A few months ago, I spent a lot of time trying to show the tech community I belong to that diversity is essential to our survival. Not just to the Web 2.0 world being healthy and thriving, but as a matter of life and death.
Unfortunately, my diatribe on the topic was boring and thus unpersuasive. Jason Kottke kicked off another conversation about the paucity of female participants in some of the higher-profile technology conferences. I agree with Jason's point, but am disappointed that his preference for rationality and logic led to him using numbers and statistics to justify the idea: The responses quickly devolved into the expected defensive numbers game.
One bright spot is that at least some of the people on the defense are smart guys whom I respect and like. Because, while they're wrong, at least I can debate them in good conscience without feeling bad. I would have felt bad if I only linked to defensive rationales foisted by those who I think are malicious and idiotic.
So, the good guys on the wrong side of this debate include, first Eric Meyer:
In my personal view, diversity is not of itself important, and I don't feel that I have anything to address next time around. What's important is technical expertise, speaking skills, professional stature, brand appropriateness, and marketability. That's it. That's always been the alpha and omega of my thinking, and it will continue to be so the next time, and time after that, and the time after that.
You'll note that nowhere in that list do you find gender, race, creed, or any other such parameter. Those things are completely unimportant to me when organizing a conference. (Or, really, when I'm doing almost anything.)
In a similar vein, John Gruber:
It's not because of a lack of opportunity or aptitude; it's a lack of interest.
So the issue here isn't why there aren't more women speaking at web conferences, but why there aren't more women interested in web nerdery.
Eric and John are both good guys who mean well, but that two people who are smart, forward-thinking, and open minded are still unaware of the limits and constraints imposed by their own shortsightedness is disappointing. Eric: Are you saying that it's your explicit desire to only make a conference that's marketable to the audience you already have? Because that seems so boring and unambitious that it feels like you're saying "we're only in it for the money".
Unless I'm going strictly out of obligation, I go to events to learn things, to have my mindset challenged. Being presented with familiar, unchallenging ideas just so someone can make a buck is the equivalent of junk food. Don't get me wrong -- I'm a fan of pop music, so junk food has its place. But I expect better of those who are seen as leaders.
And John, to fall into the laziest, least persuasive argument of all leads me to believe you're being almost willfully naive. "Women aren't in these disciplines because they aren't interested?" Really? There's a simpler explanation, which falls under the heading of "I know where I'm not welcome." This kind of bias isn't new; Guys are almost always unable to see the barriers they construct.
Let me put this into terms your respective audiences can better understand:
- Limiting the speaker list of an event to those that appeal to your existing audience will yield diminishing returns as your attendees tire of seeing the same voices over and over. And in the meantime you will make less and less money.
- Saying that you want to design an event to appeal to the audience that you already reach is like making a web page to work with only the browsers that can already see your site. Do you believe in open standards and accessibility when it matters, and when it's not easy, and when it's not merely a technological problem?
- It's foolish to think that the feedback loop of a strong network effect doesn't act as an enormous barrier to new audiences. If you are an Apple fan, do you think that merely touting one's own technological superiority is sufficient? Or does it make sense to accommodate those who aren't yet part of the community by being able to run their applications, get the same economies of scale from processors and peripherals, and improving distribution and retailing? If you do, then you're saying it takes more than opening up the door -- it requires welcoming the audience you haven't yet reached.
And in passing, I am not surprised that those who advocate yelling at their customers tend to get very defensive about their lack of ambition. It is a fitting punishment that the web of some people's "future" only includes more boys like themselves, progressing further and further into a rounded-corner of irrelevance.
That brings me to my final point, which I'll explain more in my next post: Those of you who are defending this status quo are defending a culture of failure.
And that's the most important thing to remember: Those who are reaching out to include all members of their community, who are seeking out new ideas and voices, are not only winning, they're the only ones who will continue to win. You may succeed in defending the boys-only nature of your treehouse. But you'll be dooming yourselves to irrelevance.
- For more reading: The Essentials of Web 2.0 Your Event Doesn't Cover
Hey, Anil. Do I get to call you wrong and shortsighted, too?
Nah, never mind. I do kind of feel like we're talking about different things, though. You're talking about the creation of barriers, when I'm talking about refusing to erect them. I'm also talking about marketing a conference. It's kind of necessary: the best conference ever that's also a marketing failure will only happen once, and crater the bank account of its organizers. Maybe someone else wants to take that on, but honestly? Not me. Family's gotta eat.
