We are doing IT not social engineering : willing to increase female in IT is bare discrimination

Hi guys,

Im very puzzled by what I saw on CG landing page : this session is dedicated to promoting especially girls working in IT and I cannot agree with that.

Why only girls ? We are all professionals and the sex of the people do not matter : behind a screen you can be male, female, disabled, one-handed, ugly, George Clooney or whatever (else) no one cares until you code well and work in team.

Trying to increase especially the % of girls is just basic discrimination based on sex. This will surely not help fighting for womens’ right using those controversial methods.

Let people choose what they want to do : IT is freedom, not social control nor quotas.

I think that CG should not mix social engineering with coding & IT : this fosters non-neutral political orientation in this session which I think is blurring the aim of that initiative.

I suggest that CG modifies the purpose of this session to make it politically neutral and not discriminatory.

We all think that the world needs EVERY good developer, men & women, and we should try to develop ALL peoples’ skills and teamwork whoever you guys are.

Let people choose THEMSELVES, not because of controversial social theories : we don’t need that.

Regards
Bol’

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In their mission to close the gender gap in technology they made sure to not show any men in the pictures on their site.

It could be that I’m just very very stupid but I can’t find any source of codingame which inlcudes that they dedicated a specific session promoting especially girls working in IT. Can you post a link of the source?

Yeah, I’ve been stupid.
Link: https://www.codingame.com/contests/code-royale

Isn’t the gender page gap proven to be a myth?
I found some videos about that topic. Might be interessting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13XU4fMlN3w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aINDG7AI-4o

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Oh really ? Then why we can’t have more than 5% of female in the developpers world ?

Maybe because when a female want to play with a computer at her young age her parents just tell her “Don’t play with that it’s not for you”.
Or maybe because when a female want to learn how to code, the only thing she hear is “it’s too hard for females”.
Or maybe because when at university there’s only 1 female for 25 males she will hear 100 times during the year “are you lost ?”, “are you sure you are a girl ?”, “i’m not a sure a female can understand that”.
Or maybe because when a female apply to a job the first employer question is “is there any child plan in near future ?”.

Or maybe it’s just gender theory ? After all you already took the first step, don’t stop now.

Being a female in a male world is hard. Oh yes i’m pretty sure you never blame a female for being a developper. I’m pretty sure you never ever take the gender in account when you are talking to a developper. I want to be that way too but i know sometimes i fail at that. I’m confident that when i talk to a female developper i’m not talking the same way that when i talk to a male developper. I try to refrain that but the world made me as i am now and you can’t always change what you want in your attitude.

So yes, in a perfect teletubbies world, Girls Who Code movement would be useless. Because we would have 50% of female in developpers world (I won’t talk about paygap, i have never searched anything about that, i’ll just say bullshits).

But real life is a bitch. And you are not the only developper in the world. Unfortunately, females will encounter many sexists males (and sometime females) on the way to be a good developper. You want to help them ? Start to not blame movements like Girls Who Code. Just accept that females need this kind of movement at the moment. When the times come when females and males are equals in the developper world, Girls Who Code will gladly die.

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I applied as a volunteer for coderdojo in my area, the organizer looked at this site and thought i only want to help teaching girls for some reason …

Wish BotG would mention the cause it stood for. Actually why not make every contest list somewhere what it stands for?

I will link the blog article next time, but don’t really fancy this kind of misunderstandings. It does make one look like they are discriminating.

Stop being offended by everything, please

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BTW there are far more women in nursing than there are men. I don’t see any fight for “equality” on that matter.

Who here was offended? This is a very random comment.

OP seems to be.

Hello,

A few years ago, I might have thought like you; that gender doesn’t matter in our industry, and that people should be recognized based on their skills & work.

Now, as CodinGame community manager but also as a white man in the tech industry for 6 years, I truly believe that promoting girls in tech is a great thing.

I think that a man will never truly understand how it is to be a girl interested in a male-dominated domain. Check this tweet out:

Even as professionals, we, men, might think we’re making our work environment gender-neutral, but unfortunately sometimes, as Magus wrote, we fail to do so.

I don’t see any problem in helping girls discover programming in a friendly environment and persist in their journey to becoming a programmer.

@Bolero I value and respect every opinion in this community. I believe though that you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself. To be honest, I’m a bit surprised by your vehemence (use of bold and UPPERCASE). Furthermore, you’re implicating everyone in your opinion (“we are all”, “we all think”). As you’ve just joined the CodinGame community a few days ago, did you look past this landing page before suggesting we modify the purpose of this event?

@MrMoguro you’re talking about gender wage gap; the topic here is slightly different.

The bottom line is that CodinGame is really proud to support the Girls Who Code movement (which has been chosen by the creators by the way) and we have no intention to change anything about this event.

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@_CG_ThibaudCommunity Yeah, sorry. I misinterpreted the topic. Thanks for reminding me. :slight_smile:

I find it kinda funny how it seems one sided. The “poor” woman can’t stand the male “dominated” world or job. I mean c’mon. Really? There are reasons why some jobs are “dominated by men” and there are reasons why there are jobs “dominated by women”. Some of the reasons are the interests of the individual. If it likes to figure stuff out then it should have oppurtunities to reinforce the interest and become better and maybe even passionate about it. If it likes to care about others and help them out then it should have even possibilities. It shouldn’t be about what gender you have but about what you like and love to do.

