6 ms·

How one woman got 50% female speakers at a tech conference

26 points by shandsaker 14y ago

metajack 14y ago
“If your system of finding worthy students or speakers to promote is to have them come to you and ask, but a solid body of research shows that women won’t do so, you’ve institutionalized a gap” This applies just as much to finding employees. The resumes don't just appear out of thin air usually, and it's no excuse to say you just didn't get any from women. I myself used this excuse in the past, but I hope not to make any excuses in the future.
- brennenHN 14y ago
  Well said.
- theorique 14y ago
  “If your system of finding worthy students or speakers to promote is to have them come to you and ask, but a solid body of research shows that women won’t do so, you’ve institutionalized a gap” It's also a worthy goal to find out (1) why women don't ask and (2) work to encourage women to do that asking. The more forward momentum is built, through efforts such as this, the less of a problem this is in the future.
- yourcelf 14y ago
  Indeed. A good way to increase diversity in hiring is to set a rule: your hiring process isn't done until you've received a minimum number of applications from various demographics that are underrepresented. You still pick the best applicant from all submissions, but it forces you to make sure that news of your position spreads into more than just the usual communities.
- vidiviciveni 14y ago
  >Not enough <insert "oppressed" group>, therefore DISCRIMINATION! Demand government action to correct this injustice!
- belorn 14y ago
  If one want to enforce a policy to include demographics in ones recruitment process, the following large demographics should also be considered: People of color. Immigrants. Those of young age. Those of old age. While women is clearly the largest demographic in that group, each listed group is commonly put in an disadvantage when applying for work. Outreaching to each of those groups is also the only way to get a work place that includes a fair portion from each demographic, as they are used to being denied and thus do not apply for as much work as white middle aged men. One should also want to consider people previously convicted of a crime, as that is a very large demographic in the US and is one which also have a very hard time finding jobs. Many have given up on ever finding a good job, and do not apply for higher paying jobs even if they got a higher education that would qualify them for hire.
  - fatbird 14y ago
    What you're doing is called "appeal to ridicule", but I can think of worse things than reaching out to all those communities, seeking greater participation. Ex-convicts might be at a disadvantage in expertise, and so fail to get selected in blind judging. But old grey unix neckbeards would probably be really interesting, and in every Aaron Swartz thread it gets mentioned that he was meaningfully involved in the RSS process at 14.
    - belorn 14y ago
      You can try to call it an appeal to ridicule, but I too would like to see more companies and conferences trying to reach out to communities which are used to be denied and thus do not actively seek as much opportunities for the risk of failing. Reaching out is a positive thing to do to society. Its altruistic and can bring positive rewards in return. While I would not want to claim that other people must do it, the reaching out that the author did has an positive net effect on society and I assume the conference itself. I did not include ex-convicts as a joke. Many people get locked up falsely, and even more get locked up because they enter a plea barging that they shouldn't have. Many of those has some kind of higher education, but is put in an disadvantage because of some real, or imaginary mistake in their past (like downloading a song at age 9). Assuming that those people can't do work beyond sweeping floors, or that they have nothing to contribute to a conference is discrimination without basis. As to the young and old, I too would like to see less agism in the work place and conferences. Old grey unix neckbeards tend to only be acceptable in some places. In regard to the type of conference the article discuss, game developer conferences, I think old grey unix neckbeards and 14 year old developers are a rare sight and clearly underrepresented. Pointing out that there is more than one form of group under discrimination is not an appeal to ridicule, and it does not lessen the acts done by the author in the article. Rather, the method used by the author is an effective method to address discrimination without causing further discrimination by the act of exclusion.
- smokeyj 14y ago
  Investing time to target a certain demographic seems discriminative to the excluded demographics. If equality is the goal, this seems hypocritical.
