So much ignorance here about the how and why of gender balance in the workplace. From people screaming that decisions should be exclusively skill-based, when clearly they’re in need of further education. Even if we’re being totally utilitarian about it: there’s tonnes of research that shows that companies and teams perform better when there’s balance. Achieving balance – and yes, making decisions based on more than just apparent individual “skill” – makes more effective teams. Surely that alone is reason enough?
Lot’s of jumping to conclustions in the comments here. They are talking about ethics of AI and fairness in systems powered by AI.
To avoid biases in how these systems are run that unfairly target certain groups, diversity in people those developing these systems are needed. Otherwise you get situations like the facial recognition software that couldn’t identify black people.
As the agency paper says:
“we must go further and draw on a diverse mix of minds to develop, apply and govern our use of AI.”
Commenters who think they have so smartly got it all figured out and say “Just hire the most skilled person”, are willfully ignoring any level of complexity in this issue (as usual).
Well all of those ballet dancers trained in cyber so they should be ideal for the roles.
But still no initiatives to increase the number of female sewage workers or bin collectors
I feel like many of the comments here are based on a misunderstanding of the headline and not actually addressing the article or intent of the scheme it’s about. It’s not about creating roles for women or favouring them over male applicants. It’s about providing an opportunity for women to gain experience in an industry they hadn’t considered as an option.
They’ve been watching “The Undeclared War” with Simon Pegg!
The threat is from within the building if this is what they’re doing.
People should be employed based on their ability not based on their fucking Gender, Gender Identity, Sexual preference or Skin colour.
[removed]
Meanwhile in the West…
GCHQ is many things but it really does pride itself on inclusivity. Also there is probably a practical reason why not having enough female workers of a certain type is a disadvantage.
It’s not really about forced diversity here, it’s about answering the question of why are the “best skilled” more likely to be men? Is there some unconscious bias in place that have more men gaining positions or are less women applying to these roles? It’s a more deep rooted issue than just reading the title of the article
I read about the gender advantage women can have in law enforcement and it seems very relevant to this:
>On former US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives assistant director Kathleen Kiernan’s office desk sits a closed padlock. It’s there for an analogy she’s used hundreds of times when explaining why women succeed in law enforcement. **If she hands you the padlock and asks you to break into it, she says that more often than not, “Men will figure out how to tactically compromise it, break it, subvert it, all those kinds of things.” But instead of trying to physically tackle the lock, she says, most women will initially try to find the key or figure out a way to psychologically compromise the person who has it. This, Kiernan insists, is the way most women in law enforcement work**. Most of them haven’t spent their lives assuming they can default to muscles to solve problems, so they use tools like negotiation and communication before they resort to force. And often that turns out to be a better way.*
Snow, Shane. Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart . Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.
I’m not convinced of their reasoning – I can’t help but think they have made up their reasoning to fit around their diversity ideology
I really like this idea and hope to see more women coding and working in IT development teams in general. The three women I work with currently are extremely talented. Not more or less so than men, but definitely bring a different flavour and perspective to common problems
Oh no another article that the masses don’t care so that people forget that our government’s pocketing our money to their m8s.
> A recent survey found 80% of women who had gone through the scheme said a career in technology was neither mentioned nor encouraged while they were at school.
Yeah, no shit. I also found a career in technology was neither mentioned nor encouraged while I was at school. In fact no career was ever really mentioned or encouraged while I was at school. I was asked what I might like to do, and I said I thought I might like to be a photographer, and that was it. My mother’s one and only contribution to my career plans was the single sentence, “I don’t mind what you do so long as you don’t join the army or the police”.
I lived in a caravan until I was 11, was on free school meals for the whole of my schooling, got free school clothes from a charity because we were on benefits, left home at 16, and I’ve never once had a full-time job nor brought in more than £10K in any one year (and I’m nearly 50), but somehow I don’t think GCHQ are going to be giving *me* preferential treatment! Quite the contrary, I suspect.
