

A Simple Suggestion to Help Phase Out All-Male Panels at Tech Conferences - coloneltcb
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/a-simple-suggestion-to-help-phase-out-all-male-panels-at-tech-conferences/266837/

======
blindhippo
As someone who would be in attendance at a tech conference I will tell you: I
do not care at all what the gender is of the presenter.

It has ZERO impact on my judgement of the content, discussion or presentation.
I do not believe that a person's gender provides any meaningful impact to a
presentation unless the topic is specifically about that person's gender.

To think otherwise is sexist and discriminatory.

Now if the best participants for panels are female and are being actively
excluded because of their gender, this is a problem. But simply refusing to go
to "all male panels" is a useless call to action and will not solve anything.
Neither will forcing a gender count.

Find specific instances of qualified and capable women being overlooked by
organizers in favor of less qualified men simply because of gender
stereotyping and then publicize the crap out those incidents. Boycott those
specific conferences.

~~~
danilocampos
> As someone who would be in attendance at a tech conference I will tell you:
> I do not care at all what the gender is of the presenter.

Aaaaand that's the problem.

When half of the population isn't participating in one of the most important
fields for the advancement of our prosperity, _and the other half doesn't give
a fuck_ , nothing gets better.

All the time we hear that it's tough to find skilled engineers. Guess what? We
can double those numbers – as soon as this perma-adolscent male monoculture
gives way to a healthy balance of both men and women.

But it's going to take your learning how to care about inclusion. Yes, _you_.
And everyone else.

~~~
kyberias
I don't understand this and I think I ultimately disagree with you deeply.
Women clearly are not that interested in computing per se. There are other
fields that "advance our prosperity" where the situation is the other way
around. That it would somehow make the world a better place if we force an
artificial ratio of genders in all fields, is incorrect.

~~~
danilocampos
> Women clearly are not that interested in computing per se.

Clearly to whom, sir? Not to me. Many of the women I know are interested in
computing. The ones who've made a career in tech continually lament to me the
attitude you've just demonstrated.

~~~
kyberias
Look, I don't think I personally have any 'attitude' here. Girls like to be
doctors or biologists, rather than staring at the screen for 8 hours a day.
Perhaps boys have higher frequency of introvert temperament traits. I don't
know.

~~~
danilocampos
> Girls like to be doctors or biologists, rather than staring at the screen
> for 8 hours a day.

> Look, I don't think I personally have any 'attitude' here.

Wooooooow.

------
oh_sigh
While we're at it, let's tackle other super important issues:

We also need to phase out the All-Straight panel. Refuse to join a panel of
all straight people!

We also need to phase out the All-college educated panel. Refuse to join a
panel of only college educated people!

We also need to phase out the All-uninational panel. Refuse to join a panel of
only people from the same country!

We also need to phase out the All-tall panel. Refuse to join a panel of only
people over 6' tall!

We also need to phase out the All-Expert panel. Refuse to join a panel of only
experts on the topic! We need more diversity of opinion!

------
BrentOzar
From now on, every time I see a panel discussion with exactly one female
participant, I'm going to think, "Oh, she's just a token who got included
because one of the male participants put their foot down."

I don't think that's really true - but doggone this post for putting that idea
into my head.

~~~
jrs235
I hope any women who read this article and someday find themselves as the only
female on a panel don't question themselves now too, wondering if they only
got accepted In order to be a token to get one of the other male speakers to
join.

------
leoedin
The problem isn't really with panels. In mechanical engineering, only 10-15%
of students are female. Assuming an equal distribution of students go on to
become notable enough for panels, a panel with any more than 15% of members
being female would be unrepresentative. My understanding is that 20 years ago
that proportion was even lower. If a representative panel is made up of
notable people who graduated 20 years ago, even fewer of them will be women.

I don't know what the statistics for computer science or programming are, but
I'd imagine that they're not vastly different.

I think limited female representation _is_ a big issue in a lot of fields
(including technology), but in technology the real issue is that women aren't
coming in at the bottom.

~~~
gte910h
I think it's probably okay to go over on the percentages for awhile to try to
correct this.

You can't get women in at the bottom if their perception is this is for men
only. That said, I think more in the top of the funnel is probably the most
important step.

~~~
oh_sigh
Why do you think that? The panels are going to suffer because they aren't
accessing the best talent pool, and therefore everyone is going to be worse
off.

~~~
ksmiley
If temporarily increasing the concentration of women panelists contributes
towards permanently reducing discrimination, then it's a net gain for
humanity, even if it's a net loss for panels in the short term.

