Jason Kottke has kicked the ant hill over again. After reading criticism over the gender imbalance in the list of speakers at two recent conferences, he did some research on the numbers for other recent and upcoming conferences. The numbers vary drastically, as do the events, but still, none achieve parity. (Though one, BlogHer, makes it all the way to 100% female presenters.)
Yes, I find this upsetting and frustrating. But I know that the organizers of the conferences I attend are making efforts to achieve a greater balance and I appreciate that. Would I stay away from a conference or event that wasn’t trying to achieve gender balance? No way! In the spirit of Bryn Mawr, I would go and be my brilliant female self and intimidate the men. And if I found the conference to be valuable and enjoyable, I’d try to engage the organizers in a conversation about including more women, and I’d haul along more people (both women and men) to try to change the culture, bit by bit.
That’s about all I was going to say on this matter… until some other comments on the topic came up. Interestingly, out of the blogs I follow, only one woman has commented on the topic so far. Meanwhile, two men whose blogs I follow have also commented, and it is to their posts that I feel the need to reply.
First, to Eric Meyer. He’s made himself loud and clear that, in planning a conference, diversity isn’t important, but things like marketability are. My question to him is: How does one become marketable if one isn’t given an opportunity to participate in the first place? I know that we all like to think that this blogosphere thing is an equalizer and puts men and women on a level playing field, but let’s be honest: it doesn’t. It may give everyone a voice, but not everyone is listening. Not everyone is in the “inner circle”, and it seems like the only way in is to do something groundbreaking. Unfortunately this leaves out all of the folks working very hard, day in and day out, who still have valuable experience and knowledge to contribute.
This somewhat brings me to his concern of “brand appropriateness”. I’m not entirely sure what he means, but I’m betting it has something to do with getting people who work for “big name” companies and organizations. AOL, the company that both Eric and I used to work for, is a pretty big brand. Yet the standards-compliant redesign of AOL.COM in 2004, which was built by two women (Annette Graber and me), and the mega-huge standards-compliant redesign in 2005, which enabled the opening-up of nearly all AOL content to the Web, the front-end for which was architected, managed, and about nearly 100% built by two women (Kate Chipman and me), went largely unnoticed. Why, because it was AOL? Or because the only people who were talking about it were the women involved in it? I know the answer isn’t a simple one, but the issue of gender when it comes to recognizing technical achievement is one I could analyze for a long time….
But to get back to Eric’s post, my final comment to him is this: You’re a recognized leader in a field that’s out to create change on a massive scale. Knowing what it takes to create such change, I can’t believe that you would say that it’s not important to have diversity in a group of speakers at an event which promotes and provides training around the change you want to realize! Diversity on stage is the key to including and engaging the broadest possible audience. Yes, women may attend AEA, but how many more attend when you have women presenting? How many more would attend if the number of female speakers increased? How much change would that then create in the industry?
And sure, if you want to be crass about it, how much more money would that make you?
So, enough with Eric. I’m disappointed that he’s pandering to an audience instead of enlightening them, but I’m not brandishing a pitchfork. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion and I’m glad he’s made his known. Though, to be equally honest, it will affect decisions I make about attending AEA in the future.
Now, onto Tantek’s question to those who are waiting for invites to speak somewhere: “Why are you being so passive?”
Passive, me? In the past year, I’ve submitted proposals to all of the conferences I’ve planned to attend and I’ve contacted individuals who are planning various events that don’t seek proposals to express my interested in participating. But that’s about all I have time to do. After all of that proposal-writing and networking (and don’t forget the day job and volunteering in between!), if you’re not accepted or invited then it’s not because you didn’t try.
