
Please Stop Asking Me to Speak About Women in Technology - Killswitch
http://www.snipe.net/2014/05/please-stop-asking-me-to-speak-about-women-in-technology/
======
Mz
Excerpt:

 _Simply being a woman in technology doesn’t automatically make you qualified
or interested in presenting about women in technology. It’s not some sort of
ZOMG Uterus! club, and the assumption that it’s the only thing I’d be useful
at talking about is a problem for me, regardless of how well-intentioned you
are in wanting to bring this topic to the forefront at your conferences.

If you want women to feel less like outsiders in technology, try having a few
of them speak at your conferences about _gasp* technology.*

Those are excellent points to make. I happen to have a Certificate in GIS and
I run a few websites and know a little html and css but I am kind of not
really a "woman in tech." My forte is more social (I have had classes on
things like Social Psychology and Negotiation and Conflict Management, etc)
and I like writing about social things, including women's issues. Some of my
writing on such topics has been discussed a little on HN. But, yes, she is
absolutely right that being female and in tech does not, by itself, make
"women in tech" her forte and she is also absolutely right that a much
stronger position for promoting diversity is to hire her to talk about the
thing she is an expert in, in spite of, gasp, her having female genitals.

I am glad to see this here. It fits nicely with some of my ideas and past
comments, I think.

------
clavalle
Hear, hear.

I wonder what would happen if we all collectively decided to act like the
revolution of diversity in tech has already happened?

~~~
rayiner
The industry would be 80-85% men in perpetuity? I can understand the author's
desire not to have gender be such a big issue. But it is a big issue whether
we talk about it or not, and if we don't talk about it, we'll never fix it.

~~~
clavalle
How does talking about it fix it?

Wouldn't _behaving_ as if we are living in a world where there is no
underrepresented group in tech be better? Where it is no surprise that a woman
be interviewed and hired for a position? That a little girl building robots
and taking apart electronics is just kind of the way things go? That
encouraging all children to excel in tech is the norm? Where it is a little
strange that a women be asked to speak about a social issue at a tech
conference?

It seems that calling attention to bad actors all of the time is kind of like
calling attention to school shooters -- suddenly, to the younger more
impressionable generation, there is a new alternative to their behavior that
they were previously unaware of.

~~~
rayiner
You're assuming a world where the fair arrangement is the only stable
equilibrium. Remove overt discrimination, and the world moves to that
equilibrium.

Empirical evidence shows that this is not the case. If you look at the
dynamics of gender representation in law and medicine, two professions where
female representation has gone from 5-10% to 50% over the last 50 years, you
can see it behaves like a beam in plastic deformation. You move them to one
point through discrimination, and it stays there when the force is removed.
You move it to another point through affirmative action, and it stays there
when the force is removed.

~~~
sosuke
I never considered law and medicine, is there anything special they did to
alter the balance that tech could adopt?

~~~
vellum
One factor is that it's easier for women to apply to med school or law school
because there's no required major. Law, especially, was a default choice for
liberal arts majors who didn't know what else to do. If you want to be a CS
major, however, you need to commit freshman year.

~~~
dragonwriter
> One factor is that it's easier for women to apply to med school or law
> school because there's no required major.

This is true of most graduate and professional programs. I had a friend in
college whose undergraduate degree was in Rhetoric and Communication, who then
went into a Physics Ph.D. program.

> If you want to be a CS major, however, you need to commit freshman year.

Whether that's true or not depends on the school, and its not necessarily
_generally_ particularly true of CS, though it may be more true of CS at
particular institutions. OTOH, unlike law or medicine, where a particular
professional degree is essentially mandatory [1], technology has no particular
degree requirement (while a CS degree is _helpful_ , particularly for the best
jobs, its not a legal requirement to enter the field and plenty of people in
the field don't have a CS degree.)

Anyhow, I'm not sure any of that is relevant -- why is the requirement for a
particular degree, or a requirement to commit early for a degree, a barrier
for _women_ entering the field? Are you arguing that women are inherently less
likely to commit early?

