

Girl Tickets to ng-conf - LadyMartel
http://reverse-disoma.tumblr.com/post/61474023482/i-find-this-offensive-i-get-that-the-intension-is
I was a bit surprised to see this in my inbox today.  Am I the only one to find this a bit offensive?
======
WildUtah
1\. Instead of girl-tickets, which is insulting, they should be called
"Chickets."

2\. Not all girls -- especially adult professional girls -- subscribe to
traditional princess gender roles. Offer a variety of pretty pastel and
rainbow colors beyond staid and confining old pink. Maybe men could also have
some nice alpha earth tones for their lanyards for contrast so that nobody
with a gender dimorphic identity could ever feel welcome.

3\. Conference fees in the $1000 range are usually paid by employers. Try
rewarding the actual girls who might come instead of just lowering the price
for the boss who won't share with them anyway. For example, girls could be
rewarded with many $5 bills generously slipped into their pants by passersby.

4\. If this system prospers, it is certain not to inspire any kind of backlash
from non-girls who feel the price differential is unfair to them.

------
geddski
Hey everyone, I'm one of the organizers of ng-conf. We appreciate your
feedback! Hopefully our genuine intent wasn't lost in our (perhaps clumsy)
wording.

Our only goal with this is simple: promote the cause of women in tech. We all
work with extremely talented women and recognize their value in our industry.
For example where I work (Domo) one of our VP's just won the "Women in Tech"
award, which is awesome. We just want the women in the Angular community to
know that they're appreciated, needed, and welcome at ng-conf.

To that end, we wanted to make sure that those interested would have a ticket
available. Today we sold all our early bird tickets in less than 2 minutes.
Next week we are opening up the next round of discounted tickets for the
general public. We anticipate these and all other tickets will also sell out
quickly. So to succeed in our goal - despite the inevitable statistics - we
decided to reserve a number of these tickets for women. This way, women that
wanted to attend wouldn't have to worry about the luck of the Eventbrite draw.
So the primary benefit is the guarantee (not the discount) of the ticket. We
felt that was the least we could do to show our thanks and appreciation.

The pink lanyard does seem a bit silly out of context, we should have
explained that idea better. As we've seen with other conferences with limited
availability (JSConf, Google I/O, etc.) competition for a ticket can become
intense. We didn't want men to buy up all the women's tickets using their
significant other's name, or the whole thing would be pointless. We figured if
the lanyard was clearly for women, that would deter most abuse of the
initiative.

We really do appreciate the feedback on our execution. Let me recap what we're
received so far:

\- Most generally agree with the idea that getting more women out to ng-conf
is a worthwhile initiative. \- Pink lanyards was a terrible idea. \- Some
prefer to be referred to as women, not girls. That's understandable. We took
our cues from some of the organizations championing this same cause: "Girl
Develop It", "Girl's Who Code", "Black Girls Code", "Girls Write Now", etc. In
our minds it was "guys and girls", not "boys and girls". Both are valid
semantics of the word, but we hear you.

This has been a great learning experience, and it's clear that we need to
brainstorm this a bit more. If you have other ideas that accomplish the same
goals in a less polarizing fashion we're all ears. Thanks for the positive
feedback, we appreciate it. We really want to do this right - it's too
important not to. Thanks!

Dave Geddes @geddski

~~~
LadyMartel
Hey, thank you for posting in this thread! I didn't realize one of the
organizers would see this. I hope I didn't come off as overly harsh about you
guys' good intensions. It looks like an awesome conference and I do hope to
attend someday(if it happens again in the future).

I get that lots of groups use the term girl, though I think some of them
actually deal with teaching girls (actual school aged ones) to code. In
general I dislike being called "girl" in a professional setting. (But maybe I
am in the minority for this opinion)

