Women, Tech Conferences and the Bullshit Surrounding It
sugarrae.com
sugarrae.com
Edit: missed the meaning of "blind".
Individual speakers draw crowds, yes. But conferences are also a way for people to share their ideas and establish their names in the first place. A conference that optimizes for crowd draw is enforcing a preexisting hierarchy to the detriment of the community.
A solution is to use the keynote address and invited speakers to draw crowds, while taking blind proposals for most of the actual content.
"What is the goal of X?" is a good question to ask in any social endeavor.
> A solution is to use the keynote address and invited speakers to draw crowds
Ok, but nothing's solved, just pushed up a level.
Will it mean those people have equitable chances to do keynotes today - no more so than the current systems.
Will it mean they have a chance to build a professional reputation that may result in invitations to do keynotes tomorrow - yes. This is a good long term win.
Noone cares that your computer graphics made a billion dollars, people care that they are cool.
SIGGRAPH also had, last I checked, the best gender balance of any tech community. One year our Wiki was vandalized claiming that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles was canceling a reception we were having on their property because the organization was supportive of the LGBT community and had strong LGBT membership.
So, yeah, Linus freakin' Torvalds can get rejected once in a while. I think his ego would survive. ;)
See bottom of this page. http://managingbias.fb.com/ It's kind of like when people say "I don't see race."
The concept of evaluating exclusively merit is completely sensible. Doing so in practice is not trivial. And there are indeed published studies showing that attempting to do so not only fails but produces more bias.
If that interpretation is wrong, please do correct me.
I'd like it if arguments could stand on their own, not be dismissed because someone falls into a particular category.
>I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
and all that.
The post you're responding to is making the argument "Claiming that you aren't unbiased does not make you unbiased. Trying to be unbiased does not necessarily make you unbiased."
That's certainly not ad hominem at all.
No, it goes farther and very clearly says it actually mskes you more biased.
How could we change that for the better? I think quotas are certainly a nice stopgap that can help move us forward and out of this fucked up shit we are currently in. It’s a hack, sure, a dirty one, even, but as far as hacks go I think it’s quite nice.
If you are really convinced that merit based selection is even possible (all a question of degrees, right?) targeted outreach (i.e. actually asking many interesting people to submit something, not just waiting for submissions) combined with a blind review process could also work quite nicely. I know of conferences where that alone (i.e. purely merit based selection, but preceded by targeted outreach – so of those who submitted something really only the very best presenters were selected) actually worked nicely and led to dramatic shifts in – their case (because they decided to tackle gender first, but there are obviously many other angles) – gender balance.
And a hack that can backfire when people start incorporating the existence of the quota into their judgment about someone. For example, in a place where a quota exists to ensure a minimum number of A are hired, people will begin to assume that B's are more competent. And if the quota is actually working, they will be correct. (It is possible for A-ism to be so bad that the average B is worse than the average A even given the quota, which may mean it is even worse for A as people will often not realize this is the case and think that the average B must in all cases be better than the average A when there is a quota helping A.)
Only used by people who really think there is no problem, used to argue in bad faith.
But, ok, can you suggest an alternative that’s not just proving up the awful status quo? I love more elegant solutions!
Because any (to continue my example) A-ism that is caused by the quota is counted together with preexisting A-ism. Thus, while it does not appear a big deal, it may be a major deal.
"A new report from the National Student Clearinghouse looks at degrees in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) and finds that the share of STEM bachelor’s degrees going to women ticked down over the past decade. The biggest decline was in computer science, where women received 23 percent of bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2004 and just 18 percent in 2014. On the bright side — at least for career prospects — both men and women are slightly more likely to be majoring in STEM fields today than they were in 2004; it’s just that men have shown more growth than women."[0]
The opportunities are there for those females who want it. Maybe most of them simply don't want to go into the computer field---individual men and women have different things they want out of life and out of their careers, which is ok! Why should everyone be a computer science major? The world would be a pretty dull place.
The author's points are quite valid; I would add that you don't want to push people into a field they have no interest (or aptitude) in. It makes the person miserable and cheapens the degrees of others (a smaller consideration in tech, I'll grant you, since it's more meritocratic than some other fields).
The smallest minority is the individual. If 95% of individuals who happened to be men gave the best auditions, they should probably be given the spots. I say "probably" because if it's a private conference, the organizers can do whatever they want, and people need not attend if they don't like the speaker choices. Ultimately, if women are dissatisfied with the "boys club", they can organize their own conference across the street.
