Comments on: Geek Feminism scholarships

By: Leigh Honeywell

Leigh Honeywell — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:59:38 +0000

Wow, Eivind, thanks for explaining how anti-discrimination laws work in the vast majority of jurisdictions which have them!

*facepalm*

By: Eivind Kjørstad

Eivind Kjørstad — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:25:27 +0000

Yeah, that’s what I meant, scholarships that “buy books for women” are a problem, whereas scholarships that buy “books on feminisms for anyone” aren’t.

There’s an exception though, so now that I think about it, either would probably be okay. The thing is; you’re allowed to discriminate, if you demonstrably do so in order to -further- equal rights.

For example, you’re allowed to prefer females engineers, or male nurses, over equally qualified applicants of the oposite sex, since encouraging more male nurses, or more female engineers, furthers equality.

By the same logic, a scholarship intended to encourage women to do better at salary-negotiations and/or computer-science would be okay.

By: Skud

Skud — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:20:13 +0000

I’ve been meaning to offer people copies of Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing for a while, so this is a good opportunity.

I will send up to 5 copies a month of the book to anyone, worldwide, until further notice. Copies may be new or second-hand.

To claim, email me at skud@infotrope.net with your postal address. All I ask is that you read it. I’d love it if you could post a review somewhere (your blog, a pertinent mailing list, etc) and/or pass it on to someone else to read when you’re done, but this is not required.

By: Mary

Mary — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:59:22 +0000

I assume ‘this’ in “a scholarship such as this” means Valerie’s scholarship? Question 4 in my post is not supposed to require or even encourage anyone to restrict their offer, just to note that it’s possible some people may wish to do so and that they should be clear about it.

Re “both sex[es]“, this might be better phrased as “any gender identification”: there are in fact considerably more than two such.

By: Eivind Kjørstad

Eivind Kjørstad — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:47:30 +0000

Interestingly, a scholarship such as this would be in violation of the law on equal rights in my jurisdiction — arbitrarily restricting the eligible receivers of a scholarship on the basis of sex (or race, religion, sexual orientation, a few other things) isn’t allowed.

Offcourse, that could be fixed by offering the books to takers of both sex — I’m sure many of us men could do well with a bit of reading too.