"Cool" is probably easier to evaluate too. It's not unusual for a scholarship committee to consider personal essays, descriptions of extra-curricular activities and intests, even peer endorsements as part of their decision making process. Asking candidates to submit photographs, however, might be a little harder to get approved.
And what about the scholarships that are only open to people of a certain ethnicity, or who are from a certain geographic area, or whose parents work for a particular company, or who belong to a perticular religious group, or whose grandfather was a WWII veteran, etc. All of these exist, and I'm sure that there are scholarships at your institution that have limiting conditions that work in your favour, as well as those that work against you.
None of these qualifications exist in the name of prejudice. They exist to reduce the size of the applicant pool, so that the evaluation committee can make their decision in a reasonable period of time. They exist to divide the field of applicants and ensure that the scholarships don't all go to a small group of super-bright students, but get spread more or less evenly across the student body.
It would be unfair discrimination to say "All scholarships must go to female students." It would be unfair to say "Female students shall always be preferred over male students of equal merit." It is not unfair to say that out of the hundreds of scholarships offered by a given institution, a few dozen will be restricted to female aplicants only. There are still plenty left over for the men to apply to.
As for your statement that there is nothing holding women back from joining the ranks of CS majors, you obviously haven't spoken to the women that I have. There are plenty of obstacles out there that discourage a lot of women from considering CS as a career. I've seen with my own eyes high-school teachers actively discouraging female students from taking advanced math and science courses. I've spoken to women whose families will barely acknowledge their existence because they chose to "abandon a woman's traditional place." And I've seen male students go out of their way to make life as difficult as possible for their female peers. Against all that, the scholarships are important not just as a source of funding, but as a tangible sign of encouragement and support.
You are probably right that one more scholarship probably won't encourage many more women to enter the field, but it may help a few more of the ones who do enter stay the course. And that would be quite worthwhile indeed.
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"Cool" is probably easier to evaluate too. It's not unusual for a scholarship committee to consider personal essays, descriptions of extra-curricular activities and intests, even peer endorsements as part of their decision making process. Asking candidates to submit photographs, however, might be a little harder to get approved.
None of these qualifications exist in the name of prejudice. They exist to reduce the size of the applicant pool, so that the evaluation committee can make their decision in a reasonable period of time. They exist to divide the field of applicants and ensure that the scholarships don't all go to a small group of super-bright students, but get spread more or less evenly across the student body.
It would be unfair discrimination to say "All scholarships must go to female students." It would be unfair to say "Female students shall always be preferred over male students of equal merit." It is not unfair to say that out of the hundreds of scholarships offered by a given institution, a few dozen will be restricted to female aplicants only. There are still plenty left over for the men to apply to.
As for your statement that there is nothing holding women back from joining the ranks of CS majors, you obviously haven't spoken to the women that I have. There are plenty of obstacles out there that discourage a lot of women from considering CS as a career. I've seen with my own eyes high-school teachers actively discouraging female students from taking advanced math and science courses. I've spoken to women whose families will barely acknowledge their existence because they chose to "abandon a woman's traditional place." And I've seen male students go out of their way to make life as difficult as possible for their female peers. Against all that, the scholarships are important not just as a source of funding, but as a tangible sign of encouragement and support.
You are probably right that one more scholarship probably won't encourage many more women to enter the field, but it may help a few more of the ones who do enter stay the course. And that would be quite worthwhile indeed.