Exactly: it isn't the case now, but it was the case before. Why is that?
if we would use it to belittle the work of everyone who is trying to improve the situation
But the whole point is that "trying to improve the situation" by making a huge fuss about "women in tech" is counterproductive; it makes the situation worse, not better.
To the extent that there is a "right" approach, IMO it is to not fuss about anything except what each individual child is interested in. The moment you start thinking "I want more girls to do X" or "I think more boys should do Y", you've already gone wrong. Thinking of people as members of groups instead of unique individuals is what caused the problem in the first place; that kind of thinking is not going to fix it.
> Exactly: it isn't the case now, but it was the case before. Why is that?
I don't know; but I do know it's been like that way before the recent fuss about women in tech got started.
> To the extent that there is a "right" approach .. what each individual child is interested in.
Practically speaking then, do you think we would improve the situation in tech if we told everyone who's organizing these events which do explicitly mention gender to stop doing so?
From an idealistic perspective I'm also against women-only events and would prefer them to be perfectly inclusive.
In practice that's a very hard thing to achieve though and if supplanting existing classes with predominantly boys with an explicit girls-only class helps to get some of these girls interested in tech then I'm not one to rain on their parade.
Exactly: it isn't the case now, but it was the case before. Why is that?
if we would use it to belittle the work of everyone who is trying to improve the situation
But the whole point is that "trying to improve the situation" by making a huge fuss about "women in tech" is counterproductive; it makes the situation worse, not better.
To the extent that there is a "right" approach, IMO it is to not fuss about anything except what each individual child is interested in. The moment you start thinking "I want more girls to do X" or "I think more boys should do Y", you've already gone wrong. Thinking of people as members of groups instead of unique individuals is what caused the problem in the first place; that kind of thinking is not going to fix it.