Diversity and technology conferences, part 1: the Government 2.0 Expo

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27 responses to “Diversity and technology conferences, part 1: the Government 2.0 Expo”

1. 

   Brian Drake

   July 27, 2009

   Jon– Thanks for the post. I think your list of questions is a helpful for everyone who is planning an open event. I think structurally speaking, the Gov2.0 Expo has barriers installed to focus participation. Those barriers include entry fees, the proposal process, and the social barriers that others have identified. Sexism (like racism) is alive and well in our society. We would be foolish to not acknowledge that it does not exist. My question for you: “Is representational change enough?”

   I think we are comfortable with the metric of women (or transgendered or racial or whatever) participation in an event. Why? Because we can see it. That does not mean that it is the best metric. Have we assessed the number of proposals that directly dealt with a gendered issue? I would gather not since that deliberation process is closed. My point is that while representation is important, I do not think it can be our only guiding principle.

   Thanks for advancing this discussion. I look forward to your comments and the comments of others.

   Reply
2. 

   jon

   July 27, 2009

   Brian,

   Thanks for the comment. I totally agree that representation is necessary, but not sufficient. I think it’s useful to focus on for at least three reasons:

   1) lack of equity in representation is an indication of more general diversity issues — for example, it rules out equity in participation
   2) conversely, equity in representation and participation tends to lead to other changes as well
   3) a focus on achieving equity forces people to confront more general diversity challenges

   Totally agreed about looking at how many submitted and accepted proposals deal directly with gendered issues — as well as how many proposals bring gender, race, class, etc. perspectives to bear on “neutral” issues. CFP2009 featured panels like “four white guys talking about behavioral profiling in airports” and “four white guys talking about the future of privacy” … hmm, not so good.

   And it’s an excellent point about how a more open submission and deliberation process would help surface these kinds of issues early on, and make it easier to address them.

   jon

   Reply
3. 

   myrnatheminx

   July 30, 2009

   I find the difference between the program co-chair’s profiles to be unfortunate.

   Reply
4. 

   jon

   September 4, 2009

   Tim O’Reilly’s Gov 2.0: It’s All About The Platform on TechCrunch previews the conference. He mentions 13 guys and one woman (GSA CIO Casey Coleman). Sigh.

   More positively, Allyson Kapin’s Where are the Women in Tech and Social Media? has some excellent suggestions for doing better.

   Reply
5. Inspiring the Intra-Government 2.0 Movement « The Green Dotted Line

   October 17, 2009

   […] and finally, was the composition of some of the panels and speakers. Aside from the issue of gender and racial representation at both the Expo and the Summit, I felt that some of the content just didn’t resonate with […]

   Reply
6. 

   Tara ‘missrogue’ Hun

   December 14, 2009

   Fantastic post, filled with awesome suggestions for moving things forward. And kudos to you for pro-actively seeking out advice in order to balance the scales.

   Reply
7. 

   Jurgen Appelo

   December 14, 2009

   Sorry, but I really dislike this post.

   Apparently, some people think that women need help in sending proposals for conferences. As if they are unable to decide to do such a thing on their own. It seems to confirm they are somehow weaker than men, which they are not.

   And it is simply assumed that women’s attitude in general towards a conference are influenced by the profiles of the conference chairs and program committee. Has this been researched? What is the scientific basis for this? I have spoken at quite a few conferences, but I’ve NEVER in my life been influenced by males or females on program committees. Why should this be different for women?

   I find such assumptions insulting to women’s intelligence.

   I also find it insulting to claim that a few white guys are not diverse. So you mean a US white elderly person, a gay youngster, a Ukrainian farmer, and an Australian baby are not diverse? Because they’re all white and male?

   What’s next? Are you going to verify if the number of gays among session candidates is high enough?

   Affirmative action is discrimation, like any other form. It discriminates both women and men.

   Reply
8. 

