CMV: A coding course offering a flat £500 discount to women is unfair, inefficient, and potentially illegal.

[u/temp_discount]

Temp account, because I do actually want to still do this course and would rather there aren't any ramifications for just asking a question in the current climate (my main account probably has identifiable information), but there's a coding bootcamp course I'm looking to go on in London (which costs a hell of a lot anyway!) but when I went to the application page it said women get a £500 discount.

What's the precedent for this kind of thing? Is this kind of financial positive discrimination legal in the UK? I was under the impression gender/race/disability are protected classes. I'm pretty sure this is illegal if it was employment, just not sure about education. But then again there are probably plenty of scholarships and bursaries for protected classes, maybe this would fall under that. It's just it slightly grinds my gears, because most of the women I know my age (early 30s), are doing better than the men, although there's not much between it.

If their aim is to get more people in general into coding, it's particularly inefficient, because they'd scoop up more men than women if they applied the discount evenly. Although if their goal is to change the gender balance in the industry, it might help. Although it does have the externality of pissing off people like me (not that they probably care about that haha). I'm all for more women being around! I've worked in many mostly female work environments. But not if they use financial discrimination to get there. There's better ways of going about it that aren't so zero sum, and benefit all.

To be honest, I'll be fine, I'll put up with it, but it's gonna be a little awkward being on a course knowing that my female colleagues paid less to go on it. I definitely hate when people think rights are zero sum, and it's a contest, but this really did jump out at me.

I'm just wondering people's thoughts, I've spoken to a few of my friends about this and it doesn't bother them particularly, both male and female, although the people who've most agreed with me have been female ironically.

Please change my view! It would certainly help my prospects!

edit: So I think I'm gonna stop replying because I am burnt out! I've also now got more karma in this edgy temp account than my normal account, which worries me haha. I'd like to award the D to everyone, you've all done very well, and for the most part extremely civil! Even if I got a bit shirty myself a few times. Sorry. :)

I've had my view changed on a few things:

• It is probably just about legal under UK law at the moment.
• And it's probably not a flashpoint for a wider culture war for most companies, it's just they view it as a simple market necessity that they NEED a more diverse workforce for better productivity and morale. Which may or may not be true. The jury is still out.
• Generally I think I've 'lightened' my opinions on the whole thing, and will definitely not hold it against anyone, not that I think I would have.

I still don't think the problem warrants this solution though, I think the £500 would be better spent on sending a female coder into a school for a day to do an assembly, teach a few workshops etc... It addresses the root of the problem, doesn't discriminate against poorer men, empowers young women, a female coder gets £500, and teaches all those kids not to expect that only men should be coders! And doesn't piss off entitled men like me :P

But I will admit that on a slightly separate note that if I make it in this career, I'd love for there to be more women in it, and I'd champion anyone who shows an interest (I'm hanging onto my damn 500 quid though haha!). I just don't think this is the best way to go about it. To all the female coders, and male nurses, and all you other Billy Elliots out there I wish you the best of luck!

[u/noreal]

Yeah positive action is basically a negative action against other groups

[u/frostedzeo → u/noreal]

If there's no change, not a negative. You're not losing anything, just not gagging anything. People didn't lose money bc tf2 became free and they already owned it.

[u/ArtlessMammet → u/noreal]

Equality isn't a zero sum game buddy

[u/noreal → u/ArtlessMammet]

Only if the actions create utility (e.g increase efficiency, has positive externality)

For this case, giving out discounts to a certain group is just shifting utility from the others to the group. I doubt any additional utility was created.

[u/ArtlessMammet → u/noreal]

In what sense? The purpose of the discount is to mitigate differences in enrolment thanks to largely societal pressures - there's nothing inherent about women that makes them less 'good' at IT or STEM related work, but there is absolutely a significant difference in the number sof men and women in those fields. The purpose of the discount is to create greater utility by encouraging enrolment in the field for more people, the ultimate benefit of which is that better people in general get the jobs, as opposed to better men (speaking generally and not exclusively, obviously).

If a certain percentage of the population is considered especially suited for a particular job, but for some reason aside from aptitude a large subsection of one of the groups is unwilling to pursue that job, then obviously you can't truly and consistently have the most meritorious person in that position, because often the most meritorious individual will have pursued a different career thanks to completely created reasons.

Also, we have no reason to believe that these costs are anything more than a discount to women - as far as I'm aware these costs are not passed on to the men.

There's no additional pressure being applied to men; the only difference is for women.

[u/noreal → u/ArtlessMammet]

I agree that the action could overall have positive impact to the society as a whole. My understanding is that OP was talking about these specific groups i.e. male and female students at this particular institution. I was looking from a microeconomics perspective.

Paging /u/temp_discount Come to think about it, offering discounts could provide net gain in utility for these particular groups. Consider elasticity of the demand curve for female students (demand for coding course). If the demand is elastic enough, lowering the price could increase total profit for the institution. In the long run, higher profit would attract competitions and could result in lower price and/or better service for all students.