In Support of Speakers
In our local tech community in Washington DC, few technical Meetups have women attending, and even fewer have women presenting. It’s a common phenomenon that extends well beyond our local area, and it’s not good for any of us. Young women are not getting sufficient exposure to professional networking, and young men are not being exposed to the wide range of skills that their female colleagues possess.
Why aren’t women attending these meetups? Why aren’t they speaking?
A lot of us have been chased out of mixed engineering spaces, like meetups, because of aggressive or obnoxious behavior from men. It only takes one man in a space to make it difficult. I’m sure most women working in technology know the sort of behavior I’m talking about. One solution that many of us use is to attend meetups held by groups such as Women Who Code (WWC). These provide a safe and supportive environment, allowing women to interact with and learn from their peers without being patronized, hit on, or insulted. There will always be a need for this, but I believe we can do more.
A problem that I encounter, particularly with younger men, is an inability to see women as technically competent. We’ve seen it with women being overlooked in meetings or at conferences. We’ve seen it with Damore’s memo. I get it on Twitter. I think that one of the many reasons for this may be a lack of visibility.
Many women give talks on soft skills, especially as we get older. I’ve seen women who have had amazing technical careers give talks on career growth or management, only to hear young men say that “… this may be fine, but she wouldn’t know how to handle REAL technical work”. At the same time, we don’t see many women giving technical talks. It’s understandable given that women are often invited for “soft skills” talks instead of technical topics, and were treated like we don’t know what we’re talking about when we do speak on technology.
One effect of this is that men, especially young men, are not being exposed to how technically competent many of us are, and I think that this may be helping to perpetuate these ignorant attitudes. On a few occasions when I’ve shown something technical and competent, the attitude of some of the young men I’ve met has improved dramatically. This suggests that simply seeing us share our knowledge may go some way to helping.
Consequently, I’ve decided to try to give more highly technical talks. This is partly to encourage younger women to do the same and also to set an example for young men to see. I’m especially aiming for meetups around DC. This is easier and less formal, and it also reaches more people, since conferences are costly and inaccessible to many. It’s not universal, but I have definitely had a significant effect with several people already.
I think that the more young men who see us as being technical, the better it will get for the whole community. I hope to have more women participating. However, some of the issues that I mentioned earlier continue to make this difficult or intimidating for women.
The Idea
I have proposed creating a cohort of support in our local community of Women Who Code. When someone announces that she’s going to give a talk, a group of us can make a commitment to come along as support. If we see ridiculous questions, aggressive behaviors, etc, we can step in and keep each other safe.
In this way, WWC can help women by showing the entire technical community just how valuable women are.
The primary aim is to support women speaking locally (at meetups). This will help us connect with more people in the local community since many people can’t get to conferences. It also provides a less formal venue for new speakers to gain practice before moving on to the larger stage.
For those who are interested in speaking, or providing support, we are coordinating in our local Slack as well as face-to-face meetings. This provides a place for people to discuss presentations and a forum for announcing when someone wants to give a talk. Others can then volunteer to come along as support. Creating a talk can take time to come together so not all of the details would be expected with an initial announcement.
It’s early days yet, but a number of people are enthusiastic.
The whole point of this is about community. It’s to provide opportunities and support within the community of women in technology, and outreach to the wider tech community. If you have suggestions to help us improve we are willing and open to hearing them.

