
Women, Tech Conferences and the Bullshit Surrounding It - gamesbrainiac
https://sugarrae.com/rants-in-bitchland/women-tech-conferences-and-bs/
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kogir
Why aren't conference proposals blind anyway? Seems to have worked for
orchestras.

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Domenic_S
Because individual speakers draw crowds; individual orchestra members do not.
Could you see Linus Torvalds' speaker application getting denied because it
was a blind proposal from "some hothead"?

Edit: missed the meaning of "blind".

~~~
danharaj
If it were a blind proposal, you wouldn't know it was from "yet another white
male".

Individual speakers draw crowds, yes. But conferences are also a way for
people to share their ideas and establish their names in the first place. A
conference that optimizes for crowd draw is enforcing a preexisting hierarchy
to the detriment of the community.

A solution is to use the keynote address and invited speakers to draw crowds,
while taking blind proposals for most of the actual content.

"What is the goal of X?" is a good question to ask in any social endeavor.

~~~
Domenic_S
Whoops, edited.

> _A solution is to use the keynote address and invited speakers to draw
> crowds_

Ok, but nothing's solved, just pushed up a level.

~~~
metasean
It gives women, along with other frequently disadvantaged groups, such as
minorities, the obese, seniors, and physically challenged persons, a more
equitable chance to be heard in the first place. It means that the speakers
who are chosen have met a minimum professional relevance level. This is a good
short term win.

Will it mean those people have equitable chances to do keynotes today - no
more so than the current systems.

Will it mean they have a chance to build a professional reputation that may
result in invitations to do keynotes tomorrow - yes. This is a good long term
win.

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tothepixel
In my opinion we should judge people solely on the relevance and quality of
their presentations at conferences. Why should anything else matter? I think
everyone agrees with this for the most part. It's just unfortunate that some
people feel the need to supply unequal treatment to certain genders/races by
creating quotas.

~~~
kelukelugames
I think a lot of people on HN and reddit agrees with your opinion. We should
judge people on quality and merit. Unfortunately, studies have shown the
people who claim this tend to be even more biased.

See bottom of this page.
[http://managingbias.fb.com/](http://managingbias.fb.com/) It's kind of like
when people say "I don't see race."

~~~
traverseda
That's a bit... ad-hominum. Maybe I'm mis-reading it, but for me it parsed
more or less as "I'm not saying you're a racist, but people who say what
you're saying are racists...."

If that interpretation is wrong, please do correct me.

I'd like it if arguments could stand on their own, not be dismissed because
someone falls into a particular category.

>I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content
of their character.

and all that.

~~~
danharaj
Useful reading:
[http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html](http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html)

The post you're responding to is making the argument "Claiming that you aren't
unbiased does not make you unbiased. Trying to be unbiased does not
necessarily make you unbiased."

That's certainly not ad hominem at all.

~~~
tbrownaw
_The post you 're responding to is making the argument "Claiming that you
aren't unbiased does not make you unbiased. Trying to be unbiased does not
necessarily make you unbiased."_

No, it goes farther and very clearly says it actually mskes you _more_ biased.

~~~
danharaj
That's fair, I misparaphrased. Still, not an ad hominem because its argument
appeals to studies. That could be fallacious, but it's not an ad hominem
fallacy.

~~~
Toast_
Not to be pedantic, but its logically invalid; no fallacy is needed.

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SovietDissident
Similar to the putative attitude of the organizers of these conferences,
colleges have bent over backwards to get more female enrollment (indeed, there
are now more females going to college than males). However,

 _" A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse looks at degrees in
STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) and finds that the
share of STEM bachelor’s degrees going to women ticked down over the past
decade. The biggest decline was in computer science, where women received 23
percent of bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2004 and just 18 percent in 2014. On
the bright side — at least for career prospects — both men and women are
slightly more likely to be majoring in STEM fields today than they were in
2004; it’s just that men have shown more growth than women."_[0]

The opportunities are there for those females who want it. Maybe most of them
simply don't want to go into the computer field---individual men and women
have different things they want out of life and out of their careers, which is
ok! Why should everyone be a computer science major? The world would be a
pretty dull place.

The author's points are quite valid; I would add that you don't want to push
people into a field they have no interest (or aptitude) in. It makes the
person miserable and cheapens the degrees of others (a smaller consideration
in tech, I'll grant you, since it's more meritocratic than some other fields).

The smallest minority is the individual. If 95% of individuals who happened to
be men gave the best auditions, they should probably be given the spots. I say
"probably" because if it's a private conference, the organizers can do
whatever they want, and people need not attend if they don't like the speaker
choices. Ultimately, if women are dissatisfied with the "boys club", they can
organize their own conference across the street.

[0][https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2015/01/27/wo...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2015/01/27/women-
falling-behind-in-stem-bachelors-degrees/)

~~~
zzalpha
_The opportunities are there for those females who want it. Maybe most of them
simply don 't want to go into the computer field_

You seem to take that as a law of nature... as though it's natural for there
to be a truly _massive_ gender bias in computing, a gender bias that was far
less 20 years ago and has gotten egregiously worse since roughly 2000.

