New Rails workshops to bring more women into the Boston software scene
railsbridgeboston.org
railsbridgeboston.org
Let's say I have a open source project, and it's got 100 contributors (or community members, users, whatever -- the it's all the same). If my project follows today's averages, that group will be on the order of 98 men and 2 women. Let's say we work to increase our diversity such that now 50% of our community are women. How big is the community now?
That's right -- 200 people. It's not like adding 50% women removes 50% men... if we increase the number of women in our community, we increase the number of people. Now I've got twice as many contributors, twice as many users, twice as much activity, etc. Open source projects live and die on the strength of their communities. Increasing diversity is often actually the easiest way to increase membership, full stop.
[Now, in practice, I work on diversity because I care about basic fairness. But the point is that even if you don't give a shit about those sorts of ideals, there are still coldly calculating economy-of-scale arguments for why diversity is important.]
In effect, you're saying "If we could get twice as many people, then we would have twice as many people".
In reality, there is some reason why women don't want to be programmers. Therefore, it follows that per capita, it's going to be harder to bring women into the fold.
To use your example, if you really wanted to increase your contributors to your open source project, you would be much better served to use your limited capital to attract men who are already predisposed to your project but unaware of it rather than women who are both unaware of it and predisposed against it.
That doesn't follow at all. It could be that the industry has some kind of blind spot that could be easily addressed by e.g. encouraging and welcoming people who are interested but generally left out.
Sorry, I must have not been clear: my point is that if we have twice as many people, then we get twice as much work done, move twice as quickly, etc. Django has about 30 committers, and among us we seem to be able to commit about 10-15 times per day. If we had 60 committers, I'd guess we'd be able to commit about 30 things per day. That's more bugs fixed, more features added, faster velocity between releases, etc. These are things I want.
> In reality, there is some reason why women don't want to be programmers.
I agree. I suggest that it's because women are systematically being discouraged from joining our communities. I think they's plenty of data to back this up.
BTW, it's not programming as a whole; the problem's even worse in open source communities. Women make up roughly 20% of the workforce in technical professions, but only about 2% of open source developers. Even if you believe there's something in that second X chromosome that disinclines women from tech — and for the record I certainly don't buy that argument — that can't explain why the problems ten times worse in open source.
> you would be much better served to use your limited capital to attract men who are already predisposed to your project but unaware of it rather than women who are both unaware of it and predisposed against it.
How about people who are aware and are predisposed, but have historically been discouraged or outright prevented from getting involved?
And look, this isn't a zero-sum game. I can do this and other things too! A lot of the resistance to diversity seems to imply that these efforts somehow detract from other forms of community outreach, but this just isn't true. We are in fact capable of doing multiple things at once.
I am guessing, but could the part time nature of most of open source jobs be a reason for this as well? More conservative/sexist societies generally assign the role of managing home to the female in a family, even if she is a working woman. So while the males have the time and freedom to go for hobby/low-returns open source projects, the females might be left with the responsibility of taking care of the children. I am from an eastern culture and this is definitely something I could see happening here, I am curious if similar conditions exists in western cultures.
Get down from the ivory tower please. Where do you get off saying that he doesn't believe in fairness? In fact, the original commenter could be seen as being more fair by simply stating that gender shouldn't matter.
At the same time, you're looking at one statistic. The race or religion of project contributors could be looked at, but they aren't because IT IS NOT IMPORTANT. Just to counter any downvotes, when I say it isn't important, I mean the gender debate, not women in general. For some reason, this topic has been rehashed so many times on HN and each time someone tries to look at the argument from a gender-less perspective, people like you -- jacobian -- jump out from the bushes to make statements, charging dissenters with misogyny.
Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc].
The word "only" makes this sentence completely wrong.
In startup terms it's like saying that to make a successful product you need only make something useful and put up a web page offering it for sale. It would be great if it was that simple!
To show context, my entire sentence was: Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc].
So by "only" being open to everyone, I assert that projects can maintain fairness. How is this incorrect? I never said the project would be successful, you falsely added that using your metaphor. Is there some other magic bullet for making a project fair? Do we need to inject some discrimination and close-mindedness into it?
We don't need to inject discrimination and close-mindedness, but we do need to counteract it. That means we can't just passively "be open".
Where, exactly, did I do that?
We don't live in a vacuum, so even if we feel that gender shouldn't matter it already does in fundamental ways.
> At the same time, you're looking at one statistic. The race or religion of project contributors could be looked at, but they aren't because IT IS NOT IMPORTANT.