If a man wants to become a nurse, nursey teacher or a ballet dancer for example then he gets stamped as “weak” or not “manly” enough. The same apllies to woman but the other way around. Some have either more feminin or masculin attributes. There are men who are more insightful and more careful than women and there are women who are stronger and more powerful than men. It depends on what you compare.

What I want to say by that is that the gender should not be a barrier to get a specific job!

To the girl who wrote that post: I hope that she won’t give up her dreams, interests or whatever you want to call it. I mean I can’t understand how her situation feels like but don’t let anybody tell you what you can or can’t do. How the hell should they know that? You know better! Okay, maybe your parents know what you can and what not, but do they really know? I mean if you never really tried something out how should you know that you are good at it? Maybe the instructions were unclear or the conditions weren’t that optimal or you had handicaps. I guess if she would have more self-confidence and more self-awareness then I would guess that this wouldn’t be such a problem to be the only girl in class because she would know what her qualities are and what she wants and focus on that. Of course it is not easy if you get told that you are bad or get questioned if you really could do it. But then you have to work for yourself. Say to yourself that you can do it. Visualize your goals and steps. You don’t live your life for another person. She downed herself with “stupid girl”. That is something that she calls herself! That is poison and feeds self-doubt. I guess she got told in her early ages that she can’t do something, is not good enough, others do better or something like that. I hope she fights and can get the job she wants. Good luck and show the world what you got!

Guys

Im willing to develop my coding capabilities, not endorsing any undercover political wing : “filling gender gap” is a very clear political orientation and Im just claiming for neutrality.

@Magus I don’t question the reality of your points, you & I know figures can be twisted how we want hmm ? I just say this is politics and not IT.

CG team is willing to fight against discrimination : I concur. This should start by banning any type of discrimination in your practices and not “make IT sex-neutral” as no one ask you to do so but organize that game.

This type of approach is patronizing the girls : do you think they are not mature nor clever enough to succeed if the rules are the same for all of us ? Personally I do not.
And I don’t want to steal them the successes they could achieve by considering them as “dominated” from the start.

For all those reasons, and because my opinion do not represent all others’, I think any discrimination should be banned from this initiative until the community has discussed that tricky point.

2 days before the event you demand the entire thing comes to a halt?

Why did you consider making such a demand? Why make a demand when it’s the company’s right to choose who they support? I don’t understand how you can expect compliance.

CG picked 3 members to create this contest and then offered them a list of charities to pick from. Of course they were given the chance to name any charity or non-profit. It’s their work, their choice.

I think it’s good to express disagreement when something just isn’t right, but you honestly do go a bit too far in your post.

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:bear: Kremlin says there’s no significant evidence of Russian meddling in CG contest.

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As a girl who codes I must say I find this whole “charity” thing incredibly patronizing. I’ve never felt intimidated by males in my class and I am doing well with programming assignments on my own.

Most of my female friends simply don’t enjoy programming or even science/maths in general. I wouldn’t want them to be forced into something they don’t like.

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Some people believe there is a real and problematic gender gap in computer science. They believe this not because of some attempt to be “patronizing” but because there have been studies on the matter which support these conclusions. Here are some links that support the idea of a gender gap:

https://www.usnews.com/news/data-mine/articles/2016-10-20/study-computer-science-gender-gap-widens-despite-increase-in-jobs

https://www.accenture.com/t20161018T094638__w__/us-en/_acnmedia/Accenture/next-gen-3/girls-who-code/Accenture-Cracking-The-Gender-Code-Report.pdf (PDF)

I’m not saying this is a fact that you have to believe – you are free to differ. There are surely studies that would come to different conclusions. But please understand that this is a nuanced topic and that it’s understandable that there are people (both men and women) who believe that this gap exists and want to address it.

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Not promoting girls is also a political orientation and it’s not neutral either.
Here, guys (and girls) in CG do what they want, it’s their toy, not mine nor yours.

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You could probably follow your own advice :slight_smile:

People are working hard to provide you with a fun and free community puzzle.

The authors of the contest choose to support a charity, probably because they think it’s a worthwhile cause.

You may not share that opinion and that’s ok. Nobody is forcing you to do anything.

But as you claim to be a professional, you may want step back, forget what you think you know and consider that there might indeed be some fields, environments or places in the world that are discriminating against women, even if you are oblivious to it.

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@nicola1 : CG team has neither to promote female nor male, this is the meaning of “equality” or “neutrality” : the rules are the same for everyone, not more and not less.

@FrancoisB : I do not criticize CG : job done is important and it is a good idea. My feedback is all about keeping this good idea away from non neutral initiatives which could damage it : discrimination is a bad thing, whichever shape it takes.

Regarding “Girls who code” as a “charity” is strange to me : I’d be a girl I would’nt be very proud to be considered as “a charity” !!
If need be, non discriminating causes are legions around us (disabled, seniors made redundant and willing to work, …) : act local.

S_yro : you’re right. I know those.studies. Unanswered question is always : why willing to “fill the gender gap” as this is not the purpose of a privately owned company ? Clue : “The earning power of gender-diverse companies is 15 percent higher than national industry” … women’s wellness is not really at stake in those “charity” actions.

I think we should let girls choose themselves what is good for them.

It’s definitely not illegal. The female doesn’t have to answer such question, but it’s perfectly fine to ask for insurance purposes how many children does the candidate have or plan on having.