Tantek also asked why we accept having this conversation of diversity with specific criteria, like gender. I’d say the simple answer there is that you need some context in which to start the conversation. But I agree with your sentiment, that there has to be more to the discussion. I know that gender mix alone does not diversity make — and keep in mind, I attended Bryn Mawr, a women’s liberal arts college with an excellent track record in socio-economic diversity and a good-and-continually-improving one in racial diversity, where there’s even a club for “lesbian left-handed eskimo midget albinos”! (Just kidding, that was a Dead Milkmen joke. But at Bryn Mawr, it could happen.)
To wrap up this post (my longest ever), let me say that along the path to achieving equality and diversity, I think some segregation is good. Let those who don’t want to include women do their own thing. The women have started to organize and are kicking off their own initiatives, like BlogHer and Women2.0. If you don’t know the names of many prominent women now, I’m very sure that, as time progresses, you will…
11 comments
Eric Meyer stopped by on February 24, 2007 at 10:17 AM EST and had this to say:
Kimberly, thanks for the thoughts.
“How does one become marketable if one isn’t given an opportunity to participate in the first place?”
The way to become known is to create and publish. Blogging, mailing lists, newsgroups—that is how anyone comes to be widely known in our field. In the past, it usually took writing a book, but that’s no longer necessary. There are several highly respected names in the field who’ve never done a book, and that’s actually very cool.
I think the AOL redesign went largely uncommented because it was AOL; and because it was a bit later to the party than some of the “groundbreaking” redesigns. I remember linking to it when it happened, and might have blogged about it as well. I seem to recall Microsoft’s standards-oriented home page redesign was around the same time, and it didn’t get a lot of notice either.
In neither case did I register the genders of the people responsible. For that matter, I have no idea if men or women were responsible for most of the redesigns I’ve commented on in the past. I think most people probably are the same. Lack of notice does not equate discrimination. It just means the community’s attention wasn’t captured for whatever reason. I can’t explain why a goodly chunk of the things I’ve done have gone unnoticed, nor why other things I’ve done have become widely known. Maybe people didn’t notice those other things because they’re biased against redheads.
As for why people noticed me at all to begin with, it’s because I created a lot of stuff that I published for free, and then wrote a book. It’s essentially the same career path Molly Holzschlag took, if I’m not mistaken.
“Knowing what it takes to create such change, I can’t believe that you would say that it’s not important to have diversity in a group of speakers at an event which promotes and provides training around the change you want to realize!”
What I said was that it’s important to have the best speakers. Period. If the best speakers are all men, then they’re all men. If they’re 50/50 men and women, then they’re 50/50 men and women. If they’re all women, they’re all women. That is what I said.
Interesting that you think I’m pandering. How exactly is being honest and explaining my essential blindness to external distinctions pandering? And to be further honest, it disturbs me that your post ends by turning to an acceptance of discrimination, which is exactly the opposite of what I’m talking about.
steph stopped by on February 24, 2007 at 12:03 PM EST and had this to say:
I can’t seem to comment on Tantek’s post, so here’s a kind of an extended comment on the matter.
Quoting Kimmie’s analysis: “Tantek also asked why we accept having this conversation of diversity with specific criteria, like gender.”
The thing is, whatever race you are, whatever culture you come from, whatever country you were born and grew up in - you have men, and you have women. It’s the first primary division even before you think about other physical factors. That gender bias becomes the most prominent issue should not come as a surprise.
All through out history, there have been many examples where women are never given the same credit as men for having achieved the same thing. Little wonder it still happens today - the unconscious ideas that we have buried in our cultures still show the female of the species to be, on the whole, the “lesser” - the less intelligent, the less capable. To be blatant: the more sexually attractive you are, the less smart you must be :) It follows on that if women remain women (as in we don’t imitate men and make ourselves sexless), we mustn’t quite ever be on the same footing as men, therefore achieving the same kind of recognition or acknowledgment.
The issue is greater than whether there are enough women at tech conferences or not, whether there are enough women in tech or not.
I mean, we were once thought to be less intelligent because it was thought we had less teeth.
