
Why I won't speak at women-only events - GotAnyMegadeth
http://www.guardian.co.uk/women-in-leadership/2013/jul/03/why-i-wont-speak-at-women-only-events?CMP=twt_gu
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3pt14159
The reason I don't listen to women in tech presentations:

1\. I'm basically not allowed to voice an opinion that isn't completely
aligned with the feminist status quo (I believe in equality, fuck me right).

2\. I'd rather learn how to build a better emberjs app. Or learn more about
thorium.

3\. Unlike the vast majority of problems, there are few concrete steps to be
taken to correct the imbalances that do exist.

Edit:

I can't believe I had to self sensor, just to hit the post button.

~~~
rmc
_1\. I 'm basically not allowed to voice an opinion that isn't completely
aligned with the feminist status quo (I believe in equality, fuck me right)._

Many people not involved with feminist groups often think feminists think the
same about everything. Which shows they know nothing about actual
disagreements within feminists groups. Just look up transexual issues &
feminism. That's a big source of disagreement right there.

~~~
papsosouid
That doesn't mean there isn't a significant amount of mythology that is widely
agreed upon in feminist circles. If you expect insane conspiracy theory
nonsense like "patriarchy" to actually be supported by evidence rather than
accepted on faith, then you are not welcome in feminist discourse, plain and
simple.

~~~
jb17
Do you really think societal structures that privilege men are a myth? Apart
from being quite obvious to anyone who is not extremely biased, there are
whole academic branches that study this. I'd say calling that "mythology" puts
you into conspiracy theory territory.

~~~
hacker789
_> Do you really think societal structures that privilege men are a myth?_

Nope. And neither are the societal structures that privilege women.

Western women have always been among the safest, most privileged human beings
on the planet. Predictably, and unfortunately, modern western feminists never
compare the plight of the average man with the plight of the average woman
when determining who wins the Oppression Olympics; instead, they look
jealously toward men at the top of society and declare that because women
aren't a part of that, they're more oppressed.

And sadly, it gets more ridiculous than that. I've seen people on this forum
actually say, with similar words:

 _Institutionalized misandry cannot exist, because most people at the top of
society are men. Women don 't have the institutional power to oppress men. Any
oppression men face is a result of The Patriarchy._

Ignoring the fact that oppression can come from outside of congress
(university policies, for example), those people are defining patriarchy to
simply mean "Oppressive policies written by people with penises, even if
feminists support those policies".

And that's what makes it dogma.

~~~
wonderzombie
_Ignoring the fact that oppression can come from outside of congress
(university policies, for example), those people are defining patriarchy to
simply mean "Oppressive policies written by people with penises, even if
feminists support those policies"._

You are of course entitled to your opinion, but I think you'd be better served
by engaging with a more nuanced and complex version of these views. What you
describe here is caricature. And in all I think it says more about you than
feminism.

A common refrain in feminist circles is that patriarchy hurts everyone. A good
example is parental leave as it applies to men. Paternity leave in the US is
absurdly bad, suggesting that we as a society do not value the time a father
spends with his child. Along those lines, men are typically graded on a
patronizingly terrible curve when it comes to childcare. And so on.

Note that these aren't just laws, but societal norms, especially the latter
where people praise you for doing basic shit like picking up your kids from
work or whatever. If you view patriarchy as an emergent property, then the
idea that "laws written by men" are a sufficient description of the concept is
just absurd. You _could_ of course take the least coherent out of any group
which espouses a belief and engage with that, but that's not an honest way to
have a discussion.

So like I said maybe don't engage with the most ridiculous possible
presentation of feminism.

------
raganwald
I spoke at SpainJS. It was a small conference, and unsurprisingly, most of the
audience were from Spain.

I obviously was not reaching "everyone," but so what? I reached 300 people,
and the politics of why a conference was put together to appeal to Spaniards
(is that a word?) is of no consequence to me.

If I were a politician I'd attend Church pancake breakfasts and lunch with the
Greek Business Chamber. Humans clump and cluster for all sorts of reasons. I
support some, am indifferent to others, and frown at a few more.

But in the end, if the people in attendance are people I want to reach, I'll
go. If their politics don't appeal to me, I'll avoid discussing the subject.

JM2C, I can't tell anyone else what to do.