~~~
phaylon
Not only that, but in the long run 50 males + 50 females will have a larger
amount of talent than 50 males + 1 female. That's a direct plus for the
communities.

If everyone waits for the rest of society to change, it never will. Note that
I'm not saying any one proposed solution is the right one, but it is an
important discussion.

~~~
oh_sigh
To that same point, 50 males + 1 female with have a larger amount of talent
than 45 males and 1 female. That's a direct negative for the community.

Just because you have good intentions does not mean that any random idea you
put forth will achieve those good intentions.

~~~
phaylon
That's exactly my point. A larger pool means more talent. So what's speaking
against working towards women having an easier time becoming part of the
community and exercising their talent?

------
bcoates
This is a really unfortunate problem statement and solution.

I don't think a declaration that the existence of all-male panels is in an of
itself a bad thing that needs to be wiped out (as opposed to a symptom of
systemic sexism/pervasive sexist attitudes). Immediately jumping to a
belligerent, absolutist position on the matter that won't be well received by
anyone except people looking for good-person credits by taking a stand isn't
helping either.

The underlying idea of Affirmative Action is sound: instead of just taking
people at their word when they say they aren't bigoted (they probably aren't,
inertia is sufficient), expect them to show some sign of it: Not just
passively waiting for someone who isn't a white dude to wander into their
social circle, but have an actual process.

For example, you look outside your Rolodex of usual invitees for some
qualified new blood. If you don't find any, have your white dudes conference.
It's the existence of a credible process for an outsider to get in that
establishes your good faith: not some magic ratio or token representation, and
not empty promises that you're totally not one of those bad
sexist/racist/whatever people.

The bad news is that before anyone gets anywhere along that path, the usual
brigade of people looking for any excuse to exert coercive authority over
other people jumps in and starts perverting it into the usual garbage of "Not
quotas, by which we mean quotas", leading to "oh you only invited $group to
fill the quota" or just even "Fund our group for an indulgence". Ugh.

~~~
debacle
I like your idea about looking outside your rolodex. It would be nice if there
was an org that compiled a list of minorities in technology, who could be
contacted for events like this and give suggestions for presenters.

~~~
icodestuff
How is this any different from "binders full of women"? A rolodex of people
available to be tokens is just as bad as a rolodex of all white men.

The lack of women on panels is a symptom. You don't fix a problem by treating
the symptoms, even if there's some circular feedback. In this particular case
I think there's very little feedback. How many girls are discouraged from
programming because they didn't see women on panels? Or for that matter, how
many boys are encouraged to do programming because they didn't see women on
panels?

Panels just don't matter that much. Fix the problem at a lower level - get
teachers to encourage girls to go into STEM or programming, and get them to
encourage the kids' parents to encourage them. Squash sexism in the classroom
- "I don't want to be lab partners with _her_, she's a girl" should be right
out, but so should "I don't want to be lab partners with _him_."

It's a matter of mindset, and one that can only be fixed in the young. Tech
has, latent sexism (and possibly racism) aside, a highly meritocratic culture.
Pledges like this will cause men and women alike to question whether a female
speaker is there for her opinions or to fill a quota, whereas before, few as
they might be, if women were there, there'd be no question that it for was
their opinions and expertise. This doesn't remove the latent sexism, it hurts
the meritocracy.

~~~
debacle
Because you're going to vet these people and determine if you want them on
your panel?

It's very easy on the Internet to not know if someone is a black, a woman,
gay, etc, especially if they don't advertise it (and many people don't). If
people really have a problem with what's perceived as limited diversity, the
best way to combat that would be to do something like this, rather than just
moaning impotently every time an all-male or all-white panel is chosen.

------
zeteo
Yes, you'll see lots of dismissive comments here, and this will not be a very
productive discussion. I apologize in advance to those who might think this
comment is dismissive as well. But I think that one of the reasons sexism is
so hard to fix is that people get into a "you're with us, or you're against
us" attitude very quickly with it. Finding fault with a proposed solution does
not always mean that you refuse to acknowledge the problem. Sometimes it just
means that the solution would not work and / or it would create additional
problems.

The fact is, there is a wide variety of possible situations here, differing
from field to subfield. The role that representation quotas can play is
probably different in these situations:

1\. A field in which there are lots of competent female practitioners, but
prevailing sexism makes it impossible for them to stand out and reach the
summits of recognition.

2\. A field that most women would generally like to work in, but they are
often turned away by prevailing sexism.

3\. A field that most women are generally averse to, and would avoid even if
there was no sexism whatsoever in it. (Think long-distance truck drivers.)

4\. A field that is so sexist that women are only allowed into it based on
good looks rather than competence. (Representation quotas are arguably
counter-productive here.)

------
frozenport
At the end of the day you need to find them and this is hard. A more practical
strategy is to group the chromosomes in a way that gives you the desired
ratio.

For example, if you have 4 male speakers

XY XY XY XY

Simply rearrange to form 2 females. The residual, YY is dead.

XX XX YY YY

~~~
bmohlenhoff
So you have two females, 0 males, and 2...aliens?

~~~
frozenport
The yy are dead

------
tjic
I find it amusing that a woman who chose not to go into technology says the
the root cause of women not being well represented in technology is something
other than "women choose not to go into technology".