[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2015/01/27/wo...
You seem to take that as a law of nature... as though it's natural for there to be a truly massive gender bias in computing, a gender bias that was far less 20 years ago and has gotten egregiously worse since roughly 2000.
The real question should be: why the hell aren't women enrolling into and graduating from CS programs?
The answer is probably enormous and systemic, but the current situation should not be seen as acceptable, IMO.
Incidentally, the same questions could (and should) be asked of, say, men in nursing. And, again, the answers are certainly enormous and systemic, starting from childhood socialization, running through peer group issues, and on and on.
This is a fallacy. The problem isn't that sexism in STEM isn't conscious choice; it's not like those nasty menfolk go out of their way to make women feel unwelcome. It's systemic, a culture where women are perceived as less technically competent, more unstable, less deserving of recognition or promotion. If our names are clearly female-gendered, our papers and conference submissions are accepted less frequently, even if the paper itself is the same. The old joke among women in STEM is that "you have to work twice as hard to get half the credit."
I've been coding for the web since 1996, professionally since 1998. I currently work as a senior software developer for a major retailer, and as you might have guessed, I'm female. Science, tech, engineer, math - all of these fields have gotten significantly more hostile towards women in the years I've been involved with them. Under the guise of "professionality" I've been stalked, harassed, invalidated and belittled - and I've experienced less problems than most of my female colleagues.
I look around at my coworkers, and of the several hundred developers and engineers there, less than 5 are women. 98% of my coworkers are male. I get talked down to by junior developers all the time; they either mistakenly assume I'm new to the field or not a developer at all. These aren't guys trying to make it difficult. They're operating under flawed, sexist assumptions, and that's what makes working in STEM an uphill battle. How many times can you get the message "you're inferior" before you believe it? 100? 1000?
I have a 12 year old cousin who loved programming the first time she tried it. She's smart and driven and would be a great developer. She's already given up on it; would you like to know why? Because she's isolated as a female geek and was teased about being a girl. Arguing that if we don't like it, we can just organize our own whatever is dismissive and reductive. You know what happens when we organize our own whatever? We get harassed and threatened and tons of shit heaped on us because we're women. So don't tell us that it's "there if we want it," because it's not.
Is it just me or do most of these underepresentation conversations seem to focus on gender more than race? How the heck does that make any kind of sense?
If anything racial disadvantages have even broader economic consequences than gender. How is race not an intrinsic, automatic part of every conversation on representation in tech alongside gender? Why is it "women in tech" instead of "women and minorities in tech"?
Why is that? I mean, I think of arguments for it, but I can think of arguments against it as well, enough that I don't think it qualifies as obviously true.
I'd say it's pretty awful for non-upper middle class white men as well. I think we need to make sure everyone has the opportunities they desire, but repeatedly telling 50% of the population that they're privileged when that's most definitely not the case isn't helping anyone.
I'm successful enough now but it worries me that the same tools I used to get ahead are now being systematically disassembled. Meritocracy is now a bad word. High standards are deemed non-inclusive. Being male, regardless of your socio-economic background is now a handicap. Questioning any of this will get you labeled at the very least misogynist or racist. Publicly questioning it will likely get you fired.
These developments worry me. While I "have mine" through 10+ years of very hard work, I'd like to leave the ladder in place so others can climb up instead of burning it down and helicoptering a chosen few up.
Maybe it is related to how the mismatch from base rate in prison populations in regards to race is a sign of systematic racism against the over-represented groups, but the same doesn't seem to be reported in regards to sex.
I've usually seen prison population cited not alone, but along with (and as an example of the outcome of) more direct examples of disparate treatment, such as unequal sentencing for like offenses, and the definition of different sentencing categories for different categories of narcotics, with the higher sentences being for possession or sale of categories disproportionately in use in the black community at the time the differential treatment was adopted.
I am part of a racial minority, and to be honest trying to "do something about it" never really interested me. Racial disadvantages never meant much to me personally.
And no, there's no way in hell I can pass of as white, in person or on the phone.
Changing the status quo requires outreach and making the culture more inclusive. Most appeals to meritocracy in tech boil down to "but I really like the way things are now".
And really, I think the problem starts long before college. There are structural issues in the broader culture and the education system. It's even worse for black and latino kids.
