8 ms·

Here are 588 women in the UK who could speak at your tech event

28 points by ohjeez 8y ago

lbj 8y ago
Everybody's free to submit a talk to mostly any event. If women feel like doing that less so than men, I don't see why thats a problem.
- tzar 8y ago
  An argument like this generalizes into: everybody's free to do anything and there are no problems. At least you included “I don't see”.
tachion 8y ago
I would include Magda Jadach, Raspberry Pi Foundation software developer, speaker at various conferences regarding teaching kids how to code: https://www.linkedin.com/in/magdalenajadach/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/magdalenajadach/
nablaoperator 8y ago
Speak about what?
brink 8y ago
Is there any evidence to show that men in general are working to keep women out of the tech sector? From what I've seen, any woman who wants to commit to learning and getting a job has been completely free to do so. For example; my sister, who's a software engineer because I got her into it years ago. And from what I've seen; nothing has stopped her. It just seems to me that women in general aren't interested in the field, and I'm not sure of the specific reason for it at this point.
- sundaeofshock 8y ago
  Yes. I suggest doing a google search for why there are so few women in tech; you will plenty of articles, including some that point to recent studies. For example: https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/stanford-research-explains-lack-of-women-in-tech-men-make-them-unwelcome-before-they-even-apply.html https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/stanford-research-explains-... It’s also interesting that your sister’s experience is reflective of the findings in various studies. Would your sister have pursued tech without your support?
  - maccio92 8y ago
    I've worked in companies both in the mid west and in Silicon Valley. I think this culture is much more pervasive in the valley. In most other parts of the country where normal people work, women are accepted just as well as men. In fact, every company I worked for in the mid west had a reasonable amount of women, whereas the Silicon Valley companies had very few if not at all.
- belorn 8y ago
  Looking at the public and complete data from Sweden we see that gender segregation is very universal human behavior. There more freedom a person have the more biased their choice is to groups that share similar traits to themselves. A now few years old government study on gender segregation, they cited a older study that found that being in a minority makes a person less confident when faced with a challenged compared to being in a majority. Not massively so, but adding up every small and big challenges a person face in life while being a student, to finding a job, to being a professional for several years, and the results is a significant higher risk of leaving a field where one is a minority. The big issue with this kind of research is that we don't have any gender to blame. It is equally male and female behavior, and the result is almost unbelievable similar results where in Sweden 88.6% of women and 88.4% of men work in gender segregated fields. The 12.5% that work in non-gender segregated fields, where no gender is bigger than 150% than the other gender, is a shrinking minority and there is no evidence to show either gender being behind it.
  - roguecoder 8y ago
    Would that not argue for a more proactive policy approach? Just because something is "universal human behavior" does not mean society should accept it: violence is universal human behavior too.
    - belorn 8y ago
      Yes, a proactive policy approach that address the underlying human behavior. Those 88.5% should preferable not reach 100%. Segregated professions is often also often severely undermanned since by limiting recruitment to only one gender effectively cuts the available pool in half. The question is what policy to apply. We could use a progressive affirmative action based on the severity of segregation, but that would mean for example a complete stop of new hire of midwifes that identify as female as that profession is the worst gender segregated profession in Sweden with over 99.9%. It is also the only higher education program currently that is 100% single gender. Last summer the government even had to cancel vacations on a national level because they could not otherwise cover minimal standard of health care. Its a professions that would greatly benefit by recruiting from the whole population, but its very unclear how to reach such goal. They could do a tax based incentive to encourage individuals to go beyond their own comfort levels and give progressive higher tax cut based on the severity of gender minority status you have in a profession. With Swedish taxes and gender segregation that would mean a male midwife could get up to 100% tax cut and increasing their wages with about 33-50%. A female programmer would get a tax cut around 25-50%, translating to a 10-25% pay raise. Alternative one can try to lower the difference in confidence between those in a majority group vs minority. Mentoring programs are great for that and has shown good results for professions that have average gender segregated. This work nicely on a per company level, but I have not seen any policy action on a national level to encourage such programs. It doesn't however address the initial choice when a individual select a higher education program, so the leaky pipe model still apply.
- hypatiadotca 8y ago
  Here's a detailed survey of women in Silicon Valleys' experiences with sexual harassment from a couple years back: https://www.elephantinthevalley.com/ https://www.elephantinthevalley.com/ . And a more recent one focused specifically on women YC founders: https://blog.ycombinator.com/survey-of-yc-female-founders-on-sexual-harassment-and-coercion-by-angel-and-vc-investors/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/survey-of-yc-female-founders-on...
- roguecoder 8y ago
  Yes, there is. It is often, but not always, less active and purposeful than you seem to be imagining, but even things like "believing a company is a meritocracy" and "believing that the most important thing is to hire smart developers" end up in practice leading to discrimination against women, who are less likely to be seen to be "geniuses" with innate talent or leadership potential and more likely to be seen to be hard workers. Then again, I saw a woman get put on a PIP the week after she filed a sexual harassment complaint, because the (major tech) company would rather pay a big severance than tell the dude programmers to stop sexually harassing their coworkers, so there are also explicit dynamics that play into the alienation of women. On the whole, though, it's about disproportionate impact. "You are welcome to join this sexist work environment" is a selling point to far more men that women, so we end up with more men than women. This isn't rocket science.