  - fatbird 14y ago
    Not when the targeted demographic is historically under-represented. Making an effort to include those who wouldn't be is not the same as reducing submissions from those who are normally included.
    - smokeyj 14y ago
      How does a demographic become a)targeted, and b) under-represented? It comes across as arbitrary. Especially in the context of running a business to deliver value. I think if you see all people as just people, a notion like "targeting a demographic" comes across as racist / sexist / and plain old discriminative. But that's just one opinion.
      - fatbird 14y ago
        A demographic gets targeted just because it's under-represented. Women are under-represented in STEM for historical reasons that amount to widespread sexism. You suggest gender-blindness is the solution. I don't disagree that such blindness is a worthwhile goal, but to simply say "let's all be gender blind now" without addressing an existing under-representation just cements the imbalance. Demographics realities have inertia. Women don't go into STEM just because that's not something 'that women do'. It's only appropriate to be blind once the imbalance is wiped out. That's not to say that affirmative action as previously imagined is the right way to address the imbalance--it's been shown not to be for a variety of reasons. But as this shows, and as GoGaRuCo shows, when you eliminate gender advantages for men, women are selected equally in blind judging, so there's no essential difference between men and women, just an historical artifact worth eliminating.
        smokeyj 14y ago
Narkov 14y ago
“get as many women on stage as I possibly could.” Isn't enforcing a gender ratio just more gender discrimination? How is "we need more $x" any less discriminating than "we need less $y"? You are just discriminating against the other gender. Counting a 50/50 gender split as a win is silly if you have put together a shitty conference just to satisfy some ratio. Why not have the best person for the job? I don't care if you are male/female, black/white/pink/purple/transparent, straight/gay/transgender, human/animal/robot/script, able bodied/disabled or anything in between....put the best person in the job - that is real gender equality.
- metajack 14y ago
  She knew the issue was the lack of submissions, so she worked hard to get lots of talk submissions from women. When she actually selected the talks, she did so without knowledge of the person's gender. She got the ratio she wanted by encouraging submissions, not by enforcing a quota.
  - CJefferson 14y ago
    The fact she selected the talks without looking at the gender is great, and I missed on my first read (woops, I blame HN encouraging fast replies for more karma).
    - jimzvz 14y ago
      With only 18 applications and with her specifically encouraging people that she knew to apply it must be very likely that she knew who the individual was when going through the applications. So even though she claims that it was gender blind, it wasn't really.
  - Narkov 14y ago
    "She got the ratio she wanted" That's my issue - the ratio she wanted just perpetuates this gender discrimination. Unless the gender ratio of expert speakers in this industry is somehow exactly 50/50, she has discriminated against one gender just to satisfy her magical ratio. Whether she did this blind to the applicants gender is of no consequence - she thinks it was a win when IMHO, is just gender more discrimination.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
wfox 14y ago
Now we need one woman, one black and one homosexual getting 50% speakers of each group at a tech conference.
- fatbird 14y ago
  Which isn't a problem if you have blind judging of submissions--just make sure that your submission pool is diverse, and pick the best papers without reference to race, orientation, or gender.
  - betterunix 14y ago
    ..and if the field itself has a diversity problem, then what do you do? This is not a conference-level problem; it is a problem that starts much earlier in life and which will only be fixed by solving it earlier in life. Go to middle schools and figure out why girls who were doing well in math and science in elementary school suddenly lost interest in those subjects, and once you have worked your way from there to having more diversity in technical professions, we can talk about whatever diversity problems are left at conferences.
    - fatbird 14y ago
      It may not be a conference level problem, but diversity at the conference level can go a long way to showing girls in middle school that STEM careers are viable for them. We know that a lot of the reason girls drop out along the way just is the perception of STEM as a male dominated field (and paralleling that, in countries like China where it's not considered strictly male, we see high female participation).
