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"... I would explicitly not be satisfied with a process that resulted in 100% male speakers. I would have stopped once we’d reached, say, 17 male out of 22 pos

by natrius 14y ago

"... I would explicitly not be satisfied with a process that resulted in 100% male speakers. I would have stopped once we’d reached, say, 17 male out of 22 possible speakers (being pretty conservative, I think) and insisted that the remaining five (a cool 22% female representation) would have to be women." This suggestion is a bad one. It is blatant tokenism. Try this instead: http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-speakers-at-my-tech-conference/ http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-speake... Key takeaway: "The easiest way I saw for getting more women on stage at the actual event was to get as many women to submit speaking proposals as possible. Selecting presentations was done without speaker information associated with the titles and pitches, so I wasn’t able to “reserve” spaces in the program for anyone based on aspects of their identity — and I wasn’t interested in that sort of reservation system for this event, anyway." Telling people that an unintentionally all-male conference is "inexcusable" is an unproductive (and incorrect, in my opinion) way to address the problem. The industry has a diversity problem, but it's not wrong for someone to not take action to address it. It'd be nice if they did, though. When I try to get people to do things that would be nice, I never use that sort of tone. People who improve diversity issues in the tech industry are doing us a favor. Treat them that way.

arrrg 14y ago
Maybe ‘inexcusable’ was a bad word choice. Maybe it is 'excusable’ – but the organizer doesn’t even try to excuse. As you can see from your link, getting women speakers was very hard work. It wasn’t easy. Did the organizer go that extra mile? If yes, then the result is excusable (though unlikely I would say). If no, then the result really is inexcusable. That’s all.
- natrius 14y ago
  "If no, then the result really is inexcusable." I explained why I disagree with that. Being in the tech industry doesn't obligate one to fix its problems. It'd be nice if people tried to. "Inexcusable" doesn't apply. You even called it "the extra mile," which typically implies optional.
  - arrrg 14y ago
    Yes, they are obligated. Everyone is. Because it’s an untenable situation. If you refuse to go the extra mile, expect to be called out as reinforcing sexism.
georgemcbay 14y ago
Getting different perspectives is always a positive and gender differences will certainly bring in different perspectives. If you were holding a general non-language-specific web development conference and 17 out of the 22 possible speakers were focusing on Ruby development, would you not want some of the remaining 5 to not be focusing on Ruby, for diversity? I don't see this example as being all that different. I don't quite agree with the OP in terms of how 'inexcusable' the situation was, but I do think that sometimes a bit of tokenism is fine if it serves towards reaching a critical mass of inclusiveness that isn't already naturally present.
- natrius 14y ago
  Gender and race are orthogonal to one's merit as a speaker. Content is very relevant to one's merit as a speaker. There's a huge difference. Choosing speakers based on gender and/or racial diversity is a bad idea. It's disrespectful to the people being chosen and to the people who are trying to attend a quality conference. It's also uncomfortable when you can tell that a speaker has been chosen for diversity's sake, and it reflects poorly on the other underrepresented folks speaking at the conference. If you have a transparent process that judges speakers independently of those culturally sensitive traits, that problem can be avoided. Everyone knows that all the speakers are there because they submitted the best proposals. Diversity can be achieved without tokenism.
mattpointblank 14y ago
Article author here. Thanks for the feedback. I perhaps didn't word that paragraph as well as I could -- my point there wasn't to introduce quotas, but to attempt to nip the problem in the bud. If I'd been organising EdgeConf, and had got to ~80% of my speakers being male with no female representation, I would've dropped everything and made sure that the rest were women. I guess when you include the numbers then this feels like tokenism, but it was mostly arbitrary. My point here was that they should have realised they had a problem before it reached 100%, not start out with the intention to recruit x% women (no matter how relevant or qualified they were) -- that's tokenism, right?
- natrius 14y ago
  Choosing people primarily because they add diversity is tokenism. There are processes that are effective in obtaining underrepresented speakers that are effective and don't require choosing people because they're a minority. We should use those. I really don't think we should label conferences failures because they do a poor job on the diversity front. Instead, we should encourage them to do a better job next time and show them how.

by natrius 14y ago

arrrg 14y ago

Maybe ‘inexcusable’ was a bad word choice. Maybe it is 'excusable’ – but the organizer doesn’t even try to excuse. As you can see from your link, getting women speakers was very hard work. It wasn’t easy. Did the organizer go that extra mile? If yes, then the result is excusable (though unlikely I would say). If no, then the result really is inexcusable. That’s all.

natrius 14y ago
"If no, then the result really is inexcusable." I explained why I disagree with that. Being in the tech industry doesn't obligate one to fix its problems. It'd be nice if people tried to. "Inexcusable" doesn't apply. You even called it "the extra mile," which typically implies optional.
- arrrg 14y ago
  Yes, they are obligated. Everyone is. Because it’s an untenable situation. If you refuse to go the extra mile, expect to be called out as reinforcing sexism.

georgemcbay 14y ago

Getting different perspectives is always a positive and gender differences will certainly bring in different perspectives. If you were holding a general non-language-specific web development conference and 17 out of the 22 possible speakers were focusing on Ruby development, would you not want some of the remaining 5 to not be focusing on Ruby, for diversity? I don't see this example as being all that different. I don't quite agree with the OP in terms of how 'inexcusable' the situation was, but I do think that sometimes a bit of tokenism is fine if it serves towards reaching a critical mass of inclusiveness that isn't already naturally present.

natrius 14y ago
Gender and race are orthogonal to one's merit as a speaker. Content is very relevant to one's merit as a speaker. There's a huge difference. Choosing speakers based on gender and/or racial diversity is a bad idea. It's disrespectful to the people being chosen and to the people who are trying to attend a quality conference. It's also uncomfortable when you can tell that a speaker has been chosen for diversity's sake, and it reflects poorly on the other underrepresented folks speaking at the conference. If you have a transparent process that judges speakers independently of those culturally sensitive traits, that problem can be avoided. Everyone knows that all the speakers are there because they submitted the best proposals. Diversity can be achieved without tokenism.

mattpointblank 14y ago

Article author here. Thanks for the feedback. I perhaps didn't word that paragraph as well as I could -- my point there wasn't to introduce quotas, but to attempt to nip the problem in the bud. If I'd been organising EdgeConf, and had got to ~80% of my speakers being male with no female representation, I would've dropped everything and made sure that the rest were women. I guess when you include the numbers then this feels like tokenism, but it was mostly arbitrary. My point here was that they should have realised they had a problem before it reached 100%, not start out with the intention to recruit x% women (no matter how relevant or qualified they were) -- that's tokenism, right?

natrius 14y ago
Choosing people primarily because they add diversity is tokenism. There are processes that are effective in obtaining underrepresented speakers that are effective and don't require choosing people because they're a minority. We should use those. I really don't think we should label conferences failures because they do a poor job on the diversity front. Instead, we should encourage them to do a better job next time and show them how.