results.
You are right in the need to clean up certain attitudes that are prevalent in the industry. That unfortunately I think is a chicken and egg problem. As young men enter the field, the lack of women allows for less that cordial environments where men are expected to just suck it up. But once you have that kind of environment it becomes unwelcoming to women and the problem perpetuates.
Simon,
I don't think you can really blame companies for having to deal with the realities of operating online services. I see no issue with GitHub's actions. They are a source code repository, not a file storage service. I would hardly call staying within the bounds of the law an unreasonable hack. Its unfortunate that some people have caused this to be an issue by exploiting these services. Blaming the services for instituting limits on what is largely a free service, though, is like "biting the hand that feeds you".