Mentoring and diversity for Python [LWN.net]

By Jake Edge
June 20, 2018

A two-part session at the 2018 Python Language Summit tackled the core developer diversity problem from two different angles. Victor Stinner outlined some work he has been doing to mentor new developers on their path toward joining the core development ranks; he has also been trying to document that path. Mariatta Wijaya gave a very personal talk that described the diversity problem while also providing some concrete action items that the project and individuals could take to help make Python more welcoming to minorities.

Mentoring

Stinner said he has been spending time trying to get more people involved in the Python project. There is a bottleneck in the review process; more developers would help with that. In addition, more people involved means that there are more diverse viewpoints, which leads to better review since different reviewers spot different kinds of problems.

He has been unable to identify a clear path from being a contributor to becoming a core developer. It is an unclear and unwritten process that he is now trying to document. Becoming a core developer is not really a goal itself, he said, there are lots of ways to contribute without being a core developer.

There are multiple stages along the path: newcomer, contributor, mentoree, and core developer. He added mentoree and tried to write down the requirements for the next stage. He also tried to document the responsibilities of a core developer; for example, if a core developer merges some code, they are responsible for that code for the next ten years. He also formalized the role for bug triage, which can be a step on the road as well.

Stinner recently mentored three contributors over a two-month period. He was surprised that many of the questions he got asked were not related to the code, but were more about the process. Things like who to ask to review code or how to use Git were the kinds of questions he fielded. He also found that "people are shy", they do not want to ask questions, even on the core-mentorship mailing list, which is not publicly archived.

In practice, the topics he needed to teach his mentorees were things like how to write a good pull request, how to add good tests, and adding entries to the NEWS file. The most efficient tool to get more developers is to get more people mentoring, Stinner said. That is why he stopped writing code for a bit to focus on mentoring; he hopes others will do the same.

Kushal Das pointed out that CPython did not get into the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program because of a lack of good mentors. Stinner said that GSoC takes a bigger time commitment than mentoring; he would generally just need to answer a few emails a week for his mentorees. Das agreed with that, noting that GSoC can sometimes take 10-15 hours per week.

Stinner wondered if his document should become a PEP or be handled in some other way. Nick Coghlan suggested it be turned into a pull request for the Python Developer's Guide and "let that decide whether it should be a PEP". Guido van Rossum said that he could see it is a PEP written from the perspective of mentors, but not just something with a bunch of check boxes.

There is definitely a problem with a checklist approach, Ned Deily said. There are a "fair number of intangibles" that go along with being a core developer: how well they work with the group and if they understand and accept the history of the project, its processes, and so on. Stinner said the document does not have items like "fix five bugs" or "get ten commits accepted". The criteria really depends on the kind of work that is being done and Python has a need for many different types of contributors.

Diversity

Wijaya started out by saying that she had been asked to give this talk; it is not something she would necessarily choose on her own because the topic is a trigger for her. She said she would try to control her emotions but that the presentation might be uncomfortable for attendees.

She had a list of facts about Python development that she said should make people uncomfortable. From February 2017 to April 2018, there were 848 contributors to Python on GitHub—of those, less than ten were women. That is not a percentage, but a raw number. It took a month after the switch to GitHub before a woman contributed.

In the last 12 months of posts to the python-dev mailing list, there are less than five women actively participating. There are more who are watching, she said, but who do not get involved. When she first started participating in the mailing list, she thought she was the only woman. Of the 168 committers for Python, only two are women. Both of those women were added in 2017. "This is wrong", Wijaya said. The project should not accept this situation.

She had some requests for the attendees as well. Please acknowledge that the lack of diversity is a real problem, she said. In addition, it is not her problem, it is a problem for everyone in the Python community. Those who cannot see the problem are actually part of the problem.

Attendees should not expect her to solve the problem for them, or to repeatedly explain it. There are resources available to educate everyone about the problem. "Don't ever tell me you don't see a problem", she admonished.

She listed some educational resources, including using Google ("really!") with keywords like "diversity in tech" or "open source diversity". She also suggested viewing the documentary CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap. In addition, follow women and people of color on Twitter, she said, as well as @betterallies. The project could also get professional advice. Two people that she knows who may be able to help are Sage Sharp and Ashe Dryden. Their jobs are to help organizations do better at diversity.

