Gender Diversity: Not An @media Issue
Why isn’t there more gender diversity amongst speakers at web conferences? Because there isn’t more gender diversity in the web industry. Why’s that? Childhood environment and evolutionary biology. What should conference organisers do about it? Nothing.
The recent talk of diversity at web conferences is both infuriating and boring. Infuriating because so many fundamental points are being missed, and boring because it’s a never ending argument that has come up before and will likely go on beyond eternity.
To start with my conclusion: I refuse to compromise the quality of the content of an educational event by “positively” discriminating.
The Labour Party (currently the ruling political party in the UK) employed a “positive discrimination” policy a few years back, whereby political candidates were given preference if they were female in an attempt to increase the number of women politicians. It backfired because male candidates (legitimately) complained if they felt they were more suitable for the job, and potential voters complained because they were starting to see that the best person to represent them wasn’t necessarily being put forward. Discrimination is discrimination. The policy was short lived.
Invitations to speak at @media are based on merit, and nothing else. I don’t care if the person in question is a man, woman, or hermaphrodite. Likewise, social class, culture, race, sexual persuasion, etc, simply don’t come into the equation.
Assuming most conference organisers aren’t raging sexists (we can do that, can’t we?), to get one obvious thing out of the way - the lower number of web conference speakers who are women is due to the fact that there is a lower number of women in the web (or any technical profession, for that matter). I’ll come back to this point, but it makes sense to me to look at why there are less women in the web.
The contributing factors include sexual discrimination in the work place, environmental pressures in education and the family, and biological differences.
First of all, sexual discrimination in the work place is negligible. It certainly exists, but particularly in such a modern, open, and liberal industry such as ours, it doesn’t come close to explain the extent of the disparity between men and women in it.
Dipping back into the conference issue momentarily, almost all of the speakers for this year’s @media event (and many other events) are self-made, or are speaking because of what they have achieved off their own backs. They have made names for themselves through blogging, writing, and generally forcing their way to the forefront of their chosen field.
A better argument takes one step back from the work place to explain differences in attitudes and interest in the context of a person’s pre-work life, particularly in childhood. Although changing “for the better” in “Western” societies, girls are typically not encouraged to partake in technical activities to the same extent that boys are. The “blame” for this lies primarily on the family, and secondarily on peer and (institutionalised) educational pressures. This is a really interesting but largely overlooked issue in the web context (primarily because there are few sociology experts amongst us). If this is seen as a bad thing (there’s one argument there!), the issue goes way beyond the web industry into some hardcore sociological questions and conclusions. This is where a person’s environment needs to be changed (if it is deemed the right thing to do), and that isn’t going to be done with the power of web design (let alone web conference organisation).
But how about taking one further step back? In the diversity battle, nature vs. nurture has, by and large, been ignored, but biological differences between men and women are immense, and not only physically. Evolutionary psychology (and even psychology) has gone a long way to demonstrate that there are fundamental behavioural differences between the sexes, including a greater likelihood of technical aptitude in males.
So returning to the conference issue, with all of these points in mind, making a conscious effort to increase diversity of genders should not be a factor in organising a conference. Take the evolutionary biology point of view, and there’s nothing that can, or maybe should, be changed. Take the childhood environment argument and there’s nothing a conference can do to change it - it’s anyone’s place to help sort that one out, outside of anything specifically web. Take the workplace argument, and you’re categorically missing the point.
So as a conference organiser, I unapologetically work with what I’m given. I do not feel it is my place to “help” women. To do so, in fact, would be detrimental to the health of the web and women’s standing in it - It’s not helping at all - success should be earned through hard work.
Speakers should feel embarrassed if they have only been invited to speak because of their gender rather than by merit. And it’s downright patronising to suggest women need a helping hand. People who care about this should actually be the ones least likely to advocate conscious efforts for greater diversity - they should be making opportunities themselves.
Anyone in this industry, or anyone who wants to break into it, can set up a blog, send an article to A List Apart, send a book proposal to New Riders (even using a male pseudonym if they’re worried about it), or can stand up and be counted - get going at BarCamp (there isn’t one near you? Organise one!).
At the end of the day, do you want a conference with uncompromised content (hey, it could be very diverse, but it’s unlikely), or a conference with its heart in the right place, but effectively doing more harm than good, both for the attendees, and for the speakers?
Written by Patrick Griffiths, organiser of @media, on 28th February, 2007.
