

An open Letter to Women in Tech - mikecane
http://johnwilker.com/2012/05/an-open-letter-to-women-in-tech/

======
ckolderup
One of the things I think he's overlooking:

Frequently the reason that people don't go the extra mile of giving talks or
otherwise sharing their thoughts and experiences is that they think that
they're not good enough or worth less than other people. Sometimes this
results in someone with a really great idea or a unique voice staying quiet.

In an industry dominated by men, women have been discouraged from
participating or speaking up. It takes time and effort to reverse that damage.
I'm glad that he took the time to invite women specifically, but I think his
anger at the result is misplaced when it could be more effectively directed at
a system that holds decades of inequality in place.

~~~
roopeshv
fuck. same can be said of geeks who don't speak up. there is no one advocating
for them. if the stage is open, and you don't take the fucking chance to get
in, don't complain.

~~~
sp332
Having "too few" women give talks isn't a problem. It's just a symptom of the
fact that the community is unwelcoming toward women. That's what we're really
trying to fix.

~~~
factorial
Why do you assume that the community is unwelcoming toward women? Isn't it
just equally plausible that women just don't really want to be in technology-
oriented fields? Maybe they just much rather prefer other areas. I know, the
thought that men and women are actually different is deeply troubling to those
who think that the only differentiator beween the sexes are a couple of sex
organs.

~~~
sp332
I'm not just making assumptions. e.g.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3731441> and
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3894404> and
[https://plus.google.com/106119964731604142156/posts/DkFAzuwm...](https://plus.google.com/106119964731604142156/posts/DkFAzuwmcTW)
and a lot of other stories.

I do believe that's the only difference, actually. Girls are not encouraged to
enter tech nearly as often as boys are. Also they have fewer women as role
models in tech. So it's not surprising that they don't enter the field as
often.

~~~
factorial
Hmm... Couldn't it just be that men are discouraged (!) from entering
basically any field other than science/technology these days? Just have a look
at the gender distribution in most majors. Why is nobody making a fuss about
creating more "education opportunities" for men in medicine, journalism,
communications, education, or just about college in general?

~~~
sp332
No. There is a shortage of software engineers right now. And geeks might be
cooler than they used to be but that doesn't mean that everyone is a geek.

~~~
factorial
Huh? How does this relate to anything either you or I have written in this
thread? Now all of a sudden we have to get more women into tech because there
is a "shortage right now". Why not motivate more men who may be more
interested in tech to begin with?

By the way, the alleged shortage is addressed by H1-B visas. They have the
welcome side effect of driving down prices of domestic developers, and if this
doesn't help, the corporations just collude a tiny little bit and make anti-
poaching agreements.

~~~
sp332
OK I think I don't know what you're talking about. :) You wondered if men are
being pushed into tech instead of other things. But this is clearly not
happening because there is a shortage. So men might be _more_ welcome in tech
than women, but clearly neither men nor women are being pushed into tech. We
know this because there are not enough men (or women) in tech. If they had
been pushed, there would not be a shortage. Clearly both men and women should
be pushed more :)

~~~
factorial
Logic is completely absent from your argument. Imagine you are a your typical
US high school graduate, and the message you've gotten for years was that
women are better at anything, that they are more likely to finish school, get
a degree etc. pp. Somehow, you think you want to fight the odds, and have a
look around, wondering what you might study. You find that many departments at
university lack rigor and due to your preference for logical thinking you go
into science/engineering because you find them more welcoming than, say, male-
bashing on an institutional level like in Gender Studies and humanities.

The claim that there is a shortage has nothing to do with the fact that tech
is more welcoming to men. It's two completely separate issues. Or do you think
that just hiring a bunch of unqualified women (or men) will be what solves the
problem? There is a lack of skills, not bodies, and it takes some hard work to
acquire those skills. Because there are not enough skilled people around, and
because tech is booming, there is now a shortage. (I doubt that it's as bad as
you think it is. Just look at the Dice board for plenty of disgruntled IT
people.)

Maybe we should encourage more men to actually consider college. What about
that? Sure, it doesn't gel well with your feminist agenda.

Lastly, do you actually work in tech or are you merely on a PR trip?
Sockpuppets are quite common these days and I wouldn't be surprised if some
"think tank" had sent a couple of drones to pollute the otherwise intelligent
discussion on HN.

~~~
sp332
Sure I work in tech. (Check my HN karma or history.) And almost everyone I
work with is male.

Your first paragraph is pretty vitriolic. Actually I chose to go to a liberal
arts college with a strong focus on the humanities, because I knew it would
get me a more serious education as well as better connections in business. I
didn't feel like I was fighting the odds, I was getting a massive leg up on my
career.

