Positive discrimination in the workplace: classic or dud?

what country are you in bob?

I'd say classic when it's starting at young ages to get girls interested in science and technology, or to recruit qualified women into a company, dud if it leads to women being retained at a position that they're really not suited for.

There's a lot of cases here in America (where mixed-gender classes are the norm) where you find that all-female science/math classes produce better-educated, more confident girls...science/math depend a lot on eureka! moments and boys tend to be more assertive in classes and crowd the girls out from having their own eureka moment in front of the class.

obv gross generalization disclaimer, reverse genders for female-dominated fields, etc.

I am a woman in a male-dominated field (I manage a radio station; only one in ten managers are women) and while I've had a great time in my particular company, there are still places and times where it's been very hard for women in my field. See here for details, although this site doesn't do much for either gender! I still find it hard as hell to recruit women into the field.

I'd say dud. Encouraging more women into science and technology great, encouraging anyone into science and technology is great if you ask me. However using positive discrimination as an employment tool is wrong except in the situation where you have two otherwise equal candiadtes and you use their status as a woman or a minority as a final deciding factor.

the UK.

where somehow I managed to finish school in the early 80s without ever touching a computer...

Can you find some of them and send them my way? Cause I'm languishing away in the pink collar ghetto here and I'd love to get back into IT.

this has little to do with this thread, but "positive discrimination" ("affirmative action," whatever that is, on this side of the pond) is a particularly bizarre formulation. all hiring decisions, like all admission decisions, involve the exercise of discrimination with respect to multiple qualities other than race, gender, etc.