Actually this is really important. If projects are systematically excluding people of certain races or religions, we have a discrimination problem.
> For some reason, this topic has been rehashed so many times on HN and each time someone tries to look at the argument from a gender-less perspective, people like you -- jacobian -- jump out from the bushes to make statements, charging dissenters with misogyny.
Nobody called anyone a misogynist in this discussion.
> Projects can maintain fairness without specifically targeting a demographic, they need only be open to everyone and never turn someone down simply because of an attribute they cannot change [gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, height, etc].
This is absolutely true. However, why there aren't more women in tech isn't just about project maintainers. Women in general are not going into or are finding spaces in which they can participate as developers and programmers. This is the whole point of this particular RailsBridge workshop.
This is a minor nitpick, but I'll bite. I realize nobody explicitly called anyone a mysogynist, but neither did I. There is a difference between saying someone is mysogynist the adjective and mysogyny the noun. jacobian inferred that because the OP doesn't care about diversity then he doesn't care about fairness. That is tantamount to charging someone with sexual discrimination, also known as mysogyny.
[Edit: I upvoted king_jester because, regardless of whether I agree with him on all points, his reply was concise, helpful and he wasn't being a dick]
Really it's not. There's a big difference between active discrimination and just not caring. I said that my guess is that icedancer doesn't see lack of diversity as a moral problem, not that s/he is a engaging in discrimination. Accusing me of "jumping out of the bushes" to "attack dissenters" is really unfair. Look, I appreciate that some people don't see lack gender diversity as a problem. I disagree, but I'm never going to convince those people to see the issue in my terms. I hope you'll re-read my comment and try to assume just a tiny bit of good faith on my part.
Why not?
Or do you mean should we prevent women turning up? No we should not allow events that prevent women turning up. But if an event happens to have no women turn up, then so the fuck what?
Are you going to challenge woman-kind why they aren't going? Why would one woman know why every other woman didn't want to attend?
Making divides just feels odd
The data I've seen suggests that the penetration of these minorities in technology closely tracks their representation in society as a whole. Further, there isn't a history of discrimination against redheads and lefties in open source. Discrimination against gay people is a real problem, though it doesn't seem to have prevented equivalent representation of gay people in tech.
But you could make a similar argument about representation of other minorities -- African Americans, say, or Hispanics, or whatever. And it's true, that's a problem too; we should be working towards diversity of all sorts. It's true that I'm focusing my attention of gender diversity, but I'd love to learn more about efforts towards diversity along other axes. Have any pointers?
I genuinely think the main reason that people worry about gender, over any other groups, is that it's normally so clear what group people are a member of. And that's not a sound reason to do anything.
I also genuinely think that some men cause a fuss about proportion of women in tech groups, simply because they'd like to meet and be able to hit on more women.
I see it like this: lack of diversity is a bug on our community. I'd like to fix it, so I work on fixing these bugs. Right now, the information I have available tells me that gender diversity is the worst of the bugs under the "diversity" label, and it's also one I think I have the skills to tackle. This doesn't mean that other bugs are less important, or less worth solving. I happen to believe that this bug is the one that's most worth my time to tackle.
Yes, I do see lack of diversity -- in all forms -- as an issue in our community. There are other minorities besides women that're systematically discouraged from entering tech; we should do something about that. Hopefully our fix for the gender bugs can be abstracted and applied in other areas.
This is not just an abstract inconvenience either. Whenever you are part of a historically marginalized minority -- whether by color, gender, or nationality -- it will likely be more uncomfortable for you to enter fields where you are the only person from your group. This is particularly true for women.
Not only are sexist comments more likely when there are not a lot of women at events (see http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-sex-...), the women will also likely feel more uncomfortable because of the disproportion. Let me quote a posting on our outreach mailing list thread from a woman to elaborate:
"I have definitely never experienced anything threatening or offensive at a Ruby group meeting. But, you show up at an event where there are 50 men or more to 3 women, and you grow to expect some double-takes. Some women, like me, are okay with that. A lot aren't. And it makes it hard to show up alone or when you don't know anyone if you know you're going to stick out like a sore thumb. A man can show up at boston.rb for the first time and not have anyone pay the least attention. A woman cannot.
"There's some critical mass that needs to be reached before that's not true anymore, and it's just hard work to get there. There needs to be enough women who don't care if they stick out, so the women who do care don't stick out so much. And you need to make plans to meet the women you know there, so they already know someone. That could be a component of any project night, outreach, or mentorship effort -- encouraging people to come to the meetings, and affirmatively planning to meet them there."
