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You dance around it, but that's what you're saying. What else would explain the < 5% female speaker rate at conferences? Obviously the good women are making it,

You dance around it, but that's what you're saying. What else would explain the < 5% female speaker rate at conferences? Obviously the good women are making it, and the rest... just aren't very good. "Reservations" or whatever you want to call them are lowering the bar to the same level as other people, but of course the "B"s are going to scream blue murder because they now have to work instead of cruising.

woah 13y ago
Does anybody know the proportion of women in tech? If there is a lower proportion of women speaking at conferences than in the industries that the conferences are about, you may have a point.
klipt 13y ago
Or maybe there are just more men than women in tech to start off with (in which case it's hardly surprising there are also more men at conferences). The problem needs to be fixed at the middle school level (or earlier) where girls are discouraged from technical subjects.
- kamaal 13y ago
  The worst I've seen is Mechanical Engineering course in my engineering. In all my four years of Engineering course. There wasn't one single girl in all four batches of Mechanical Engineering branch.
gnarbarian 13y ago
Women do not constitute 50% of the people in tech it makes sense for them to be a minority when presenting. Why are they a minority in tech in the first place? Well video games got me and most of my friends into tech, and when I was in high-school in the mid 90s most girls abhorred games and considered them childish and geeky. It was a serious social faux pas to be a tech geek who loved hacking around with computers and playing video games. I never met a single girl in the 90s who was into it beyond playing an occasional game of Mario Kart. Who are we to blame for that?
kamaal 13y ago
I will call for a reservation policy if you show me instances where a good well deserved talk from a women was rejected at a conference just because she is a woman. Are there cases where a talk from a woman was judged not because of its merit but because the speaker's gender? If all woman who have good talks are getting their chances, I don't even see a problem here.

woah 13y ago

Does anybody know the proportion of women in tech? If there is a lower proportion of women speaking at conferences than in the industries that the conferences are about, you may have a point.

klipt 13y ago

Or maybe there are just more men than women in tech to start off with (in which case it's hardly surprising there are also more men at conferences). The problem needs to be fixed at the middle school level (or earlier) where girls are discouraged from technical subjects.

kamaal 13y ago
The worst I've seen is Mechanical Engineering course in my engineering. In all my four years of Engineering course. There wasn't one single girl in all four batches of Mechanical Engineering branch.

gnarbarian 13y ago

Women do not constitute 50% of the people in tech it makes sense for them to be a minority when presenting. Why are they a minority in tech in the first place? Well video games got me and most of my friends into tech, and when I was in high-school in the mid 90s most girls abhorred games and considered them childish and geeky. It was a serious social faux pas to be a tech geek who loved hacking around with computers and playing video games. I never met a single girl in the 90s who was into it beyond playing an occasional game of Mario Kart. Who are we to blame for that?

kamaal 13y ago

I will call for a reservation policy if you show me instances where a good well deserved talk from a women was rejected at a conference just because she is a woman. Are there cases where a talk from a woman was judged not because of its merit but because the speaker's gender? If all woman who have good talks are getting their chances, I don't even see a problem here.