~~~
dguaraglia
This is my main complaint about all these editorials about the gender ratios
at tech conferences. Well, I'm sure if you go to a
trucker/blacksmith/hairdresser meetup the ratio is just as skewed, in one
direction or the other.

There's no escaping the fact that certain professions tend to attract more
people of one sex than the other. Forcing the selection criteria to enforce an
equal ratio instead of aiming for excellence will only hurt the content and
those paying to access it.

(And NO, I'm NOT saying the aren't awesome women in tech. I'm just saying that
gender/ethnicity should never take precedence over merit.)

------
chayesfss
Having worked in security & federation for years I can say, there just aren't
any women in the field. There was one woman I meet during a conference who was
into federation but she went by some weird name like Mrs. Federation or
Authentication, something like that, I can't remember.

What I just glanced over is ridiculous, even though Rebecca J. Rosen is
worried about it I can 100% say that I'm not. When I'm actually spending my
time listening to someone talk, I'm more interested in what that person is
saying, not what sex they happen to be.

It's unfortunate but most women at technical gatherings seem to be more
marketing types, and if you're technical you know, there's nobody you'd rather
NOT listen to more than some marketing person babble.

~~~
theorique
I think that's an unfair characterization of women as marketing types. Don't
forget HR and recruiting!

(I keed, I keed.)

------
Zikes
Every time this issue comes up everyone talks around in circles, statistics
are thrown around, disputed, refuted, it's all discussed at length, and then
everyone gets frustrated and gives up until the next article gets posted. You
know what's going to fix this? Complete transparency and a nearly omniscient
source of available speaker data.

So we create some kind of online universal tech speaker rolodex. Sortable,
filterable, searchable, anyone and everyone that's brave enough to get in
front of more than a dozen people are on there along with a list of subjects
they're comfortable speaking about. Steal the subject tags right off
StackOverflow, I don't know.

Then it's got a list of tech events. Every event in the world, if it's public
and related to technology. It's got a full list of subjects the event covers
and who's speaking on it, and more importantly _who they invited_. Maybe 50%
of the speakers they invited were unavailable; couldn't afford the flight,
scheduling conflict, don't speak the native language, whatever.

Actually, maybe the site wouldn't even need to list who was invited. After
all, the site would have a comprehensive listing of subject matter experts,
right? So Super Big Tech Conference San Francisco 2013 gets announced and
currently has 10 out of 10 male speakers on Subject A, we do a search and find
out those are indeed the only available speakers. Or there is a female speaker
on the subject available and she writes to the conference organizer and offers
to speak, or posts a blog post about her disappointment at not being invited
to speak, at which point people are (potentially) justifiably upset.

You know what, I'd sign up on that site in a heartbeat. Not as a speaker, of
course, but I'd love to see a comprehensive list of subject matter experts
whose blogs and articles I can follow, find out when I might be able to catch
them speaking, or even find out when any event at all related to a subject I'm
interested in might happen near me. That sounds too obvious not to exist
already, maybe I'm just missing something there, maybe it'd just be
ridiculously hard to monetize, or maybe one of you has the skills and
dedication to make it happen.

------
jere
>I am writing this today because yet another tech conference -- Edge: Building
Out From the Edge of Web Technology -- has been announced and this time there
is exactly one woman confirmed to speak.

That's a horrible ratio, but it's most certainly _not_ an all-male panel.

Reminds me of an article on "brogramming", in which the best example they
could find of brogramming was a marketing executive (not a programmer) giving
a sexist speech.

~~~
LaGrange
"Panellist profiles will be posted as they are announced."

~~~
jere
What's your point? Are you saying the crime here is not posting a profile
because they were waiting on a photo (which is now posted)?

The author of the post is asking panelists to protest all male panels but
_this is not one_ , so I'm not sure what she's asking. To protest less than X
women or less than X% women? What line are we asking not to be crossed?

~~~
LaGrange
The point is, the female speaker appeared after publishing this post. I guess
it's great the organizers relented. She was asking for what actually happened.