She made some specific suggestions of action items for the project. A better code of conduct is needed because there is no enforcement information in it. Who will handle complaints and how? Several good examples can be found, including the codes of conduct for Django, Write the Docs, and the PyCascades conference. PyCon 2018 also has a code of conduct with an enforcement manual, which is the first time the conference has added that piece.

She noted that Stinner had said people are shy, but she had a somewhat different take. Public spaces are not always seen as safe spaces for minorities. So, she suggested that Python developers be available privately. Van Rossum has been mentoring Wijaya and others, she said, separate from the core-mentorship mailing list. Don't expect minorities to post there and instead explicitly provide office hours or other ways for those folks to get their questions answered.

Give minorities opportunities to contribute, she said; pay attention when they are creating pull requests and review them. Actively seek out minorities and invite them to participate. Another possibility is to pair up with someone on something you are working on, she said.

Her last piece of advice was to "be a minority". She suggested attending a PyLadies event alone to just listen. A blog post about a man's visit to PyLadies London is worth reading; his worries about being in the minority echo what she and other minorities often feel.

Brett Cannon replayed some of the action items he heard: the code of conduct needs to be more clear and to include an enforcement manual. Thomas Wouters noted that the Python Software Foundation (PSF) is working on an update to its code of conduct that could be useful. Christian Heimes suggested adding photos of the enforcement people as well as multiple different contact options for them.

Das said that some are scared to ask questions in public spaces, so office hours can really help. Video calls can also be useful for those who are willing to do that. For most, text is probably easier, but any private communication mechanism is workable. Wouters said that predictable hours where one is available to talk or answer questions is the most important part. Van Rossum agreed, saying that there are people who want to ask questions but don't want to do so on python-dev with 20,000 readers.

Stinner wondered if a new mailing list to discuss diversity topics would be useful; there was one earlier, but it closed down due to lack of traffic. Coghlan said that a mentoring special interest group (SIG) might be good. Being a good mentor is a skill in its own right, he said.

Brian Curtin suggested that active outreach is a good way to increase diversity. He noted that after a PyCon that had only a single woman speaker, the two PyCons in Santa Clara, California specifically sought out more women speakers by talking to PyLadies groups and others. That was quite successful to increase the number of women speakers at the conference.

The conferences outside of the US and Europe are a different story, Das said. He has seen PyLadies looked down on at conferences outside those regions "again and again". The women's groups are trying hard to bring in more women to the project, but they get no support from the conferences or attendees, he said.

Heimes said that when developers are asked to speak at conferences they should ask if there is a code of conduct and diversity program. If there isn't, guide them to the PSF for examples. Van Lindberg said that anything funded by the PSF must have a code of conduct, though he acknowledged there are no rules about what must be in it; the PSF does provide examples, however. One attendee said that a conference had added a code of conduct after he asked. The conference is not sponsored by the PSF, but is now talking about adding a diversity program. Potential speakers can use that as leverage to help influence conferences to get on board.

Steve Dower asked about finding people to mentor; he has helped his colleagues at work, but how can others be found? Das said that new people with pull requests who are looking for review are good candidates. Adding some information to the Developer's Guide or as a new PEP would also raise the visibility of mentoring opportunities.

A technical walkthrough of some part of the interpreter or standard library is quite useful to those who are new to the code, Carol Willing said. Making sure that the presentation is recorded for others will help increase its reach. The move to GitHub has been a great move forward in making it easier for new people to get involved. But Python is fighting an uphill battle, she said, talented women can have their pick of open-source projects to join.

Dower suggested that perhaps speaking at a PyLadies meetup to do a review of some part of CPython might be a way to combine two of the suggestions from the session. As part of that, the speaker could make it clear that they are willing to mentor anyone who is interested. Eric Snow noted that simply introducing yourself to everyone you run into at PyCon is a good starting point; telling those with an interest about the core-mentorship list and that you are willing to be a mentor will help get the word out as well.

Index entries for this article
Conference	Python Language Summit/2018
Python	Community

to post comments

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 21, 2018 7:54 UTC (Thu) by raegis (subscriber, #19594) [Link] (14 responses)

A quote from one of the provided links (emphasis added): "CODE documentary exposes the dearth of American female and minority software engineers and explores the reasons for this gender gap."

Notice how the writer forgets he or she mentioned "minority" by the end of the sentence. There is a lot of talk about diversity for "women and minorities" when people really mean just women. This meaningless "minority" name- dropping is everywhere, and getting sort of tiring. (I'm an African-American male, by the way.)

