
Women, Tech Conferences and the Bullshit Surrounding It - krisroadruck
http://www.sugarrae.com/rants-in-bitchland/women-tech-conferences-and-bs/
======
petercooper
One way to look at percentages is as a quota. "20% of our speakers this year
shall be women!" Right or wrong, a lot of people don't like this.

Another way is to use percentages as an indicator of _how well your outreach
is going._ If you have, say, 5% women/minority/whatever speaking in the first
year of your conference, that metric could act as a swift kick up the butt
that you're not doing enough outreach, your CFP is poor, you're not promoting
the CFP in a diverse way, etc. You work and improve, and then in year two you
might notice you ended up at, say, 30%. Hurrah!

Both approaches involve percentages and measurements, yet the second is not an
attempt at fulfilling a "quota" (even if there's a target % to reach) and
should be more palatable to everyone while still ensuring efforts are made to
increase diversity.

~~~
vijayr
This "forced quota" thing rarely works well - on large or small scale. Back in
my college days, IBM came to campus - they announced their intention to hire
more women than men, to have diversity in their workforce. While it was good
for the girls who got hired (edging out guys who were more qualified), it
annoyed a lot of guys who had better grades.

May be a better way is to create a nice atmosphere where women feel welcome
and comfortable, having very strict code of conduct in conference and
generally us (male engineers) being nice to them - this might take time, but
the changes would stay.

~~~
guard-of-terra
By the way, are "grades" still considered as a worthy predictor of one's
performance in the workplace?

Because it's kind of strange when I think of it. I've interviewed a lot of
people in my life already and I can't remember a single time grades were
brought forward or mattered. Is it an US thing?

~~~
mhurron
What else do you have when you are going to a campus to recruit?

On top of that, even if the company didn't consider them, their classmates
probably knew where everyone fell in relation to each other. They would know
if they got passed over for someone who had better grades than themselves.

~~~
jleader
If person A came from a privileged background, and got straight As, and person
B came from a much less privileged background, and had to overcome many
hurdles just to get into school, and continued to fight to stay in school, and
got Bs, which person would you want on your team?

I'm not saying that's definitely the case here, just that grades alone don't
tell the whole story.

~~~
jchonphoenix
The one that will produce more value for my company. In many cases, that
person is person A.

I don't care if you were pampered and that's why you got A's. If you have the
necessary knowledge and are a hard worker, you have my vote.

------
katherineparker
Making sure a certain % of speakers are women is ridiculous. I'm a woman and a
programmer and I'd be offended they just threw a few women on to even it out
vs. to make sure the best of the best speakers are there. If some happen to be
women - great! If not, who cares. Women are not being excluded, so what's the
problem? Why include women who may be mediocre just for the score? Too much
sensitivity these days...

~~~
colmvp
Indeed. I'm Asian. There's a lot of Asian men in tech. I don't see many Asian
men on speaking panels. And I don't really care.

~~~
sliverstorm
In that case, I will take it upon myself to be offended on your behalf. No
need to thank me.

;)

------
jacalata
It's pretty annoying to read articles like this about any topic - someone who
doesn't appear to have thought through much of anything, let alone done a
little research, bringing up 'thought provoking' ideas like 'did they consider
that most of the submissions may have been from men?'. Well gee golly, if only
anyone ever had looked at submission patterns across gender and ways to change
them. Or there's the 'you think they dismissed awesome presentations from
people who happen to wear a bra?' question, which is saying 'you must be
accusing everyone involved of outright misgyny!'. Gee whillikers, if only
anyone ever had studied the unconscious changes in reaction to a proposal
submitted under a male name or a female name! etc etc. Do everyone a favour
and do a little research before diving in to a controversial topic that
already suffers so much from 'I'm a man/woman, I must know about this!' layman
syndrome.

~~~
jorgenev
> Explanations for women's underrepresentation in math-intensive fields of
> science often focus on sex discrimination in grant and manuscript reviewing,
> interviewing, and hiring. Claims that women scientists suffer discrimination
> in these arenas rest on a set of studies undergirding policies and programs
> aimed at remediation. More recent and robust empiricism, however, fails to
> support assertions of discrimination in these domains.