~~~
jusben1369
A better analogy might be if you wanted to reach Italians (because you thought
Spaniards already completely grasped what you had to say) would you keep going
to an event that ends up only being attended by Spaniards. I suspect not.

------
theorique
She nailed it: _it 's a waste of my time to be invisible to half the people I
need to talk to._

The danger with women-only events is that they become perceived as a ghetto.
By opening the doors to all, the entire community has a voice, which is as it
needs to be if women are to be full, mainstream members of tech communities.

There's a place for "safe spaces" if people are sharing extremely personal
stories (e.g. sexual assault, legal issues), but those tend to be done best as
small groups anyway - it's a lot harder for a 1000 person auditorium to be a
true "safe space".

~~~
shubb
How would you feel about an event with a female only speaker list?

Instinctively, it raises my hackles, because positive discrimination is still
discrimination, but I've seen it work really well in stand up comedy.

Women standups only events have a very different feel, but you are also more
likely to see women do standup that is normally male territory. So you might
see an angry female political shock comic, whereas mainstream female comics
tend to do observational humor about life.

I'd suggest that there is value in creating a situation where vacuum causes
people to fill roles they normally feel they don't fit the expectation for.

~~~
ckb
Are they all qualified speakers who are insightful and sharing something I can
learn from? In that case, I wouldn't mind one bit.

~~~
officemonkey
This reminds me of a joke. HR person comes to the boss and says "I've got two
candidates for the job. Joe and Jane."

The boss interrupts the HR person. "You know, I've had it with all this
affirmative action and diversity crap. It's a waste of time. Let's just stop
all this. I just want to interview the best qualified person."

The HR person says "Ok, boss." The next day Jane shows up for the interview.

~~~
brazzy
So... where's the joke?

~~~
plorkyeran
The idea that HR could actually pick the most qualified person?

------
tehwalrus
I've attended several gender balance events (in politics, more than tech) and
been one of the 2-3% of the audience who were male. They were some of the best
I've been to, and I wish more dudes would turn up and learn from them.

~~~
toble
The few female focused technology events that I have seen promoted locally
give off the vibe of a private members club. They don't say it explicitly, but
hint with words like attendees are welcome to take their partners etc. It just
seems strange to me because other events have nothing like that style of
language.

~~~
king_jester
> They don't say it explicitly, but hint with words like attendees are welcome
> to take their partners etc.

How is an invitation for guests to bring their partners make an event a
private club?

~~~
sp332
It means that the partners wouldn't be invited except they happen to know
someone in the club.

------
spinachthrow
If I had one suggestion for these types of events - focus more on what you're
building, less on "issues".

Show, don't tell!

------
ChikkaChiChi
I wouldn't believe for a second that Meg Whitman, Marissa Mayer, Virginia
Rometty, or Carly Fiorina have this problem.

Parmer's column is accurate but not perplexing given what she said about being
the CEO of Lady Geek. Her choice of target market (explained fairly well in
its name) defines the context of her target audience.

~~~
VLM
"Meg Whitman, Marissa Mayer, Virginia Rometty, or Carly Fiorina"

Terrible examples. I was motivated enough to wikipedia them to gather the
following data. Whitman and Fiorina have no tech background at all and have
never worked tech jobs, pure management material all the way. Fiorina is
legendary for destroying HP not exactly a glowing endorsement for women in
anything. Mayer and Rometty went to school for tech but between the two of
them they've only got about 5 years experience in tech/engineering before
succumbing to the dark side of management.

If anything the message to young women with a list like that is women should
get out of tech and into mgmt/marketing/beancounting ASAP because tech is a
dead end for women.

Now, rather than 1%er management crooks, why not an example of a techie like
Limor Fried? There's a real engineer, who happens to be female, someone who
would make a good hero for young women in engineering / tech / programming. If
you don't know who she is, you should look her up on wikipedia. There are of
course a zillion other good techies who happen to be female, but an EE-
chauvinist like myself is going to promote another EE. I can think of a
relatively famous FPGA dev and many others.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
Very fair point.

I pointed them out mostly because these are "celebrities" in the tech world
that you could easily find giving talks at various venues. Real people who get
real work done tend to not have time for such nonsense :)

I could/should have noted Mayer only because I consider her to be one of the
most influential people in the (FTSE equivalent mentioned by Parmer) NASDAQ.
While the jury is still out on her tenure at Yahoo!, several of Google's
recent missteps _could_ be attributed to her absence at Big G.