asien 8y ago
The author of this post is doing a huge disservice to the almost 600 tech experts listed. She is clearly suggesting that we should invite these experts not because they are experts but because they are women. How acceptable is that ? Hence , I will never get why tech industry believes so much it must be so « inclusive ». Okay then , can we have the same thing for female dominated industry ? Sociology , Education , Nurses ? Where are the articles complaining about those sectors being crowded with the opposite sex ? Why on earth do we have conventions with « Women who codes » but not «Women Carpenter » or « Women BrickLayer » etc... or those jobs degrading or something ? Tech is the only sectors that believes it is so ahead in terms of values that it’s « okay » to choose people based on criterias like gender or ethnicities similar to google hiring scandals[0], and call that « Progress », and « Inclusiveness » Sometimes I wish I was in the valley to work for top companies , then this type of articles pops up and it reminds me that I would have an arguments with nearly every co-workers on this topic almost every day. An expert should be invited because he has dedicated a portion of his career studying a problem in depth and has come up with solutions or concepts that help elevates the debate , of which he is willingly to share this knowledge with an audience. An expert should never be invited because of his or her gender or other criterias outside of his/her work. [0]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/ex-recruiter-accuses-google-hiring-discrimination-against-white-asian-men-n853601 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/ex-recruiter-accu...
- tachion 8y ago
  The thing is that nurses, for example, don't defend their field so actively and loudly like, for example, you do. And that's the reason why fighting sexism in IT is so important.
- ohjeez 8y ago
  > Hence , I will never get why tech industry believes so much it must be so « inclusive ». Perhaps, if many people in a community complain, you should assume that they have a reason to do so? And you might listen, in order to learn the source of the upset and what can be done to fix it? Do you take the same attitude with your customers, clients, and users? It's an example of "It works on my computer:" "I don't see why they think the software is slow. So I'm not going to investigate to learn why they say the application isn't working, and I certainly am not going to try to improve its performance."
adamrezich 8y ago
Have each of these women been repeatedly rejected from giving talks at conferences or something?
- roguecoder 8y ago
  If you aren't aware, usually a significant portion of speaking slots are filled because organizers reach out and solicit speakers. Indeed, I don't know of many conferences that could fill their schedule if they relied exclusively on inbound speakers, and doing it that way would be a recipe for having the same twenty dudes speak each year, which isn't going to create the best possible event for attendees.
meghan-maternie 8y ago
To all the men saying/thinking “hey this isn’t equal and maybe women just aren’t as good at tech,” I invite you on a journey with me back to my first basketball game in the 4th grade. I had seen sports my whole life but had never played them, and was also very good at being a good little girl. So while I got that sports was a competition (duh), in my first game I was dumbfounded as to how I was supposed to compete, because I was supposed to be nice and kind and not cause trouble. I literally passed the ball back to my teammates every time. After the game, my Dad pulled me aside and said what would become a catchphrase of his and would change my life: “Meghan, be aggressive.” This was mind blowing. No person, no movie, no tv show had told me in the 90s that I could (and should!) be aggressive. And still be a good girl. Two years later, I was the kid on the team that came close to fouling out bc I would use the box out very enthusiastically. My dad never stopped telling me to be aggressive. I ended up an all state field hockey athlete in high school, primarily because of my skills as a defender who was not afraid to get in the way. For those who say women are predisposed biologically to not be good at things: Do you think my biology changed? Was I always born an aggressive woman, or was it a learned behavior? This example is a microcosm of thousands of other examples from a life where the messages one absorbs can shape action. (Others: Had I never been sexually propositioned by sources as a reporter, would I have been more aggressive about who i invited to drinks? Or in tech world, if a woman wasn’t the only woman on their team/division/whatever for the past few decades, would they have stayed longer?) If you want to measure my testosterone, fine, but please also control for the fact that I never got any sort of message about how it could be a good thing if I was aggressive until I was 10 (plus a million other things like that.) On the topic of bring more gender parity to nursing and teaching, please do. I would love to see more male engineers give up six figure salaries to learn what it takes to be a nurse or a teacher and wonder why they make so much less in return. Perhaps it’s because things considered “women’s work” was never highly valued to start?
- belorn 8y ago
  > “hey this isn’t equal and maybe women just aren’t as good at tech,” ... "women are predisposed biologically to not be good at things" No one has said that. Please assume some good faith that when people say they don't want speakers to be selected based on gender, it means they don't want speakers to be selected based on gender. There is not a single comment under this article that has said or implied that there are difference in the ability of men and women to perform skillfully with technology tasks. > On the topic of bring more gender parity to nursing and teaching, please do. Sure, lets bring in a universal affirmative action law that dictate that any industry that has more than 60% women or men must apply affirmative action for any new hire. I would enjoy to see that experiment. For reference, the top 3 most gender segregated professions (99.4% or higher) in Sweden a few years ago was midwife, dentist nurse, and stone layer. Engineers didn't even breach top 50, and is pretty average in gender segregation.