<http://ateson.com/ws/r/www.pnas.org/content/108/8/3157.full>

~~~
magicalist
You misrepresent that study by quoting only that part. It continues:

 _"Based on a review of the past 20 y of data, we suggest that some of these
claims are no longer valid and, if uncritically accepted as current causes of
women's lack of progress, can delay or prevent understanding of contemporary
determinants of women's underrepresentation. We conclude that differential
gendered outcomes in the real world result from differences in resources
attributable to choices, whether free or constrained, and that such choices
could be influenced and better informed through education if resources were so
directed. Thus, the ongoing focus on sex discrimination in reviewing,
interviewing, and hiring represents costly, misplaced effort: Society is
engaged in the present in solving problems of the past, rather than in
addressing meaningful limitations deterring women's participation in science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics careers today. Addressing today's
causes of underrepresentation requires focusing on education and policy
changes that will make institutions responsive to differing biological
realities of the sexes. Finally, we suggest potential avenues of intervention
to increase gender fairness that accord with current, as opposed to
historical, findings."_

and what's with the spammy intermediate link? direct link:

<http://www.pnas.org/content/108/8/3157.full>

------
Smudge
The author's assertion is simply that enforcing quotas does not empower women,
and that instead it devalues the work and talent of the women who are
ultimately represented at the conference. And I agree with her. Women
shouldn't need quotas in order to be offered the same opportunities as their
male counterparts.

Of course, percentages matter, and the fact that far fewer women are
represented in a conference may be a symptom of something else, as opposed to
a direct bias by the conference organizers. What we need is more of the
underlying data. To start, I'd like to know how many women submitted technical
talks to begin with.

------
kamaal
I am from a country(India) where reservations and quotas are as rampant as
breathing. Quotas and reservations are disastrous to any community over the
longer run.

The only place where reservations make any impact is areas where there are too
many good candidates and somebody from the lesser privileged sections of the
society who is equally good can't make it due to the limited availability of
opportunities. In such cases it makes some sense to offer the minorities a
degree of reservation as the culture is unwelcoming to a meritorious minority
person.

Any thing apart from this and what you will see is, the social problems remain
totally unchanged. Reservations and quotas means some one from privileged
class who is deserving of a position will be denied the opportunity, and some
one oppressed class who is not deserving will get the opportunity instead. The
net result is the whole system will be poisoned. Work never gets done, more
and more hard working people are denied opportunities. At the same undeserving
people get the same opportunities and make a big waste out of them.

If some one is good, they will win anyway. If they are not, they can't and
won't.

Our job is to create a level playing field. So that anybody who want's to, can
deliver.

~~~
anthonyb
Ah, right. No women in tech because they're not very good at it. Gotcha.

~~~
kamaal
Sorry, where did I say that?

I only say there must be a level playing field so that hard working women get
same chances as men.

Reservations create a scenario where you are lower the entry bar for A group
of people. While keeping it high for B group of people. Net result is there
will no motivation for A set of people to try anything extra since they are
guaranteed an entry anyway. At the same a certain set of people from B will
stop doing any good work because regardless of their work, A's are going to
get their chances.

The whole system collapses.

India has tried this for the past 60 years. The situation has only gone worse.

Work should be done to help women win _without_ reservations.

~~~
anthonyb
You dance around it, but that's what you're saying. What else would explain
the < 5% female speaker rate at conferences? Obviously the good women are
making it, and the rest... just aren't very good.

"Reservations" or whatever you want to call them are lowering the bar to the
same level as other people, but of course the "B"s are going to scream blue
murder because they now have to work instead of cruising.

~~~
klipt
Or maybe there are just more men than women in tech to start off with (in
which case it's hardly surprising there are also more men at conferences).

The problem needs to be fixed at the middle school level (or earlier) where
girls are discouraged from technical subjects.

~~~
kamaal
The worst I've seen is Mechanical Engineering course in my engineering.

In all my four years of Engineering course. There wasn't one single girl in
all four batches of Mechanical Engineering branch.

------
Morendil
Fallacy of the excluded middle. Just because quotas are a wrong solution
doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

A tech conference that ends up with 95% male speakers _is_ Doing Something
Wrong. They have no right to be "happy with their process".

