

On false dichotomies and diversity. - ciudilo
http://aralbalkan.com/notes/on-false-dichotomies-and-diversity/

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wtvanhest
Hi Aral (assuming you read HN),

I've never met you and I believe your intentions are good. In a perfect world
more female speakers of equal quality to male speakers would be a better, but
there may be more research to be done before assuming the organizers had any
chance at all of bringing in female speakers for the presentation series (one
which I was no part in, and have no interest in).

Saying there are 20% females in a particular industry does not mean that 20%
of females are qualified to speak.

It also doesn't mean 20% of females want to speak.

Now, both of those statements are somewhat inflammatory since logically men
and women are equal, so how could a greater percentage of men be at the top of
an industry, or a greater percentage want to speak?

Professor Roy Baumeister wrote this amazing paper on the subject (which was
posted to HN about a year ago).

"Is There Anything Good About Men?"
<http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm>

I promise it is worth the entire read, not to be used as weak evidence in a
tough conversation.

After considering the full article, and the fact that the twitter development
ecosystem is a fairly small industry it is entirely possible that there are
far less female speakers worth bringing to speak or that the female speakers
who would be great candidates for speaking simply have no interest in doing
so. At the same time, even I have a hard time believing that there is not one
qualified female speaker interested.

So, what really needs to be addressed is not whether the team had a bias, but
whether there was an efficient way to recruit those female speakers. If Aral
or anyone else can provide suggestions on systems to achieve that, perhaps a
guide of steps, that would be far more beneficial to the community.

[EDIT] Removed "beating up on the people who organized that" and replaced with
"assuming the organizers had any chance at all of bringing in female speakers
for the"

I recognize that even the edited statement I added has the partial effect of
absolving the organizers. My intention is not to absolve them or say it was
impossible to find female speakers. My intention was to simply to cast doubt
on the assertion that a lack of female speakers was preventable.

[Added] I upvoted the original article because it did call out the presenters,
but simply calling them out without providing a novel or proven approach to
adding better speakers is simply not helpful. Especially given the complexity
in finding great speakers.

To respond to the point made below that efficency is not important, I can't
disagree more. Efficiency is always a consideration with anything, anyone
does. If there was only one women expert who did not have any public speaking
ability, would it be worth spending months training them to speak prior to
them speaking so you could fill your 5th spot? I don't think anyone would
argue that that makes sense. Obviously it is the extreme, but I, nor the OP,
nor anyone else truley knows how hard it would be to get a female speaker for
that event without putting on the event yourself.

Time spent getting speakers is time that cannot be spent on other facets.

~~~
luigi
Criticizing the results of a speaker selection process is not "beating up on
the people who organized" the event. Aral does indeed point to resources that
describe speaker selection processes which successfully achieved healthy
diversity. I'm not sure why efficiency needs to be a consideration here.
Organizing a conference is not an efficient endeavor to begin with.

The notion that the people who organize these events shouldn't be held
accountable is profoundly wrong. Event organizers appoint themselves leaders
of the community that they're holding the event for. Sure, they're well-
meaning volunteers usually, but that doesn't mean they're absolved of any and
all criticism. Leaders organizing a software conference should recognize that
an industry-wide lack of diversity is a problem, and should take steps to
solve it. And the community should call them out when they fail at that.

