Why I attended PyLadies London as a man

I have to say I am nervous about writing this. But I promised Jessica I would do it. And like Stephen Covey says “make small promises… and keep them”.

It’s been a while since I’ve felt this nervous

I’m nervous because I want to accurately represent my experience, talk openly about everyone’s thoughts on the gender pay gap and share my thoughts as a man attending ladies meetup. I dearly hope it comes out ok and does not descend into some horrible version of mansplaining or worse. Wish me luck.

Why did I attend?

I founded a startup 4 years ago, one of the values that we decided on in our founding team was “Diversity” in fact this is directly from our website:

“Everyone says they value diversity don’t they? Let’s take a look in the mirror and actually live that value. Get more people involved, build a better team.”

We failed to do that. Sure there were reasons, you know we tried…but we didn’t do it. I’m thinking of starting another company next year (after a little rest) and I really want to do better next time. So I thought a good way to do that would be to actively go out and meet women in technology and from the earliest possible time try and understand where I went wrong and how I could do better by actually speaking to people.

I was also pretty damn nervous turning up to the meetup. I’m wasn’t sure why I was nervous. I’ve been to plenty of meetups before and given a few talks. I’ve presented at conferences and in my day job I regularly demo and sell software and services to executives I’ve never met. Why would I be nervous about going to a meetup? Why would I want to go?

So why was I nervous about attending the meetup? I thought really hard about this. I tried to be honest with myself…

I felt that nobody would talk to me. Perhaps I’d be judged? I also worried that I’d be intruding. And I felt pressure to to justify why I, a man, was going to a women’s meetup. For once in my life, I was in the minority… and it was scary!

Was that how women felt attending technology events dominated by men? So I asked a couple of people, including my partner Sarah. Apparently it was like that… especially the bit about being judged and justifying being there. Maybe I’d learned my first thing!

None of those things actually happened. Nobody demanded to know why I was there. Nobody scowled at me. It was super welcoming and I had a really nice chat with several people before the meetup started. We talked tech, machine learning and discussed the stats around the recently published gender pay gap reports.

Who can attend?

One thing that wasn’t clear was the etiquette of attendance. Should men be allowed to attend PyLadies at all and if so, how many? How do you create a ‘safe space’ for discussion? Well… at least I know more now.

Jessica told me that they limit attendance of PyLadies to about 10% men. Personally I think that’s really brilliant because you have the majority of the group discussing the issues that are important to them but not in an echo chamber. And you have men able to listen, understand, learn and ultimately empathise.

Other meetups are intended to be ‘safe spaces’. I talked to one of the organisers of AI Club for Gender Minorities. She explained that if any men at all attended this meetup, then some people would just not turn up, never mind speak up and these were the very people she was trying to reach. That totally makes sense!

Making changes

One of my favourite things about the meetup was talking about building “accomplices and not allies” when it comes to making change. “Allies” implies distance and agreement and support (much like my company’s values statement). “Accomplices” implies action, plotting and foreable change. This really is an important difference.

Hopefully by men attending some of these events, we are able to become more like accomplices, genuinely understanding more, with deeper empathy and therefore being more effective at creating actual change.

Overcoming bias

I’m fascinated by cognitive bias and the unconscious decisions we make (I’d highly recommend The Undoing Project for those interested). That’s why I don’t buy crap from companies like “it’s a meritocracy here” or “we have a diversity of ideas”. Really?!?! The whole point about unconscious bias is that it’s unconscious. It starts early. As early as buying your first pair of shoes.

Attending events like PyLadies are a good thing for men to do, or anyone really.

Well I thought so….and I when I ask a friend to review this post they pulled me up on this and asked;

“My thought here was — is it really? Is it good in any circumstances? Doesn’t that depend on what your intent is and what you do with what you learn? There could be a danger that you are just some sort of gender tourist satisfying your curiosity, or to feel that attending events is enough in some way. So I would think of it in these terms — what is your intent in attending, and what are action are you going to take as a consequence of what you learn.” — Rich Littledale (PeopleUp)

I felt that was such a great comment I would just include it. How do you know you’re doing the right thing? You don’t really. But I think doing nothing is worse.

My opinion is this is that if you burst your filter bubble you are forced to confront some of your biases. That’s when you learn something. If there was one thing I came away with that was it. Get out of your filter bubble and you’ll learn something. You’ll have to see things through another lens and that will help you evaluate if the lens you see the world through needs adjusting.

Diversity and the gender pay gap

Without going into all the details of what was discussed, one thing struck me. Lots of the questions from the audience were not necessarily gender based. People asked things like:

• How do I approach my manager for a salary increase when I’m not being paid the market rate?
• I know two of my coworkers that do the same are paid more, how should I raise this?
• What do I say when a recruiter asks me “what salary are you on?”
• How do I negotiate during the interview process?
• Do I have to have another offer when I’m interviewing to get the right salary?
• How do I find out what “the right number” is?

Those are all great questions I’m sure plenty of men would love the answers to, and credit to the panel for coming up with some absolutely superb and practical answers.

I guess the thing I wondered here was whether the discussion would have been as open if the meetup had been equal numbers of men and women, or an open meetup? Would as many women have felt confident enough to stand up and ask for really direct pieces of advice? That’s another reason I like the 10% number on attendance. Not only were people able to ask questions, but I was also able to understand many different perspectives that I may not have heard before.

What did I learn?

There were great discussions around the gender pay gap, what causes it and what we can do to address it. We could probably write several blogs on that topic but I want this blog to be about sharing my experience of attending the meetup and a discussion about the merits of mixed, shared and exclusively-attended gender meetups.

Gender diversity is a complex topic as is meetup diversity. I think based on what I learned I would offer the following advice for men thinking of attending womens events;

• Make sure you know why you are attending, and that it is a reason you feel happy sharing
• If you don’t know what the etiquette is, ask don’t assume (I should have done this)
• The price of being welcomed is an obligation to take action based on what you learn

On the last point, one of the actions I took was to write this blog and share my experience in the hope of encouraging others who are thinking of attending meetups like this. I hope this also enables people to talk about this more openly.

Summary

I really hope there wasn’t any mansplaining and I came across ok. See I’m still a bit nervous! Is it like this all the time?

Anyway, thanks so much to PyLadies London. See you again.

Head along, find an accomplice.

PS: I write a Bi-Weekly journal on Machine Learning and Ethics and Values in technology, head over to my website to subscribe if you are interested.