One of the "correct" solutions has already been discussed in many places - use
a name-blinded review process, and make sure your CFP outreach activities
include women-intensive groups.

~~~
jiggy2011
Do you think a name blinded review process would yield a different result?
I've never run a tech conference but it would not surprise me if ~95% of
submitted technical talks were from men.

If you name-blind the review process you would still expect to get 95% men
unless there is a higher % of women submitting talks and being rejected
because they are women.

The quoted article suggests doing the opposite of name-blinding and actively
looking for female talks in the pile.

~~~
j_s
I never did follow up to see how DjangoCon 2013 turned out... looks like
you're about right.

<http://2013.djangocon.eu>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5036457>

    
    
      > Everybody can vote for DjangoCon 2013 presentations (Github required)
      > The voting is deliberately anonymous at this first stage.

------
brianbreslin
As someone who has organized several conferences, and countless events in the
tech space, let me just say that it is REALLY hard to find and get top-
tier/well-known women to speak at your event. I reached out to over a dozen
women execs from 10+ startups that were well known and all of them turned us
down for this last conference I helped organized in Miami in February.

Part of the issue is that you need well known speakers to sell more tickets,
that coupled with the fact that the % of women working in tech is a minority,
you're left with a shallow pool of possible speakers. Furthermore, if you're
looking for certain skill-sets in tech to be speakers, you're further
diminishing your pool of available candidates.

~~~
dspeyer
Did you have similar problems recruiting make execs? If not, do you have any
idea why the difference?

~~~
brianbreslin
Male executives obviously gave us a much higher acceptance rate (lol anything
over 0% acceptance would be higher). But we also had a larger pool of guys to
invite/recruit (more males and more visibility of these guys).

------
belorn
Affirmative action are troublesome, and its good that someone are directly
speaking against it. There are all from social to statistical problems, and
those problem need to not be ignored.

Take Sweden education system. In the 1990s, they thought it would be a good
idea to encourage minority groups by giving them an bonus when applying to a
area of study where the applying individual would be a minority. It was a very
simple rule, and it backfired, got scraped by the early 2000, and declared
illegal. What the Swedish Education board found out was, that in 90% of the
time where a applying individual would become a minority in a class, it was a
white male trying to enter a female dominated area of study. The concept was
scraped short after, with statements that the initial goals was not achieved,
and that affirmative action was found as counterproductive to the concept of
education. The second part was also reaffirmed in the courts and is now made
illegal.

There are also much better alternatives to affirmative action which has been
_proven_ to be effective. Outreach programs works. Just a few months ago,
there were a article describing how they reached around 50% or above female
speaker participation through just doing outreach. They even made it a large
point that they did no distinction what so ever when picking speakers, and the
only work towards equality was outreach.

There are also social studies. We need more of those. As a scientific society,
we should even demand it before listening to anyone arguing about problems
within this society, and more importantly, when the discussion turns to causes
or suggested solutions. If we do not demand it, those studies won't happen, as
there will be no pressure to do so or money invested into it.

------
smoyer
A few years ago I heard someone push the premise that women were simply too
smart to acquire or keep a career in the tech industry. While sweeping
generalizations like that usually set off my spidey-senses, this hypothesis
might actually have merit.

The short version is that women won't put up with the (lack of) work-life
balance, long hours and constant on-call status. The successful women I've
worked with all stayed because they simply love it (like I do) but it's
entirely possible that this is something that even young girls notice when
they avoid IT related curricula.

To get back to the topic at hand, I think the best way to get women involved
in more conferences is to have more "tenured" women in the industry. And the
best way to do that is to that is to recruit more into the industry and to
make the industry more aligned with their desires.

I'm actually not opposed to quotas for female participation at conferences ...
I simply want to learn something from anyone that's put in front of me.

~~~
stephenbez
This is probably what you remember reading:
<http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science>

------
ignostic
-The author claims that criticism is misguided, because we don't know the ratio of men to women who pitched or work in the industry.

-The author doesn't seem to know either.

-Insofar as criticism of conference excluding women is uninformed, the defense that the author provides is equally uninformed.

If there are fewer women speaking, applying to speak, or in the industry as a
whole, there's a reason why. It seems to me we should spend less time going
back and forth with vague abstractions, and more time looking for the
underlying cause. Anything else is just cheap uninformed opinion. In this
case, it's probably just linkbait.

