Women as Entertainment in the SEO Industry

I know Jane well IRL and count her as a friend.

My company also runs digital conferences and she's frequently spoken at our events - and I'm very thankful it wasn't one of ours where the sleazeball stuff happened.

From a purely pragmatic perspective (i.e. what, as organisers, can we do about sleazeballs) I'm fascinated by two aspects of my own personality:

- on the one hand, I skew towards believing that individuals are entirely responsible for their own actions. If someone's a sleazeball at one of our events, that's entirely his fault (I would obviously react badly if I witnessed it or knew it was happening in real time)

- on the other hand, I'm into game theory and behavioural economics and I wonder how we can structure things so that we reduce the occurrence of this kind of thing. I'd love to hear ideas for tactical things conference organisers can do to filter and constrain ridiculous behaviour...

I'm a bit torn by this particular post. On the one hand, I think there's enough evidence of sexism and racism in the technology sector to treat it curiously -- as in, it's worth examining further and figuring out if there's an actual problem (I think there is, but that's just opinion) and where that problem is and how it can be addressed. I'm also interested in why so many self-described "hackers" seem so quick to dismiss it, especially since if they share any one trait, it should be curiosity.

So if this were a post about how they couldn't make a business deal or get funding or were at a disadvantage because they had a woman on their team, it would be as compelling to me as some of the other stuff I've read recently.

But: it's primarily about jackasses with no social skills, and there are tons of those in technology circles. People who interact with electronics more than other people are more likely to have all the social graces of a meadow muffin, and I don't think that's a solvable problem in society this year or next.

It sucks that she had to deal with those people. It sucks that they focused on her gender or attractiveness and said stupid things instead of having a conversation about one of her interests. Still, this is mostly a case of nerds behaving badly more than anything else.

I'm also pretty lukewarm on her feelings about “the sexiest women in social media”. Taken seriously, she's right on all her points. Taken in good humor, I find it about as offensive as sexy firemen calendars (i.e., not at all offensive, just all in good fun).

This is one of those things where personal actions do mean something. Avoid booths with half naked girls at conferences. It will only take one conference with an empty booth for that company not to use this kind of attraction again. Makes sure that people around you know that this is not OK, they will think twice before acting as assholes, even if it is for the sake of peer pressure and not out of respect for women.

Thanks Jane for writing this up. Important.

Sadly I don't see this scenario changing any time soon, the reason being that so far, for these guys, the rewards are much greater than the risk.

The rewards would be (male) peer approval and easy relief during presentations, whereas right now there seems to be little risk of either law suit or peer reprehension.

So, since these guys don't really think of women as people, they don't see any harm done.

It's actually a horrible picture of just how much non-empathic an adult can be and still function well in our culture.

The fastest way to revert this is to get many male tech guys to acknowledge the problem enough to publicly reprehend them. That way the rewards are thinned for the sexist presenter. He may carry on to be a jerk, but won't gain as much from being a public jerk.

Unfortunately there are many men (in all industries) that still put women on the 'scale' immediately, & subconsiously. At one end, women get ignored, stared through and sidelined. At the other they get harrassed and the only topic of conversation is attractiveness.

These men don't distinguish from the booth babes, strippers etc (who have chosen the model industry) and the women that they work with, that are their peers in the tech industry.

I think the worst part is when you point out you don't want to be addressed according to your appearance, these are the guys that claim their remarks were some kind of backhanded compliment!

Perhaps naming and shaming those involved in the more threatening, dangerous and scary encounters would be a deterrent or a warning sign at least.

I work in the tech industry & as yet to have never had a comparable encounter, though there have been general annoyances in the workplace that I've put a stop to early on.

Should I ever have such an experience I'd be sure to speak up about it.

A lot of excellent points, and I don't think "digital conferences" are the only places women are harassed in this nature. But for all the good points I found myself wondering what she was really struggling with at some times. Part of her piece came off as a rant about how she felt jilted that she didn't "stack up" to other ladies.

What I'm still missing here is how this links back to technology.

A lady has a deeply unpleasant encounter with some some jackass, and also notices that in an industry which is mostly men, you get some creeps putting together sexist things like the "sexiest women in technology".

But: what's the relationship with this to technology conferences, other than: you're going to meet a lot of men? What's the take-away here for the tech industry? What does she want us to /do/ about this?

I don't think overt sexism is any more prevalent at tech conferences than it is in any other predominantly male gathering. In fact, I would bet it's actually less prevalent at tech events: for every aggressive jerk at a tech conference, there are 10 quiet geeks who would be scared to death to talk to an attractive woman. Try going to a male-dominated sales conference for comparison. I'm not condoning the behavior, only pointing out that it is hardly unique to tech.

We are born of woman, we are conceived in the womb of woman, we are engaged and married to woman.

We make friendship with woman and the lineage continued because of woman.

When one woman dies, we seek another one, we are bound with the world through woman.

Why should we talk ill of her, who gives birth to kings?

The woman is born from woman; there is none without her.