28 points by ohjeez 8y ago

lbj 8y ago

Everybody's free to submit a talk to mostly any event. If women feel like doing that less so than men, I don't see why thats a problem.

tzar 8y ago
An argument like this generalizes into: everybody's free to do anything and there are no problems. At least you included “I don't see”.

tachion 8y ago

I would include Magda Jadach, Raspberry Pi Foundation software developer, speaker at various conferences regarding teaching kids how to code: https://www.linkedin.com/in/magdalenajadach/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/magdalenajadach/

nablaoperator 8y ago

Speak about what?

brink 8y ago

Is there any evidence to show that men in general are working to keep women out of the tech sector? From what I've seen, any woman who wants to commit to learning and getting a job has been completely free to do so. For example; my sister, who's a software engineer because I got her into it years ago. And from what I've seen; nothing has stopped her. It just seems to me that women in general aren't interested in the field, and I'm not sure of the specific reason for it at this point.

sundaeofshock 8y ago
Yes. I suggest doing a google search for why there are so few women in tech; you will plenty of articles, including some that point to recent studies. For example: https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/stanford-research-explains-lack-of-women-in-tech-men-make-them-unwelcome-before-they-even-apply.html https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/stanford-research-explains-... It’s also interesting that your sister’s experience is reflective of the findings in various studies. Would your sister have pursued tech without your support?
- maccio92 8y ago
  I've worked in companies both in the mid west and in Silicon Valley. I think this culture is much more pervasive in the valley. In most other parts of the country where normal people work, women are accepted just as well as men. In fact, every company I worked for in the mid west had a reasonable amount of women, whereas the Silicon Valley companies had very few if not at all.
belorn 8y ago
Looking at the public and complete data from Sweden we see that gender segregation is very universal human behavior. There more freedom a person have the more biased their choice is to groups that share similar traits to themselves. A now few years old government study on gender segregation, they cited a older study that found that being in a minority makes a person less confident when faced with a challenged compared to being in a majority. Not massively so, but adding up every small and big challenges a person face in life while being a student, to finding a job, to being a professional for several years, and the results is a significant higher risk of leaving a field where one is a minority. The big issue with this kind of research is that we don't have any gender to blame. It is equally male and female behavior, and the result is almost unbelievable similar results where in Sweden 88.6% of women and 88.4% of men work in gender segregated fields. The 12.5% that work in non-gender segregated fields, where no gender is bigger than 150% than the other gender, is a shrinking minority and there is no evidence to show either gender being behind it.
- roguecoder 8y ago
  Would that not argue for a more proactive policy approach? Just because something is "universal human behavior" does not mean society should accept it: violence is universal human behavior too.
  - belorn 8y ago
    Yes, a proactive policy approach that address the underlying human behavior. Those 88.5% should preferable not reach 100%. Segregated professions is often also often severely undermanned since by limiting recruitment to only one gender effectively cuts the available pool in half. The question is what policy to apply. We could use a progressive affirmative action based on the severity of segregation, but that would mean for example a complete stop of new hire of midwifes that identify as female as that profession is the worst gender segregated profession in Sweden with over 99.9%. It is also the only higher education program currently that is 100% single gender. Last summer the government even had to cancel vacations on a national level because they