~~~
Smudge
In my mind, the author is the one pointing out the lack of industry data. Just
because she doesn't provide it does not mean her core argument -- that quotas
undermine the empowerment of women by devaluing their hard work and talent --
is invalid. It just means that, ultimately, we still need more data.

------
kens
Out of curiosity, what's the acceptance rate for these tech conferences? Are
these like academic conferences where < 20% of the talks are accepted after
months and months of work, or do mere mortals have a reasonable chance of
acceptance?

~~~
Udo
I think it depends on the conference, but my general impression is that mere
mortals _cannot_ expect to get speaker spots. In most cases, the organizers or
at least the community in general want well-known speakers. There is no way
random people are allowed to just walk up there and present. That's probably
for the best, since as an organizer you want to have some kind of quality
control. I do suspect that's part of the gender ratio problem though.

When I started to do open source development, I tried to speak at several OS
conferences. In most cases I didn't hear back, but once they told me in no
uncertain terms that they didn't tolerate "no-name" speakers (even though the
signup page implied everyone was welcome).

~~~
kunai
Paradox. You need speaking experience to speak, but you can't speak unless you
have speaking experience.

~~~
MattGrommes
You can always start with smaller local events. In southern California we have
the SoCal Code Camp which let me speak with no experience. There's also user
groups. Build up a bit of a resume and a name for yourself, then go to the big
shows.

~~~
littlegiantcap
Exactly. Just like getting a job you have to pay your dues in a lower position
before you get to be the CEO.

------
groby_b
It's a tricky question to address. It doesn't help that the people addressing
it are obviously not entirely clear on the concept of an unbiased sample. To
quote the fine article:

 _But let’s say a larger percentage of the pitches came from women. Then
people are also assuming that of the pitches that came from women, 100% of
them were awesome pitches that organizers passed up solely because the
presenter would be wearing a bra._

No, people are assuming that pitches from women and men are on average of
equal quality. It's an assumption borne out by experience. So we _do_ need to
ask the question why there are less women. If indeed 95% of the proposals were
from male speakers, it's not a problem with the conference. If there were more
than 5% of the proposals coming from women, but the final selection looked
like it did, the organizers _should_ take a look at their process - something
is likely to be off if that's the case.

------
jtbigwoo
I don't pretend to know if the conferences mentioned in the story are
exclusionary or just choosing the best speakers. The only thing I'll say is
that speaking or joining a panel at a small conference often leads to speaking
at bigger conferences and keynote appearances.

If I was looking for speakers for my conference, I'd check their proposals to
see if they had spoken at other conferences. But at this point, whose
judgement am I relying on? Not mine, of course. I'm relying on the judgement
of other conference organizers who in turn probably relied on the judgement of
other conference organizers. This isn't really a system based on merit, though
it appears to be. It's more based on who had an initial connection or a good
PR guy to get access to that first conference spot.

I'm not entirely sure what we do about this problem, just pointing out that
there's a problem here.

~~~
jlees
One of the problems in the hierarchy underlying this is simply that women
(empirically) don't take that first step of reaching out to a small conference
to speak. It's similar to data about self-nomination rates for promotion.
Simply raising awareness of the promotion case managed to even the rates out,
so arguably anything that raises the visibility of the lack of conference
submissions by women could have a similar knock-on effect.

------
jongold
For a vastly different take on the same subject… (no comment)

<https://medium.com/about-work/405b2d12d213>

~~~
Crake
"Make no fucking mistake that you occupy your cushy tech salary, your mid-
level management job, your paltry access to power by permission of the
patriarchy."