~~~
geddski
You bet, and thank you. Better to take feedback now than have regrets later.
Would changing the name of the ticket to the name of one of the official
groups (Women in Tech Ticket, or Girl Develop It Ticket) and did all same
lanyards (no pink!), would that be enough in your opinion?

~~~
LadyMartel
For me, it would be good enough.

Although, the idea in general doesn't sit too well with me since it's a little
bit unfair for guys since they have less of a chance of getting in (and have
to pay more).

But, I guess the priority ticketing system is an okay fix for possibly getting
more women who are interested in angular to go to this conference. (If that is
an important goal, which I guess it apparently is)

~~~
geddski
Cool, I think we'll start with that. Yeah, there's always the risk of "reverse
discrimination" with any kind of effort like this. Will have to find the right
balance. So far most of the early bird tickets (even more discounted) have
gone to men just because of the current industry ratios, so I'm not too
worried about them feeling bad.

------
abduhl
This is one of the things that confuses me so much about the feminist movement
in tech and in society at large. The conference organizers are trying to
encourage female attendance by giving discounted tickets to women and someone
immediately finds fault with them; however, if no effort were made then a
multitude of posts would probably show up lamenting the lack of female
attendance at the conference. This type of catch 22 is extremely detrimental
to the feminist cause in my mind as it paints a picture where there is no good
way out so why not just ignore it and take the flak that's coming anyways?

Also, the bar/nightlife industry has had great success with discounted "girl
tickets" increasing female and male attendance.

~~~
sgentle
I think you're looking at a false dilemma here. Your choices aren't limited to
"don't encourage women and take flak for it" versus "encourage women in a ham-
fisted way and take flak for it". I believe that in this case there were a lot
of ways the organisers could have encouraged participation respectfully. I'd
start by getting in touch with some of the relevant women-in-tech groups -
this is kind of their area.

If you're attempting to reach a group of people of which you're not a member,
you really need to be doing it in consultation with someone who is. Otherwise
you're just going to make obvious outsider mistakes and shoot yourself in the
foot. That goes just as much for women as it does for hardcore gamers or
scotch enthusiasts.

I think you do have a good point, though: it feels like there's a lot of
negativity around tech feminism sometimes without much positive to aspire to.
As the article says, the organisers were well-intentioned but doing it wrong -
which is, at least, a good start. It's a shame we don't see many articles
praising the conferences that do a good job encouraging women to participate,
or sharing best practices and advice. I feel like that would do more to
prevent mistakes like this and ultimately improve the community.

~~~
britta
Unfortunately, positive articles about conferences encouraging participation
from women are less likely to get voted up on HN - as these comments show,
there are many people here who are uncomfortable with the whole idea of
conferences trying to adjust for sexism.

I see lots of positive messages because I follow tech feminists on Twitter and
subscribe to tech feminist email lists - they post happy updates about the
latest conferences that have adopted anti-harassment policies, links to
conferences that make genuine efforts at inviting diversity (so many tweets
about PyCon!), and so on. There's not much actual basis for a "tone argument"
([http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument))
- HN is just a weird place.

~~~
sgentle
I agree. It seems like positive articles get less attention on HN, and in
general for that matter. I guess the internet flocks to angry more easily than
happy. Even accounting for that, though, it seems like there's less positive
material out there. I actually went a-googling as I wrote my original comment
and couldn't find much in the way of material that would be helpful for
someone in the position of organising a conference, even in terms of exemplary
behaviour by other conferences.

After your comment I went looking for information on PyCon and it really does
seem like they're doing a lot right. I suppose I can't speak for anyone else,
but I'd definitely vote up a post that went into a bit of detail about it.

I'm not sure I understand your link. Are you accusing me of being a "concern
troll" or engaging in "derailment" to "ruin conversations and silence people"?
I thought I was being pretty civil, but I'm happy to modify my behaviour if
you can point out something specific.

