Technical conferences

Issues

• Technical conferences usually have a very small minority of Women speakers or may only have token women presenting.
• Low attendance by women
  • Attracting women to tech conferences: my experience with Sketching by Mike Kuniavsky
• Invisibility -- women may be so rare at tech conferences that their existence is largely ignored. See Tshirts for example.
• Women who attend may be assumed to be accompanying a male partner, rather than attending for the technical content
• Sexualized environment
  • Occasional Sexualized presentations may make women uncomfortable
  • Trade shows or other promotional events may have Booth babes
  • Evening social events, sometimes held in nightclub or bar environments, often support behaviour women may find uncomfortable
• There may be Social expectations that women will volunteer for certain "soft" roles and activities at the conference
• Conference facilities and the format of events may not be women-friendly and may disadvantage mothers of young children in particular
• Although it's for a short period of their life, women in the later stages of pregnancy may not be able to fly to conferences or anything else, or get travel insurance if they do so.
• The technical glass ceiling can mean that technical women are found in more junior positions, making them less likely to be chosen to speak and much less likely to get travel assistance or leave to attend. Together with family responsibilities and family expenditure priorities that disfavour her (see Motherhood), women may be unable or unwilling to use their own funds and their own vacation time on conference attendance.

Responses and solutions

See Women speakers#Solutions

Incidents

• See Sexualized presentation for a list of conference presentations with sexualized content
• See Booth babes for incidents relating to booth babes at conferences and trade shows

Personal aacounts

• Shanley Kane: Seethe and Grin: My Life Going to Tech Events

Women featured at conferences

See List of women keynote presenters at technical conferences

Women at specific conferences

The following conferences are covered on this wiki. Please add a page for any conferences you attend. If you'd like to help out by tallying Women speakers at these conferences, it would be much appreciated.

• ETech
• Gnomedex
• GUADEC

• linux.conf.au:
  • Women at linux.conf.au 2008
  • Women at linux.conf.au 2009
  • Women at linux.conf.au 2010
• OSCON
  • Women at OSCON 2007
  • Women at OSCON 2008
  • Women at OSCON 2009
• Open Source Bridge
  • Women at Open Source Bridge 2009
• SCALE
• Web 2.0 Expo
• Ohio LinuxFest
• PyConAU
  • Women at PyCon AU 2010
  • Women at PyCon AU 2011
• Wikimania
  • Women at Wikimania 2011
  • Women at Wikimania 2012

• (please add a page for any technical conference you attend)

Women-friendly and women-centric events at technical conferences

These can help encourage and recognise women in the technical community.

• LinuxChix miniconf at linux.conf.au
• Women In Open Source (WIOS) miniconferences at SCALE in 2007 and 2008.
• SXSW Interactive often has sessions on feminism, issues facing women online, etc.
• Diversity in Open Source workshop at Ohio LinuxFest 2009

Papers about women presented at technical conferences

• Heroes Women in FOSS presentation at OSCON 2008
• Form an Orderly Queue Ladies presentation at OSCON 2008

Statistics

• Be Counted collects gender representation statistics at conferences.