The first reaction from the organizers to what happened wasn't exactly
promising as well.

~~~
jere
Ok. If that's the case, I take back my comment.

It's not clear from the article though. Usually updates are clearly noted in
an article with brackets and italics and the original content is left
untouched.

------
shrub
As a female computer scientist, I would be very sad if a speaker I was very
much looking forward to hearing at a conference opted out because there
happened to be no women on the panel. This seems to be an inappropriate level
at which to demand action or try to intervene. How about a pledge instead to
mentor some young women so that they go into the field and then go on to
become part of the panel?

Here is an interesting thought for the discussion: in fact, the more highly
skilled women I see in tech, the less I feel I should be in this field unless
I am as good as them, which I simply am not. If there were more average chicks
doing average tech things, I would feel much better - but as it is, I feel
like I need to be some sort of super women who speaks on a panel in order to
fit in.

------
theorique
The Python Software Foundation seems to be doing a good job of including more
female speakers and panelists. However, there's already a nice baseline of
20-30% female users. Assuming you could force everyone to hew to this rule,
how would it work in fields where there were very, very few female
participants?

------
hunvreus
Let me first say that I may not have the proper PC sensibilities as I am not a
US citizen; apologies if I cross a line.

As I understand the issue of "women in tech", I believe people are usually
referring to two separate issues;

\- __Lack of acknowledgement, representation of and hostility towards women
__within the tech community, in the professional context especially, context
which extends to conferences and other gatherings.

\- __Lack of women actually choosing or sticking to a tech career path __,
which is attributed at least partially to the previous point.

Affirmative action has been around for long enough to have created a decent
amount of literature on all sides of the fence. I doubt that there's a final
conclusion to that chapter.

I'd be curious to know what the public opinion is nowadays on that issue,
specifically in the US. Personally I would favor positive initiatives focusing
on easing the process of women going into tech, rather than trying to force
some sort of (subjective) balance upon a community that more often that not
behave organically (thus likely to not be very receptive to this kind of
action). Things like <http://techwomen.co/> or <http://www.girlswhocode.com/>.

------
freework
I think the ratio of female speakers at a conference should be equal to the
ratio of women in the industry. Otherwise, you're dumbing down your speaking
qualifications just to allow women speakers. That doesn't help anyone. If 1%
of people in the tech industry are women, then 1% of the speakers at any
conference should be female. No more, no less. Doing it any other way would be
unfair.

At Pycon next year I will skip all the women speakers because I know they got
that speaking spot because the Python Foundation is on a crusade to get as
many women speakers as possible, not because their proposal was great or
interesting. It won't just be me though. Whats going to happen is that these
women will be treated differently than the men, not because of their gender,
but because their talk just wasn't interesting. I go to those conferences to
hear interesting talks, I don't care about gender. But the end result s that
people like me in the community end up looking sexist and overall makes the
problem worse.

~~~
dgabriel
But why wouldn't you just read the talk description and title to decide
whether or not to go? This reaction: "I won't go because I think that some
women were specifically recruited!" doesn't make any sense.

------
RyanMcGreal
Why am I not surprised to see the usual litany of sexist, condescending,
dismissive and outright offensive HN comments on what is unquestionably a
serious problem of gender imbalance in the tech industry?

Ugh.

~~~
bostonpete
What comment do you find offensive here? The most dismissive comments I see
seem to be arguing that sex should not be a factor in selecting panelists.
Maybe that's a debatable stance, but I think it's a little extreme to declare
it offensive...

~~~
phaylon
Because it greatly simplifies the issue. It's basically saying "there would be
more women in tech if they wanted to". And it completely ignores the issues of
"Why don't they want to be part of these communities?" And if that question is
asked, the answers usually circle around "Women shouldn't be offended by
sexism." I can see how those two combined attitudes could offend people.

It's not about fixating on a 50/50 ratio. It's about changing the climate and
attitudes so it's a more welcoming environment, so they _do_ want to be part
of the communities. If more women go into tech, that doesn't automatically
mean less men. My personal belief is that it would increase the amount of
capable people in the respective communities.

What I find most surprising though, is the vehemence with which these
attitudes are defended.

~~~
bostonpete
This line of reasoning seems to assume that it's sexism that drives women away
from tech. But most people chose to go into a technical field when they're
still in high school -- long before they would have encountered the sort of
workplace/conference/community sexism people gripe about. Colleges have
historically had a lot of trouble attracting girls to their
technical/engineering programs, despite often bending over backwards to try to
improve their ratios.

Isn't it possible that there are other factors which cause such a large gender
disparity between choices that teenagers are making...?

~~~
phaylon
Sure, there are lots of factors. But "It is what it is, and we shall not touch
the natural order of things" is not a productive part of the discussion, at
least to me.