21 comments
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So much ignorance here about the how and why of gender balance in the workplace. From people screaming that decisions should be exclusively skill-based, when clearly they’re in need of further education. Even if we’re being totally utilitarian about it: there’s tonnes of research that shows that companies and teams perform better when there’s balance. Achieving balance – and yes, making decisions based on more than just apparent individual “skill” – makes more effective teams. Surely that alone is reason enough?
Lot’s of jumping to conclustions in the comments here. They are talking about ethics of AI and fairness in systems powered by AI.
To avoid biases in how these systems are run that unfairly target certain groups, diversity in people those developing these systems are needed. Otherwise you get situations like the facial recognition software that couldn’t identify black people.
As the agency paper says:
“we must go further and draw on a diverse mix of minds to develop, apply and govern our use of AI.”
Commenters who think they have so smartly got it all figured out and say “Just hire the most skilled person”, are willfully ignoring any level of complexity in this issue (as usual).
Well all of those ballet dancers trained in cyber so they should be ideal for the roles.
But still no initiatives to increase the number of female sewage workers or bin collectors
I feel like many of the comments here are based on a misunderstanding of the headline and not actually addressing the article or intent of the scheme it’s about. It’s not about creating roles for women or favouring them over male applicants. It’s about providing an opportunity for women to gain experience in an industry they hadn’t considered as an option.
They’ve been watching “The Undeclared War” with Simon Pegg!
So positive discrimination in other words? 🤔
Need more 0’s because there’s too many 1,s.
01000101 01110000 01110011 01110100 01100101 01101001 01101110 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100100 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01101011 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101000 01101001 01101101 01110011 01100101 01101100 01100110
The threat is from within the building if this is what they’re doing.
People should be employed based on their ability not based on their fucking Gender, Gender Identity, Sexual preference or Skin colour.
[removed]
Meanwhile in the West…
GCHQ is many things but it really does pride itself on inclusivity. Also there is probably a practical reason why not having enough female workers of a certain type is a disadvantage.
It’s not really about forced diversity here, it’s about answering the question of why are the “best skilled” more likely to be men? Is there some unconscious bias in place that have more men gaining positions or are less women applying to these roles? It’s a more deep rooted issue than just reading the title of the article
I read about the gender advantage women can have in law enforcement and it seems very relevant to this:
>On former US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives assistant director Kathleen Kiernan’s office desk sits a closed padlock. It’s there for an analogy she’s used hundreds of times when explaining why women succeed in law enforcement. **If she hands you the padlock and asks you to break into it, she says that more often than not, “Men will figure out how to tactically compromise it, break it, subvert it, all those kinds of things.” But instead of trying to physically tackle the lock, she says, most women will initially try to find the key or figure out a way to psychologically compromise the person who has it. This, Kiernan insists, is the way most women in law enforcement work**. Most of them haven’t spent their lives assuming they can default to muscles to solve problems, so they use tools like negotiation and communication before they resort to force. And often that turns out to be a better way.*
Snow, Shane. Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart . Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.
I’m not convinced of their reasoning – I can’t help but think they have made up their reasoning to fit around their diversity ideology
I really like this idea and hope to see more women coding and working in IT development teams in general. The three women I work with currently are extremely talented. Not more or less so than men, but definitely bring a different flavour and perspective to common problems
Oh no another article that the masses don’t care so that people forget that our government’s pocketing our money to their m8s.
> A recent survey found 80% of women who had gone through the scheme said a career in technology was neither mentioned nor encouraged while they were at school.
Yeah, no shit. I also found a career in technology was neither mentioned nor encouraged while I was at school. In fact no career was ever really mentioned or encouraged while I was at school. I was asked what I might like to do, and I said I thought I might like to be a photographer, and that was it. My mother’s one and only contribution to my career plans was the single sentence, “I don’t mind what you do so long as you don’t join the army or the police”.
I lived in a caravan until I was 11, was on free school meals for the whole of my schooling, got free school clothes from a charity because we were on benefits, left home at 16, and I’ve never once had a full-time job nor brought in more than £10K in any one year (and I’m nearly 50), but somehow I don’t think GCHQ are going to be giving *me* preferential treatment! Quite the contrary, I suspect.
More 👏 lady 👏 spies