~~~
britta
I wrote a blog post on this recently: [http://jeweledplatypus.org/cgi-
bin/blosxom.cgi/text/conferen...](http://jeweledplatypus.org/cgi-
bin/blosxom.cgi/text/conferences.html) \- the strategies there aren't going to
fit with all conference styles, but they can be adapted and used as
inspiration for other ways of thinking carefully about conference experience.
Here's also what seems to be the main place to look:
[http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Resources_for_conference_...](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Resources_for_conference_organizers)
\- and the Ada Initiative website has more. I'd be curious if there's anything
you can think of to add to the wiki page to help it show up in searches
better; I agree that making these resources easier to find would be useful.

I didn't get the sense that you were asking for positive examples in a
silencing/derailing way, but it's a pattern that happens with this stuff in
general.

------
RyanZAG
This discussion will go off the rails like always, but I just want to point
out that not all women (girls?) are the same. Many women will take this
positively and attend because this would make them feel welcome, while many
others would be put off by this. Simply being female does not give you the
ultimate say on whether this is fine or not. You are not some spokeswoman for
your entire gender.

I'd judge this as a success or not based on how many of these tickets are
used, which will be found out after the conference. Hopefully they do a post
on the statistics at the end so we can make proper conclusions.

~~~
weego
I love this line of thinking.

"As a random person with no stake at all in this yet a strong opinion on it, I
can tell you that if your opinion is the opposite of mine then it doesn't
matter even if this issue directly affects you".

That's the kind of lazy, passive-agressive, statement that has no place in
proper discussion.

~~~
fletchowns
Is this supposed to be some sort of meta comment where you are describing your
own reply?

------
britta
Google distributes stickers that say: "I'm a woman in tech. That doesn't mean
everything has to be pink." See
[https://twitter.com/blackfemcoders/status/318072430771978241](https://twitter.com/blackfemcoders/status/318072430771978241)
for a photo. They're very popular at women-in-tech events!

In other words: trying to make your event more welcoming to women, in an
effort to compensate somewhat for the industry's systemic sexism - sure,
that's a good idea, and there are experts and nonprofit organizations who can
advise you on how best to do that. There are also lots of blog posts about
good strategies. Handling this clumsily, with pink stuff and calling women
"girls" \- not so good execution.

------
hartror

        No reason to try to get your ratio up artificially.
    

Why shouldn't they?

If they do this they may attract more girls (ladies, women?) to Angular which
will improve the Angular ecosystem overall. Perhaps there are a number of
women who have been tempted to go but aren't that committed to Angular and
this might tip them over the edge.

I don't think we can acknowledge that there is a problem attracting women to
our industry and not provide these sorts of concessions and special treatment,
at least in the short to medium term. In the long term the industry culture
and perceptions should be such that this isn't needed but that isn't where we
are yet.

~~~
LadyMartel
It's not that I necessarily disagree with the goal of attracting more female
attendees, but as a girl (and maybe I'm just speaking for myself,) I don't
feel like I would be "tipped over the edge" by a demeaning pink "Girl ticket."

~~~
hartror
I missed the pink lanyard bit. That does tip it into demeaning territory. Like
girls/ladies/women need to be highlighted any more at a tech conference.

~~~
Dewie
The intent is so that _men_ can't use the tickets. Sure, they could have used
a different colour, but they needed to differentiate those tickets.

~~~
seszett
Because using a photo and name would have been too simple and trivial?

