The reason I don't listen to women in tech presentations:<p>1. I'm basically not allowed to voice an opinion that isn't completely aligned with the feminist status quo (I believe in equality, fuck me right).<p>2. I'd rather learn how to build a better emberjs app. Or learn more about thorium.<p>3. Unlike the vast majority of problems, there are few concrete steps to be taken to correct the imbalances that do exist.<p>Edit:<p>I can't believe I had to self sensor, just to hit the post button.
I spoke at SpainJS. It was a small conference, and unsurprisingly, most of the audience were from Spain.<p>I obviously was not reaching "everyone," but so what? I reached 300 people, and the politics of why a conference was put together to appeal to Spaniards (is that a word?) is of no consequence to me.<p>If I were a politician I'd attend Church pancake breakfasts and lunch with the Greek Business Chamber. Humans clump and cluster for all sorts of reasons. I support some, am indifferent to others, and frown at a few more.<p>But in the end, if the people in attendance are people I want to reach, I'll go. If their politics don't appeal to me, I'll avoid discussing the subject.<p>JM2C, I can't tell anyone else what to do.
She nailed it: <i>it's a waste of my time to be invisible to half the people I need to talk to.</i><p>The danger with women-only events is that they become perceived as a ghetto. By opening the doors to all, the entire community has a voice, which is as it needs to be if women are to be full, mainstream members of tech communities.<p>There's a place for "safe spaces" if people are sharing extremely personal stories (e.g. sexual assault, legal issues), but those tend to be done best as small groups anyway - it's a lot harder for a 1000 person auditorium to be a true "safe space".
I've attended several gender balance events (in politics, more than tech) and been one of the 2-3% of the audience who were male. They were some of the best I've been to, and I wish more dudes would turn up and learn from them.
I wouldn't believe for a second that Meg Whitman, Marissa Mayer, Virginia Rometty, or Carly Fiorina have this problem.<p>Parmer's column is accurate but not perplexing given what she said about being the CEO of Lady Geek. Her choice of target market (explained fairly well in its name) defines the context of her target audience.
The blog post conflates two issues. First there is the societal issue of the gender gap in tech. That involves discussions and education with the community at large regarding why women are underrepresented and <i>how the gap can be closed.</i><p>The second issue is an implementation of the first. Women only events are one of many contributing solutions to the gender gap. A woman only event ending with an invitation to a larger general event will likely do more to bring women into that event than sitting on a panel with a 95% male audience lamenting the fact that women seems to be missing.
I disagree with this. <i>Only</i> speaking at women-only events is a bad thing, but <i>refusing</i> to speak at women-only events is just as bad. It seems like women act more passive around men (at least in engineering). If there are only women in an audience, they might be encouraged to speak their mind more and feel less awkward about it.<p>Here is an example of women being passive in engineering:
An engineering club at my college had 30% to 50% women at almost every meeting. Most of the time, the women didn't do anything for the club's project - they stood nearby, talked, and sometimes cut foam or got something for a guy. This was in a machine shop.<p>If they had put themselves forward and tried to get involved, they would have learned a lot <i>and had more respect from the guys in the process </i>. As it is, I'm afraid their behavior only reinforced the stereotype of "women engineering majors aren't serious" and left them with fewer practical skills than the guys.<p>---<p>I don't know how effective having a women-only audience and speaker would be at reversing situations like this. If the talk was on "be more assertive" and "here are the potential problems you might face", it might be helpful. men-are-evil and similar lines are not.<p>In the example given, having women-only clubs might help more - <i>if</i> the focus is primarily on building things, learning new tools, or completing some major project. It would increase womens' confidence and their assertiveness, as well as giving them an opportunitity to learn stuff a lot of the guys in the regular engineering club already know - without feeling awkward/stupid/embarassed.<p>Regardless, though, any women-only group opens up the door to women who might be uncomfortable speaking out and asking questions otherwise.<p>Edit: fixing some italics :/
Men created the problem. Women like her can solve it. I knew it would come to this and other absurdities. All these men, accusing other men of anti-women sentiments, even when there weren't any. Some(mostly men!) have make it a personal crusade to vilify all men by definition. Some men are awful, some women are awful too. This kind of behavior will only sterilize our environments in the worst possible way. I'd like to see more women like her seeing the problem - and men taking notes.