I think one of the biggest concerns that conference organisizers should be worrying about (and luckily JAOO did) is that the ratio of women at the conferences does not reflect the industry – I have heard that between 5-10% is considered good, where as I believe the industry is at about 20% (unconfirmed sources). I don’t want to start of speculating at why the numbers are so low, but what I can share is why I don’t attend conferences.

Conferences are quite expensive for your employer – not only do they need to purchase entry, but accommodation, meals and transfer to and from the conference, not to mention loss of “billable” work. So, usually they can only afford to send one or two people there. I have seen two ways that these tickets are distributed. The first is that the same people always seem to go to the conference. It is noticeably remarkable how many people you see at conferences that seem to be on the “conference circuit” – they have seen each other every month, following the conferences around the world. So, unless you already are in the conference circuit, it is really hard to enter it – as there are currently 5-10% women normally at conferences, and the same people keep attending, then this number won’t change. The other way that I have seen tickets distributed is by everyone-gets-a-turn selection. Lets say the industry average is 20% – then its only fair that for every five conferences that are attended (given one ticket per conference), a company would send a female to only one of them. From that point of view, it does not seem that unbelievable to me that the number of women is low in comparison.

So, I think it is up to conference organisers to think outside the box for different ways to attract females to conferences. For this, I would like to commend the people at Trifork who organised JAOO Aarhus 2009 as they did something a little different. For every full-paying ticket that you bought for JAOO, you were entitled to a free day pass for a person of the opposite sex. This wonderful scheme saw registrations jump from a lowly 3.7% to about 14%. I think that this shows that the arguments around women not able to travel to be not necessarily the driving factor behind the low attendance, and perhaps the key lies in being selected in your company to attend. For me it is certainly true that the main reason I don’t attend conferences is that I believe that the bought tickets should be distributed fairly.

I think, however, speaking at a conference is slightly a different manner. I read today (I tried to find the source, but I can’t seem to find it again) that the difference between a would-be male speaker and a would-be female speaker is that the female thinks “I don’t know everything about [topic], I don’t think I can speak” whereas a male thinks “I know a bit about [topic], I think I will speak”. I obviously don’t know if that is true for all men/some men/no men in as much as I can’t say that it speaks for all women/majority of women. What I can say is that it certainly rings true for me.

As anyone who has known me since I was three can testify, I like public speaking. I am comfortable on a stage, talking about what I feel passionate about. As a female software dev who loves public speaking, I feel that I should be one of those who help increase the numbers – but here’s the catch. I don’t want to get up and talk just because I am a woman. If I ever present at a conference, I want it to be primarily because I have something important to say about technology and -oh yeah- I happen to be a women. But I also don’t feel that I have anything that interesting worth presenting – I don’t know as much as those guys already presenting, so what would I have to give. I don’t know if this is a female trait – I would be interested to find out if others feel like this.

If this assertion is correct (that women don’t feel that they have anything to say), perhaps the conference old-timers could help these would-be presenters in recognising material that could be presented. Another way to know if you have something valuable to say is to go and attend a few conferences yourself – see what other newbies are presenting, and see if you can do as good a job (lets face it – there is no sense in comparing yourself to a Martin Fowler or a Neal Ford – compare yourself to someone who is in the same position as you are).

So, there are the reasons why I don’t attend or present at conferences. How do we adjust this? Well, JAOO certainly has set the standard – I hope other conferences follow suit and find new and innovative ways to get women to their conferences.

The Women in IT meeting was quite fun and well attended – it seemed like it was the first time many of the people there met with others to talk about being a women in IT. I was also glad to see that this was not attended only by women – four of our ThoughtMen came along. I thought this was fantastic – how cool is it that I work for a company where the guys not only want to find out more about the problem and help where they can but are also willing to miss out on other user groups, such as the Java and Ruby groups which also met at the same time.

During the session, we had three of the conferences speakers (who were also women) form a panel to share experiences and exchange ideas. These speakers were Rachel Reinitz, Linda Rising and Rebecca Parsons. I have been to many of these sessions before, but I was entered a little skeptical and a bit jaded but I left reenergized to helping solve some of the problems.

During this discussion, I think I realised that the topic “Women in IT” was such a broad one, and there are so many issues surrounding it, that when you get a group of people to talk about it as a whole you get too many cross cutting conversations. So, I am going to attempt to list the issues that I see comprise the broader “Women in IT” ‘problem’.

• Not enough women entering maths/science/technology
• Lack of self confidence to speak up
• Lack of involvement in the community and open source projects
• Lack of women at conferences (attendees as well as speakers)
• Lack of role models
• Perceived glass ceiling and salary offsets
• Perception around women as mothers vs women as employees
• Employees don’t do right for humans
• Women are not networking as well as men are
• Treatment of women at social events/in the workplace/lack of respect for other humans
• When you try to do something positive, you get hit with people crying discrimination
• Filters women apply to situation to make them seem worse than they actually are
• Subvert harassment through jokes and conversations
• Lack of awareness with men to understand what is OK
• Women not respecting the problems other women have faced.

I hope to build out a series of posts around these points, explaining what I believe is the issue, suggestions of some solutions, and what I have seen the community do to try to help address these problems.

If you think there are parts to the problem that I have missed, tell me about them in the comments section!