I'm not just in this for the money, no. I'm in it to put on great conferences. Part of that involves making money, though, or else I'll have to stop putting on any conferences. A sad reality of our economic system, I know, but we're not up to Economics 2.0 yet.
"Saying that you want to design an event to appeal to the audience that you already reach is like making a web page to work with only the browsers that can already see your site."
Or maybe it's like saying that you want your site to be popular enough that everyone will come visit, and by making the best site you can (both externally and internally) you make that more likely. But let's not play Analogy Wars, which never really get anyone anywhere.
What I don't get is how you took my post to be a defense of any kind of "old boy club". I'd think it was a willful misreading, except I know better. Help me out here, please.
Thanks so much for this thoughtful and eloquent post.
It's disappointing to me that time and time again all I encounter is reactive behavior. It's time to be proactive and constructive.
I'm not interested in engaging in a long, pointless conversation about why things were done the way they were. I'm also weary of rebutting accusations of fomenting tokenism and/or insulting women by insisting that inclusion is essential. (That sounds absurd even as I type it.)
Again, thanks.
Anil,
I posted about this issue a few days ago myself. An important point I think is often missed in these discussions is the value and impact ON THE SPEAKERS of being asked to speak. i.e. of being told "your voice matters and is worth paying attention to" - that's one of the most valuable aspects of speaking (whether you are a man or a woman).
See http://shannonclark.wordpress.com/2007/02/13/women-conferences-and-the-importance-of-voice/
And I agree, there are dozens of other highly qualified women (and men) who are not often on current speakers lists but who should be.
Shannon
Best (ie, genuinely intellectual and genuinely savvy) response I have seen to this whole sorry mess. Thx Anil.
This may be the best thing you've ever written.
Amen.
I find your insinuation that women care more about the gender makeup than the quality of the speakers at a conference insulting to their intelligence. If there were any evidence that female speakers were being excluded in favor of lower quality male speakers it would be a different story, but I haven't seen any yet.
I also find the story you link to on discrimination in orchestras irrelevant. In that case, the people making the decisions "have asserted that female musicians have 'smaller techniques,' are more temperamental and are simply unsuitable for orchestras." I do not see how an example where conductors have tried to rationalize their perceived inferiority of women has anything to do with the case of conference organizers who have clearly stated they do not believe female speakers are inferior in any way, and in fact have said they want more of them.
There's a simpler explanation, which falls under the heading of "I know where I'm not welcome."
With respect, I think this particular 'insight' is bollocks. I have never felt unwelcome at any web gathering. Maybe it's different in the US...
Unfortunately for Anil, it’s perfectly possible that a conference for the future that attracts new people with new ideas will also have male speakers. And that’s OK, isn’t it, Anil? Because you want us to select speakers on merit.
I am waiting for someone to disprove my contention that the barriers to success in information technology are poverty (can’t afford a computer) and disability (cannot use it), not sex. The computer does not have an opinion about whether or not you “are wantedâ€; women have no barriers in *using computers* for their own purposes.
Anil,
Take a look at the concept of "deep diversity"
Here:
http://news.gilbert.org/2007/02/23#a6341
nice post as this is an issue for so many who are ultimately voiceless in the dilog. anil, good for you to use whatever power/authority you have to keep issues of diversity and cultural competence in the forefront. there are so may issues to raise, but to adress just one, would be eric's comment,
"You're talking about the creation of barriers, when I'm talking about refusing to erect them."
The assumptions that lie here are two. One, that the barriers are not ALREADY there, even if unintentionally and two, that anyone is ABOVE the barriers that exist is society. In fact I would say by not taking a good look at how any event/institution does or does not respond to issues of diversity, the possibilities for creating them grows exponentially. And while i am in a different field (church/non-profit), I linked this comment to a post might be helpful for understanding "Brown" presence in places of leadership.
hmm.
as one of the co-chairs / organizers for the Web 2.0 Expo conference (cited by Kottke), i beg to differ.
point 1: i asked Anil to be part of our program committee to help select speakers, along with a number of other men & women. i also recruited tara hunt & deb schultz to be on one of the program committees, and our other [female] co-chair Jen Pahlka also recruited Kelly Goto and other folks to help with her speaker selection.
point 2: the reason i got involved with organizing this event -- even though i don't work for O'Reilly or CMP -- was to BROADEN the diversity of previous Web 2.0 conferences, and take it beyond the normal tech geek. thus, we created a program with specific tracks for marketers, designers, and entrepreneurs / business strategy folks. while this may not reflect a specific intent to influence GENDER diversity, it does reflect a specific intent to expand OCCUPATIONAL diversity. but no one (except for brian oberkirch) appears to be talking about that point.
point 3: if you look at our industry, the representation of women is currently not much different from the overall avg representation of women speakers at the conf's Kottke mentioned. i'm not making a scientific observation here, but i'd guess that the composition of speaker gender isn't dramatically different from the composition of audience gender. you may call this "playing to the same audience you've always had", but i'd say it's more like "drawing speakers in approx equivalent ratios from the community".
in summary, while i may agree with you that program & speaker diversity are important, i tend to think that most of the criticism isn't referencing the lack of diversity that i think would be most helpful.
