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Still no women at web conferences

kottke.org — After two visible complaints last year about the lack of women speakers at web conferences, upcoming conferences still are not doing a good job of getting women on their speaker rosters.

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  • armbar, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15Hmmm...you also need to consider that it's possible that more men are doing web design, and therefore there's a larger pool to draw from. Gender diversity sounds like a good thing, but the genders are wired differently, and you have to take that into account when doing any sort of statistics based on personal interests.

    For example, many schools try to enforce gender equality in sports...if there aren't just as many girls as boys playing, then the boys can't play. Even after essentially bribing girls to join the teams, they can't raise the numbers to equal levels. On the other hand, you don't see as many boys joining the school clubs, cheerleading, etc.

    The genders are (thankfully) different. Before we make a judgement that there aren't many women speaking, we should get statistics on percentages of men vs. women in the web development community as a whole.

    With that said, there's probably no excuse for the 0% rosters.
    • bookcat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4In general, that argument can come up for all discussions of diversity. Affirmative action for African Americans, for example: there are/were fewer African Americans educated to the level that would get them accepted to college, so it's a smaller pool.

      Nobody's asking for 50/50 equality, but rather demographic representation. I'm fine with the 25%ish conferences, but the zeroes, and the ones with a token woman or two, are less cool.

      Most importantly: the data from SXSW shows that there are at least 147 women to choose from, so get on it, organizers.
    • pwallroth, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Well put! I would reiterate your point that there are clearly more men who are geeks than women. Think of digg for example. There are definitely plenty of women who roam the site but it is undeniably and significantly more populated by men.
    • miles01110, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I wonder how many web conferences at Harvard had women speakers.
    • m3mn0n, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Yeah, I think we totally need strippers at web conferences.

      Wait, what are we talking about?
    • loup, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1There is one thing that has always bothered me about things like this. I don't think it's okay to exclude a female speaker purely based on her sex, if you look at BlogHer Business '07 you'll see all the speakers are female. I doubt you'll see anyone complaining about the all woman conference, but it's just as wrong for the exact same reasons.
    • GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2No, loup, not really. Regular confrences aren't "men only", they just happen to be men only because, statistically, more men are in the industry and more men sign up to speak. However, something called "BlogHer Buisiness '07" is obviously female only.
    • ell0bo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Hey man, welcome to the blight of being a (white?) male. You can be excluded from anything, but if you dare to exclude anyone else from anything... you are a vile womanizing sexist pig that which likes to put down the races, and spends all your time smoking cigars in the all boys club up on the hill.

      @GawtMilk... this is true, but what kind out outcry would happen if they actually went and had a guys only web conference?

      Anyone whom complains about a 25% or greater representation of females at web conferences just doesn't have anything good to complain about, nor do they see the reality in the field. I know at my work there are 2 girls out of 30 guys in the web development department. That's 6.6%, assume the average is higher, say 10%, how can you complain when you actually get above 20% which is probably double the national average.
    • loup, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3in truth, I have no problem with a female only conference, what I have a problem with is that it seems to be socially okay to have a female only conference or even events for people of specific races as long as it's not a white only thing, but if someone were to host a conference for only white males aged between 18 and 45, a large number of people would get very ***** off about it. My real problem is the double standards that our society has placed on these kinds of things.
    • GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Why should women have conferences to themselves? What good does it do? Do they have secret vagina web design techniques that guys cannot participate in? Should black people have conferences to themselves? Do they sit under sun lamps whilst talking about CSS?

      If a black person doesn't have the skills required to speak to the crowd, he shouldn't speak to the crowd. It isn't racism, it's logic.

      I could learn something from Femmy Feminist's speech, so it would make sense for me to sit in the audience. That's why I don't like female only conferences
  • climaxdesigns, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3i have been discussing the same issue with some close friends about minorities in general. being black myself i always feel as though i'm standing on an island at these conferences. To Bookcats point, it would be interesting to get some hard stats on how many non-white designers/techies/developer are out there, how many of them are doing anything of consequence and why aren't they being asked to join some of these panels.