   Jurgen Appelo

   December 14, 2009

   – Did conference materials and communications channels feature gays as much as or more then straights in the videos, phtoso, and quotes on conference materials?
   – Were any of the two co-chairs gay? If not, why not?
   – How many of the program committee were gay? Was their equality of sexual orientation here? If not, why this bias?
   – How did the conference reach out to gay and lesbian organizations?

   Are these questions ridiculous? Then why do you ask them for women?

   Why not treat all humans as equals?

   Reply
9. 

   Tom Coates

   December 14, 2009

   Again, there are loads of great steps here that people should definitely consider, but the core question is not – in an imbalanced technology community with more men than women, what is the proportion that we should actually be aiming for at conferences?

   For example, does it make sense that a programme committee should be equal men and women if (say) the population in the technology community is 90% men to 10% women. In a community where there is a massive disparity between the number of men and women contributing, should we really be aiming for 50% male and female attendance or speakers? If there are 90% men, is it appropriate to expect men and women equal representation in the printed materials?

   Other people have pointed out, albeit sometimes clumsily, that there are many more non-white people on the planet than white, even though that’s not true of the US technology industry. Should we expect 50%+ representation of ethnic minorities in the committees and speakers at conferences in order to better reflect global proportions?

   As a gay man myself, I’m very sensitive to the political needs of minority groups for representation, and the kind of implicit prejudices that people have even without really realising it. But if gay people were nearly absent within the technology community, I’d never argue that 10% of conference attendees should be gay to reflect the wider population. That would be insane.

   I’m absolutely and completely clear that there is sexism, both implicit and explicit, accidental and intentional in our industry. I’m also completely in agreement that we have to do something about it. I want to see a more gender and racially diverse technology community. I want to see more successful women entrepreneurs, engineers and architects. But the aspirations that I’m hearing here are both unrealistic and, honestly, a bit puzzling!

   It’s like the conference itself has become the arbiter of balance. If the conferences have an equal number of speakers in them, then we can somehow pat ourselves on the back and ignore the wider disparities in the industry. The conferences are, on the whole, symptoms not causes, and we’re kidding ourselves if we think otherwise. Until there are 50% female engineers in the industry then we should not expect to see 50% of female speakers at engineering conferences. In fact, it’s even a dubious aspiration.

   Let’s accept that there are implicit problems, and make every effort to redress them, let’s err on the side of representation rather than taking the safe well known speakers all the time, let’s aim to escalate the proportion of women at conferences to be higher than the proportion of women in the industry, so that we can be sure that we’re working to move things in the right direction. But *any* situation where you had (say) ten available speakers and conference organizers were required to let one of them speak fifty percent of the time would be extremely hard to justify!

   Reply
10. 

    jon

    December 14, 2009

    Tara: thanks!

    Jurgen: trying to reform a system where guys have unfair advantages isn’t “discrimination”.

    Tom: conferences are causes as well as symptoms of inequity. When a technical community is overwhelmingly male-dominated, it becomes even more important to aim for at least equal representation for women in the program committee and speakers. Otherwise it’s just reinforcing the marginalization of women.

    PS: In case anybody’s wondering, this flurry of activity was sparked by Tara’s excellent Women Women Blah Blah Blah

    Reply
11. 

    jon

    December 14, 2009

    Meanwhile, here’s what the discussion looked like on Twitter:

    

    Let’s see, missrogue, isbeli, and shellie all like what I’m saying. Tom and Jurgen don’t. Hmm. I’m noticing a pattern here …

    Reply
12. 

    jon

    December 14, 2009

    CFP’s early-bird deadline was this Friday, and so we’ve got some early stats about the gender breakdown of proposals. Counting up all the names that were proposed as speakers so far, it’s about 43% women. While it’s still not where we’d like to see it, this is substantially better than past CFPs (where numbers in the 20-30% ratio were more typical) — evidence that our attention to diversity is paying off, at least in terms of gender.

    Update, later in the day: Here’s a couple of other useful numbers

    – over 60% of the proposals were submitted by women
    – about 40% of the people who submitted proposals were women.

    The full list of proposals is here.