* what about the lack of international speakers?
* what about the lack of senior citizen or young adult speakers?
* what about the lack of blind speakers?
personally speaking, i think we do a pretty good job in Northern California of being diverse, inclusive, and do a fair amount of navel-gazing to make sure we're not being too iconoclastic.
however, i also challenge the folks who are kvetching -- where are you going to get your diversity?
my family is from west virginia, and my wife's family is from japan. i'm a geek, she's a musician. there's a ton of diversity that i don't seek out from tech conferences, but i do seek out in the rest of my life. i love to travel, i love to attend meetings on topics i don't know much about, i love to read about world culture, politics, cartoons, sports, etc.
so while we beat up on a few event organizers for not creating the equivalent of affirmative conference action for every possible combination of race, gender, sexual preference, and/or religion, i hope we also hold ourselves accountable to the same standards.
finally, for the record: my 2-year old listens to both funk & classical music. rock on.
- dave mcclure
http://500hats.typepad.com/
I was at a Stanford Artificial Intelligence conference a couple of years ago. One woman with a dry-writer put a big not on the lobby white board saying "Where are all the women?" Well, I happened to go to lunch at the Stanford Mall that day and guess what. That's where all the women were -- sitting at the cafe tables, shopping leisurely, talking with friends, whatever. And why the hell not. The real question is this: Why are all the men here at these boring conferences when we could be at the Mall sipping capuchino in the warm sunshine. Let me tell you brother, its those women who got it right.
Thanks, Anil. Great post.
Eric, your post _is_ a defense of the old-boy club. Willful refusal to be an active part of changing an exclusive status quo is a (very effective) defense of the status quo.
Do you honestly believe that there are NO barriers making it far more difficult for women than men to break into your "A-list web-geek club"? If you can't see those barriers at all, despite all the evidence, then there's little useful conversation to be had. If you do see the barriers, but publicly refuse to lift a finger to actively break them down, you're a defender of the old-boys club.
People with privilege of any sort always want to start the discussion from the assumption of a level playing field, and then work from there building dream-castles of meritocracy. But the playing field never has been level. Taking a bit of extra energy to specifically seek out excellent female conference presenters is a small thing compared to the much higher barriers they've had to overcome to get to where they are in the industry. And refusing to put out that extra energy in the long run hurts all of us, by contributing to the exclusion of a great deal of potential brilliance and insight in the field.
Anil, I think you owe Eric a response, which I look forward to reading. You cannot limit yourself to attacking someone who refuses diversity bias as a solution to gender imbalance by attacking them and then demonstrating that there are enough intelligent female speakers through your new list. It takes more than frontal attack to explain why not enough of these make it to the stage. You need to develop this argument further. Many thanks.
anil. wow. looks like you have hit a nerve, one that clearly needs to be addressed within any industry that in many ways prides itself on being beyond or above these issues. keep on raising the issues because the tone of defensiveness and justification is too strong to let it go. big props to Carl's response to those who would defend the status quo. stay strong bro!
Anil, thanks for bringing this up.
I think that those who are not in the "in group" already know the barriers are there. Every Black American knows that we have to work twice as hard, twice as long, and be twice as productive while we do it in order to get half the pay. (64% was the last figure I saw.) The barriers are real. They exist.
Having said that, I don't think diversity is necessarily just about different genders and ancestries. I think diversity is about selecting people with very different personal histories, including different genders, ethnic backgrounds, ages, educations, work histories, economic status/income levels, and places of residence. If technology X (whatever X is this year) is really any good, it will be useful in South Los Angeles as well as the Silicon Valley, Kansas as well as Atlanta, Uganda and Pakistan, as well as France and the Netherlands. And implementors in those very different environments will face very different challenges, bring different ideas and preferences to the table, and in the process make things better for *all* of us.