[1] in some states, its still possible to meet the requirements to practice
law through what amounts to a private apprenticeship rather than professional
degree.

~~~
vellum
_Anyhow, I 'm not sure any of that is relevant -- why is the requirement for a
particular degree, or a requirement to commit early for a degree, a barrier
for women entering the field?_

When discussing women in tech, people bring up how the candidate pool mirrors
the pipeline. See the recent discussion on Google.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7813310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7813310)

 _Are you arguing that women are inherently less likely to commit early?_

Guys are more likely to start coding in high school or earlier, so they're the
ones starting freshman year. For example, the number of women who take the AP
CS test is ~18%, which is close to the % of CS degree grads who are women.

[http://www.exploringcs.org/resources/cs-
statistics](http://www.exploringcs.org/resources/cs-statistics)

If you want to graduate in 4 years, you have to start your CS program freshman
year. You can switch later, but you're going to have to pay for more
semesters, or work harder and cram in more units. And yes, you can start
coding after 22, but it's an uphill battle.

~~~
dragonwriter
> And yes, you can start coding after 22, but it's an uphill battle.

"Getting an undergraduate degree other than CS" isn't the same thing as "start
programming after graduating".

------
easymovet
I enjoyed your viewpoint. Your blog post have actually been a great talk on
women in technology, aka, people in technology.

------
hippo33
I think the organizer should have been upfront with you about what he/she
wanted you to talk on. That said, I don't think it was an offensive request.
The organizer wasn't being presumptuous that you would be interested in
speaking on this topic just because you're female -- he/she was merely asking
you... As a woman in tech, I get how it's these little things compounded over
time that get annoying, but this ask on its own is not unreasonable is it? You
can always just say no (as you did). :)

~~~
mtdewcmu
I think it was more disappointment at not being asked to speak about what she
wanted to speak about.

~~~
snipeyhead
Yeah, I wasn't offended. I was disappointed.

------
Tycho
Seems a bit strange that the author doesn't mention what the previous speaker
was scheduled to speak on...

~~~
snipeyhead
I didn't actually know what the previous speaker was scheduled to speak on. I
never thought to ask. I recently spoke in Paris as a pinch-hitter for someone
who couldn't make it last minute, and they asked me what I could speak about.
That's pretty common, in my experience. Last-minute replacements don't always
have to speak on the same topic, as long as it's a valid topic for the
conference itself.

In retrospect, women in tech may well have been the original topic, but I
never thought to ask, since I have never presented about women in tech before,
so why would I be selected as a replacement if it was?

------
phazmatis
Well this is great. We're told to "just give women in tech a voice". So some
organizers go looking for someone who's comfortable with keynoting the damn
conference on these issues. She gives a weak "no, but maybe I could generalize
to a talk about diversity in general", and they DO NOT cancel the diversity
keynote, they find someone who's more confident to talk about this
PARTICULARLY bad targeted issue. And she assumes that they are just dum-dum
conference organizers... or something.

~~~
snipeyhead
And frankly, the entire point of that blog post was that "giving women in tech
a voice" shouldn't _always_ mean having them talk about women in tech, but it
should also be about actual _tech_. The meta conversation is useful, but
cannot be the _only_ thing. When the only time men (and women) see women
presenting is on topics about women in tech, I think it's damaging. As if
we're allowed to exist in the tech space, but not because we actually solve
difficult technical problems, but because of moral obligations.

------
jamesbritt
I have no idea who this person is, and the Web site does not seem designed to
help me find out.

Snipe? Does that handle ring a bell for some people?

~~~
quomopete
[http://www.snipe.net/about/](http://www.snipe.net/about/)

edit: removed cheap shot about motivation.

~~~
jamesbritt
I looked all over for a link labeled "About" or the like and did not find it.

What's with the cheap shot about motivation?

~~~
quomopete
my apologies, i'm in a terrible mood and taking it out on strangers on the
internet.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, you're big enough to recognize it, apologize for it, and edit to fix it.
Don't be too hard on yourself, because we often see a lot worse...

------
trhway
at least she has a mercy to not name the conference in her righteous rant, as
after reading it i also started to feel that the conference organizers are
arrogant chauvinist pigs because they reached to a woman in tech to talk about
... you'd not believe it ... women in tech. I guess the right choice was to
reach to a man in tech. Yes, yes, that would be the most PC solution that
everybody, especially women in tech, would applaud loudly long after the
conference ended - a man in tech talking about women in tech.