    Reply
13. 

    Tom Coates

    December 15, 2009

    I’m afraid I think this is a theory without a lot of substance to it. I don’t think women are attracted to the technology industry because of the presence of other women at conferences. If you asked teenagers whether they wanted to study computer science at university and if they did, why, almost none of them would say, “because of these people I saw at this conference”. Almost none of them will ever have heard of the conferences in question.

    So no, I just don’t buy that making half the programme committee and speaker list women is going to change things dramatically in industries where women are under-represented in the workforce.

    It might help a bit, but the bigger issue is why and how do people choose their jobs, career paths, educational trajectories. What makes being an computer nerd the kind of job that is associated with boys with no girlfriends? What stigmatises it?

    If you get the causality the wrong way around here, then all we’re doing is salving our own guilt while working to make 10-20% of the community give 50% of the talks. That cannot be correct, surely?!

    I’m a designer by trade. I’m not a programmer, but I regularly attend technology conferences and have spoken at many. The design community is much more balanced between the genders than the engineering community, and is, I think, the better for it. I would like nothing more than engineering and technology and business communities with equal representation between the sexes.

    But it doesn’t exist yet, and these proposed solutions are going to have a remarkably limited effect on them! These figures are bizarrely arbitrary, there’s an implication that conference organisers that cannot drum up a (basically disportionately large) number of female speakers are sexist, which seems unfair, and the chain of causality appears to be to be either completely or mostly backwards. It’s extremely puzzling.

    Reply
14. 

    jon

    December 15, 2009

    Before I reply to Tom’s post, here’s the continuing discussion on Twitter:

    

    Reply
15. 

    Kathy Sierra

    December 15, 2009

    This post is borderline offensive to me as a woman in tech — 20 year software developer/programmer–AND as a mother of daughters. I understand it’s well-intentioned and has many practical, useful ideas but for me, you’re demonstrating EXACTLY the type of subtle gender bias you’re claiming exists. On that point, mission accomplished. Just one of many examples:

    “Women may generally be less experienced and/or comfortable with the five-minute rapid presentation format than men.”

    WTF?

    Well-intentioned posts that take the discussion this far into the “women are inferior and need help” realm are doing more harm than good, in my opinion. You paint us simultaneously as weak/helpless but also entitled creatures who are unwilling to put in the time and effort that women in OTHER professions have no problem with.

    Posts like this are also “enabling” (and I mean that in a bad way) to the tiny percentage of women who do not believe they should have to work their way “up” to presenting at professional events and, far more important, it’s *discouraging* to those who otherwise would.

    Posts like this continue to propagate the meme that tech conferences are subtly (if not overtly) hostile to women. Posts like this have the potential to keep women AWAY from these events, and in my (non-expert) opinion, the ONLY sustainable way to have more women presenters is to have more women first — FIRST — as paying attendees.

    If women are not placing value on the benefits of *attending* these professional events, then why the hell are we expecting them to value *presenting* at those same events?

    I know none of this is your intention, and clearly you’re getting support from women in technology, but not ALL of us. I’m not blaming women for being underrepresented. But I’m not blaming the organizers either. It’s an ultra complex system, and people on ALL sides need to do some heavy lifting.

    And again, as a mother of 20-something daughters, both who were writing code since kindergarten, they would in fact spit cola out their nose at this thought, “If only I’d seen that more women were speaking at ETech, I’d have gone for that CS major!” Seriously. Anyone who thinks the typical teenage girl is discouraged by who ISN’T speaking at FOWA has spent precious little time around teenage girls.

    And no, even from a systems dynamics perspective, I do not believe that who presents on stage at these events is going to have any measurable trickle-down impact… not when the root causes may have little to do with “visibility” (or lack of).

    Reply
16. 

    jon

    December 15, 2009

    I responded to Kathy on Tara’s blog with this:

    Kathy, point taken indeed. Apologies for the wording; I rephrased it as

    Did the conference organizers investigate the possibility that the unfamiliar five-minute rapid presentation format might be a barrier to entry?

