For the last three decades, one of the biggest job fairs for women in tech has been the Grace Hopper Celebration, named after the computer-science pioneer who devised the theory of machine-independent programming languages. In the past, the fair has been a Mecca of sorts for women looking for high-tech jobs, and not surprisingly, the great majority of attendees have been women, or lately "non-binary" persons as well, according to a news report in Wired.
This year's GHC held in Orlando, Florida was a disappointment to many women, however. The problem? In a word, men.
Lots of high-tech companies have laid off their skilled help in the last couple of years, and so there is a larger than usual turnover in the field, with people of both sexes trying to find jobs. By Federal law, GHC cannot discriminate against men by, for example, allowing only women (and non-binaries) to attend. So technically, it has always been open to men, but everybody involved knew that the main idea was to provide a place where women (and non-binaries) could gain the exclusive attention of recruiters, and recruiters could count on being able to make their upper management happy by hiring more women. But this year, not so much.
If anyone kept statistics on the number of men and number of women (and non-binaries), the Wired reporter, Amanda Hoover, didn't cite them. The most she could get out of a conference organizer was that there was "an increase in participation of self-identifying males." Clearly, there were more men than many women wanted to see there. A founder of a "female-talent focused media platform" said she heard from a number of women who were sad and frustrated. A female student from Ohio State said, "Now is one of the most important times to advocate for gender equity."
Consider that phrase "gender equity." The word "equity" has chased "equality" out of rights-based public discourse like bad money chases good out of circulation. That is not to make a iniquitous judgment against equity. But some people use the word "equity" to mean a goal that seeks something close to identical outcomes, not just equal opportunities for everyone.
Here's an example from my own field of engineering. Prior to about 1960, a woman who wished to become a professional engineer faced tremendous obstacles which were social, legal, and customary in nature. Many engineering schools accepted only men. The ones who accepted women sometimes didn't allow them to take certain courses or specializations. If a woman managed to get a degree and an engineering job, she was almost certain in a meeting to be asked to go get the coffee, as I heard from a pioneering civil engineer who also happened to be female.
The field of engineering, in the U. S., anyway, lacked both equality and equity for women.
Following the enactment of various civil-rights laws and the advance of feminism in the 1960s, most of the formal legal and organizational barriers that kept women out of engineering collapsed. Women could take any engineering course or degree, and many did. As time went on, they went from being a tiny and obvious minority to being relatively common in the field, and in a generation some rose to positions of management, founders, and so on. Most people would agree that equality has been achieved for women in engineering, by and large.
But what about equity? Many government officials, politicians, and activists who concern themselves with such things keep their eyes on the raw numbers of women in this or that field, and compare that number with the magic 51.1% What is magic about 51.1%? That is the fraction of the U. S. population who are female. If the percentage of women in any field whatsoever—engineering, law, medicine, harness racing—is less than 51.1%, to these folks that is ipso facto evidence that equity has not been achieved. Hence the billions of dollars expended by the U. S. National Science Foundation on programs for women in engineering, and other perpetual efforts to bring the fraction of women in engineering schools and organizations closer to that magic number.
So far, it hasn't worked, at least in the U. S. Those of us who believe that there are deep-seated psychological as well as physical differences between men and women (and non-binaries), which may lead the two sexes to choose different kinds of careers for reasons that may be obscure even to themselves, are not overly troubled by this fact. I rejoice that the barriers to equality came down. I find it easier to remember the names of the women in my classes, not solely because there are only a few of them, but I'm sure it helps. But I don't think it is a blot on the escutcheon of engineering that we have fewer than 51.1% women in the field, any more than I think it is a shame that there are less than 51.1% of men teaching kindergarten classes.
The irony of a womens' tech job fair being overrun by men is this. The same law that allowed women to do engineering at all, allows men to go to job fairs designed mainly for women. So when men take advantage of a privilege that women have benefited from, the women get annoyed.
I personally don't see why the organizers of the GHC can't declare it a private club for four days and admit only people they like, whether they be women, non-binary, red-headed, or whatever. If women (and non-binaries) want to have a meeting to themselves, by all means let them have it. Surely their lawyers could find a way to do this. But it would smack of the old private-club dodge that Southern swimming pools tried for a while to exclude blacks, until the lawyers put a stop to that. So maybe it wouldn't work after all.
The best outcome of all would be if men, out of deference to womens' delicate feelings, and acting as true gentlemen, refrained from registering for the GHC next year, and let the women know the reason they were staying away. But that would probably just make them even madder.
Sources: Amanda Hoover's article "Men Overran a Job Fair Designed for Women in Tech" appeared on the Wired website at https://www.wired.com/story/grace-hopper-celebration-career-fair-men/. I also referred to the Wikipedia article on Grace Hopper.
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