      - betterunix 14y ago
        "diversity at the conference level can go a long way to showing girls in middle school that STEM careers are viable for them" When was the last time you saw middle school students wandering around at a conference? "We know that a lot of the reason girls drop out along the way just is the perception of STEM as a male dominated field" Yes, clearly that's part of the problem. So why didn't the organizer of this conference go out of her way to invite middle school girls to see all the women she managed to get into the conference? When I was an undergrad, the EE department had a problem: the policy of doubling female enrollment each year had to be revised to having female enrollment at all. Part of the solution was to print new admissions pamphlets that showed equal numbers of men and women, and equal numbers of white, Asian, and black people (none of these proportions even remotely reflected the reality of the department) smiling while working on their breadboard projects (also somewhat disconnected from reality). This is forgivable, of course, for the following reasons: 1. It is an advertisement. Advertisements always paint a rosier picture. 2. Nobody received any sort of career boost from being featured in the pictures. 3. The pamphlets were sent to high schools, which is exactly who the department needed to target to meet the goal of increased female enrollment. Compare that to the conference: 1. Conferences are not advertisements for a field or job (usually) 2. Being invited to speak at a conference is a career-booster 3. The demographics at a conference have no impact on middle or high school girls' attitudes about math and science.
robwgibbons 14y ago
I'm sorry. I disagree that you are "institutionalizing a gap" by not going out of your way to get women because research says they are less likely to apply. There is no "institution" presented by simply opening up public applications and sorting through the responses. I have respect for the lengths this person went to in order to increase gender representation at her event. However, I disagree fundamentally with that statement.
azakai 14y ago
> In her own words: “I always end up sitting in a room listening to the same four straight white men agree with each other on some panel.” How does she know they're straight? Does she know each and every one of them on a very personal basis?
grannyg00se 14y ago
It's impressive that she went through all of that extra effort to solicit submissions from a particular group and then didn't give any special preference to that group when accepting submissions.
- joeco 14y ago
  Almost incredible. Or is it uncredible? I always confuse the two.
  - grannyg00se 14y ago
    I'd go with the former :)
- tzs 14y ago
  That's the same approach Caltech took when it first started admitting women in 1970. Things get socially very awkward and uncomfortable for everybody when you have a school where almost all students live on campus and socialize primarily with fellow students, and the male/female distribution is severely unbalanced, and so getting more women was a priority. Gender was not considered when deciding on an applicant, but they made quite an effort to get more qualified women to apply, and to get those who did and were offered admission to choose Caltech. This isn't the fastest way to balance the population (when I was there, 10 years later, they were only up to 15-20% women, and are up to around 40% now), but it allowed them to keep their high standards.
jimzvz 14y ago
How could the selection process be gender blind when she knew some of the applicants? Surely she would be able to tell who each individual was when she was going through the applications.
mhb 14y ago
Saturday’s New York Times carried an article “How to Attack the Gender Wage Gap? Speak Up”, pointing out that women earn only a fraction of what men are paid. The Times cites some numbers: “77 cents for white women; 69 cents for black women. The final dollar — so small that it can fit in a coin purse, represents 57 cents, for Latina women.” While for the non-profit organization described in the article this is seen as a problem, a profit-minded business owner might see this as an opportunity. Why not find an industry with mostly male employees, offer jobs at 57 percent of the current wages in that industry, attract an all-Latina workforce, and crush the competition with labor costs that are a fraction of those in the rest of the industry? http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/17/profit-opportunity-if-women-earn-less-than-men/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/17/profit-opportu...