Don't you think an IT community more friendly towards the female part of the
population would be beneficial and could interest more young females than the
status quo? Consider in todays age it is easy to lurk a community over the
internet.

So, would you think being a teenage female trying to learn language $X and
finding lots of sexism is an encouraging experience and would not be a factor
in driving them away?

------
debacle
It's fun coming up with fake names.

On a more serious note, this is tired. If a man is as good as a woman, why
does it matter what is or isn't hanging between the legs of a speaker at a
conference?

~~~
danso
You're raising a strawman argument. Advocates like the OP aren't arguing that
a person's gender affects their merit as a conference speaker. They are
arguing that organizers, like any other social group of people, tend to
groupthink...not out of malice necessarily, but in such a way that women (or
whatever excluded group) are not reached out to enough.

In a conference with two, three, five speakers...sure, no big deal if it's all
one gender. Ten, 15, 20? Something would seem amiss.

~~~
debacle
If you are saying that this statistic proves bias, then you don't know enough
about statistics.

If you are saying we should introduce bias towards women, then you don't know
enough about programmers (man or woman). Would you really want to be the lone
woman on a panel, who was picked not because she is the best speaker, but
because she needed to be the token presence? Do you think you're going to get
the best female programmers to do that? How do you think people are going to
respond to that?

If you think that the panel already is biased, then that may be the case but
in order to prove that you'll have to point out people who were not asked to
talk that should have been, that are more prominent in the community than
those already speaking.

You actually have to have statistics and data to back up your argument, and
not just emotion. I'd love to see a 50/50 panel at a convention, but it's not
likely to happen - I'm impressed when I see one woman presenting at a
convention. Like it or not, programming is still a sausage fest.

~~~
danso
> _If you are saying we should introduce bias towards women, then you don't
> know enough about programmers (man or woman). Would you really want to be
> the lone woman on a panel, who was picked not because she is the best
> speaker, but because she needed to be the token presence? Do you think
> you're going to get the best female programmers to do that? How do you think
> people are going to respond to that?_

Who said anything about advocating for tokenism? I'm saying that that is the
strawman argument here because the OP is (ostensibly) not arguing for the
selection of a woman just to balance the panel, but arguing that a panel of N
number of human beings is unlikely to be all-male unless the panel-organizers
had overlooked female prospects.

To further my point: what is "the best speaker"? I mean, how do you rank that?
Are the best qualified speakers the ones who are the best programmers? The
ones who are the most accomplished? The ones who are the most engaging
speakers (regardless of actual topic)? The ones who make the most money? The
ones who work for the most interesting startups who have used web tech in the
most interesting ways? The ones who have the best perspectives (and how would
you rank that)? Unless you have a very limited view of who would make a good
panelist, it's hard to imagine a web tech field in which no woman excelled in
any of those above metrics.

~~~
debacle
> arguing that a panel of N number of human beings is unlikely to be all-male
> unless the panel-organizers had overlooked female prospects.

Then lets get together a panel of N former professional football players, or
navy SEALs, or physicists.

The fact of the matter is that I can't think of a single individual on any of
the mailing lists I frequent that is unambiguously female.

------
javert
No, the panel should be composed of _the best people._ Anything else is, by
definition, suboptimal. And unjust.

This is just like "affirmative action" in schools (which is reverse racism,
which is racism). Except it's reverse sexism. Which is sexism.

I am sure that women get selected for panels all the time, when they are
experts in the area of discussion of the panel. So this is addressing a non-
problem.

~~~
fatbird
_I am sure that women get selected for panels all the time, when they are
experts in the area of discussion of the panel._

You're very wrong on this.

~~~
javert
So you think that women are systematically passed over because they're female?
What makes you think this?

------
cantastoria
I'm not sure any top down approach that's done out in the open like this will
ever really work. At best you'll end up with the situation that now exists in
college admissions where it's just assumed all minority applicants got in on
preference and the white/asian applicants got in on merit (excluding
legacies). While these programs do achieve the goal of "diversity" over the
long term they just further stigmatize minority participants in other ways.

To me at least, the only approach that will work will be long-term and bottom
up. We're just going to have be more aggressive about getting women in tech in
high school and let them slowly build their numbers until there's enough of a
critical mass to open the flood gates.

------
roopeshv
anyone think the stackoverflow top users is sexist?
[http://stackoverflow.com/users?tab=reputation&filter=all](http://stackoverflow.com/users?tab=reputation&filter=all)

------
AgathaTheWitch
Panels should include speakers with the most relevant input in regard to the
topic under discussion.