Oooh, it's one of those tumblr-style feminists. You always know you're in for
a psychotic, incoherent rant when they start dropping the f-bomb repeatedly.
(not to mention blaming everything from car engine troubles to a stubbed toe
on the nebulous yet infamous "Patriarchy"...)

~~~
claudius
Clearly it is the fault of the patriarchy to make engines that women don’t
want to service and to implement measures that no women are allowed in fire
brigades and ambulance services. Hence it is also absolutely obvious that
engine troubles and medical problems are due to the patriarchy.

Oh wait, there aren’t any laws banning women from entering fire brigades and
ambulance services or to take up apprenticeships in car workshops? Then it is
obviously again the patriarchy’s fault to affect women in such a way that they
don’t join those areas anyways.

------
peripetylabs
When you submit a paper to an academic journal, the reviewers do not know the
name or origin of the authors, and make a decision based on the contents only.
Conferences should select talks using a similar process. This would prevent
potential bias against women, and also shield the conference from allegations
of bias.

~~~
vickytnz
Conversely, the difference is that women are incentivised just as much as men
to apply and be accepted as (in the UK at least) it's tied to research
outcomes.

At least one other article has made the point that conference organisers
should aim at getting more females to submit by a) finding female networks and
making them aware of the CfP and b) even putting a quota on the submissions.
That way, unless something is very wrong with the pool of people, some women's
talks should just get through by sheer probability.

~~~
claudius
Oh yay, let’s fight assumed sexism with more obvious sexism. That will surely
work!

------
rcirka
This is the concept of affirmative action at it's core. Do we base admission
partly on demographics instead of merit? On one hand it may help promote the
minority, though there are downsides as well.

~~~
eplanit
Sadly, in modern times Dr. King's dream of basing ones judgement of others
solely on character (including merit) rather than on skin color is considered
by many to be passé. I must quickly add that I am not of that modern group --
I still cling to the notion of a color-blind society as being the 'right'
approach. Clearly we need "gender blindness", too. However, counting colors
and genitalia and striving for parity across all colors and parts has proved,
over and over, to cause as many errors as it solves.

I'd pose the same question to professional women as has been posed to black
males for decades now: "Are you wanting to define yourself as a great
lawyer/doctor/engineer, or a great _black_ (or in this case _woman_)
lawyer/doctor/engineer?"

Personally, I have far, far greater respect when the gender and race is not
part of the definition. Otherwise it seems there is a message of "I get extra
points due to the mistake of my birth". Is that not just another form of
'privilege'?

~~~
Crake
I saw Neil Degrasse Tyson speak a few months ago. In his talk, he mentioned
how strange it was that he was always referred to as "a black physicist,"
since he had always thought of himself as just "a physicist."

I feel much the same way.

------
septerr
I don't get why this is made to be a big deal. Gender or race shouldn't matter
in choice of speakers, it should be their talent, track record, relevance of
their work etc. What woman would want to be invited to speak if they knew it
was because the organizers want to be representative of both sexes.

~~~
laichzeit0
There is this perverse notion that there is something like "fair
discrimination". As a South African this is something I've been forced to
accept. Actually what it does is breed extreme discontent and disillusionment
in those on the opposite side of the fence. No amount of rationalization can
make this palatable. They even do it in sports. What this does is discredit
people because everyone is thinking "Oh look, a quota player" and any actual
merit this person might have possessed is discredited because of the bias in
the selection process.

------
nullc
It's unsurprising that the "SEO" industry is taking gender equality seriously:
They obviously wouldn't want to besmirch their reputation for ethical conduct.

------
azurelogic
Generally speaking, I agree with the author of this post. While the language
is at times intentionally inflammatory, the core point still stands: people
who have talents, skills, and ideas should get to float to the top.

We work in a hyper-logical field (the only thing more logical is math). Why
can't people involved in the field see that the only thing that truly matters
is furthering the progress of our craft/art/discipline/whatever-you-call-it. I
don't care who wrote my framework/language/IDE/whatever. I just want it to be
quality.

This is the same problem that plagues things like education. No child seems to
be allowed to be special or exceptional anymore. Everyone wants a damn
participation ribbon. Screw your participation ribbon.

