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Note: This comment was in response to Lynn Root's discussion on women in the Django / tech community at Djangocon Europe 2012.*

The issue of women in our community has been very prominent recently—mostly due to negative situations where something went wrong, but sometimes because of thoughtful discussions about how to actually improve things. Your talk is one of the latter—thank you for giving it!

Like any sensitive topic, most attempts to discuss the issue end up going nowhere good. Sometimes it veers into “women tend to,” sometimes it veers into a lot of self-congratulation on how enlightened we are to be even discussing it. It’s been my experience that none of these are really helpful in getting actionable things I can do.

Obviously, having a safe environment for women is a precondition, and I don’t think it’s a solved problem, but what else should we be spending our cpu cycles on? Say we have a conference code of conduct which is properly enforced. What should we be figuring out solutions for next?

@auredyry

There are some simple solutions to the problems you are trying to think about. For the second one, is for the conference organisers to allow anyone to mention events that are outside the conference hours. e.g. what will happen after the panel? Anything?

For the third issue, even guys have a problems doing talks. I've found the best/simplest way is to simply "volunteer" people. It works remarkably well; firstly people are flattered that you think they have something to say. Secondly when other people see their peers in the community talking - who agreed to be volunteered - they realise they can talk to.

For the first issue, I really think it is up to the conference to decide if they want to publise grants. What I know has worked is for them to be silently granted for a year or two, and then to make it public.

All of this said with my ex-linux.conf.au organiser hat on.

@jacobian — “But... I do really like the idea of a more general focus on "outreach" rather than "diversity" -- the former leads to the latter, and has other attendant benefits to boot.”

That is one of the best things I have read on this topic, and it puts into words something that I have always felt but could not express. As a straight, white, American male, I know that there are a lot of obstacles that I don’t have to deal with, and I am grateful for that. I hope we can make it that way for everyone, eventually. (Though, like you say, probably not in our lifetime.) Yet, though I strongly support including everyone, a focus on “diversity” can often feel like “We have too many people like you. We don’t need more people like you. We will do nothing to help you individually, because the classes you belong to are the majority.”

But a focus on “outreach” can help anyone and everyone, and leads to diversity (as you said).

A key to removing lines that separate us socially is, in many cases, to remove the lines that separate us socially. Focusing on diversity just retraces those lines. The backlash that @audreyr and others experience over creating opportunities is disheartening, and inexcusable. But I wonder if it may simply be a negative expression of the feeling that the majority can get from a focus on diversity — “We don’t need you.” While it may be true of a class of people, I am not a class, I am an individual. I want to contribute. I want to be wanted. And sometimes I need help and opportunities.

I support groups like PyLadies, and hope they continue their good work. Like @ashwoods says, we may need some pointed solutions for specific issues. But for those to work we need everyone to feel wanted. So let’s keep having group meet-ups at conferences: runners go running, women’s breakfasts, gamer’s nights, etc. And let’s try to figure out a way to include new people through outreach.