But a lot of discrimination comes from female peer-pressure, not males. My daughter kept repeating "math is hard" because her female friends kept saying so, until I had none of it. She ended up being very good in math, but chose chem+biology as her major in college :-)
It looks like females comprise over 90% of our nurses and about 20% of our surgeons (in the US). For the matter, I understand the trend is going in the wrong direction in Scandinavia.
Because people who care don't get nearly as much press as people who talk about women being excluded.
Because the men who work in tech don't care so much about race, but they do care about the obvious lack of women.
Because it's easier to go "we have 40% asians and indians" and ignore the issue than to find a way around "we have 95% males".
"For all they know, 95% of speaker pitches came from men and thus why they ended up with a 95% male speaker line up once they whittled down the list to the best pitches." Shouldn't the very next thought be: "gee, why would 95% of speaker pitches come from men?" Why might that be the case?
To me, the "women just aren't interested in tech" explanation is ridiculous on its face. "Women just don't want to be in a high-profile, financially rewarding career with tons of growth potential, because ____." What goes in the blank? I'm dying to know.
I think a large part of this problem is generational. As we see female numbers increase every year, eventually it'll reach some sort of equilibrium. It's like asking 20-30 years ago why there weren't more women in business. I think it was just because until it becomes a socially regular thing to see, only the exceptional will try to break through that glass ceiling. Like the article says, forcing inclusion of women who aren't interested or particularly good at the topic won't help anyone.
But "women in tech" has a lot of factors and they're not the same worldwide (most of the articles talking about this are so incredibly US-centric, but that's another issue). There's hiring policies, positive discrimination, education choices, social factors, etc... You can't point the finger. Society evolved that way.
If you stop giving a shit about gender, instead of focusing so much on it, you're a lot more likely to get results.
What bothers me most is that it's not inherently wrong that there's a disproportionate % of male/females in a certain factor. There's also a disproportionally high amount of white people in Europe. Is that somebody's fault? Is it a problem?
If some form of inequality is actually caused by a malevolant actor, then sure, you got someone to blame now and you have something to fix. Something concrete. Sometimes that's the case. But "women in tech" ratios are certainly not the result of sexism. And I find the lengths guys will go to to get more women involved in their sector creepy and revolting, more so than anything else.
Past oppression, even if it didn’t exist anymore today (but it actually still does, so even that doesn’t work out!) extends from the past into the future! That’s what’s so devilish about it. You cannot just be gender/color/whateverblind and hope the problem will just go away. You have to actively work to make the world a better place.
And it's not what I said. I said caring so much about gender just serves to reinforce the problem. You're more likely to get results ignoring it than focusing SO MUCH on it and forcing quotas. The article explains why really well.
But yeah, well done on disregarding the rest of my post. I don't know why I bother writing more than 140 characters if it's just to get cherry-picked.
You have to care about this and think about this deeply. I also agree that quotas are a dirty and inelegant solution and I always love to hear alternate approaches (e.g. two-phase selection process including first a call for papers plus targeted outreach followed by a blind review phase), but the point is you have to think deeply about the problem and actually engage with it deeply. It’s a hard problem – just wishing it to go away won’t make it so. That’s magical thinking.
You have to think about it more not less. Also, quotas, while a very dirty solution, are to my mind a hell of a lot better than status quo. But as I said, I’m sure it’s possible to do better than quotas – but not by just ignoring the problem.
Bingo. But by accepting this premise you accept that men and women are not The Same™, i.e., they do not have the same preferences, which is a problem for a lot of people.
(notice I said preferences and not abilities)
I would like to know why you think the possibility that "women just aren't interested in tech" is ridiculous on its face? I would think it would be easy to find out such things with general surveys of young men and women as they leave high school and enter college age to determine their career interests, has no one done this?
So, do we try to be proactive about making up that difference, or do we just throw up our hands and say "well, it's society!".
These things are cyclical. More prominent women in tech will influence more high school girls to get involved in tech, who will influence the generation beneath them, etc. etc. - it just needs a kickstart, that's all.
I, for one, am being proactive today with my daughters before they are even in middle school. But, alas, I often feel real lonely as I'm attempting to do this at the same time people are attacking my chosen career; labeling me as part of the problem.
You can take all the surveys you want of billions of people but until you have a deep understanding of the sociological and psychological landscape you can't demonstrate that womens' collective "disinterest" in tech is anything but a facade resulting from some unknown variable or an out of control feedback loop (i.e., what if the impact of a girl seeing a 2:1 ratio of men to women in her favorite field leads to a death spiral where it ends up being 9:1 despite equal interest?)