Aggressively recruiting women is awesome. Pretending to recruit "minorites" when you're just really concerned about female representation masks a different problem which requires different outreach. Note that I have no problem with women recruiting women only, and I strongly encourage it. I'm just suggesting more honest language, so that organizations which promote diversity do not overlook non-female "minorities".

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 21, 2018 11:46 UTC (Thu) by vstinner (subscriber, #42675) [Link] (12 responses)

Currently in CPython, some core developers are trying to mentor more women than men (positive action). There is no clear path how to increase diversity in term of minorities. On GitHub or by emails, it's not always easy to guess if the author of a PR/email is a woman or part of a minority.

Right now, CPython has 2 woman core developers for a total of 171 core developers... or 90 if you only count core devs who are on GitHub... or 34 if you only count core developers working on pull requests (review/merge). We are discussing to move "inactive" core developers in a new "emeritus core devs" list to better track the current number of "active" core developers.

By the way, my notes about CPython core developers (especially how to get more of them!): http://pythondev.readthedocs.io/core_devs.html

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 21, 2018 18:51 UTC (Thu) by Ranguvar (subscriber, #56734) [Link] (11 responses)

> On GitHub or by emails, it's not always easy to guess if the author of a PR/email is a woman or part of a minority.

Perhaps that is how it should be? So everyone is treated equally?

I see merit to introducing more developers who think differently into a project.
There are downsides as well though, so any top-down approach should be careful.

I don't see any benefits towards selecting for specific race, sex, gender, or skin color, however.
In fact, we should be moving **away** from doing so, and towards concentrating on ideas.

> "This is wrong", Wijaya said.

The differences between the career and hobby choices men and women make _increase_ with greater choice, they don't decrease.
The research on that is quite clear, but here is one specific example.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-m...
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617741719

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 22, 2018 22:42 UTC (Fri) by rwm (guest, #104883) [Link] (6 responses)

I sometimes lament how the Internet has panned out. Profile pictures abound, they add no value when browsing a Github repo. Real names everywhere, in Facebook, Linkedin, along with your personal and professional life stories.

I had hoped we'd move to being increasingly anonymous, devoid of skin color, gender, existing in communities where "...nobody knows you're a dog". I wanted hiring to be the same. I wanted judgement based on patchset, not identity intersection.

But instead we seem to be going in the opposite direction, everyone's talking about gender and skin color, and how we can get more of some genders and colors into ${project|company}.

A well meaning re-architecture of society is being attempted at the moment, but it is one that frequently confounds equal opportunity with equal outcome. I'm not going to say they're right or wrong, but we do have to be very careful - for the tools being employed to bring about systematic change and fighting the alleged gender and racial discrimination are frequently themselves gender and racially discriminating.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 23, 2018 4:54 UTC (Sat) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (3 responses)

I understand your position but if you think logically about how the ethics of this approach work in practice you will find that people are not, have never been, and probably will not ever be truly color-blind, so members of the dominant social group, in this case white hetero males, can freely choose to be anonymous or use their real names and faces without any particular repercussions but members of non-dominant groups are basically required to be anonymous to be treated fairly, deny the basic truth of who they are and how they live their lives, for the comfort of those who would treat them poorly. One would need to maintain near-Intelligence-mole levels of opsec to stay anonymous, because most people work on teams, go to conferences, engage in team building (see LinuxCon, etc.) where they could never truly hide these basic facts about themselves so even if you could maintain that kind of anonymity you would always be at a disadvantage to those people with a more conventional reputation, given an equivalent skill level, so this doesn't actually solve the negative effects of racism and sexism, in and out-group discrimination, in practice.

In practice what works is to make note of when someone is in one or more protected categories, that have been demonstrated to experience discrimination, and take conscious deliberate (one might say affirmative) effort to undo the effects, by rolling out the welcome mat through mentoring programs to generate a pipeline of qualified people and then when it's time to include more people on the team deliberately choosing from the pool of qualified candidates the one who increases the diversity of the team.