The Presentation Itself

Looking at the presentation online, without having attended the conference, may exclude me from commenting fairly, but I just think “why”; as in, I don’t get it. I think that there is a tenuous link between the pictures and the slide; one which could also be made with other images. I guess I follow Ted Neward’s feelings that the same effect could of been achieved with subtle imagery, and double-entendres. 

The Audience Members

I wonder how many people in the audience thought this was inappropriate at the time. Clearly, Sarah Allen and Sarah Mei were uncomfortable. How many men in that room looked around to see how the 6 girls were reacting to it? I bet what they saw was an expression that read ‘Oh…haha….’ while really the girl’s inside voices were screaming…’*groan* no, not another god-damn picture – we get it already, you are a guy…time to move on’*. With the obvious acceptance of the girls, perhaps the rest of the audience felt the images were ok (at least at first…I think I have seen comments from people who say that the first few pictures were good and funny but the joke wore thin). I would like to think that if I was in attendance, I would have the courage to standup and declare the inappropriateness of the presentation. In reality, I know I would not. I know this for several reasons; firstly, I would actually find that too rude.

Secondly, when at conferences or at the workplace, I try not to draw attention to the fact that I am a woman. Why do I do this? Frankly, because I wanted to be seen as a damn good developer first, and I fear what thoughts some people might have, especially some of the men who fit the stereotypical profile of a single, WoW playing, don’t meet real girls unless they are an elf on WOW (who, I have come to learn are usually men playing women) guy (as irrational as it may be).

Thirdly, I know that is how I would react (ie inaction), because it is the same reaction that I give when I am sitting next to a group of developers (yes, all men) who are talking about putting their girlfriends/wives/women into their place, or commenting on the length of another woman’s legs as she walks past, or other behavior which I would associate with groups of friends at a pub. At a pub, or out with friends I am quite happy for this type of discussion to take plus, but com’on guys, let’s make the workplace gender-free, not equal, and leave our hormones at the door.

The comments along the lines of ‘this should not offend you’ or ‘I’m and Rrated person – deal with it’

Quite frankly, I was not surprised. This is the same type of comments that I get whenever I mention the whole women-in-IT thing. It’s also why I try to not to post too many entries on the subject matter (obviously sometimes I feel the need to speak out about the latest injustice)

The comments along the lines of ‘this is bad. How about we all grow up’

Wow. Every time I read a comment like that, it negated any bad feeling I got from the other type of comments. It is great knowing that there are a large number of people out there, people of influence especially, who are on ‘your side’. When people like Martin Fowler speak out about the Smut in Rails, it really makes you feel like you are on the right side. At Thoughtworks, we had an internal discussion on a mailing list about this, and I was just waiting for someone to say ‘hey, its not so bad’, but still I can’t believe that everyone I talk to about this strongly believes that this is inappropriate. So, thankyou for all who believe in this, and especially thankyou for all those people in a position in power who not only believe in it but also speak out about it.

In Summary

Was I offended by the presentation? I don’t know; I wasn’t there, so I don’t feel that I can really comment.

Was I offended by the reactions and the aftermath? Yeah, I was, although I was not surprised.

Would I want to get in my DeLorean and stop Matt from doing the presentation? Hell-to-the-no. I think that we should embrace this storm and let it be a catalyst to changing our minds, our behavior and our industry.

 
[Update - I corrected a few places where I used the wrong version of woman/women; also fixed grown into groan - Thanks Simon]
*[Note - reading back on this, I feel like I have read it somewhere before on someone elses blog/in a comment. Sorry if I have, but this is still a valid point].

In order to address this problem, and also to celebrate the work that women are doing in IT, some smart cookie has come up with the idea of  Ada Lovelace Day, which happens to be today, March 24.

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

In honor of today, I thought I might give a shout-out to a few of the groovy chick developers that I work with at ThoughtWorks, so happy Ada Lovelace Day Julie Yauches, Elly Gandy, Liz Keogh, Navya Reddy, Isabella Degen and Chrysovalanto (Val) Kousettii.

I find that a few people still have to be convinced that it is a good thing for women to be in technology. Why should we actively seek to improve the number of women in technology? Various people have answers which a supported by research and their findings, like Innovation is enabled best in teams which are 50:50 [1] and the fact that there is no difference in the abilities between males and females except for certain physical tasks like throwing a ball. But these are not my reasons why we should strive to get equal numbers of women and men in technology (although, they do help to convince those out there who say there is no problem).

Want to know my number one answer to why the number of men and women should be equal?

Why not. 

Unfortunately, not everyone likes the idea of actively recruiting more women. The most common outcry that I hear to that statement is “we want hire good people, not just hire someone because they are a women”. I am quite amazed at the number of times this statement arises. However, I agree with it. I don’t want women in my organisation just because they are female. But do these nay-sayers really believe that we would hire any just girl off the street without regard to their qualifications.

Increasing the number of women recruited is not about hiring any women who acts for a job; nor is it about discounting a potential hire because they are male. It’s about finding new ways to reach out to the technologists so the target audience has a higher percentage of women.

My final imparting note, for now, is to look around your workplace and answer these 3 small questions.

How many women do you work with?

Do you think that it’s acceptable?

What are you going to do about it?

If this is not just because I am the target audience (and no one else thinks its fairly obvious), I think I am a bit offended by it. Why mask these improvements behind a drive to attract more women. Why not adopt these “relatively simple changes” to benefit all contributors, regardless of their gender.

What do you think – obvious improvements or women-centric?