I hope these points carry at least a little weight for you. Thank you for raising the challenge.
Good software involves good design (both for UX / code), good design requires empathy, and without women in the industry you are loosing out on the diversity, design and empathy that women can bring to the table.
That is "why" I think there should be more women in the industry.
Good design requires good design skills. 'nuff said. One could say that good design requires eyesight, but even blind people have been shown to be exceptionally bright at making beautiful things. Why is this? Because it is about passion and effort to build those skills, not because one happens to lack a Y chromosome.
Men are able to show empathy as well. There are a great number of chefs, layout artists, fashion designers, and hairstylists who have a knack for design and would disagree with you.
We do not live in that utopia yet. At the moment women in tech and men in knitting circles need more help (seriously I (a cis male) went to a local craft night and felt out of place). We should focus on people who need help. If people need more medical help (i.e. are sick), we give them more medial help than healthy people. Same with gender & tech.
It's also the grouping that confuses me. You want more women in the community, and so you are encouraging someone to join your community based on an entirely irrelevant property. You only want them because of their gender. You look at them, and see a woman - just that one property. It's objectification, de-humanisation.
You're wrong. There are lots of things that women experience that men do not (and vice-versa).
If anything this RailsBridge workshop shows that there are woman who are voluntarily interested and want resources like this workshop, so this is definitely not involuntary.
> You can't ask woman-kind why none of their group aren't attending because she has nothing to do with the rest of her group.
We aren't asking individual women to speak for all women, that would be silly. However, when women share their experiences in tech or attend events like this, we get reactions like yours where women are challenged and questioned for seeking knowledge in the first place. Instead of attacking women when they participate in tech circles, try listening and stepping back.
> It's also the grouping that confuses me. You want more women in the community, and so you are encouraging someone to join your community based on an entirely irrelevant property. You only want them because of their gender. You look at them, and see a woman - just that one property. It's objectification, de-humanisation.
So treating women like human beings with genuine interests and struggles and listening to what they have to say and offering resources for them when they are under served in tech is objectifying and dehumanizing?
Let's clear something up: women in tech are actively discouraged from existing in those circles in a variety of micro- and macro-level ways. I do not see women as just women, but I do not deny that being a woman is part of their experience and it shapes their life in a way I cannot experience since I am not a woman. Nobody should be excluded from programming and tech because of their gender, but pretending that men and women are on an equal playing field in terms of treatment and opportunity is ludicrous.
No, come on, that's grossly unfair.
I would never challenge or question a woman for seeking knowledge. I would never treat a woman any differently. You're implying that I'm doing something objectionable like those who grope or make sexist jokes.
I'm saying that I'm not interested in anyone's gender, and I don't think it should be a property of interest to anyone except for dating.
I think that saying "hey! you're a woman! this special event is just for you! there's the main event as well, which we'd love you to come to, but there's also this special one just for you" is offensive.
Perhaps I've missed some part of the community, or I don't attend the right (wrong?) conferences, but I've never seen anything that discourages women. The only possibility is that they see an existing low proportion of women and then conclude it's not for them. Well that's their loss and their prejudice.
Sarah Mei and I felt that we could change the ratio simply by teaching more women Ruby on Rails, we would have more women in our community, and we were right.
We agreed to make our first workshop open to people with any level of programming experience. (Men could come if they participated in the outreach and found a woman to sign up.)
We thought it would be hard to find women to attend our first workshop. We brainstormed for weeks about how to connect to various women's groups and corporate organizations. Then after two tweets and and one email, we had a waiting list in less than 24 hours. Over the last 3 years the pattern repeats itself, no matter where we have workshops, we consistently have waiting lists of women who want to attend. In SF, we have workshops every month, and routinely have 60 people (mostly women) on the waitlist.
Women do want to write code. We usually have 20% who have never coded before, but typically 50-70% self-identify as non-programmers. Are you a programmer if you just write SQL? does bash count as programming for a sys admin? does it could if you did COBOL 20 years ago, but you can't do any of the modern stuff? maybe you got a CS degree, but have never done more than a toy app? From a teaching perspective, if you answered yes to any of those questions, you are way ahead of the total beginners -- you understand variables and expressing logic in words and symbols.
We have diversity issues in tech, and it isn't just about gender and race. I believe those are just the most visible outward symptom of a problem where we have fairly homogeneous work and communication styles, as well as background and patterns of thinking. If we are going to solve the very real problems we have in this world (and many of those solutions will be facilitated with tech), we need all kinds of people. We need diversity of thought.