As more people get used to working closely with peers who are different then themselves in these fundamental ways, then the base level of racism and sexism will lower and there will be no advantage in hiding your identity. Its never the person who is discriminated against's job to "fix" the discrimination, it is the responsibility of the moral agent who is choosing to discriminate, rather than discipline their negative tendencies, to learn to be better people. Hiding all the non-dominant people just makes that harder, there is no easy fix.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jul 2, 2018 6:06 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

> you will find that people are not, have never been, and probably will not ever be truly color-blind, so members of the dominant social group, in this case white hetero males, can freely choose to be anonymous or use their real names and faces without any particular repercussions but members of non-dominant groups are basically required to be anonymous to be treated fairly, deny the basic truth of who they are and how they live their lives, for the comfort of those who would treat them poorly.

How true.

The recruiters need to confront their own prejudices (which means they need to be allowed to talk about it!!!), and then the only questions that should be asked are "Can this person do the job? Will they add value to the team?".

To give a couple of examples when I was recruiting, we had a far-Eastern guy apply. Can't remember whether he was white expat or Chinese, what I do remember is he was brilliant but the reaction of everybody on the recruitment board was "yes, he's technically the best candidate we've had, but do we really want to work with him?!". For a different job, we had a black guy turn up, but as I put it, he was "English first, black second", a very nice guy and he got the job. Compare that with a black lad I was at school with - "nobody likes me because I'm black". No - nobody likes you because you keep playing the race card.

The problem with being a member of the minority is that if your face doesn't fit, it doesn't help you get the job. Quite how you square that circle I don't know, but if you can do your first-round selection on technical merit, and your second-round on added-value (bearing in mind that diversity is almost always a value-add!) then hopefully things will improve. Except that this will probably then bring on claims that you are discriminating against the majority! :-(

Cheers,
Wol

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jul 2, 2018 10:40 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

The other "exciting" part of the problem is the presence of a minority of genuine bigots who know how to disguise their bigotry as real concerns about someone's ability to add value to the team. So, you get an awesome candidate who seems perfect to all but one team member, who then raises concerns like "will this candidate be a team player? Will they be able to cope with the workload we face?" meaning "I want to sow doubt about this person's ability, because if we hire them, I'll have to hide my distaste for the targets of my bigotry".

And this is deeply difficult because it's carefully disguised to be exactly the same as a non-bigot raising real concerns; distinguishing bigotry, ignorance[1] and real issues is a challenge that I don't think anyone has a solution to.

[1] Ignorance in this sense being a complete lack of knowledge, such that you raise concerns that can be addressed by educating you - e.g. someone being concerned that a candidate with a First from the University of Cambridge is perhaps underqualified compared to someone with a degree from Harvard.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jul 2, 2018 12:04 UTC (Mon) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link]

> Compare that with a black lad I was at school with - "nobody likes me because I'm black". No - nobody likes you because you keep playing the race card.

Living in Europe at "the wrong end of the minority stick", I have sympathy for that kid at your school.

It can be tough to drop or ignore the subject of race/origin/background ("race card") when it is *constantly* brought back to you. I think part of the trouble is that people not "at the wrong end of it" don't get how often one gets that card waved at you.

FWIW Ever thought at how bad teenagers are at regulating emotions and dealing well with conflict? How well do you think *you* would have dealt with racism at school age had it been towards you? Not just one aggression but all the years of it.

[....]

/me recently visiting the office where most of my team works:

Coworker: "Don't be too sensitive. It was just a joke."
Me: "I've heard that same 'joke' four times today."

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 23, 2018 8:18 UTC (Sat) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

The thing is, the Internet has shown us what kind of communities we get when everyone is anonymous: 4chan.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 23, 2018 14:20 UTC (Sat) by rweikusat2 (subscriber, #117920) [Link]

Realistically, "nobody knows you're a dog" means "everybody assumes you must be a dog".

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 23, 2018 18:04 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

That Atlantic article was very interesting. Thanks for the link.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 27, 2018 13:23 UTC (Wed) by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604) [Link] (2 responses)

I wonder if there is true merit in having a lot of people who "think differently" in a single project. It sounds like a source of conflict more than a source of more quality contributions (which should be the goal).

It's also interesting how often people underestimate the diversity of open source projects, by virtue of being open you'll usually have a lot of people from different backgrounds contributing. Of course this is usually limited to English speaking people with sufficient economic resources / free time to contribute.

Pointing out that certain groups are under-represented usually comes with an implied allegation of sexism, racism or another -ism. I think there should be some burden of proof for that.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 27, 2018 15:10 UTC (Wed) by misc (subscriber, #73730) [Link] (1 responses)

I do not understand, you are the one suggesting there is something implied, shouldn't the burden of proof regarding the implied allegation be on you ? As otherwise, it would seems that you are making stuff nobody said, and then asking to prove while no one said anything. That sound really weird and I do not get the logic.