The real question should be: why the hell aren't women enrolling into and
graduating from CS programs?

The answer is probably _enormous_ and _systemic_ , but the current situation
should not be seen as acceptable, IMO.

Incidentally, the same questions could (and should) be asked of, say, men in
nursing. And, again, the answers are certainly enormous and systemic, starting
from childhood socialization, running through peer group issues, and on and
on.

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abalone
How can one lament the lack of women in a conference panel but make no mention
of how lily white it is?

Is it just me or do most of these underepresentation conversations seem to
focus on gender more than race? How the heck does that make any kind of sense?

If anything racial disadvantages have even broader economic consequences than
gender. How is race not an intrinsic, automatic part of every conversation on
representation in tech alongside gender? Why is it "women in tech" instead of
"women and minorities in tech"?

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>How can one lament the lack of women in a conference panel but make no
mention of how lily white it is?

Maybe it is related to how the mismatch from base rate in prison populations
in regards to race is a sign of systematic racism against the over-represented
groups, but the same doesn't seem to be reported in regards to sex.

~~~
minnows
So, commute all prison sentences to STEM scholarships, and problem solved?

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Lawtonfogle
If prison offered good job training (and we got people to be willing to employ
felons), I think recidivism rates would take a significant dip. But oddly
enough, such a solution would only further solidify the gender gap in tech as
such scholarships would be going to far more men than women.

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cgearhart
The gender imbalance in tech will remain self-reinforcing unless we actively
work to change it. Right now the gender balance is so bad that we're
effectively giving up on half the population. How does anyone think that is a
_good_ thing? Other high-skill fields like medicine & law aren't anywhere near
as imbalanced as tech.

Changing the status quo requires outreach and making the culture more
inclusive. Most appeals to meritocracy in tech boil down to "but I really like
the way things are now".

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talmand
That change in culture has to start at high school and college levels, if not
sooner, in educational terms for any meaningful changes to happen. Plus the
culture that needs to work to change isn't necessarily just the tech culture.

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jazzyk
Exactly. Pop-culture in the US (and high-school/college kids are drowning in
it) is very anti-intellectual in general. And getting worse every year
(reality shows, etc).

But a lot of discrimination comes from female peer-pressure, not males. My
daughter kept repeating "math is hard" because her female friends kept saying
so, until I had none of it. She ended up being very good in math, but chose
chem+biology as her major in college :-)

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serge2k
> There’s also no African Americans on the Edge Conference’s roster. I don’t
> see any people of (obvious) Hispanic descent. Why is no one up in arms over
> that?

Because people who care don't get nearly as much press as people who talk
about women being excluded.

Because the men who work in tech don't care so much about race, but they do
care about the obvious lack of women.

Because it's easier to go "we have 40% asians and indians" and ignore the
issue than to find a way around "we have 95% males".

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rayiner
The lack of representation of women at these sorts of conferences is _in and
of itself_ something that turns women off participating in them and ultimately
off the profession. It's a self-perpetuating problem. Until you get that
essential fact, you just don't get the overall problem.

"For all they know, 95% of speaker pitches came from men and thus why they
ended up with a 95% male speaker line up once they whittled down the list to
the best pitches." Shouldn't the very next thought be: "gee, why would 95% of
speaker pitches come from men?" Why might that be the case?

To me, the "women just aren't interested in tech" explanation is ridiculous on
its face. "Women just don't want to be in a high-profile, financially
rewarding career with tons of growth potential, because ____." What goes in
the blank? I'm dying to know.

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WalterBright
I didn't choose to be an engineer because it was high profile, financially
rewarding with tons of growth potential. I chose it because I absolutely love
designing and building things. If you've ever been completely captivated by
the sight, sound, and smell of a steam locomotive's moving parts, or sheer
awesome thrill of a top fuel dragster or P51 at full throttle as it "digs in",
or building something nobody has made before, you are not really an engineer.

If you can't use a piece of machinery, look at software, read about Fukushima,
and not always be thinking about how you'd design it better, you are not
really an engineer.

If you wouldn't work on cool engineering projects for free just because they
are cool, you are not really an engineer.

If you just want to do engineering to make a pile of money and retire, you are
not really an engineer.

If you want to present at conferences for the fame and recognition, you are
not really an engineer. If you present because you cannot resist telling
everyone about this totally awesome piece of engineering, you are likely a
real engineer.