could not otherwise cover minimal standard of health care. Its a professions that would greatly benefit by recruiting from the whole population, but its very unclear how to reach such goal. They could do a tax based incentive to encourage individuals to go beyond their own comfort levels and give progressive higher tax cut based on the severity of gender minority status you have in a profession. With Swedish taxes and gender segregation that would mean a male midwife could get up to 100% tax cut and increasing their wages with about 33-50%. A female programmer would get a tax cut around 25-50%, translating to a 10-25% pay raise. Alternative one can try to lower the difference in confidence between those in a majority group vs minority. Mentoring programs are great for that and has shown good results for professions that have average gender segregated. This work nicely on a per company level, but I have not seen any policy action on a national level to encourage such programs. It doesn't however address the initial choice when a individual select a higher education program, so the leaky pipe model still apply.
hypatiadotca 8y ago
Here's a detailed survey of women in Silicon Valleys' experiences with sexual harassment from a couple years back: https://www.elephantinthevalley.com/ https://www.elephantinthevalley.com/ . And a more recent one focused specifically on women YC founders: https://blog.ycombinator.com/survey-of-yc-female-founders-on-sexual-harassment-and-coercion-by-angel-and-vc-investors/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/survey-of-yc-female-founders-on...
roguecoder 8y ago
Yes, there is. It is often, but not always, less active and purposeful than you seem to be imagining, but even things like "believing a company is a meritocracy" and "believing that the most important thing is to hire smart developers" end up in practice leading to discrimination against women, who are less likely to be seen to be "geniuses" with innate talent or leadership potential and more likely to be seen to be hard workers. Then again, I saw a woman get put on a PIP the week after she filed a sexual harassment complaint, because the (major tech) company would rather pay a big severance than tell the dude programmers to stop sexually harassing their coworkers, so there are also explicit dynamics that play into the alienation of women. On the whole, though, it's about disproportionate impact. "You are welcome to join this sexist work environment" is a selling point to far more men that women, so we end up with more men than women. This isn't rocket science.

asien 8y ago

The author of this post is doing a huge disservice to the almost 600 tech experts listed. She is clearly suggesting that we should invite these experts not because they are experts but because they are women. How acceptable is that ? Hence , I will never get why tech industry believes so much it must be so « inclusive ». Okay then , can we have the same thing for female dominated industry ? Sociology , Education , Nurses ? Where are the articles complaining about those sectors being crowded with the opposite sex ? Why on earth do we have conventions with « Women who codes » but not «Women Carpenter » or « Women BrickLayer » etc... or those jobs degrading or something ? Tech is the only sectors that believes it is so ahead in terms of values that it’s « okay » to choose people based on criterias like gender or ethnicities similar to google hiring scandals[0], and call that « Progress », and « Inclusiveness » Sometimes I wish I was in the valley to work for top companies , then this type of articles pops up and it reminds me that I would have an arguments with nearly every co-workers on this topic almost every day. An expert should be invited because he has dedicated a portion of his career studying a problem in depth and has come up with solutions or concepts that help elevates the debate , of which he is willingly to share this knowledge with an audience. An expert should never be invited because of his or her gender or other criterias outside of his/her work. [0]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/ex-recruiter-accuses-google-hiring-discrimination-against-white-asian-men-n853601 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/ex-recruiter-accu...

