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Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment mattersAurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment mattersPosted Aug 15, 2012 19:21 UTC (Wed) by aliguori (subscriber, #30636)In reply to: Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters by slashdot Parent article: Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters
I think there's two separate problems. One is that a very small percentage of people are rude/socially awkward. Unfortunately, in a conference of 1,000 people, if .5% of people can cause a lot of trouble. If the number of women is only 1%, then chances are every woman is going to have some amount of trouble due to that .5%.
I can absolutely confirm that this does happen with a regularity that is honestly appauling. There are many more woman who don't speak out for everyone one like Val who does. It's definitely a problem.
The second problem is something of an institutional bias against women in our industry/community. My wife joined me at a conference just a week ago. She's not only a Linux user but also works as a software engineer. She was repeatedly asked if she was in HR or marketing which she found quite offensive.
No one meant to be offensive in asking a question like that. Quite the contrary, people are trying to be friendly by creating small talk. But being asked questions like that can be very offensive if you already feel out of place because you're one of a handful of people that share your gender.
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Too few women, too many men Posted Aug 16, 2012 9:56 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
Treat it the same as nightclubs. No single males admitted, you have to come with a female friend. If you don't have any female friends, well, that may be an indicator that you don't have enough social skills to attend a conference (or perhaps, that you should spend some time getting female friends rather than wasting it on computer stuff). Invited speakers and sponsors could be exempted from this requirement. Then the sex ratio will be close to 50-50 and the whole atmosphere will be quite different.
I have to admit that it could be hard to find enough women interested in kernel memory management. So the content of conferences might have to change a little bit to attract a better balance of the sexes.
Failing that just have separate conferences for men and women.
Too few women, too many men Posted Aug 16, 2012 11:14 UTC (Thu) by BlueLightning (subscriber, #38978) [Link]
Or we could all just agree to behave ourselves at conferences. Why is that so hard?
Too few women, too many men Posted Aug 16, 2012 17:00 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
What about spouses who are not interested in IT? What about gay people?
Too few women, too many men Posted Aug 16, 2012 20:42 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
It doesn't have to be your wife, just a female friend. Gay people (of either sex) have those too.
Too few women, too many men Posted Aug 16, 2012 20:49 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] I have female friends. I have enough respect for them that if they wouldn't go to a given technical conference on the basis of its direct interest to them, I wouldn't ask them to be my admission pass.
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