For years I’ve avoided talking about the topic of what to wear when presenting. I didn’t want to cover it because I didn’t want people to think that I only worried about this topic because I was a woman. I also didn’t want other women to inherit any of my neuroses around deciding what to wear. I’m the sort of person who always enjoyed thinking long and hard about what to wear the next day at work, and I know that’s not how everyone works.

I realise I have a bunch of experience and advice for speakers and potential speakers that I simply haven’t written down or shared. Here’s the first piece on things to consider that you might not have thought about. Note: as usual, my advice is from the point of view of a woman (me) and is aimed mostly at women, but also as usual it’s probably useful for others to know too.

It’s 2018, and we still Have conferences with only one woman speaker Regularly see all-male panels See only a small subset of ethnicities represented Use language that excludes people from job advertisements By now we’ve heard that diversity makes for better teams, better products, and better leadership, and it seems like the industry has been beating itself up about it for some time now. Why isn’t it fixed? What can we do?

Now I’ve been speaking at (mostly Java) conferences for a while (six years now), I get asked to present at a lot of conferences. Obviously all these conferences are mostly interested in my terribly educational talks, but it’s also because I’m a technical woman and there aren’t very many technical women speaking at conferences.

In my experience, conferences want to do the right thing - they want a diverse line up of speakers, they want to attract diverse attendees. Often this is not as easy as it may seem, and frequently conferences are Twitter-shamed for not having enough women speakers. When it gets to this point (and often before), conferences frequently ask me for advice on speakers they could invite, and how to attract more women.

So, I wrote a long email to the London Java Community in answer to an excellent question: “What can men do to support Women in Technology?”.

It’s a bit of a brain dump, by no means comprehensive, and is in answer to a specific question in a specific context, but I’ve been asked to make the information public so it can be useful in a broader context. So here it is.

Since publishing yesterday’s post, I’ve had a lot of great comments, so I thought I’d write yet another post to answer them.

Off the back of yesterday’s post, I received a number of comments and questions around blind CFPs (Call For Papers - usually to get into a conference you submit to a CFP) for conferences. I often hear it said that a blind CFP will fix, or at least improve, the diversity imbalance at conferences.

I don’t believe this.

We work so hard to promote equality, to fight for the rights of people who are not middle-class white men, and time and again it just feels like we’re not getting anywhere. International Women’s Day highlights the issues that face women all around the world, and make our women-in-tech problem look like a genuine First World Problem, and yet we can’t even get that right.

Last month at Devoxx I was in a session discussing what we can do to encourage more diversity in our speakers (specifically, although not limited to, increasing the number of women speakers). I’m going to outline the things I remember being discussed, although as usual we did not find the answer to the problem, only identify some issues and explore some options. This is a very chaotic blog post, because if I don’t post it now I’ll never post it, and it’s better if my thoughts are scrawled down and posted than if this all goes to die in my drafts folder.

I loved this analogy: Cycling is awfully similar to being a woman. It nicely describes how it feels to be marginalised and not quite “normal”. But there are some things that I’d like to add:

So, following on from my observations of being an outsider at FOSDEM because I’m not an open source developer, I do have another story to tell where my female-ness is actually relevant.

So, FOSDEM.

I’ve heard great things about this conference, so I was pretty exited to go

Now I know people talk about impostor syndrome whenever they mention the woeful lack of diversity at tech conferences. Interestingly, I felt like an impostor at FOSDEM - not because I’m a woman (there were quite a few techy women around at FOSDEM, more than I expected) but because I’m not an open source person.

I’m pleased to see that GM has hired the “best person for the job” as their new CEO - that does seem like a good idea. I’m happy her gender did not get in the way. What makes me uncomfortable is the international news coverage of the decision of this large manufacturer to hire a woman as their CEO - if she were a man (and/or black/gay/disabled) would the headline read “The camera loves her.

As well as talking about, you know, actual work-type-stuff, I was encouraged to give my “Technical Approach to Women” presentation at Devoxx. This went so well at JavaOne that I thought it would be difficult to top. Also, I wasn’t convinced it would work at Devoxx, because the theatres are not well suited to audience participation - the seats are warm and comfy, the room is dark, the speaker is on stage in front of a massive screen….

Yesterday dawned, with a sense of foreboding (actually it dawned with me coughing my lungs out, but we’ve heard enough about the sub-optimal state of my respiratory system this week). On this day, I was giving the talk I was dreading when I got asked to do it. It’s the talk I actually put more work into than any of the other sessions I was presenting at this JavaOne. It was the Women In IT talk.

I attended (one way or another) two events last week that got me thinking

The first was Girl Developers will Save the World - a session that had me a little confused as to whether that referred to me, or actual girls, i.e. those that are not yet legally classed as adults. The second was the Remarkable Women Twitter party the following day.

I’ve been challenged to do a session at a very large conference around women in programming. Which leads to two reactions from me 1) wow, what an honour! and 2) sigh.

I was flattered to be interviewed for InfoQ at QCon London. It was a fun interview actually, and didn’t feel anything like the half an hour it actually took. In it, I get to talk about Agile at LMAX, the Disruptor (of course) and diversity in IT (again).

Just a quick note to say I was interviewed for another podcast (Update 2020: apparently no longer available), again to talk about all-female events. It’s only a short one and there’s probably not much in there that I haven’t said before, either on here or in person. From the 21st May, I’m at GOTO, both Copenhagen and Amsterdam. I’ll be talking about code & the Disruptor, thank goodness, and will be trying not to rant about the subject of women in technology.

This week’s BBC Outriders podcast features yours truly venting about The Subject That Won’t Go Away, Women in Technology. I was interviewed at Sunday’s Girl Geek conference, and got a chance to voice my opinions once again. For those who can’t be bothered to listen, they can probably be summarised as: There are genuine problems that face people in our industry, let’s talk about those that you have actually faced, not ones that you imagine exist.

