An open letter to Laura Kalbag, a woman who wants to be a token speaker.(blog.chrisleydon.com) |
An open letter to Laura Kalbag, a woman who wants to be a token speaker.(blog.chrisleydon.com) |
But females aren't underrepresented due to rampant sexism, there are fewer women at tech conferences because there are fewer women in tech period. Creating a preference/quota system (i.e. affirmative action) that tries to correct a imbalance due to lack of participation will only serve to further stigmatize and reinforce whatever negative attitudes exist about the group supposedly being helped. It may not intend to create tokens out of them but it does none the less. Although it does seem to make proponents of said system feel better about themselves which many will claim is its actual purpose.
Do you not think that there are fewer women in tech because of rampant sexism?
1: And by "because" I mean actual causation: the minority status of the speaker held significant weight in the decision.
* @laurakalbag previously spoke at @leydon's tech meet-up.
* She was involved in a twitter debate regarding gender equality in tech.
* @leydon chipped in with a comment meant in jest: https://twitter.com/leydon/status/294450249567711232
* @laurakalbag took offence and a twitter fight ensued.
For context, @leydon is an openly gay male who runs a small tech meet-up group that has had a large percentage of female speakers in the past.
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It's time to face the fact that conferences are becoming antiquated by technology.
EDIT: Judging by the replies, apparently people think conferences are local get-togethers? The point of a conference used to be about exchanging ideas with people outside the neighborhood. It would roll in airline, hotel, $100s for attendence fees (because the venues are large and require organizers.)
Basically, these things turned into junkets in exotic locations. And then many companies decided they are no longer necessary in the age of the web.
What then is left?
So you can choose to quote your 50 euros and say that it's a conference, or you can examine how much money the "attendees from all over the world" paid in travel and hotel paid in and note that their money is now being substituted by the web.
Your call.
Much cheaper than an expensive conference.
Until technology can replicate that, I think conferences won't go away.
Holy moly, travel and hotels have gotten very cheap in Europe.
Do you get to see unconscious[1] biases that cause women not to be hired; to be paid less than men for the same work; to be not promoted?
[1] At best.
In my time I've advertised over a hundred dev vacancies. I can honestly count on one hand the number of female applicants that applied.