~~~
andresmanz
Same here. I wouldn't even be interested in tech jobs other than programming.
I don't care about the money. Two years ago I even turned down a promotion to
the manager because all I wanted to do was (and is) coding. Also, the original
commenter implies that the average man and woman have the same (tech)
interests, which is simply wrong. The average man and the average woman are
_not_ the same.

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pnathan
For the record, I agree with the points made. But, I've flagged this, as it
will (and has started to) produce the usual firestorm.

~~~
contactmatts
Then so be it. We shouldn't _not_ talk about it.

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contactmatts
Brilliant article. Unfortunately, Rae's perspective does not fit the narrative
of most HN readers.

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rootedbox
When say you chose people solely on relevance and quality, but you only have
men as speakers.. Then it's laughable that your system for choosing speakers
isn't biased.

Percentages shouldn't be the reason why you hire or don't hire someone but
they should be a measure of how much bias is in your system for choosing
persons of varying classes. If your percent of xyz participants in the
majority class is way higher than the distribution in the possible applicants
then there is some sort of class bias(economic, race, socio) in either how you
choose applicants, or in how you get applicants.

~~~
tothepixel
Wouldn't this only be true if there was a perfect 50/50 split of qualified
speakers based on gender? Percentages can be positioned to show that bias
exists only when the input doesn't match the result. It is unknown whether the
field of applicants had an "acceptable" amount of diversity to begin with.

~~~
rootedbox
The percent ratio based on class of participants should be in range of the
percent ratio of possible people qualified by class.

And as I stated.. The failure of not being near this percent is either because
how you chose your participants from applicants or how you chose to get people
to be applicants.

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greenmarantz
> how you chose to get people to be applicants

Applicants are self-selecting. Your argument attempts to shift responsibility
(and agency) away from speakers and practitioners.

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rootedbox
I'm not shifting anything.

How can one have agency if they don't know that there is an opportunity?

i.e.

If an opportunity is open to all; but is only presented to one class then you
are in general only going to get applicants from the class that you presented
the opportunity too.

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21echoes
that's a very long way to say "I don't understand / like affirmative action"

~~~
traverseda
It's a long way of saying "I don't like affirmative action" because they're
explaining why they think affirmative action is bad.

>I earned my way onto that list. And here is someone telling me people who
didn’t should be added simply so I wasn’t the lone female on it?

>In three words? That’s some bullshit.

It's only a long way to say it if you're already committed to ignoring their
arguments. Because in reality their arguments have a bit more nuance then just
"I don't like affirmative action".

~~~
21echoes
Frankly, I think they make one and only one point with a lot of different
examples that make the same point in basically the exact same way: "as a woman
in tech who has succeeded despite roadblocks, I feel like any amount of
affirmative action will make others doubt the extent of my achievements".

I am not committed to ignoring their arguments -- I used to hold similar
positions. Then I talked with people who disagreed with me, grappled with
their positions, and changed my mind. The author here shows no semblance of
any such depth of thought, just repeated invocations of "if I made it, it must
be possible! if we help others who are worse than me, then that lessens my
achievement!" At its core, it's a selfish argument[1], which is why I changed
my mind.

[1]: to be clear, there are quite a few non-personally-selfish arguments
against affirmative action. "it'll make others doubt how much better i am than
most other women" is not one of them.

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meira
Kids (and people that didn't grow up) will try for a long time to avoid this
discussion. But I have to say to you: you lost. You can leave, or you can
adapt. But you can't stop it.

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SandersAK
This article is kinda insulting. Panels and conferences suck when they're
homogenous. They're banal and uninspiring because the perspectives are all too
similar.

The reality is that they didn't work hard enough to find good quality
presenters that represent the actual world we live and work in - one where
people approach problem solving in myriad different ways that stem from their
own history and experience.

tl;dr - if you can't find women, POC for your conference, you didn't look hard
enough.

~~~
tyenl
Does diversity of gender/race equate directly to diversity of content?
Painting a conference as uninspiring solely based on what percentage of the
panel are $demographic seems wrong. Are you suggesting that white males
somehow all produce the same content?

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calibraxis
Bias favoring white males creates a culture of entitlement. Ever went to these
mediocre conferences with mediocre talks? What unimaginative blokes organize
them?

Then take one considered magically good, like Strange Loop. Their excellence
translations into excellent diversity work too:
([http://bridgetconsulting.com/?p=131](http://bridgetconsulting.com/?p=131))