Elisa Camahort stopped by on February 24, 2007 at 5:22 PM EST and had this to say:
Great post. You might also want to check out Snappy the Clam’s post on this same brouhaha:
http://www.snappytheclam.com/archives/000893.html
Over at Just Shelley » Progress on February 25, 2007 at 12:08 PM EST, someone said:
[...] Regarding the dialog about women and conferences, I wanted to thank folks for commenting here on my posts and elsewhere. I appreciate the effort makes when she goes to conferences to seek out organizers to help diversify their events. I especially want to point out Dave Shea's post on his own conference organizing efforts. Specifically (and I hope he doesn't mind me taking such a large quote): [...]
john allsopp stopped by on February 25, 2007 at 5:30 PM EST and had this to say:
Amen Steff!
john
Kevin stopped by on February 25, 2007 at 8:21 PM EST and had this to say:
I think the way to get found is to start proposing and leading discussions at unconferences like Mashup Camp, BaseCamp, etc. Join conversations (just like you’re doing with this one), and I think Eric makes a good point - publish. I’m in the same position you are: not enough time, too many good intentions and lots of responsibilities. You need someone at work who can help do the grunt work of conference stuff - get PayPal to sponsor conferences, and then you’ll have more speaking opportunities than you can shake a stick at.
Kimberly replied on February 26, 2007 at 12:33 PM:
@Eric Meyer:
I agree that it’s important to have the best speakers, but the best speakers aren’t all men. Now that you’ve clarified your point to mean “gender blind”, I’m less shocked, but I guess part of me still can’t understand the results of the gender mix at your conferences.
There are many well-qualified, well-spoken female developers and designers out there. Their barriers to entry may be that they don’t publish enough, or participate enough in the fora that attract the A-listers, and thus they’re not known.
They also may not yet have the confidence to put themselves out there and write proposals or suggest themselves for things like writing, editing, or speaking. I have Tantek to thank for first pulling me up on stage, after all.
I wasn’t suggesting discrimination at the end of my post, I was suggesting an all or mostly female environment where women could more safely express themselves, and experiment with speaking on stage about their work and about standards. Such an environment (a conference, camp, G2G, etc.) may empower those that are teetering on the edge of participating of co-ed events, and get them to jump in.
I can’t get you in to Bryn Mawr to understand this effect, but I could get you into the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference. I can tell you the stories of women who’ve attended that one, mostly-female conference, and how it changed their lives. (I know because I’m one of them.)
So gender-blind, good. Empowerment, good. A-list that’s still predominantly male, bad. And if you’re only looking at A-listers then you’ll get mostly men. Bad.
Kimberly replied on February 26, 2007 at 12:38 PM:
@Kevin: I wasn’t referring to myself for speaking opportunities — I actually have enough on my hands right now! But I know of others that use the same tactics that I use and don’t yield quite the same results… and most of those folks are self-employed, so they don’t have the ability to ask The Man for help. (PayPal isn’t The Man as much as AOL was. ;))
Over at Carsonified! » Blog Archive » Diversity - The real issues and what we’re doing about it on February 26, 2007 at 4:31 PM EST, someone said:
[...] (This is a response to the following posts: Jason Kottke, Anil Dash, Eric Meyer, Tantek Celik, Dori Smith, Shelley Powers, Kim Blessing and Virginia DeBolt) [...]
Over at ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon » Diversity and the Web2Open on April 8, 2007 at 6:36 PM EST, someone said:
[...] The reason that I’m pushing on this at the moment is because I want to highlight that, in light of the myriad of conversations about diversity that are recurring, we are actually trying a little experiment for the Web2Open… [...]
Over at Null is Love » Blog Archive » Where are all the women? on June 19, 2007 at 12:55 PM EST, someone said:
[...] A few months ago, I followed with interest a thread started by Jascon Kottke about the poor ratio of female to male speakers at web conferences. Later posts on this thread are here, here, here, here and here. (There were many others…) [...]