tachion 8y ago
The thing is that nurses, for example, don't defend their field so actively and loudly like, for example, you do. And that's the reason why fighting sexism in IT is so important.
ohjeez 8y ago
> Hence , I will never get why tech industry believes so much it must be so « inclusive ». Perhaps, if many people in a community complain, you should assume that they have a reason to do so? And you might listen, in order to learn the source of the upset and what can be done to fix it? Do you take the same attitude with your customers, clients, and users? It's an example of "It works on my computer:" "I don't see why they think the software is slow. So I'm not going to investigate to learn why they say the application isn't working, and I certainly am not going to try to improve its performance."

adamrezich 8y ago

Have each of these women been repeatedly rejected from giving talks at conferences or something?

roguecoder 8y ago
If you aren't aware, usually a significant portion of speaking slots are filled because organizers reach out and solicit speakers. Indeed, I don't know of many conferences that could fill their schedule if they relied exclusively on inbound speakers, and doing it that way would be a recipe for having the same twenty dudes speak each year, which isn't going to create the best possible event for attendees.

meghan-maternie 8y ago

To all the men saying/thinking “hey this isn’t equal and maybe women just aren’t as good at tech,” I invite you on a journey with me back to my first basketball game in the 4th grade. I had seen sports my whole life but had never played them, and was also very good at being a good little girl. So while I got that sports was a competition (duh), in my first game I was dumbfounded as to how I was supposed to compete, because I was supposed to be nice and kind and not cause trouble. I literally passed the ball back to my teammates every time. After the game, my Dad pulled me aside and said what would become a catchphrase of his and would change my life: “Meghan, be aggressive.” This was mind blowing. No person, no movie, no tv show had told me in the 90s that I could (and should!) be aggressive. And still be a good girl. Two years later, I was the kid on the team that came close to fouling out bc I would use the box out very enthusiastically. My dad never stopped telling me to be aggressive. I ended up an all state field hockey athlete in high school, primarily because of my skills as a defender who was not afraid to get in the way. For those who say women are predisposed biologically to not be good at things: Do you think my biology changed? Was I always born an aggressive woman, or was it a learned behavior? This example is a microcosm of thousands of other examples from a life where the messages one absorbs can shape action. (Others: Had I never been sexually propositioned by sources as a reporter, would I have been more aggressive about who i invited to drinks? Or in tech world, if a woman wasn’t the only woman on their team/division/whatever for the past few decades, would they have stayed longer?) If you want to measure my testosterone, fine, but please also control for the fact that I never got any sort of message about how it could be a good thing if I was aggressive until I was 10 (plus a million other things like that.) On the topic of bring more gender parity to nursing and teaching, please do. I would love to see more male engineers give up six figure salaries to learn what it takes to be a nurse or a teacher and wonder why they make so much less in return. Perhaps it’s because things considered “women’s work” was never highly valued to start?

belorn 8y ago
> “hey this isn’t equal and maybe women just aren’t as good at tech,” ... "women are predisposed biologically to not be good at things" No one has said that. Please assume some good faith that when people say they don't want speakers to be selected based on gender, it means they don't want speakers to be selected based on gender. There is not a single comment under this article that has said or implied that there are difference in the ability of men and women to perform skillfully with technology tasks. > On the topic of bring more gender parity to nursing and teaching, please do. Sure, lets bring in a universal affirmative action law that dictate that any industry that has more than 60% women or men must apply affirmative action for any new hire. I would enjoy to see that experiment. For reference, the top 3 most gender segregated professions (99.4% or higher) in Sweden a few years ago was midwife, dentist nurse, and stone layer. Engineers didn't even breach top 50, and is pretty average in gender segregation.