------
tunesmith
For all the people who rail against quotas, the reason they exist is because
of institutional sexism (or racism, in other matters). An overly simplified
way to explain it is where there isn't any one instance or person that is
sexist, but where the overall result of the system is sexist. A quota is a
non-ideal blunt tool but it is one way to try and make up for the
institutional sexism - not with the intent of giving improper advantages to a
particular person who may be unqualified in a limited view, but by shocking an
overall system to reduce the overall levels of sexism.

~~~
Crake
This isn't the way to do it. I'd be really offended if someone explicitly
added me to the speaking roster just because of my genitals, just as much as
I'd be annoyed if they explicitly denied me because of them.

~~~
tunesmith
While I don't know many of the particulars, I believe that one possible good
example is Etsy. Etsy started a deliberate effort to employ more female
engineers, and they did it by hiring junior female engineers and training
them.

They don't call it a quota, but it certainly fits the loose definition - they
wanted more females, and so they hired junior female engineers when they could
have hired more senior male engineers. I'm sure that at some point, a team of
theirs was considered at full capacity and some male resume was passed over
that might have otherwise been considered.

But it's really, really hard to argue that they did something offensive there.
They created more engineering talent, got some good press out of it, and I
wouldn't be surprised if it had some sort of small effect in making
programming a more viable-seeming career choice for women.

~~~
claudius
They choose their engineers based on their gender, hence acted sexist. I find
that offensive and will take it into account when having to decide whether to
do business with them.

------
rwmj
It becomes absurd if you substitute tall and short people for men and women.
Tall people have higher earnings[1] and are better off in many other ways, so
should we not be satisfied if a conference panel doesn't include at least one
short person?

[1]
[http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli...](http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2008/05/the-
height-prem.html)

------
rachelbythebay
Do male speakers tend to get a lot of weird stalkers after they do a
conference? Honest question.

~~~
DanBC
Stalking proper happens to both men and women, and is done by both men and
women.

I suspect you mean something other than stalking. I guess, but I have nothing
to support this, that the answer is "Women probably have more men acting weird
and creepy after the woman has spoken at a conference".

~~~
rachelbythebay
I suspect you're right. I wasn't sure how to word it.

I could probably talk about a great many things but have done no conferences.
There's something a little too "real world" about it. Does that make any
sense?

------
GhotiFish
I wonder how these pitches are reviewed and accepted.

It's well possible for an unconscious bias to seep in and taint your
perception of someone's work.

It brings to mind things like this:
[http://www.aas.org/cswa/status/1999/JANUARY1999/BehindTheSce...](http://www.aas.org/cswa/status/1999/JANUARY1999/BehindTheScenes.html)

Then again, with the kind of heat conference heads have on them now, I bet
they ARE doing something like this, if not actively making quotas.

------
trg2
I've seen Rae speak at multiple conferences and she's freaking awesome.
Couldn't agree more with this article - gender quotas for panels are a.) a
slippery slope and b.) detract from both the quality of the conference and the
accomplishments of the speakers that have made it there without them

------
Alex3917
"Another 10% of people between the age of 18-64 in the United States have a
disability."

According to the CDC, 27.1% of Americans between the ages of 18-64 have at
least one disability. Anyone know why the census numbers are different?

------
mtext
Tech Conferences these days are just terrible. It's always the same people
saying the same things, it's just a plain repetition of the same straight
white male men saying the same boring things. I always think i'm just loosing
my time. If i had dedicated the same amount of time to study seriously, it
would be more benefical.

------
charlieflowers
Where is the + 10,000 button?

------
stefantalpalaru
There's too much common sense in this article.

------
ditojim
who is john galt?

~~~
psychometry
An unrealistic, one-dimensional character in a second-rate novel by a second-
rate philosopher. Next question?

~~~
MartinCron
You know, if you had called her a _third-rate_ philosopher the sentence would
have a beautiful linear 1-2-3 progression to it. Consider that for next time.

~~~
SPSteinbeck
Haha, yeah I'm gonna use that line sometime with your modification :)

------
altero
There was tech conference in eastern europe where was 15% quota for womans.
Organizers solved it by organizing afterparty and hiring stripers.

------
tomjen3
This is _bad taste_ we have people getting blow up in Boston, we don't need
another circle jerk right now.

~~~
peterwwillis
We have people getting blown up all over the world. We don't need your pious
bullshit right now.