Also, yeah, that is really interesting how people misunderstand numbers and several studies regarding diversity instead of seeing how different are people from West coast and East coast, indeed.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 27, 2018 16:01 UTC (Wed) by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604) [Link]

To give one example, people often say that a different CoC (code of conduct) is needed (it says so in the article), saying that the CoC adopted by the PSF is insufficient while the CoC of Pycon is better. The Pycon CoC lists a lot of "unacceptable behaviors". To me it follows if you need to spell out what is unacceptable or inappropriate these things are alleged to happen on a regular basis and a new CoC is needed to purge these destructive elements - the latter being conjecture on my part, perhaps there is a more innocent explanation and I'm being hypocritical here.

> Also, yeah, that is really interesting how people misunderstand numbers and several studies regarding diversity instead of seeing how different are people from West coast and East coast, indeed.

To which continent/country are you referring? Assuming you're thinking of the United States, you're kinda making my point for me since some US Americans often have somewhat warped views on that topic (categorizing people by somewhat arbitrary races). Of course when you look at a community that predominately communicates in English you'll find a lot of "white" people, it's an easy categorization to make but far too broad to assess a whole group.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 22, 2018 17:16 UTC (Fri) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

Maybe I'm emblematic of this problem.

I tend to think that "obviously" we should be able to have female participation with comparable numbers to male numbers, and that the lack of this shows a clear problem. I also feel like I've talked to a lot of people about this problem for the last decade and change, and think I have some idea about what the problem looks like specifically and how it plays out and what sorts of things are likely to help.

For participation from what we think of as racial groups, I have no idea what the numbers should be, and I don't really know what the biggest problems are and I don't know what would be likely to help.

I know there are some things that will help both scenarios. I've pushed for removing names from resumes in the hiring process, and encouraged dismantling talk of "meritocracies" which typically damage all out-groups. I have come to believe that broadening the mechanisms by which companies seek talent is necessary to avoid hiring mostly "people like us", including seeking talent from different physical regions and different schools, and that companies must be willing to hire junior staff to get access to groups before they give up on the industry entirely (never mind that the idea of hiring only people who you expect to come in with all the knowledge they will need is dumb in other respects.)

But I think this mostly comes from the targets for women being more obvious, and it having become a spotlighted issue recently drive this to a significant degree.

Or to be more awful, what is it like to be an african-american software engineer? I don't know. I've met maybe a handful in my life in the silicon valley bubble, and I'm not terribly enamored of turning the conversation into one of stupid, clumsy questions if I don't know them very well.

I guess I'm just saying you're probably right at a number of levels, and that I think there are a number of hurdles to getting to a more reasonable place. I spent time in a diversity and inclusion working group for around 6 months in a company that was pretty drastically diversity-challenged, and there were no serious discussions of minority outreach beyond a footnote of going to some job fair / career thing or other. We had east asian and south asian participationin the group, but in silicon valley software I don't know if these groups particularly think of themselves as minorities. (They don't get the same advancement opportunities, but representation is very high.)

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 23, 2018 17:03 UTC (Sat) by bobbytables (guest, #65908) [Link] (15 responses)

There are no more women in coding because women don't want to code, they prefer to do something else. And guess what, that's fine.

What is stopping women from starting their own open source projects?

These social experiments are going to end badly for the open source projects that take them "seriously". Anyway I'm not concerned as the best developers will quit toxic environments and move on to something else where it is still a true meritocracy, as it should be.

Code / PR should be blind, no-one cares if you're a woman or a minority. If you belong to one of those groups and are concerned about some possible bias, why don't you submit code under pseudonym like Jack Kelso?

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 23, 2018 18:06 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (5 responses)

Not long time ago there were very few female orchestra conductors. After all, women just don’t have the required hearing and sense of rhythm. Everybody knows this!

Well, now around 30% of graduating conductors are female.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 23, 2018 22:53 UTC (Sat) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

When will the madness of this social experiment end!?!?

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 24, 2018 1:49 UTC (Sun) by bobbytables (guest, #65908) [Link] (3 responses)

Being a conductor is a very public role where you cannot hide your gender, plus we are talking about a centuries old profession where men ruled. Obviously there were fossilised dinosaurs against it. Can you really say the same about the tech industry, which is barely 40 years old? Additionally as I said before you can easily hide your age, gender and sexual orientation behind a computer.