~~~
freshchilled
I think she takes issue with the fact that the organizers already had a narrow
topic in mind when they asked her to present. And that the topic was kinda
stereotypical (You're a tech woman? Talk about women in tech!). I think the
right choice is to let your presenter present what they are experts in.
Especially since she offered to speak on a similar, but less bounded, topic!

~~~
trhway
>I think the right choice is to let your presenter present what they are
experts in. Especially since she offered to speak on a similar, but less
bounded, topic!

is she an expert or have any equivalent experience to talk about say "African-
Americans (or latino) in tech" or any other facet of diversity which she has
no direct relation to? Is she an expert on diversity? If yes, than what makes
her that?

~~~
snipeyhead
I am not an expert on diversity. If I was an expert on women in tech, or
diversity in general (although I care deeply about it and would have been
willing to put together something great for that), it wouldn't have been weird
for them to ask me to speak about it at their conference.

That's sort of the point of the article. I am an expert on many things - women
in tech isn't one of them (other than the fact that I have been one for a long
time). But there mere fact that I'm female seemed to dictate to them that I
would want to and would be qualified to speak about it.

~~~
trhway
>I am an expert on many things - women in tech isn't one of them (other than
the fact that I have been one for a long time).

multi-year experience with something frequently makes an expert or at least
gives others a good reason to suspect so. Have you never stated how many years
you do PHP/MySql/whatever in order to communicate your experience level?

~~~
dragonwriter
Assuming the experience being _a woman_ in tech gives you particular expertise
relating to the situation of _women_ in tech is, pretty much, the same thing
as assuming that because you knew one black person for many years, you are an
expert on black people -- it relies on a "what's true for one member of the
class is true for all members of the class" stereotyping.

~~~
trhway
>Assuming the experience being a woman in tech gives you particular expertise
relating to the situation of women in tech is, pretty much, the same thing as
assuming that because you knew one black person for many years, you are an
expert on black people

no. It is, pretty much, the same thing as assuming that because you are a
black person, you are an expert on black people - pretty reasonable assumption
at least to some degree.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It is, pretty much, the same thing as assuming that because you are a black
> person [for many years], you are an expert on black people

That's the same stereotyping assumption as the one I suggested. I've been a
member of my race and gender my whole life (obviously!). I am expert on _my_
experiences, and have opinions (some of which are pretty well grounded in
_other_ knowledge I have, from formal education and elsewhere, that is more
general than my personal experience) on how my race and gender _relate_ to
those experiences.

But it would be grossly stereotyping my race or gender to assume that I was an
expert on my race or gender generally to assume that I had _general_ expertise
on the experience of _people_ of my race or gender (or even only those of my
race or gender in my career field.)

~~~
snipeyhead
Precisely. I'm an expert on being _this_ particular woman in tech - which is a
far cry from knowing what it's like to be other women in tech. Our stories are
widely varied, and my experiences are not an accurate reflection of many other
women in tech. I do not speak for them, only for myself.

~~~
pavement
I think it would've been pretty awesome if you proposed a slide deck composed
purely of vaguely captioned images, and then got up there, and derailed the
talk for 90% of your alotted time by just delivering an off-topic talk
regarding subject of your choice (maybe something highly technical and
intimidating). All the while clicking through slides as if they related to
your spoken word, and then at the end, summed up with the sentiment you
expressed in this post on your site. And then, when you open up the floor for
a Q&A session, respond to any questions with markov-chain generated non-
sequiturs.

In my book, that would be a great talk. The more extemporaneous, the better.

Maybe that's a little anti-social, but remember that in comedy, a joke that
bombs can be entertaining all by itself. And if your worried about losing your
nerve, when the moment arrives, and it's time to be beligerent, just do a
couple of shots before you get on stage.

...on the other hand, if the talk gets a positive response, you'd probably
have another problem on your hands: being asked to come back and give the same
talk again. One way to curb that would be to pre-record your protest and just
play the recording into the microphone.

~~~
snipeyhead
I had thought about it, trust me (in very much the way you're describing,
funnily enough) :) But ultimately, it's their conference, and they do have the
right and the responsibility to schedule the sessions they feel will be most
valuable.

Not to mention that if I pulled that stunt off, I probably wouldn't be invited
to speak at many conferences anymore, because organizers aren't fans of loose
cannons. But really, I didn't feel the need to be a dick about it. Their loss.
I give a pretty good presentation. _shrug_

------
staticelf
Good choice, I would never go to a talk about women in tech.

~~~
angersock
...even if it got you laid?

Edit: One crass response deserves another.

~~~
dang
> One crass response deserves another

No, it doesn't. Please don't do this.