No need to talk about the max three people with epicene names and faces who
maybe could have abused this, they don't matter.

~~~
Dewie
> Because using a photo and name would have been too simple and trivial?

Using a generic ticket for every woman is more simple than assigning a name to
each ticket... so no.

------
kaila
I think their intention is good, and they deserve a little slack.

I totally get the whole "don't treat me any differently because I have a
vagina" thing, but the conference organizers really do seem to have good
intentions.

Yes, making the lanyard pink prompts a momentary mental picture of someone
putting a pink lanyard over my head while babbling incoherent baby talk, but
then I realize that maybe the person who decided on pink really just has that
culturally ingrained boys = blue, girls = pink thing. Or maybe the person who
picked the color is a woman who likes the color pink. Or maybe, there are so
many other details to plan for the conference that picking the color of the
discounted lanyard didn't get a whole lot of consideration.

Yes, someone should have told them we don't call women above a certain age
"girls". They do say woman and women a couple times in the email, and I can
see how maybe Woman Tickets or Lady Tickets or Gal Tickets just sound awkward
compared to Girl Tickets. I don't get the sense they mean girl in a derogatory
fashion at all.

Or, I could be totally wrong, and they could all be misogynist jerks.

And, to answer your question, the top three discounts/free money for women I
can think of are: Bars and clubs Auto insurance Scholarships

------
jaredsohn
Conferences often offer "student tickets" at a much lower rate and I think
these "girl tickets" should be thought about and handled in a similar fashion.
Certain groups are allowed to attend conferences at a lower rate because they
might not otherwise and it is advantageous to the conference or industry that
they do.

Instead of calling them "girl tickets" they should perhaps be called "women in
tech" tickets or the conference should partner with one or more women in tech
groups and name the tickets after them (i.e. PyCon could offer PyLadies
tickets.) Conferences could even use membership in the women in tech groups as
a way of certifying that people deserve the discounts similar to how a student
ticket might require proving that one attends a university.

(These are just some ideas; one problem may be that some women in tech groups
may also allow males to join, although it could be enough of a hurdle to
prevent abuse.)

~~~
geddski
I like the idea of naming the ticket after one of the organizations, maybe
even having them be a sponsor. I'm taking notes, thanks for great ideas like
this!

------
aegiso
If I were a girl on the fence about going, something like this would
definitively convince me that I'm not welcome, except in the Titstare sense.

------
msoad
I came from a country where there is 80/20 women/men ratio in it's engineering
schools. In Iran girls are doing much better in school and engineering degree
is super hot, as a results girls will enter universities way more than boys.
All those graduated women that come out of school do very well shoulder to
shoulder to their men schoolmates, in middle east where it's hard (for real)
to be a women at workspace.

My take in United States culture is that young women are too afraid of looking
nerdy if they go after math and engineering. Those who are brave enough to not
care about stereotypes get pissed off by this kind of artificial "culture
fixes".

------
jmduke
_" In what other industry is it okay to give discounted “girl tickets”?"_

To provide, at least, an objective answer, airlines will discount tickets if
they have a given level of certainty that the passenger is female -- except,
interestingly, on Thanksgiving and Mother's Day, when female demand is higher
than male demand.

------
iuguy
Wow, I find this pretty bad.

I've just come back from co-running my conference last week. We were way up on
female attendance and speakers compared to last year, which I'm really glad
with. Women don't need discounted tickets to decide whether or not to come to
a con. They definitely don't need their own colour lanyards and if they had
one it doesn't need to be pink.

Most importantly, what women need are _reasons to come_ , not discounts. We're
limited in what we can do at 44CON[1] to change the sausagefest nature of the
industry by the number of women, but we're happy to help where we can. We
should focus on improving the conference experience for women (and everyone)
so they'll tell their colleagues and friends in industry to come along. Women
buy tickets too, is it so hard to listen to customers instead of singling them
out?

~~~
britta
Discounts could make sense because of the evidence that women tend to be paid
less than men, but that would have to be handled with a ton of tact - I don't
know how I'd do it.

I've also seen these forms of practical support from conferences that want to
encourage participation from women:

* Enacting a harassment policy and/or code of conduct to provide a signal that the organizers care about maintaining a healthy conference environment, which can help women feel more comfortable attending (see [http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/conference-policies/](http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/conference-policies/)).

* Helping make arrangements for childcare, such as setting up inexpensive group childcare for children of attendees, since women tend to have more responsibility for children than men do.

* Offering advising for qualified people interested in submitting talks who don't have much speaking experience, or having lightning talk opportunities for less-experienced speakers, to help fix the self-reinforcing cycle of few women speakers at conferences.

And pleasantly enough, those policies also benefit attendees of all genders
and support other kinds of diversity as well.