If you only have one kind of people on your team by a visible metric, you are likely to have much deeper diversity issues. Just because you have a woman or a person of color on the team doesn't necessarily mean you've solved your diversity problems.
I applaud the Boston folks for their success in their recent workshop. If you think that the language you develop in would be great for anyone/everyone to learn, you should do the same.
I am also a little reminded of my first forays into learning Rails with no prior programming experience. I think one of the biggest turning points for me was when I realized the concepts for massive services like twitter were not only understood by crazy math ph.d geniuses untouchable by the common man. It is really empowering to realize you can create real software that can actually do things people need without decades of experience under your belt. I think workshops like this and RailsGirls which have you create an actual (albeit simple) application are great for just that reason.
I was a mentor for the Ruby class and absolutely loved the experience, students of all backgrounds were so eager to learn and understand programming.
In Boston there was a python workshop for women which provided much inspiration for this Ruby one: http://bostonpythonworkshop.com/
There was a similar event some years ago also sponsored by the Berkman Center, with some TAs participating in both: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/genderandtech/2009/10/20/post-w...
And then there is the Ada Initiative, which I think is fantastic: http://adainitiative.org/
- Heather Payne (Founder, Ladies Learning Code)
Do I want better diversity in our organization? Absolutely. Have most of the women coders I've worked with been above-average? Indeed - actually, now that I think about it, women overall have been better co-workers and employees.
But targeting them directly seems strange, and like I said, patronizing/condescending. I dunno. A weird duality that maybe only exists in my mind.
In my mind, the Rooney Rule is a good policy to model after. Strict affirmative action is complicated, controversial, and... yeah, I'd feel "weird" just like you implementing hiring quotas. But an interviewing quota (or just a rough goal) seems perfectly legit.
The key is to focus on interviewing more women, not hiring more women. Do your best to get more women into the top of your hiring funnel, and you'll likely see more women come out the bottom. And you'll have a wider pool (because this'll force you to interview more candidates, total), which you'll have a better chance that whoever you hire — man or woman — will be awesome.
I actively pursued an acquaintance of mine to try and get her to work for us, as she was just graduating from a top engineering undergraduate school and was an actuary. Sadly, she took a position in NYC (understandable).
We're very strict on hiring, so we do interview many candidates for each position that opens up (we have plenty of open positions now that we can't seem to fill).
If we set an interviewing quota, it could literally take us years to hire someone for a mid-level developer position simply because we would get no applicants or no referrals from recruiters that were women. It's just how it is. Very sad.
I do think you need to start further up in your hiring funnel than the phone screen: were I in your shoes, I'd be trying to get more minorities to submit resumes in the first place. One of the problems identified by those studying diversity in tech is a self-selection bias: minorities, and women especially, seem to send out fewer resumes and less ambitious about the positions they apply to. Perhaps consider reaching out to groups like RailsBridge, Python Boston, PyLadies, Ladies Learning Code, etc., and letting them know you're hiring and want to talk to candidates from their communities? Drop me an email (and let me know where you're located) if you'd like me to try to help make you some connections.
Re-reading the above, I'm hoping it doesn't come across as critical; it's clear you're taking this very seriously, and that's awesome. Just hoping I can help more!
There's a local hackerspace that has women groups, I think. I'll start there. Thanks for the advice!
Cool initiative and I'm all for introducing more programming to everyone...but I wonder whether Rails is the best way to do it. There are many, many moving parts, least of which is the concept of MVC and then the interaction between each part of MVC...nevermind, for those who just know only HTML and CSS, the fundamentals of programming (variables, the difference between "1" and 1, loops, etc), and even how to use the command line.
I've toyed with teaching a workshop that entails: teach enough programming to turn a non-flat-file dataset (maybe a json of their tweets) into a decent visualization (by plugging into Google Charts, perhaps) and uploading a static page, with Twitter Bootstrap, onto a free hosting service, or even a blog service such as Wordpress.
But even that is a lot to teach in a day:
1. Command line and file system basics 2. Fundamentals of programming (enough to open a JSON file, parse and aggregate it on some conditions, and spit out HTML) 3. Basic HTML and DOM, including what you need to know to 4. Basic webserver/uploading stuff
Most workshops struggle with getting 3 and 4 done. #2 is not easily achievable over even several days.
I have a few apps of negligible utility that run out on Heroku, and they are no different than the apps Railsbridge participants built.
They got to make something real, and got exposed to real tools and infrastructure.