    The reason I brought this up is that Gov 2.0 organizer Jessica Pahlka had commented “I’ve long meant to start a Women’s Ignite series, designed to let women practice public speaking … more women who feel comfortable on stage will help with the left side of that equation.” Computers, Freedom, and Privacy has introduced five-minute talks over the last couple of years and while they’re very popular, a lot of people (of all genders) have told me that it’s a new format to them and they’re not ready to try it in a conference setting. This year, we’ll try to arrange mentoring for people who would like to participate but are concerned about their lack of experience. This might be helpful for Gov 2.0 as well.

    However, I certainly didn’t say it well. Apologies again. And if there are other bad word choices in my essay, I’d certainly appreciate hearing about them.

    jon

    In her reply, she commented (amongst other good points):

    I’m equally concerned, though, that all of this still sends at least two messages I’m less than thrilled with: first, that women NEED “extra special care and attention” in learning to do these things… more so than men, and second… that public speaking is something women MUST or SHOULD do to further their career. Whenever these topics come up, the implicit assumption is that public speaking at events is implicitly THE path to increased success. I don’t fully buy that, and think we put WAY too much emphasis on the Importance Of Being On That Stage. (I can think of so many other far better ways to increase one’s exposure or chances for success)

    Reply
17. 

    jon

    December 15, 2009

    Wow, a lot to respond to — enough that it merits a new post. Coming soon. For now, a few random thoughts.

    One of the things this really highlights is how hard it is to talk about these issues. Well-intentioned words like mine can come across as offensive; different perspectives on system dynamics point to a different conclusions.

    My guess is that everybody in this thread, and virtually everybody at most technology conferences, would prefer a situation where women are treated like everybody else and are represented equally — and ditto for blacks, Latin@s, lgbtq’s, people with disabilities, and everybody else who’s currently marginalized in the tech world. The question is how to get there.

    So yes, I *do* believe that you can start by diversifying the planning team for a conference, and then the speakers, and then if you do a good job of outreach and make it possible for people to participate in a variety of ways, you’ll get diverse attendance and the kind of sustainable cycle Kathy’s talking about. CFP’s a good potential proof point for that … we shall see.

    In terms of system dynamics, yeah, I *do* believe that conferences and the networks around them play a significant enough of a role that this will have some impact on women (and more generally diversity) in technology. Let me think about this and articulate it well.

    jon

    Reply
18. 

    Tom Coates

    December 16, 2009

    I mean, it’s great that you believe that, but that doesn’t make it true, and even if it is true, it doesn’t mean it’s as true as you think it is nor that it’s having a particularly significant effect.

    Here’s an article that talks about the number of women doing computer science courses: http://www.livescience.com/culture/091215-computer-science-girls.html

    It says that the numbers of women doing computer science courses is decreasing. I would argue that the technology industry in the meantime is getting less sexist if anything and that conferences have a (gradually) increasing number of female attendees and speakers. I would argue that this demonstates that you couldn’t state that conference attendance or women speakers as the most important motivating factor for balancing out the industry.

    The article talks about some other factors – particularly the stereotypes of the people who work in the industry – as influencing the take up of technology jobs. Impressions of the industry that include coke cans, video games and star trek posters made it less attractive to many women. Not all women, of course, found this to be less appealing, but many did.

    Now honestly, it’s difficult to know where to go from this. We know, for example, that design as an industry is one that attracts a fairly balanced gender split. Parts of the industry that focus on communication also seem to be fairly balanced or even weighted towards women. So what is it about them? Are they just inherently ‘less sexist’ than the technology industry? I find that slightly difficult to get my head around. I’m sure there is sexism. I’m sure it’s a factor in this. But it doesn’t seem to me to be the rationale for why only 20% of computer science places are going to women. The tech industry is not aggressively macho like the banking sector. Being a software engineer has much more in common with being a visual designer than it does with being a day trader.