Do I believe in quotas, that is selecting people *because* of their gender, ancestry, or whatever? No. But I believe that taking a broader view of who to look at when deciding which speakers (and which ATTENDEES) you want at a conference will necessarily lead to broadening the spectrum of participants at all levels, as well as greatly improving the utility of what is produced.
Honestly, I can't afford to go to any conferences, but when I'm looking at them and drooling, a consistently vanilla cast is probably not where I want to be.
I started to leave a comment that would exceed my ">3 paragraph comments deserve to be posts" rule, so i did indeed write that post. You can skip the quotes from this and other blogs on this subject, but toward the bottom I do give a few examples of why reaching out to more women might indeed result in a more attractive environment to more women. All the examples are real from real conferences I attended in 2006.
I think some people here might have a chronic case gendermania (as apposed to genderphobia...)
Anil, thanks for a great post!
I am self-proclaimed feminist and an opinionated one at that. I worked for a small company where I was the only young colored female in management and have attended many of these 'vanilla-cast' conferences.
I am a strong believer that if you're not invited to the dance, invite yourself, or be bold enough to crash the party. Women shouldn't wait around for someone to recognize their talent. Cheerleaders and champions like you are welcome, but women also need to step up to the plate.
"I know where I'm not welcome" should change to "I will make sure that I am welcome and I will pave the way for others like me". It's going to take time for the doors to the old-boy's club to open up but it's time women learned to knock down those doors, if need be.
You rock.
Thanks Anil. It's heartening to see such thoughtful and clear posts from guys who really get it. Maybe some guys will listen to you, even if they can't manage to hear it from all the women in the field who really do spend a large amount of effort trying to explain and bridge, fix & construct. So, thanks for engaging in doing some of that work of explaining!
What you say about a culture of failure & about welcoming the audiences you haven't reached - I hope that people hear that and take it seriously.
As I wrote over on Zeldman's blog, I'm a white guy who never got into web or software development for the same reason many women and non-whites don't -- I wanted a life. I ended up being peripherally involved in web design in some other ways through the back door of being a writer and editor.
If standards-based web design and software development are fields that need the skills of a broad range of people, then those of us involved in the field need to look at whether the culture we have built and help maintain is conducive to that. And if it’s not, we need to decide if that’s something worth changing. I like what Dori Smith wrote in 2005 about a Google recruiter at a conference she attended:
"They had a guy there whose title was 'Technical Recruiter.' He talked a lot about how cool it was to work at Google, and all the benefits, etc. And he looked straight at me (I was sitting near the front) and made a point about how they were trying to hire more women. So I raised my hand and said, 'If you want more women, try describing the company in a way that doesn’t make it sound like it’s hell on earth.'"
Sorry to have missed your keynote at Northern Voice (and the rest of the conference) because of surgery, Anil. At least I can still watch the video.
Four people have a place on my browser's toolbar:
Anil Dash
danah boyd
John Gruber
Adrianna Tan
Does that make me a winner?
It's posts like this one that got Anil on the toolbar. He's done A LOT of them.
This is a great debate which could be applied to many shades of subject matter.
The debate as any debate.
I wish folks were a little less concerned about winning (I know, I know that makes me an apologist/bullshit) and were more peaceful towards opposing points of view ... more sympathetic to change rather than getting ever more close to the truth.
As a reader who doesn't pretend to have THE answer, I always side with the person who demonstrates the greatest ego-detachment.
Way to go Anil ...
... waiting for danah
Thanks to almost everyone here, and at the places this has taken me.
Hey Joe, why not PROVE your contention about poverty and disability instead of asking someone to disprove it? Your approach at this argument is pretty weak.
My contention is that THE barrier to success in information technology is pretty much the same as for every other field of endeavor- lack of desire. Lots of poor people have somehow managed to succeed in their careers- Presidents, CEOs, doctors, lawyers, Generals, athletes and entertainers have started out dirt poor. You can also find successful people with disablities (is it still a disability if the person can compensate with other abilities? Couldn't stupidity or sloth be a bigger disability in practice than, say, blindness? Just a thought...)
I won't argue that poverty or disability makes an IT career harder, but then again, it makes almost any career harder.
Anil, great post.
I agree with the poster who says women need to invite themselves to the table, but as an aging feminist, I've barged my way to so many tables so many times that I also agree that everyone is responsible for diversity, including conference presenters.
Regarding working conditions, workplaces that have more women are often more humane, not because women are kinder and gentler (we aren't), but because women are often the childcare contingent, and they won't stay at places where they are expected to work insane hours. I don't have children, but I empathise with what it takes to work and raise kids--and I do like having a life. Culture matters.