There are literally hundreds of scholarships and support programmes to get women to code, and have been for the last ten years. Almost every European government gives grants for hiring women in tech companies.

Look, I'm all for creating new opportunities for people, getting more people to code, etc. But not at the expense of a true meritocracy or enforcing positive discrimination over something which can be done anonymously.

At some point people will realise that it's ok to have preferences and being a woman. Do you want to be a powerful tech industry magnate? Go ahead! Want to be a stay at home mum? That's fine too!

If you want to code and you are good, no-one will really care if you're a woman. If you're bad, you're going to get roasted, no matter what is your gender.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 25, 2018 8:16 UTC (Mon) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (1 responses)

> If you want to code and you are good, no-one will really care if you're a woman.

This is simply not borne out by reality.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 25, 2018 13:46 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

There is, for example, this study showing that having a visibly female name reduces the chances of getting a pull request accepted.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 25, 2018 9:58 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

My direct experience is that people do care if the person coding something is a woman, not a man, and treat exactly the same code from me differently to the code from my co-workers.

It would be lovely if this was false, and people did not care about the gender of a coder, but that's not the case today.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 23, 2018 20:48 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (8 responses)

> If you belong to one of those groups and are concerned about some possible bias, why don't you submit code under pseudonym like Jack Kelso?

Among other reasons, people are proud of their work and want to be recognized for it, sometimes this is a step to building a career as a programmer. People also want to attend conferences or speak at a event etc.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 24, 2018 1:40 UTC (Sun) by bobbytables (guest, #65908) [Link] (7 responses)

That's shouldn't be a problem, it should be easy for the author to prove who he / she is under a pseudonym.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 24, 2018 1:47 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (6 responses)

> That's shouldn't be a problem, it should be easy for the author to prove who he / she is under a pseudonym.

How? Resumes are reviewed only for seconds. A link with your name is obvious. Also, how would you present in a conference while hiding under a pseudonym?

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 24, 2018 1:53 UTC (Sun) by bobbytables (guest, #65908) [Link] (5 responses)

And who uses their real name as a github user? It's incredibly easy to make up a gender neutral sounding handle.

If you have reached the stage where you should be presenting, there should be no need any more to have the pseudonym, you can go public from then on as your value as been proved, women, minority or not.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 24, 2018 2:04 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

> And who uses their real name as a github user?

Lots and lots of people including me

> It's incredibly easy to make up a gender neutral sounding handle.

Why should some people be forced to do that?

>If you have reached the stage where you should be presenting, there should be no need any more to have the pseudonym

Why do you want people to hide their identity in the first place?

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 24, 2018 2:12 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

> If you have reached the stage where you should be presenting, there should be no need any more to have the pseudonym

Have you read https://lwn.net/Articles/417952/

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 24, 2018 9:03 UTC (Sun) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (2 responses)

If you have reached the stage where you should be presenting, there should be no need any more to have the pseudonym, you can go public from then on as your value as been proved, women, minority or not.

That is not how things actually work out in Real Life™. There are women who are at the top of their respective areas of expertise but they still get hit on and/or belittled by (male) sleazebags at conferences (and elsewhere).

Also, there's an obvious incongruity in saying that in a free-software “true meritocracy”, women should just adopt pseudonyms in order to ensure that their work will be judged on its merits because nobody knows they're women. In an actual meritocracy, people's work would be judged on its merits no matter what name they're using for themselves. A “true meritocracy” where half of the potential participants must disguise themselves in order to be able to play on a level field is not a meritocracy at all.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 27, 2018 10:34 UTC (Wed) by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604) [Link] (1 responses)

Having bad experiencres with other people is just a fact of life, whether it's at a conference or anywhere else. This isn't a problem unique to women.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 27, 2018 12:43 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

It is when people target a woman in a manner that they would not have, had she been a man – and that unfortunately happens all too often. Male software developers don't tend to get harrassed for being male software developers (see, e.g., Gamergate).

Also, if “that problem isn't unique to women” is a true statement it should, if anything, be interpreted as a call to action, to try to minimize bad experiences for everyone including women. Unfortunately it is, more often than not, interpreted as an excuse for doing nothing at all (“it's just a fact of life”) – in effect a form of whataboutism.