> But too few people are willing to admit that if 40% of the speakers are women that represents a drop in the quality of the talks.
Not necessarily. It's certainly possible that, if you go and rank the top 100 python speaker candidates, 40 of them will be women. The total number of female programmers will certainly influence the number in the top 100, but it won't define it.
GP said that the PyCon speaker review process starts blinded, meaning that reviewers don't know the gender of the speaker candidates. So if they got 1000 submissions, and had to pick 100 of them, and 40 of those chosen were women, they were likely among the top 100 speaker candidates, or at least approximately so.
> But often DEI goes to absurd lengths like lowering standards for female firemen or combat soldiers.
Big fat [citation needed] there. (Not just for the idea that it happens -- I'm sure it has happened at least once -- but to support your assertion of "often".)
Not necessarily. It's certainly possible that, if you go and rank the top 100 python speaker candidates, 40 of them will be women. The total number of female programmers will certainly influence the number in the top 100, but it won't define it.
GP said that the PyCon speaker review process starts blinded, meaning that reviewers don't know the gender of the speaker candidates. So if they got 1000 submissions, and had to pick 100 of them, and 40 of those chosen were women, they were likely among the top 100 speaker candidates, or at least approximately so.
> But often DEI goes to absurd lengths like lowering standards for female firemen or combat soldiers.
Big fat [citation needed] there. (Not just for the idea that it happens -- I'm sure it has happened at least once -- but to support your assertion of "often".)