Today I was at the Girl Geek Meetup conference. I didn’t advertise it much because I’ve said in the past I don’t really agree with women-only events, and actually I felt quite uncomfortable telling you guys I was going to be there, knowing the majority of my readers weren’t allowed to attend.

It’s probably worth explaining why I went, so a) I can give you guys and excuse but b) conference organisers can see what people like me are looking for in a conference.

If you have a Parleys subscription, you can watch the whole “Why we shouldn’t target women” panel from Devoxx 2011 a month or so ago. Watch me attempt to monopolise the whole panel as if it was my idea or something…

Tori Wieldt from the Oracle Technology Network interviewed me at Devoxx. Because I was there to be on the Why We Shouldn’t Target Women panel, the interview is just another platform for me to air my views on this subject again. Yes, I am actually wearing pink….

Panel with: Martijn Verburg; Regina ten Bruggencate; Trisha Gee; Antonio Goncalves; Claude Falguière; Kim Ross

I’m back from Devoxx, having had lots of food for thought. In particular, my panel on Why We Shouldn’t Target Women generated a lot of discussion and I’m still trying to process it all.

The panel went really well, we got decent interaction from the audience, and of course my fellow panel members were awesome. I managed to restrain myself from using the opportunity as my own personal soap box and allowed other people to speak occasionally. Sadly the only male on the panel stole the show somewhat, so Antonio won’t be invited in future… Actually in seriousness, it was great to have a guy on the panel to present his point of view. It was interesting that he’s a father, highlighting that parenting issues are not the same as women’s issues, and conflating those two concerns hurts both genders. But Antonio’s hair is far too shiny and pretty and he’s funnier than I am, so I’m not standing next to him again.

Stephan wearing the Brazilian flag at the opening keynote European conferences are different (and cool) because you get to hear even more languages spoken than you usually do in London (apparently the most diverse city in the world for spoken languages). I think the idea of a Paris Devoxx with 75% of the talks in French is brilliant - I’m always banging on about diversity, we shouldn’t expect developers to learn in English only.

“What… exactly… were you guys looking to get out of today’s event? Because…” “Because we’re girls?” “Um… yes…” Kim impetuously opts for The Truth: “We’re here to meet men.” Our interrogator looks round dubiously. “No, really, why are you here?” Phew. My reputation is intact1 Kim eloquently describes what her situation is as Product Manager and the criteria she’s measuring third party products against. I explain how LMAX aims to be the fastest retail exchange in the world, and therefore low latency is a tiny bit important to us.

It must be time for me to move on from talking about Java One, it has dominated my blog of late. But also I want to talk about JAX London from this week. But before I move on, it’s probably worth rounding off with the last two resources from the conference. 1) Martin Thompson and I are interviewed about the Disruptor winning the Duke Award (we come in halfway through):

I discovered, through the power of the search words that lead to my blog, that there was an incident at JavaOne that once again opens the can of worms that is Sexism In IT.

This Makes Me Sad. I had a really positive experience at JavaOne. In fact, I would say it was the one conference I’ve been to in the last 12 months where I felt like my gender wasn’t a problem - I even got away with wearing hotpants (tweed is business-casual, right??) without being mistaken for anything other than a developer.

…“what do female programmers look like”: Well, sometimes… If there are any girl programmers out there who are interested in being part of a montage showing who we are, I’d be dead (see what I did there…?) interested in putting us all on one page. And not just because I’m narcissistic. Although that helps.

Gah!! This is exactly what I was talking about - it’s pink, it mentions shoes, and it’s about as patronising as you can get.

Would the chart be different if your possible outcomes were Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Linus Torvalds? I bet for a start it wouldn’t mention Jimmy Choos or choice of handbags. And it probably wouldn’t be in baby blue either.

(First, let me say this post contains opinion, stereotyping and sweeping generalisations. But that’s sort of the point. Also I don’t pretend for one moment to speak for all girl programmers, I can only speak for myself)

When I first started this blog, I wanted to just post “proper” technical information. I wanted to prove that there are girls out there doing “real” programming.

I specifically didn’t want to talk about my gender. I wanted to prove by silence that gender is incidental to what I do.

But, it doesn’t really work that way, does it?

Firstly because one of the first things I get asked by guys when I meet them in this industry is “why aren’t there more girl programmers?” (that’s after they ask “do you work in HR?” followed by “are you a real programmer?” - I’m not joking, this happened this week).

I have not (yet) seen the presentation this post is referring to. But I think many of the comments Ted makes are very valid, and our industry as a whole should occasionally stop and think. I’ve seen Ted speak at QCon, and I’ve had a lot of time for his comments ever since. I’m aware that this blog is rapidly filling with comments about gender and perceptions and people-y stuff, when I originally wanted it to be a purely technical blog.

Let’s celebrate our IT women “Everyone” knows that there are more men than women in IT. That it’s a “boys” job. Not a lot of people know that the first programmer was a woman. Not a lot of people realise the number of women in IT is DECREASING. And has been since the 80s. In a working world where I honestly believe that in general there are more opportunities for women (OK, inline with the other stuff I’ve been reading I’ll caveat this with white, middle-class women), it seems shocking that such a growth industry as IT is actually losing women, and appears unable to determine why, or stop the flow.

I’m very interested in the subject of gender stereotyping, which probably isn’t surprising as I’m a girl in a predominantly male industry. And I like cars, and sports, and get irritated if people assume I’m not “allowed” to be interested in these things.

Far from being discriminated against, however, I find many people ask me why there aren’t more women in the industry and what can be done to encourage girls into IT. If these questions were easy to answer, they wouldn’t have to be asked.