> The purpose of DEI is to rectify the discrimination that is already present.
But what's the mechanism for how it can ever actually do that? Suppose there was discrimination that meant some women who "should" rightfully have done CS degrees instead did something else (and I don't think anyone's ever actually shown this without making an arbitrary assumption that any difference in the number of applicants must be due to discrimination, but let's put that aside for the moment). So now you have a number of women with less CS experience than they rightfully "should" have. If you lower the bar for women to give conference talks, or get promoted in the workplace, to compensate for this lesser experience, you're not actually filling that experience deficit, you just get a number of women who've been promoted above their experience level. That doesn't fix past discrimination, it makes it worse.
This only holds if you assume that the hiring process is already fully meritocratic (which it very clearly isn't) and that it isn't missing talented women already (which it very clearly is).
If hiring managers are, subconsciously or not, more likely to pick the male candidate when faced with a choice for equally capable male/female candidates then there is inherent discrimination in the process and the DEI approach balances the scale.
This means more women working these roles with the same capability as men, it doesn't mean replacing men with women who are worse at the job, which ironically is an attitude making up part of the reason efforts like this have to be made.
> This only holds if you assume that the hiring process is already fully meritocratic (which it very clearly isn't) and that it isn't missing talented women already (which it very clearly is).
Citation needed. Certainly neither of those is "clearly".
> If hiring managers are, subconsciously or not, more likely to pick the male candidate when faced with a choice for equally capable male/female candidates then there is inherent discrimination in the process and the DEI approach balances the scale.
And if it's the opposite, as the best available evidence (not that there is any really solid evidence in this space) suggests?
I'm all for ensuring that everyone gets a fair chance that reflects their skills and experience, regardless of personal characteristics. As far as I can see DEI initiatives are working against that.
But what's the mechanism for how it can ever actually do that? Suppose there was discrimination that meant some women who "should" rightfully have done CS degrees instead did something else (and I don't think anyone's ever actually shown this without making an arbitrary assumption that any difference in the number of applicants must be due to discrimination, but let's put that aside for the moment). So now you have a number of women with less CS experience than they rightfully "should" have. If you lower the bar for women to give conference talks, or get promoted in the workplace, to compensate for this lesser experience, you're not actually filling that experience deficit, you just get a number of women who've been promoted above their experience level. That doesn't fix past discrimination, it makes it worse.