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You advocate second rate panels? | 364 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
What's the ratio of male/female for the panels?
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, January 04 2013 @ 03:45 PM EST

Let's consider some factors:

    Group = predominantly male
    Specific expertise
I don't think we need to go much further. Those two factors alone - without knowing anything about gender - may very lead to more-often-then-not all-male panels. The most qualified individual having been selected.

With just complaints about it being "all male" and nothing else, I find that as silly - yes, silly - as when my local municipal police force decided to institute a standard of minority quotas. I'm talking:

    For every caucasion you hire, you must hire:
    1 Asian
    1 Native
    1 Indian
You get the idea. This was at a time when I was actually interested in becoming involved in police services. There were adds running along with media reports indicating the service was heavily understaffed and had the budget to hire lots new members.

When I was querying about applying, I was told:

    I'm sorry, but we can't accept any more applications from caucasians - we have to fill our quotas of minorities first! It'll be at least 2 years before you're considered.
I was stunned.

To quote McClane's comment to Zeus in Die Hard 4:

    Look, just because you're prejudiced doesn't mean everyone else is.
Put in the context of an all-male panel:
    Just because you might think there's some anti-female agenda, doesn't mean there is one.
Just something to consider.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Let's say panels do proceed as suggested
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, January 04 2013 @ 03:59 PM EST

This is just something else to consider.

Let's say all the males refuse unless the panel is more balanced with 50% females. 2 males, 2 females.

But the field has 1% female ratio. Only 1% of those is actually working the technology under discussion. And only 1% of those are reasonably versed with the technology, the others are fairly new. This is - what I hope - an extreme situation, but I hope it gets the point across as to the odds of finding a very specific that matches the knowledge base the panel requires.

You want to put together a panel that's going to get heavy into the tech.

Do you really want to stop the discussion completely because you can't find 2 expert women willing to play part in the panel?

Or you can't find 2 expert women with the sufficient knowledge base?

Would you rather pair a women who was less knowledge with two men with indepth knowledge and another woman with indepth knowledge?

For example:

    You're putting together a panel on Quantum Physics.
    You have two Einstein level guys, an Einstein level woman and a woman who barely studied in the field.
I don't know about any woman, I can't claim to know being a man. But I can tell you, if you put me - a man - in that setting with the three Einsteins and the discussion would be dominated by the three Einsteins and I would be feeling so totally out of my depths.

In such a setting, do you believe the schism that exists between men and women is more likely to be alleviated or grow fruther because of what that one woman was put through?

And if anyone (whether male or female organizer of the panel) were forced to do that... is it really their fault that the women involved felt as they did or is the fault of the group who pushed the situation in the first place?

I'll stop now. I've already said far too much that's far too controversial even though I view such questions as reasonable.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Binders full of women
Authored by: betajet on Friday, January 04 2013 @ 05:27 PM EST
I would suspect that the people organizing these panels simply ask people they
know to participate, or ask other people they know for suggestions, and it's
simply that the known people are almost all men or are too busy to participate
like Alice in "Dilbert".

Here's a solution that worked in Massachusetts: I read that before Mitt Romney
was elected governor, some women's groups put together binders of qualified
women and presented them to the governor-elect just after the election to make
finding qualified women easy. (Mitt Romney told the story differently at the
debate -- but that's a topic for a different web site.)

If women think there are too few women on these panels, telling the panel
organizers who should be included would IMO be a lot more effective than
expecting the panel organizers to find women they don't know exist.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

A Simple Suggestion to Help Phase Out All-Male Panels at Tech Conferences
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, January 04 2013 @ 09:42 PM EST
One must wonder if she is just put out that she is not good enough to be on a
panel.

Tufty

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

A Simple Suggestion to Help Phase Out All-Male Panels at Tech Conferences
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, January 05 2013 @ 10:39 PM EST
How's that going to help when many women don't participate in the tech community because of men's unwelcoming, condescending behavior towards them? Asher Wolf quits Cryptoparty (warning: salty language)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

You advocate second rate panels?
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, January 06 2013 @ 12:36 AM EST
I'd rather listen to the best techs regardless of gender.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

A Simple Suggestion to Help Phase Out All-Male Panels at Tech Conferences
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 08 2013 @ 08:38 AM EST
or be like fox tv and have all p retty girl panels.

sex discrimination cuts both ways.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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