    I think we have to consider the possibility that *some* of this is about human wants and desires, rather than external constraints. We should consider that societal standards and attitudes to do with what constitute success for women make the technology industry as it stands at the moment almost a ‘low status’ job. That a number of female teenagers when considering what to do next in their career just don’t find it appealing – and that this is what we have to do to actually make a substantive difference in the industry.

    We know that stereotypes exist out there that we’ve heard both men and women say – that men like technology, like gadgets, like toys and that women don’t care about those things. I’ve heard female executives in very large companies say that ‘only teenage boys use the internet’ and not seem to notice that it’s just not true! We can pretend people don’t hold these beliefs, but we’re just fooling ourselves. We have to accept that a chunk of women don’t go into the technology industry because they just don’t think it’s interesting!

    Again, I’m not trying to minimize the sexism that does exist. Where we find it, we have to root it out. We have to make sure that everyone gets equal opportunities, that we celebrate the achievements of women in the industry just as much as we celebrate that of men – in conferences as well as anywhere else. But we also need to look at the wider problem – challenge the widespread attitude among women as well as men – that the technology industry is simply *boring*, *uncool*, a stupid thing that boys do.

    Now, you might think this means that the conference circuit is the perfect place to make changes, but we know that’s not true. We know that when people are making these decisions, they’re not really aware of that circuit.

    There *are* some amazing break-out technologists out there who are able to be role-models that do inspire outside the conference circuit – I’d put Caterina Fake into that clump, for example – and it’s in all of our best interests to make sure that our industry is not getting in the way of those people’s achievements and recognition. And there is a role for the conference circuit in trying to find and promote those people and their projects. There is definitely something that conference organisers can do, in their small way.

    But this arbitrary 50% thing makes no sense. While we’re working to spot talented people, promote their work, give them a platform, we cannot seriously say that 10-20% of the engineering talent should be given 50% of the speaking gigs on the simple basis of their gender. The only way that would be justifiable is if you could effectively make the case that to do so would have a huge impact on the numbers of people entering the industry, and—as I’ve said through this piece—I simple don’t think there’s the evidence to support that.

    The problem is fundamentally elsewhere.

    Reply
19. 

    jon

    December 19, 2009

    The conversation continued on Twitter:

    

    Reply
20. 

    jon

    December 19, 2009

    Kathy and I had a followon discussion on Twitter, and I’m still working on the longer post. Tom, apologies for not responding quicker …

    Gender equity in technology professions is a complex issue that has been studied for years and we can argue until we’re blue in the face about which are the most important contributors. Instead, I think it’s a lot more useful to focus on opportunities for improvement and make progress. Conference organizers can have a big impact, if they want to.

    Don’t underestimating how valuable attending, speaking at, and/or helping to organizing conferences can be. The connections you make, the recognition you get, the skills you learn all often have significant payback. On top of that, having more women speakers provides recognition and role models. And if there are enough women present, the in-person networking can help provide a support system.

    These last three points respond to problems many women cite as contributing to their reasons for leaving — or not choosing — technology fields. Of course making progress at conferences isn’t enough to make the issues go away but it’s a great place for a first step.

    jon

    Reply
21. 

    jon

    December 19, 2009

    it’s very interesting to look back at the paths the two different conversations took after Tara’s opening comment.

    on the blog, the remarks are overwhelmingly negative. intelligent people put a chunk of time and energy into telling me how wrong i am in so many ways.

    meanwhile on Twitter, the overwhelming majority of comments were positive and several people actively assisted in getting the word out; and we generated at least one likely proposal — on #amazonfail, a subject that directly relates to CFP’s core issues, has an explicit diversity focus, and hasn’t been discussed in the past.

    seems like a proof point to me.

    coming soon: diversity and technology conferences, part 2: #cfpconf as a #diversitywin?

