Re: Effect of Gender in Learning Ada - OT

["Frode Tennebø" <frode@tennebo.com>]

On Sunday 27 April 2003 01:41 Robin KAY wrote:

> Frode Tenneb� wrote:
> 
>> You would if it meant a greater probability of safer software being
>> installed in the planes you fly or the subways you take, wouldn't
>> you?
> 
> But it doesn't mean that at all, rather the opposite. People should be
> hired purely based on their ability to do the job.

Which, sometimes, may depend on their sex. "hired purely based on their
ability" is not very objective. Also, if two candidates, one male and
one female, had identical "abilities to do the job", _I_ would chose,
independent of quotas, the female candidate purely based on the
not-documented-but-in-my-experience effect of, on average, females
outperform males in the field of engineering.

> Quotas are a form of discrimination in themselves - a 
> legal one perhaps, but dubiously moral and nothing that will make the 
> software in planes or underground trains any safer.

Have you worked in an all-male environment (dislaimer: Robin being a vry
neutral name)? The only thing worse is perhaps an all-female
environment (or so have I been told). :) Even if all those males
possessed better abilities than their female rivals, I would never have
such a composition in my (hypothetical) department.

 -Frode
-- 
^ Frode Tenneb� | email: frode@tennebo.com | Frode@IRC ^
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