I think it's fair to call women in tech initiatives nonpolitical. There's no significant political opposition to them; things like the INSPIRE Women Act (the women in tech initiative for NASA) regularly get passed with no real debate.
"I think it's fair to call women in tech initiatives nonpolitical"
I don't actually know if this is true? James Damore has largely been considered a political act, and James Damore was stating being skeptical of the needs of women in tech initiatives. So, if being skeptical of the initiative is a political act, wouldn't going through with the initiative (being nonskeptical) also political?
(Personally I am for women in tech initiatives, FTR, I just don't know if they're not considered political.)
I see the symmetry you're referring to, but I don't think that's a useful way to think about what's a political act. In the 2008 election, there was a political controversy about whether it's snooty to eat fancy mustard; it wouldn't make sense to generalize from that and say condiment choices are always and forever political.
No. I'm not sure whether I think they ultimately are political (is it political for a company which employs lots of Christians to talk about Jesus?), but it's a harder case at the least.
Political opposition? Well, no, not visibly, but that's because "people should only get jobs if they're qualified" is already the default mainstream position. Women In Tech style initiatives claim to be about encouragement but invariably devolve into discrimination against men (in my experience at least) and that's illegal. One political faction turning a blind eye to violations of the law doesn't change the fact that it's still the default position.
This isn't about one political faction, though. Both major political parties support women in tech programs; again, bills to set up women in tech programs for government organizations generally are unopposed.
If it was non-political, then you would expect to see no debates on the issue. Given that there was a post here on HN [1] about an initiative for women devolving into flamebait and arguments about reverse sexism, I think one cannot say it's non-political. As most things are political.
> about an initiative for women devolving into flamebait and arguments about reverse sexism, I think one cannot say it's non-political. As most things are political.
More specifically, an initiate that explicitly excluded non-females elicited comments that said this program was sexist and exclusionary.