There were a lot more women than men around because the nursing program was
the best in the area. I think only 4 people graduated with me from the CS
department, it was very small. The entire CS faculty was women, but even so
there was only one girl student in the entire CS program (not counting the
beginning classes which most people didn't pass). This was mainly because the
boys in the classes had started studying computers much earlier, so the girls
thought they must somehow be less smart when really they just didn't have the
same head start. That's also discussed here
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3836440>

_The claim that there is a shortage has nothing to do with the fact that tech
is more welcoming to men. It's two completely separate issues._ I know. You
brought it up when you said that men were being encouraged to go into tech, to
the point that they were almost being pushed away from other fields.
Demographically speaking (looking at the whole population) no one - neither
men nor women - is encouraged to get into tech. Therefore there is a shortage
of skilled workers.

------
jamiew
I'm amazed anybody, male or female, would speak at an event where tickets cost
$600 and they won't even pay for speakers' airfare & lodging.

~~~
aspir
Conferences are lower margin than you think, particularly in tech. They're
normally thrown for the good of the community or as a loss leader for some
other business/product. If you're lucky, there's a slim profit that can be
reinvested into the next conference, or that allows you to pay yourself for
the insane hours put into planning. In all, tech conferences are generally a
labor of love.

~~~
factorial
This certainly does not apply to conferences that cost a cool four figures to
attend and are geared towards the corporate market. Nobody can tell me that
the organizers are not making money.

~~~
aspir
Oh definitely -- Legal, Medical, Real Estate, "Corporate Leadership" -- those
guys are definitely out for the payday. They also usually are thrown by niche
publication/magazine firms, so there's even more to be made.

------
adrianhoward
This post prompted me to go check the people we accepted onto the UX stage of
Agile 2012 - and we have a 50/50 male/female split. Merit based - sex wasn't a
factor in picking speakers. Makes me rather proud of the community we've built
up in that particular field over the years.

And community building is what changes things in my experience. People attend
conferences to have fun and learn. Speaker or audience. Lose some of that in
however small a way for some group and you start losing traction with that
group.

I know people who don't attend particular events, or in a few cases
conferences in general, because various attendees or organisers or sponsors
acted like asshats. Word spreads and it affects future years attendance and
submissions if the organisers aren't proactive about dealing with the
situation.

Even worse it casts a general air of malaise over the whole field. Attend two
different conferences in a row where you're made to feel uncomfortable in one
way or another, and it makes you a little less likely to attend the third....
an so things spiral...

The door maybe open - but people's views are tainted by discovering what was
actually behind some other supposedly open doors.

~~~
ryandvm
> we have a 50/50 male/female split. Merit based - sex wasn't a factor in
> picking speakers

In a field overpopulated by males at a rate of about 9:1, half of the most
qualified speakers you picked were female? Statistically, that doesn't reflect
well on the skill of men. I would have expected a merit-based selection
process to produce candidates in the same sex ratio as the sampled population.

I had no idea a woman was four times as valuable as a man...

~~~
adrianhoward
_In a field overpopulated by males at a rate of about 9:1_

Intriguing. Where did you get this statistic on folk qualified to speak on
integrating UX and Agile? It's a fairly narrow field that I'm intimately
familiar with and I've never come across a gender breakdown.

Oh wait... the Agile 2012 submission process is an open one... so I can just
go look to see what sessions were submitted.

Of the 51 session proposals submitted to the UX stage there were 19 female and
40 male speakers (this adds up to more than 51 because some sessions had
multiple speakers) - so judging by submissions that ratio is 2:1. If we only
look at the primary speaker of each session we have a 8/5 split. So,
statistically, the men don't come off too badly. Good for us boys.

If you're worried about a gender bias in the CFP then you can find an example
at <http://www.ixda.org/node/31640> \- they were sent to many other places but
were all pretty much variations on the same theme.

The session reviews and session submissions are public. Just register at
<http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/> and browse around. If you detected a
bias that has caused us to reject an excellent submission please let me know.
Wouldn't want that. We try an make the submission process better each year.

One way that the Agile 20XX conferences differ from many others is that we
have a public review process. The review panel gives feedback on proposals -
and submitters have a chance to clarify and improve their session proposals.
I'm too lazy to go through the history of each session to see whether women
were more likely to improve their sessions based on feedback. Can't say I
noticed any difference at the time - but it's possible that may explain the
difference.

[Edit: Hmmm... it might be a factor at that. More men submitted at the last
minute when there wasn't enough time for submissions to be updated after the
reviewers feedback - so they lost out on a couple of potential feedback
loops.]

 _I had no idea a woman was four times as valuable as a man..._

Or maybe it's just that we try quite hard not to say things like this.

[Edit: removed one unnecessarily harsh word]

------
tomjen3
Just a quick question: has there been any research indicating that more
females want to be in tech? That females are unfairly (ie other than ability)
excluded?

I realize this may seem a silly question, but so far all I have heard is what
percentage of females are programmers, but by the same argument men are being
prevented from getting a career in nursing.

~~~
sp332
This article has some information:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1643180>

------
hej
Nice victim blaming.

~~~
roopeshv
oh, fucking stop with the victimization complex.

~~~
hej
Get off your blinders is all I can say.

~~~
roopeshv
first you open your eyes