~~~
VLM
I think you're still missing my point. A management drone, or at least a more
or less non-techie, prognosticating about cultural issues in tech, is almost
meaningless other than maybe simple P.R. "we care about diversity" and such.
Unless you have techies in the executive suite, the answer to techie problems
is not going to come from the executive suite, or at least not any more likely
than any other random unqualified group. Its not enough for one's subordinates
8 times removed be techies, or to have a PR campaign aimed at techies.

There's an impedance mismatch. It would be like sending me as a missionary to
encourage young black men to enter the religious seminary, and then being
surprised at my remarkable ineffectiveness. Why, VLM has a lot of karma on HN,
how could he not have been effective?

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
I don't disagree and I think the only fair balance is to have stronger
technology-oriented personalities at the table for balance to be achieved.

I think without engineers or at the very least representatives that can be the
true voice of the engineers any company is doomed to produce waste and a
disconnect between what is, what can be, and what isn't.

My point is management drones love to talk, and techies by a large majority
are much more comfortable staying out of the executive suite and staying in
the labs. Until a balance occurs, the mismatch will always be present.

I think this is more of a cultural divide issue than a gender one, however.

~~~
VLM
"stronger technology-oriented personalities at the table"

Women Techies dream team version 0.001:

Limor Fried, Jeri Ellsworth, Radia Perlman (noobs probably don't know who she
is... hint... Spanning Tree Protocol and a epic 90s book titled
"Interconnections"). "the table" needs techies like those three women, not
some famous bean counters.

I would much rather have my daughter look up to those three (or about a
bazillion others) than, say, "Job Destroyer Carly"

------
parfe
The blog post conflates two issues. First there is the societal issue of the
gender gap in tech. That involves discussions and education with the community
at large regarding why women are underrepresented and _how the gap can be
closed._

The second issue is an implementation of the first. Women only events are one
of many contributing solutions to the gender gap. A woman only event ending
with an invitation to a larger general event will likely do more to bring
women into that event than sitting on a panel with a 95% male audience
lamenting the fact that women seems to be missing.

------
throwwiffle
I disagree with this. _Only_ speaking at women-only events is a bad thing, but
_refusing_ to speak at women-only events is just as bad. It seems like women
act more passive around men (at least in engineering). If there are only women
in an audience, they might be encouraged to speak their mind more and feel
less awkward about it.

Here is an example of women being passive in engineering: An engineering club
at my college had 30% to 50% women at almost every meeting. Most of the time,
the women didn't do anything for the club's project - they stood nearby,
talked, and sometimes cut foam or got something for a guy. This was in a
machine shop.

If they had put themselves forward and tried to get involved, they would have
learned a lot _and had more respect from the guys in the process_. As it is,
I'm afraid their behavior only reinforced the stereotype of "women engineering
majors aren't serious" and left them with fewer practical skills than the
guys.

\---

I don't know how effective having a women-only audience and speaker would be
at reversing situations like this. If the talk was on "be more assertive" and
"here are the potential problems you might face", it might be helpful. men-
are-evil and similar lines are not.

In the example given, having women-only clubs might help more - _if_ the focus
is primarily on building things, learning new tools, or completing some major
project. It would increase womens' confidence and their assertiveness, as well
as giving them an opportunitity to learn stuff a lot of the guys in the
regular engineering club already know - without feeling
awkward/stupid/embarassed.

Regardless, though, any women-only group opens up the door to women who might
be uncomfortable speaking out and asking questions otherwise.

Edit: fixing some italics :/

------
rantanplan
Men created the problem. Women like her can solve it. I knew it would come to
this and other absurdities. All these men, accusing other men of anti-women
sentiments, even when there weren't any. Some(mostly men!) have make it a
personal crusade to vilify all men by definition. Some men are awful, some
women are awful too. This kind of behavior will only sterilize our
environments in the worst possible way. I'd like to see more women like her
seeing the problem - and men taking notes.

------
stephengillie
I wouldn't speak at male-only events either.

