Diversity in tech: still an issue in 2013?

You can't assume that this was intentional. The author writes that when he tried to inquire about why there weren't any women asked to speak, he wasn't given a very detailed response. This can mean anything! If these guys deliberately decided to exclude anyone who wasn't a white male: that sucks. But it's extremely possible that this is a coincidence. I know a handful of super-smart female designers and hackers. I'd ask them to join my team any day of the week. I see no difference in their ability due to their gender. That being said: all of them, now that I think of it, are on the extreme end of shy. Not "nerdy basement dweller anti social shy" but the kind of shy that would prevent them from speaking at a conference, let alone volunteer to do so.<p>I really don't think there is enough ground to say this is one way or another. It's a toss up. Why are we jumping to such harsh conclusions? In my 5-6 year career I've yet to experience gender discrimination. I've worked in Hawaii, LA, DC and Sweden: all of which I've worked alongside respected and talented female coworkers. I really feel like this recent gender inequality stuff is an example of the 80/20 rule. A few edge cases are making us feel like everyone is out to get the girls. Relax! We aren't!

<i>"... I would explicitly not be satisfied with a process that resulted in 100% male speakers. I would have stopped once we’d reached, say, 17 male out of 22 possible speakers (being pretty conservative, I think) and insisted that the remaining five (a cool 22% female representation) would have to be women."</i><p>This suggestion is a bad one. It is blatant tokenism.<p>Try this instead: <a href="http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-speakers-at-my-tech-conference/" rel="nofollow">http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-speake...</a><p>Key takeaway: <i>"The easiest way I saw for getting more women on stage at the actual event was to get as many women to submit speaking proposals as possible. Selecting presentations was done without speaker information associated with the titles and pitches, so I wasn’t able to “reserve” spaces in the program for anyone based on aspects of their identity — and I wasn’t interested in that sort of reservation system for this event, anyway."</i><p>Telling people that an unintentionally all-male conference is "inexcusable" is an unproductive (and incorrect, in my opinion) way to address the problem. The industry has a diversity problem, but it's not wrong for someone to not take action to address it. It'd be nice if they did, though. When I try to get people to do things that would be nice, I never use that sort of tone. People who improve diversity issues in the tech industry are doing us a favor. Treat them that way.

My experience in university CS and EE programs is this: schools are under enormous pressure to bring more women into tech, yet none of the "typical" techniques for doing so seem to work. At my alma mater, the EE department could not attract <i>any</i> qualified female applicants in my year; they published flyers showing women in class, they sent female students to speak at high schools as representatives of the school, etc., but nothing seemed to work. Where I am now, we are told to use female pronouns in our lectures and research papers and to be as gender inclusive as possible, and professors struggle to find ways to make CS seem more interesting to people who did not spend their teenage years hacking; still, women remain a small minority in the CS and computer engineering programs. There is something happening here that is beyond what schools can do; somehow, high school girls are being convinced that technical fields are not something they can or should pursue.

"The population is not uniform, yet our sample is? SOMETHING IS WRONG."<p><a href="http://www.empiricalzeal.com/2012/12/21/what-does-randomness-look-like/" rel="nofollow">http://www.empiricalzeal.com/2012/12/21/what-does-randomness...</a><p>Finding a cluster doesn't necessitate a bias.

this topic is so complex that i am left convinced that anyone who has a strong enough opinion as to write a blog post on the topic, doesn't respect it's complexity.<p>what is particularly offensive about this post is that the author infers the question "why are there no women speaking at this conference?", yet they completely ignore the possibility that no qualified women applied to speak at the conference. statistically speaking, would this really blow anyone's minds? by doing this you are defaming the organizers by calling their character into question.<p>the responsibility is left up to the organizers because they did not go out of their way to find women to seed the speaker list. but putting this responsibility solely on the organizers without even exploring other possibilities is irresponsible.<p>i think i can make my point best with some rhetorical questions directed at the author: why didn't you recommend any of your female peers for consideration as a speaker? what good do you hope to bring to the argument by outright ignoring possible causes of the effect that concerns you?

I would think that part of the organizer's response is due to the use of 'inexcusable' in what looks like the initial contact. If a stranger contacted me and used that word in reference to my actions, I would certainly immediately be on the defensive. This could have definitely led to the future lack of communication.

Here's a take on getting more female conference speakers from a female blogger (who is a copywriter):<p><a href="http://rel.ly/2012/09/conference-organisers-a-point-for-your-consideration/" rel="nofollow">http://rel.ly/2012/09/conference-organisers-a-point-for-your...</a><p>I'd say many of the points in the above link are equally useful to all speakers and attendees (regardless of gender or colour). So perhaps some simple forethought in planning and prepaparation can go a long way in encouraging a wider range of attendees and speakers.

Would you rather them have less qualified speakers for the sake of equality? give it a rest.

Alright, Got to weigh in here.<p>I used to work at the ft, and spent a good deal of time dealing with the labs division.<p>Andrew probably went out of his way to ask for diversity, seriously, he is awesome like that.<p>I think the issue may be time constraints and the fact that within 3 companies, no females/minorities/etc offered to speak and had the relevant high level of expertise.

Funny, looks like britruby will be held in spirit after all.

Only if we keep talking about it...