26 points by shandsaker 14y ago

“If your system of finding worthy students or speakers to promote is to have them come to you and ask, but a solid body of research shows that women won’t do so, you’ve institutionalized a gap” This applies just as much to finding employees. The resumes don't just appear out of thin air usually, and it's no excuse to say you just didn't get any from women. I myself used this excuse in the past, but I hope not to make any excuses in the future.

brennenHN 14y ago
Well said.
theorique 14y ago
“If your system of finding worthy students or speakers to promote is to have them come to you and ask, but a solid body of research shows that women won’t do so, you’ve institutionalized a gap” It's also a worthy goal to find out (1) why women don't ask and (2) work to encourage women to do that asking. The more forward momentum is built, through efforts such as this, the less of a problem this is in the future.
yourcelf 14y ago
Indeed. A good way to increase diversity in hiring is to set a rule: your hiring process isn't done until you've received a minimum number of applications from various demographics that are underrepresented. You still pick the best applicant from all submissions, but it forces you to make sure that news of your position spreads into more than just the usual communities.
vidiviciveni 14y ago
>Not enough <insert "oppressed" group>, therefore DISCRIMINATION! Demand government action to correct this injustice!
belorn 14y ago
If one want to enforce a policy to include demographics in ones recruitment process, the following large demographics should also be considered: People of color. Immigrants. Those of young age. Those of old age. While women is clearly the largest demographic in that group, each listed group is commonly put in an disadvantage when applying for work. Outreaching to each of those groups is also the only way to get a work place that includes a fair portion from each demographic, as they are used to being denied and thus do not apply for as much work as white middle aged men. One should also want to consider people previously convicted of a crime, as that is a very large demographic in the US and is one which also have a very hard time finding jobs. Many have given up on ever finding a good job, and do not apply for higher paying jobs even if they got a higher education that would qualify them for hire.
- fatbird 14y ago
  What you're doing is called "appeal to ridicule", but I can think of worse things than reaching out to all those communities, seeking greater participation. Ex-convicts might be at a disadvantage in expertise, and so fail to get selected in blind judging. But old grey unix neckbeards would probably be really interesting, and in every Aaron Swartz thread it gets mentioned that he was meaningfully involved in the RSS process at 14.
  - belorn 14y ago
    You can try to call it an appeal to ridicule, but I too would like to see more companies and conferences trying to reach out to communities which are used to be denied and thus do not actively seek as much opportunities for the risk of failing. Reaching out is a positive thing to do to society. Its altruistic and can bring positive rewards in return. While I would not want to claim that other people must do it, the reaching out that the author did has an positive net effect on society and I assume the conference itself. I did not include ex-convicts as a joke. Many people get locked up falsely, and even more get locked up because they enter a plea barging that they shouldn't have. Many of those has some kind of higher education, but is put in an disadvantage because of some real, or imaginary mistake in their past (like downloading a song at age 9). Assuming that those people can't do work beyond sweeping floors, or that they have nothing to contribute to a conference is discrimination without basis. As to the young and old, I too would like to see less agism in the work place and conferences. Old grey unix neckbeards tend to only be acceptable in some places. In regard to the type of conference the article discuss, game developer conferences, I think old grey unix neckbeards and 14 year old developers are a rare sight and clearly underrepresented. Pointing out that there is more than one form of group under discrimination is not an appeal to ridicule, and it does not lessen the acts done by the author in the article. Rather, the method used by the author is an effective method to address discrimination without causing further discrimination by the act of exclusion.
smokeyj 14y ago
Investing time to target a certain demographic seems discriminative to the excluded demographics. If equality is the goal, this seems hypocritical.
- fatbird 14y ago
  Not when the targeted demographic is historically under-represented. Making an effort to include those who wouldn't be is not the same as reducing submissions from those who are normally included.
  - smokeyj 14y ago
    How does a demographic become a)targeted, and b) under-represented? It comes across as arbitrary. Especially in the context of running a business to deliver value. I think if you see all people as just people, a notion like "targeting a demographic" comes across as racist / sexist / and plain old discriminative. But that's just one opinion.
    - fatbird 14y ago
      A demographic gets targeted just because it's under-represented. Women are under-represented in STEM for historical reasons that amount to widespread sexism. You suggest gender-blindness is the solution. I don't disagree that such blindness is a worthwhile goal, but to simply say "let's all be gender blind now" without addressing an existing under-representation just cements the imbalance. Demographics realities have inertia. Women don't go into STEM just because that's not something 'that women do'. It's only appropriate to be blind once the imbalance is wiped out. That's not to say that affirmative action as previously imagined is the right way to address the imbalance--it's been shown not to be for a variety of reasons. But as this shows, and as GoGaRuCo shows, when you eliminate gender advantages for men, women are selected equally in blind judging, so there's no essential difference between men and women, just an historical artifact worth eliminating.
      - smokeyj 14y ago

Narkov 14y ago

“get as many women on stage as I possibly could.” Isn't enforcing a gender ratio just more gender discrimination? How is "we need more $x" any less discriminating than "we need less $y"? You are just discriminating against the other gender. Counting a 50/50 gender split as a win is silly if you have put together a shitty conference just to satisfy some ratio. Why not have the best person for the job? I don't care if you are male/female, black/white/pink/purple/transparent, straight/gay/transgender, human/animal/robot/script, able bodied/disabled or anything in between....put the best person in the job - that is real gender equality.

metajack 14y ago
She knew the issue was the lack of submissions, so she worked hard to get lots of talk submissions from women. When she actually selected the talks, she did so without knowledge of the person's gender. She got the ratio she wanted by encouraging submissions, not by enforcing a quota.
- CJefferson 14y ago
  The fact she selected the talks without looking at the gender is great, and I missed on my first read (woops, I blame HN encouraging fast replies for more karma).
  - jimzvz 14y ago
    With only 18 applications and with her specifically encouraging people that she knew to apply it must be very likely that she knew who the individual was when going through the applications. So even though she claims that it was gender blind, it wasn't really.
- Narkov 14y ago
  "She got the ratio she wanted" That's my issue - the ratio she wanted just perpetuates this gender discrimination. Unless the gender ratio of expert speakers in this industry is somehow exactly 50/50, she has discriminated against one gender just to satisfy her magical ratio. Whether she did this blind to the applicants gender is of no consequence - she thinks it was a win when IMHO, is just gender more discrimination.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

wfox 14y ago

Now we need one woman, one black and one homosexual getting 50% speakers of each group at a tech conference.

