Where are the women?
Daniele Procida
<http://2012.djangocon.eu/schedule/involving-women-in-the-community/> - and then I had a closer look at the names of this year's speakers.
There are *two* women out of the 24 or so speakers listed, and only one is doing a solo talk.
This is absolutely not a comment about or criticism of the organisers; apart from anything, I know that they're aware of and concerned about the issues. They can only select proposals they've been given, or have attendees who sign up.
At last year's DjangoCon Europe, there were few women attending. At PyCon UK last year, there was a similar dearth. Someone remarked to me then that a Microsoft event there would be a much more equal distribution.
So where are the women?
Does open source put women off? Is it something in the open source community, or the personalities you find in it? The nature of these conferences?
It's true that some open software communities, and the people in them, are pretty unwelcoming to newcomers, or seem to delight in expressing agressive and macho attitudes, but Python and Django are clearly not like that (quite the opposite in fact).
The conferences I've attended have been relaxed, warm and friendly. The worst you could say is that they are a little bit nerdy, which as a complaint would be like saying that medical conferences tend to be a little bit doctory.
The last thing I want is for a woman to read this (there won't be that many reading in any case, I suppose) and decide not to go because she doesn't like the thought of finding herself one person in ten; but from what I understand she's one in ten in the workplace and in the industry anyway.
I assume that most people agree this is a problem and worth addressing, but perhaps I'm wrong.
If women are not part of the community, or not coming forward to do things like give talks at - or even simply attend - its conferences, what if anything should be done about it?
Daniele
Marcin Tustin
Daniele
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Marcin Tustin
Tel: 07773 787 105
Tom Evans
> My experience is that there are very few women working in shops that
> primarily use open source technology. When I've encountered them, it's been
> in Microsoft shops, and very large technology organisations which love
> proprietary technologies.
>
I don't think this is particularly true. I've met many male developers
who can't handle open source at all.
We use primarily open source - mainly python - at $JOB. In our UK dev
department we have ~ 25 developers, and ~ 20% of them are women. In
our US department it is more like 10%.
This compares to when I was at university (~10 years ago), when ~10%
of my peers were female. I don't think compsci admissions will reach
gender equality any time soon, so you can expect to see this trend
continue.
All of my colleagues are excellent (which is why we hired them!),
regardless of gender :)
Cheers
Tom
Marcin Tustin
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Remy 'Sieben' Leone
Hanne Moa
> I was looking at <http://2012.djangocon.eu/schedule/> again with excited anticipation, and reading through the talk summaries.
>
> <http://2012.djangocon.eu/schedule/involving-women-in-the-community/> - and then I had a closer look at the names of this year's speakers.
>
> There are *two* women out of the 24 or so speakers listed, and only one is doing a solo talk.
More generally, I would have liked to go to EuroPythonCon both this
year and last year but from experience I don't deal with hot and humid
weather very well so it's out of the question.
More specifically, when the base percentage of programmers vs.
non-programmers being different in the two sexes (this is also depends
on class and culture) is multiplied with the base percentage of
open-source programmers vs. non-open source programmers you will end
up with four different groups generally in four different sizes (Bayes
theorem!). We know that male programmers outnumber female programmers.
If non-open-source programmers outnumber open source programmers then
the group "female open-source programmer" is likely to be the smallest
group.
You can then set up a new test with "female programmers" vs. "male
programmers" and "programmers that visit techie cons" vs. "programmers
not visiting techie cons". The group "female open-source programmer
that visit techie cons" will have fewer members than "female
open-source programmers".
You get the idea. It might be that running those numbers will explain
the low number of "female open-source programmer that visit techie
cons that also are of interest to you" all by itself, no conspiracy
required.
You get more women in by changing the weights in *any* of the tests:
more programmers, more female programmers, more open source
programmers, more programmers visiting techie cons etc. It adds up.
So: you have this wee group of potential "female open-source
programmer that visit techie cons that also are of interest to you".
Then, and only then can you start to look at con-specific or
language-specific tests that the community can directly do something
with: "bro"grammers, strip shows, excessive drinking and pressure to
drink (rumored to be a problem at Java Script venues), rock star
behavior (ruby?), specific idiots that should never have been left out
of the asylum and ruins it for everyone etc.
I haven't heard any rumors of stupid behavior among pythoneers or at
python cons though so it might just be that "female open-source
(python and django) programmer that visit techie cons that also are of
interest to you" is a very small group.
HM, member of "open source programmers that don't get a paid trip to
visit techie cons that often and can't function very well in hot
climates"
Daniele Procida
>On 24 April 2012 16:14, Daniele Procida <dan...@vurt.org> wrote:
>> I was looking at <http://2012.djangocon.eu/schedule/> again with
>excited anticipation, and reading through the talk summaries.
>one is doing a solo talk.
>more programmers, more female programmers, more open source
>programmers, more programmers visiting techie cons etc. It adds up.
>
>So: you have this wee group of potential "female open-source
>programmer that visit techie cons that also are of interest to you".
>Then, and only then can you start to look at con-specific or
>language-specific tests that the community can directly do something
>with: "bro"grammers, strip shows, excessive drinking and pressure to
>drink (rumored to be a problem at Java Script venues), rock star
>behavior (ruby?), specific idiots that should never have been left out
>of the asylum and ruins it for everyone etc.
I wasn't entirely sure what to expect before I went, but I didn't imagine there'd be strippers and heavy drinking - is that usual? Or what people expect, and are put off by?
>I haven't heard any rumors of stupid behavior among pythoneers or at
>python cons though so it might just be that "female open-source
>(python and django) programmer that visit techie cons that also are of
>interest to you" is a very small group.
Daniele
Katie Cunningham
successful on this side of the pond:
- Scholarships set aside for female attendees
- Specifically invite potential female speakers to talk, or at least
submit a talk
- Reach out to women-based tech groups, and make sure they know about
the conference
- Talk to females that are already attending, and see if they can share a room
- Encourage sponsors to sponsor costs for a female attendee.
- Have a code of conduct that is public, explicit, and enforced.
Even doing the scholarships for a few spots shows that your conference
shows that you're serious about women attending. I don't know, when
looking into a conference, whether your conference is going to be one
where I'm going to get cat-called or one where I'm going to feel
completely at home.
Katie Cunningham
Jonas Obrist
Katie Cunningham
used this year. They borrowed it from another advocacy group, I
believe, so it's becoming pretty standard.
Katie
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Daniele Procida
><http://2012.djangocon.eu/schedule/involving-women-in-the-community/> -
>and then I had a closer look at the names of this year's speakers.
>
>There are *two* women out of the 24 or so speakers listed, and only one
>is doing a solo talk.
Jessica McKellar <http://2012.djangocon.eu/blog/announcing-our-second-keynote-speaker-jessica-mcke/> is a Python Software Foundation board member and a maintainer of several important open source Python projects.
Karen Tracey <http://2012.djangocon.eu/blog/announcing-our-final-keynote-speaker-karen-tracey/> is a core Django developer and author of Django Testing and Debugging.
which is really excellent and certainly helps address the imbalance.
Two weeks to go!
Daniele