~~~
iuguy
> Discounts could make sense because of the evidence that women tend to be
> paid less than men

While it is true that many studies have shown that there is a disproportionate
difference amongst the average between men and women, people working in
information security are generally paid above average to start with.
Furthermore, quite a lot of people who come to 44CON come through their
employer.

To be honest I'd rather we gave a bigger discount to those who are paid less,
but I don't know how to do that.

------
serf
if you don't like the use of the word girl, eh. I don't really like boy much,
either, but it wouldn't offend me. 'Boy's night out', 'one of the boys',
whatever. It's not professional, but tech companies tend to be pretty fringe
on the word professional, anyway.

if you don't like the idea of giving a specific sex a discounted ticket for
simply having been born with different genitalia , right on. I totally agree.

~~~
penrod
On the topic of annoying words, thank you for writing "sex" rather than
"gender". I hate that stupid euphemism.

~~~
EllaMentry
The two words mean entirely different things...

~~~
penrod
Actually, not any more:
[http://www.oeb.harvard.edu/faculty/haig/publications_files/0...](http://www.oeb.harvard.edu/faculty/haig/publications_files/04inexorablerise.pdf)

"... the major expansion in the use of gender followed its adoption by
feminists to distinguish the social and cultural aspects of differences
between men and women (gender) from biological differences (sex). Since then,
the use of gender has tended to expand to encompass the biological, and _a sex
/gender distinction is now only ﬁtfully observed_" [emphasis mine.]

"... gender has come to be adopted as a simple synonym, perhaps a euphemism,
for sex by many writers who are unfamiliar with the term’s recent history."

~~~
EllaMentry
Read the paper and better understand what you just quoted...

------
EllaMentry
Wow...I don't know how much more stereotypical sexist male you could get in
one email..."girls", "pink lanyard", gender binaries...

The way to attract more women, stike, people to your conference is not through
tokenizing them...it's by making the conference interesting (having some
diversity in the organization group would be a start!)

~~~
danellis
If women in tech don't want people referring to them as "girls", perhaps they
shouldn't create organizations like "Girl Develop It", "Girls Who Code",
"Girls Teaching Girls to Code" and "Black Girls Code".

~~~
EllaMentry
They have completely different connotations...one is a self descriptive, the
other is belittling.

~~~
Dewie
Maybe it was a woman who initiated this? What then?

------
penrod
Once again, life imitates the Onion [http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-
study-shows-progress-ma...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-study-shows-
progress-made-by-broads,19586/)

------
brennenHN
Pretty not psyched about the gender normativity.

"If you don't look like our idea of a girl, we'll throw you out of our
conference for identifying as one."

------
paulocal
I thought girl's get discounts and free drinks at all events.

------
Dewie
When will events that have to do with learning programming and such give out
"jock tickets": tickets to people, men and women, who has been involved in
activities through their lives that has isolated them from nerd-culture. If
anyone with glasses are seen with these tickets they will be escorted off the
premises: the person might be myopic, which might be because of too much
vigorous reading!

(No, being a jock and a nerd is not mutually exclusive. I feel like I have to
point that out because of how so many seem to get easily offended in this
thread. And it's mostly a joke.)

------
camus
That's called neo-sexism, like affirmative action was neo-racism ( i dont deny
the social implications of racial segregation and slavery, but these politics
did not make people less racist). If I was a girl I would definetly feel
offended. Now what about tickets for us black people ? We too are a minority
in the IT sector... how does it sound now ?

~~~
danellis
I often wonder why there isn't the same big fuss in the industry about the
lack of black men and women in tech. In my experience, there are fewer black
people in the software industry than there are women.