    Reply
22. 

    jon

    December 19, 2009

    and speaking of proof points, by starting with a highly-diverse team, making diversity an explicit goal, and prioritizing it from the beginning rather than trying to patch it in after the fact, CFP 2010 has gotten a much higher percentage of proposals from women than a typical technology conference — 40-60%, depending on how you measure it. okay, it’s too soon to know what the final numbers will be, how much of an affect this will have on diversity of attendance and online participation.

    still if you combine the progress we’re making so far and the learning about how to reach more diverse audiences I talked about in Social network activism and the future of civil liberties, it seems like a great opportunity for a sustainable impact on the diversity of the online civil liberties and privacy community.

    we shall see … i’m certainly looking forward to finding out!

    Reply
23. 

    Kathy Sierra

    December 19, 2009

    @jon
    “Gender equity in technology professions is a complex issue that has been studied for years…”

    And the “for years” part is also a problem. Much of the research — both stats and conclusions — are painfully outdated when it comes to looking at young girls and technology. What a 10 year old girl said a decade ago has almost no relevance or meaning today (in the US, at least).

    Not that there isn’t plenty to be learned from the research, but the findings about school age girls and computers are no longer all that useful or insightful… they reflect a pre-Web, pre-digital native world that no longer exists for the typical American teen/pre-teen.

    Unlike when I was growing up, tech *today* holds no special magic and includes no special barriers. I DO believe it’s plausible that the majority of females simply do not find tech–as a profession–appealing.

    Yes, the research does show that 20 years ago, computing and girls was an “I Can’t” and/or “I’m Not Welcome” problem.

    Today, it seems it is more an “I Don’t Want To” problem, and the relentless (if well-intentioned) talking points about how HARD/SEXIST it is for women in tech is *not* doing much to help.

    Still, the work you’re doing to bring more diversity to conferences is a very positive step regardless. As I said earlier, even if it does nothing to increase diversity within the profession, it is–at the least–a big win for attendees! Cheers

    Reply
24. 

    jon

    December 22, 2009

    The call for participation for the O’Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON) 2010 is a great example of unintentionally sending a message to women that they’re not particularly welcome. The announcement page has three textual links to last year’s presentations on the main page: Neal, Adam, and Howard. To the right are the photos and videos they feature on their main page, with Michael and Greg as speakers. Hey, I’m noticing a pattern.

    And rather disappointingly, diversity and accessibility aren’t called out in the list of topics.

    What kind of conclusions are potential speakers and attendees likely to draw from?

    Then again, I certainly don’t want to be churlish. There’s definite progress. I got the announcement via outreachto a diversity mailing list by program committee member Aahz … gotta like that! In stark contrast to last year, it’s great to see the weight given to co-chair Allison Randal’s bio. And Kirrily Robert talked about the importance of a diversity statement in her list of Ten tips for getting more women speakers, and sure enough they’ve got one on the about OSCON page.

    So about six weeks until the February 1 deadline for proposals, there’s still of time for the organizers to address this, if they decided it’s a priority. And In the asset-based thinking tradition, it could be that once again a #diversityfail is an opportunity. Maybe I can work with some folks to propose a track on “creating diverse and accessible open source teams” — a couple of three-hour tutorials, and then 40-minute sessions on specific topics. I bet it’d be a pretty big draw. Something to think about …

    In the interim, here’s Skud’s Standing out in a crowd OSCON 2009 keynote, and a link to her followup Debunking myths, answering questions.

    jon

    Reply
25. 

    jon

    December 22, 2009

    Oh goodie, TED just posted their program.

    It seems to me like it’s around 80% male. There are no women at all speaking on Saturday. Because, y’know, what could women possibly have to say about “simplicity” and “wisdom”?

    And a third of the women speakers are on the “play” track. What’s with that?

    Depressing.

    Reply
26. 

    ugg

    November 27, 2010

    a good blog article ,We stock Argyle, Bailey, Cardy, Sheepskin, … ugg boots.

    Reply
27. Today’s Noted Pages | Uncollecting Sherman

    July 24, 2015

    […] I was pointed to the Liminal States blog (thanks to @missrogue) where Jon [takes up the call to examine this issue] and does a great job of not only laying out the basic issues, but calling attention to some of the […]

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