Encouraging Women in Computer Science

why?
My mother got a degree in computer science in the seventies, so I was unaware that there were "barriers that kept women and minorities from entering computing and technology". She did not need anyone to (ugh) empower her.

jwenting:
why do people keep attempting to get more [add your favourite group here] involved in [add your favourite activity here]?

Because people of a certain political persuasion (people who constantly work their choice of presidential candidate into blogs which are ostensibly about computing, for example) think that if X percent of programmers aren't [add your favorite group here] then there must discrimination. It never occurs to them that most people aren't interested in our profession. In fact, most people consider it boring. Or, considering we already have a surplus of developers, that encouraging more people to enter the field is actually setting them up to be unemployed.

why?
Because the education system in the US (and maybe other countries) has a bias that generally (as studies show) still continues to encourage and discourage students towards and away from various disciplines (math and science among them) based on sex, race etc.

To counteract that, altruistic (for the most part) actions are generally taken to help counteract this bias.

It is a very real problem. So, when people stop applying thier personal biases and biggotries to keep others out of particular positions or disciplines, perhaps this sort of selection criteria won't be needed.

Until then, I applaud it.

why?
And it everybody did that, what a wonderful world it would be.

In the meantime, we'll just keep letting people decide for themselves what they want to do with their money, and that includes donating it for scholarships.

After all, the point of Google's scholarship is to help women get jobs based on merit, and not gender, right?

I say, good for Google!

why?
why do people keep attempting to get more [add your favourite group here] involved in [add your favourite activity here]?

Let people decide for themselves what they want to do, and select candidates for jobs/positions based on merits only and not on sex/race/religion/[your pet characteristic here].

All this "favour [group]" only causes hostility towards that [group] as they get preferential treatment.
If they're getting preferred over other groups for positions they'll be scorned by others, and their skill doubted (they were hired only because they're part of [group] and not because of their skillset... after all).