If you can't use a piece of machinery, look at software, read about Fukushima, and not always be thinking about how you'd design it better, you are not really an engineer.
If you wouldn't work on cool engineering projects for free just because they are cool, you are not really an engineer.
If you just want to do engineering to make a pile of money and retire, you are not really an engineer.
If you want to present at conferences for the fame and recognition, you are not really an engineer. If you present because you cannot resist telling everyone about this totally awesome piece of engineering, you are likely a real engineer.
And I fundamentally disagree with your implication that women who don't want to undertake the social, financial, and professional liability of being a minority in their chosen line of work wouldn't have been "real engineers" anyway, because "real engineers" would have cast such practical considerations aside.
Better question(s), is there, on average, some social factor that would result in men rating a careers desirability different from a woman?
If so, would this rating result in tech careers being rated, on average, differently between the genders?
Finally, what percent of the difference does this explain? Even if there was some reason men desired to work in tech more that would result in a 60/40% split in favor of men, but reality shows a 80/20% split, then there is still other forces at work.
a) It is not high profile. Outside of a few tech hubs the work is neither cool nor well respected.
b) It is no more financially rewarding than many other careers. In my city the average software developer earns about the same as a nurse. There are plenty of good developers in the US who are on less than 6 figures.
c) Unlike nursing etc, there is an incredible amount of churn and knowledge quickly devalues. This concerns anybody who wants the option of taking a few years off work.
d) Despite c) we rarely allocate any work time for L&D. So if you don't want to fall behind then you need to spend a significant chunk of your own time on L&D. Great if you are looking for more work-life balance!
In reality, most work done by most people is not "high profile".
There are lottery-win careers like managing director path investment banking or high-end corporate consulting, which only a tiny fraction of all the practitioners in those fields get, and there are medical doctors.
Pretty much everything else is just a job, like all the other jobs, and you're crazy if you think office managers, machinery parts sales reps, and accountants have higher-status jobs than software developers.
It's time to kill this meme about tech being low-status.
> In reality, most work done by most people is not "high profile".
Spot on! And so you can't expect women to want to become software developers because of its high profile.
Percentages shouldn't be the reason why you hire or don't hire someone but they should be a measure of how much bias is in your system for choosing persons of varying classes. If your percent of xyz participants in the majority class is way higher than the distribution in the possible applicants then there is some sort of class bias(economic, race, socio) in either how you choose applicants, or in how you get applicants.
And as I stated.. The failure of not being near this percent is either because how you chose your participants from applicants or how you chose to get people to be applicants.
Applicants are self-selecting. Your argument attempts to shift responsibility (and agency) away from speakers and practitioners.
How can one have agency if they don't know that there is an opportunity?
i.e.
If an opportunity is open to all; but is only presented to one class then you are in general only going to get applicants from the class that you presented the opportunity too.
Asserting that anyone who understands affirmative action must like it is begging the question.
>I earned my way onto that list. And here is someone telling me people who didn’t should be added simply so I wasn’t the lone female on it?
>In three words? That’s some bullshit.
It's only a long way to say it if you're already committed to ignoring their arguments. Because in reality their arguments have a bit more nuance then just "I don't like affirmative action".
I am not committed to ignoring their arguments -- I used to hold similar positions. Then I talked with people who disagreed with me, grappled with their positions, and changed my mind. The author here shows no semblance of any such depth of thought, just repeated invocations of "if I made it, it must be possible! if we help others who are worse than me, then that lessens my achievement!" At its core, it's a selfish argument[1], which is why I changed my mind.
[1]: to be clear, there are quite a few non-personally-selfish arguments against affirmative action. "it'll make others doubt how much better i am than most other women" is not one of them.
The reality is that they didn't work hard enough to find good quality presenters that represent the actual world we live and work in - one where people approach problem solving in myriad different ways that stem from their own history and experience.
tl;dr - if you can't find women, POC for your conference, you didn't look hard enough.
Then take one considered magically good, like Strange Loop. Their excellence translations into excellent diversity work too: (http://bridgetconsulting.com/?p=131)
Part of the problem with finding more women and/or POC is that most conference organizers aren't looking for people at all; rather, they're looking for interesting projects/products/businesses. And what happens is they get a representative of that organization on the phone who agrees to send someone to present, but often they don't even know who will actually be getting on stage until much later.
This obviously isn't true if you're getting a keynote speaker to talk about their career, but you only get one of those per event.