fatbird 14y ago
Which isn't a problem if you have blind judging of submissions--just make sure that your submission pool is diverse, and pick the best papers without reference to race, orientation, or gender.
- betterunix 14y ago
  ..and if the field itself has a diversity problem, then what do you do? This is not a conference-level problem; it is a problem that starts much earlier in life and which will only be fixed by solving it earlier in life. Go to middle schools and figure out why girls who were doing well in math and science in elementary school suddenly lost interest in those subjects, and once you have worked your way from there to having more diversity in technical professions, we can talk about whatever diversity problems are left at conferences.
  - fatbird 14y ago
    It may not be a conference level problem, but diversity at the conference level can go a long way to showing girls in middle school that STEM careers are viable for them. We know that a lot of the reason girls drop out along the way just is the perception of STEM as a male dominated field (and paralleling that, in countries like China where it's not considered strictly male, we see high female participation).
    - betterunix 14y ago
      "diversity at the conference level can go a long way to showing girls in middle school that STEM careers are viable for them" When was the last time you saw middle school students wandering around at a conference? "We know that a lot of the reason girls drop out along the way just is the perception of STEM as a male dominated field" Yes, clearly that's part of the problem. So why didn't the organizer of this conference go out of her way to invite middle school girls to see all the women she managed to get into the conference? When I was an undergrad, the EE department had a problem: the policy of doubling female enrollment each year had to be revised to having female enrollment at all. Part of the solution was to print new admissions pamphlets that showed equal numbers of men and women, and equal numbers of white, Asian, and black people (none of these proportions even remotely reflected the reality of the department) smiling while working on their breadboard projects (also somewhat disconnected from reality). This is forgivable, of course, for the following reasons: 1. It is an advertisement. Advertisements always paint a rosier picture. 2. Nobody received any sort of career boost from being featured in the pictures. 3. The pamphlets were sent to high schools, which is exactly who the department needed to target to meet the goal of increased female enrollment. Compare that to the conference: 1. Conferences are not advertisements for a field or job (usually) 2. Being invited to speak at a conference is a career-booster 3. The demographics at a conference have no impact on middle or high school girls' attitudes about math and science.

robwgibbons 14y ago

I'm sorry. I disagree that you are "institutionalizing a gap" by not going out of your way to get women because research says they are less likely to apply. There is no "institution" presented by simply opening up public applications and sorting through the responses. I have respect for the lengths this person went to in order to increase gender representation at her event. However, I disagree fundamentally with that statement.

azakai 14y ago

> In her own words: “I always end up sitting in a room listening to the same four straight white men agree with each other on some panel.” How does she know they're straight? Does she know each and every one of them on a very personal basis?

grannyg00se 14y ago

It's impressive that she went through all of that extra effort to solicit submissions from a particular group and then didn't give any special preference to that group when accepting submissions.

joeco 14y ago
Almost incredible. Or is it uncredible? I always confuse the two.
- grannyg00se 14y ago
  I'd go with the former :)
tzs 14y ago
That's the same approach Caltech took when it first started admitting women in 1970. Things get socially very awkward and uncomfortable for everybody when you have a school where almost all students live on campus and socialize primarily with fellow students, and the male/female distribution is severely unbalanced, and so getting more women was a priority. Gender was not considered when deciding on an applicant, but they made quite an effort to get more qualified women to apply, and to get those who did and were offered admission to choose Caltech. This isn't the fastest way to balance the population (when I was there, 10 years later, they were only up to 15-20% women, and are up to around 40% now), but it allowed them to keep their high standards.

jimzvz 14y ago

How could the selection process be gender blind when she knew some of the applicants? Surely she would be able to tell who each individual was when she was going through the applications.

mhb 14y ago

Saturday’s New York Times carried an article “How to Attack the Gender Wage Gap? Speak Up”, pointing out that women earn only a fraction of what men are paid. The Times cites some numbers: “77 cents for white women; 69 cents for black women. The final dollar — so small that it can fit in a coin purse, represents 57 cents, for Latina women.” While for the non-profit organization described in the article this is seen as a problem, a profit-minded business owner might see this as an opportunity. Why not find an industry with mostly male employees, offer jobs at 57 percent of the current wages in that industry, attract an all-Latina workforce, and crush the competition with labor costs that are a fraction of those in the rest of the industry? http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/17/profit-opportunity-if-women-earn-less-than-men/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/17/profit-opportu...