[LRUG] Ru3y Manor diversity

[Paul Robinson]

On 20 Sep 2011, at 10:11, Murray Steele wrote:


> However one thing that's striking (and I presume, at least partly my fault for not directly addressing it.  Somehow?  I don't know how.) is that going through the archives of talks on lrug.org there's not a whole lot of diversity, except perhaps along the age-vector.


There isn't a whole pile of diversity in the Ruby sector internationally, nationally or regionally, so that wouldn't surprise me.


> Is there something more that I as the main organiser and we as a community can do?


Yes, but it's not simple! :-)

I've bashed my head against the wall on this in the North of England so many times, I have a few ideas. I'm going to speak specifically about getting more women to LRUG than getting them to talk. My reasoning is that if LRUG has more females in attendance, more of them will want to offer talks. Also, the general points I talk about here can apply to other under-represented demographics (racial, religious, sexuality, etc.), but the specific idea at the end can only be applied to getting more women involved, of course.

When Girl Geek Dinners arrived in Manchester there was a huge backlash from a lot of the males in the local tech community on the GeekUp mailing lists and the like.

Their argument was this: an event that excludes men without female accompaniment was sexist. On the face of it, you can see their argument because sexism is exclusion based on gender, and men were being excluded for no other reason than that they were men, but on analysis it shows a lack of pragmatic reasoning.

It took a long time - and the battle isn't yet won in some cases! - to make people realise that GeekUp and NWRUG and its ilk already were excluding women by the nature of their format. We were the sexist ones all along by unintentionally devising these great events that women felt they couldn't attend! How? Pretty simple really.

In Erin's talk you refer to, she points out that for a woman to walk into a room full of men is incredibly intimidating.

This is the one fact most event organisers forget or ignore above all others, especially in the tech community. It's not the only reason why so few women ultimately show up to community events, but it's pretty much the top reason given.

Men who don't like this being pointed out to them (especially by women), will insist such a feeling is silly, it's prejudicing the men as sexual aggressors or violent, and that it's nothing they can do anything about. If some women want to be silly about these things, well, it sucks to be them! You get the idea...

Here's the thing: we can't choose whether a group of individuals are intimidated by us. We can only choose if we care.

If we do care, we can try and reduce the intimidation as much as possible. An anti-harrassment policy is a good signal to help. But there's more proactive things you could consider:

I know there is a Geek Girls Dinner in London (it's where it started). You might want to contact the organisers and see if they want to do a joint LRUG/GGD evening where the GGDers can get an intro to the beauty that is Ruby and talk to Ruby developers, and those LRUGers who show up can ask questions of the GGDers about what they're working on, how they got started, etc. and not live up to the stereotype of basement-dwelling sociopaths who awkwardly hit on women constantly. 

The GGDers will be likely mostly programmers or scientists, they don't need anywhere near as much persuasion that we're not all sociopaths as the general female population do (they work with guys like us), but they do need to get an understanding that going to LRUG is something they can do without fear of harassment or prejudice, and that Ruby is something they should want to enjoy.

Afterwards, maybe some of them will want to show up to LRUG in future. It follows that in time some will want to do talks...

An idea to seed into people's heads if this does ever happen: it's OK for people to buddy up. It's quite intimidating being alone in a group, especially when you're the only one of a group not represented there. I went to GGD Manchester to do a talk once, and it was the most intimidating evening of my life because I walked into a room of 100 women, and didn't know many of them. Given women are not historically aggressive towards men, that feeling must surely be only a fraction of what women feel when the situation is reversed.

Anyway, getting people to buddy up reduces the intimidation. If making representations to a woman that she should attend LRUG, it might be more acceptable and reasonable a proposition if you suggest that "several of you should come along", or that she "and a few friends or colleagues who might be interested" could show up.

Just my 2p worth. Good luck!
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