    To be fair i have seen a large number of Indian/Asian participant, but yeah 0% women/brown people or the token one or two of a 50 to a couple hundred is not cool. (and look, before anybody tries to flame this as a race thing, its not, its just honest debate about who is doing what and being able to speak to whom)
  • melkirk, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4I think that it's about time that people started focussing on the content rather than the gender of the person speaking. The fact is that it is a mainly male dominated industry - so therefore to expect a 50/50 split for speakers I think it unrealistic. I think that it would be more harmful to put someone on stage just because they're female - we always make sure to choose industry leaders and gender doesn't even play a role in the decision.
    • ekboost, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Gonna have to agree with this statement. You can't really force them into the system. The best way to do it is more education targeted towards women in the tech field. Which should, in theory, produce more women workers. On that note, Tara Hunt did a great job at the FOWA regardless of her gender.
    • Homunculiheaded, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Go to Amazon and look up 'HTML'. All of the first set of titles that appeared (except one) are authored or co-authored by women. In an upcoming User Interface program I'm working on 2 of our 3 speakers are women, and gender played no role in our decision process, we just looked at who the big authors in the field were. Women aren't producing less work in this area then men, if they're not appearing at the big web conferences gender is playing a part in this.
  • MAdaXe42, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1You're forgetting the twingly girl at FOWA. That almost doubles the %age of women speakers.
  • ninjacell, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Summing up my experience and the experience of my colleagues, the woman rate at IT-related conferences in the west lies at 20%.
    National conferences of eastern countries, however, seem to have a much higher rate.
  • foxhaze, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Boo frickin hoo. Just get used to it.
  • booozeninja, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Maybe women just suck at the internet? Ya know? maybe its just that simple.

    Anyway what does it matter if its a man of woman on the stage giving the talk. The only way it would matter is if it was a strip show.
    the complainers need to shut the f*ck up and focus oin whats important. THE CONTENT OF THE TALKS!!!!!!!! not the genitalia of the speaker.
  • tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1My view is that as long as there's equal opportunities for everyone, then the rest happens naturally. If women have the same opportunity to speak as men, but none want to or aren't good enough as the male alternatives, then whats the problem? We need to ensure that there's no barriers to anyone doing what they want to do, but going out and hunting for people to 'fill the quota' is just stupid, in anything.
  • neoneddy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I've found women come at things from a different angle, and in web design type stuff, it's a great thing. Besides, they'd be better to look at as well during a session :-)
  • Justinsb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I'm going to this tomorrow http://podcamptoronto.pbwiki.com/ and granted it's only a web-related (podcasting) conference but alot of the presenters are going to be women.
    • booozeninja, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0so ummmm you're saying women are only good for talking? not the real work?
    • Justinsb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Erm..nope I don't think that has anything to do with what I was saying. Little more ninja, little less booze ok?
  • CannedTuna, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1would like to see similar stats for a global conference list not a US centric one.
  • allwomenstalk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Women always goes after men and much more fundamental than men. Hope project like http://allwomenstalk.com will be totally in charge.
  • najmo991, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0From experience, the woman rate at IT-related conferences is no more than 15%.. anyway since i like this article am gonna add it in all my directories: http://www.pro-directory.net http://www.promodirectory.net and http://www.qualitydirectory.net !

    Duuuged
  • netstorm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Women will only become stronger in this field. It's the same with gaming, and anything else tech related. It's not accepted for most women to be in the field, but at this point it's starting to become the norm. I mean a lot of girls are starting to build websites and become successful. There was one girl who was making over 80,000 a month off a myspace layouts site. Theres another girl building a game site who is making a lot as well. http://www.girlgames1.com
  • netstorm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Now that I think about it most women are probably just busy at home writing content. In fact I've noticed that most women just write, compared to men who procrastinate all the time. For instance this women that posted in digitalpoint made http://www.flat-stomach-exercises.info in under two weeks. I would say generally men just like to go do things, and not actually put forth the effort when it comes to building sites. I personally know more women entrepreneurs then men. Also another reason would possibly be because of the creepy guys that show up at web conferences. This will divert many women from showing up at all.
  • pizdets2u, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0I think this will change over time. We are approaching an era where gender will be irrelevant in such spots.
    Martha - http://www.flatstomachtips.com/
  • emazing, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I'm about to attend a tech conference in Washington, DC. It's more specifically about web analytics, but I know that there are a few women speakers. However, I agree in that there are often a lot less women attendees, but this seems to be trending in a positive direction. I think that the stereotypes that are normally assosciated with women are beginning to die out, especially as we start to see more and more websites made by women with large sectiosn specifically for women. For instace, http://www.gain-weight-building-muscle.com/ has a large section for women's health. Also, if your a girl and you like web games, check out http://www.girlgames1.com/
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  • Kropula, on 04/04/2008, -0/+1We need women we need more talented people!

    http://quitsmokingtoday.terapad.com/
  •  

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