A colleague suggested that I post here to share my perspective as someone who’s had some success organizing inclusive conferences. Disclosure: the author of this article is [another] friend and colleague of mine.
When I read the fallout from Sara’s article, the main area of disagreement seems to be whether an all-white-male lineup demonstrates a [de facto] discriminatory organizer policy (it does, even though the organizers are probably not misogynists). If you are genuinely interested in this question, and like @sformisano above it throws up issues of “tokenism” and affirmative-action-type dilemmas for you, I recommend you read everything “Faruk Ate?”:http://farukat.es/ has written on this topic. If he can’t convince you, I suspect you’re not listening.
Here’s what I’ve learnt about organizing inclusive conferences:
If you put the work in, it’s possible to organize inclusive speaker lineups
When you do that, it improves attendees’ perception of quality (in the talks overall)
It also raises the stakes for attendees, because they feel more like participants than spectators
So far I’ve organized one conference (with Destry Wion and Randall Snare): Content Strategy Forum 2011, and I’m working with my colleagues at Brain Traffic on a second conference, Confab London coming up in March 2013.
For CS Forum, we made inclusion an explicit aim of the conference, and worked hard at it. The formula is simple:
Have a female keynote
Announce invited speakers who are female
Run an open call for speakers which explicitly mentions inclusion. One of the fields on the submission form asked for recommendations of people who are under-represented at conferences (for us to approach).
Select speakers from the open call using a number of different criteria. For example, we wanted a mix of countries, backgrounds, etc.
“Here’s the lineup we ended up with”:http://2011.csforum.eu/speakers
A good mix of genders, some non-white faces. I’m sure I can do better in the future, of course—e.g. more diverse ethnicity, including disabled people, different educational backgrounds, etc. etc.
When I worked with Brain Traffic to bring Confab (the Content Strategy Conference based in Minneapolis) to London, we used a similar strategy, and we got a lot of love (on twitter at least) for “the inclusiveness of our lineup”:http://confabevents.com/events/london-2013/speakers/
Yes it’s hard work, but in the medium term it’s also good for business. Just one example. Imagine you are a female German web professional, and you look at the “Confab London 2013”:http://confabevents.com/events/london-2013/speakers/ lineup. Wow, there’s an awesome German woman presenting! People like me! Now contrast that to an all white, all male, all English-speaking line-up. Less attractive, and you’d have immediate concerns about whether you’d be welcome there.
Copy & paste the code below to embed this comment.
Matt Fitzgerald
I agree with Andy Rutledge. All white men are not the same. I could cry over being discriminated against because I am short (5’7” 130lb). I could fill the page with stories of how I was assumed to be fragile, weak or otherwise less able than my taller and larger peers. I could tell you how I was given less chances to make mistakes (because one mistake up was sufficient evidence of my lack of ability); or, how I had to prove myself worthy in order to be included.
I could have let those experiences turn me away from pursuing what I loved. I could have complained and probably been made fun of, ultimately to not be included anyway. But you know what I did? I worked extra hard. I made less mistakes. I held myself to a higher standard. And I earned the respect I deserved for my ability.
It would be nice if we could all live by the Golden Rule: Treat others as you have them treat you. Maybe someday. Trying to force people to do it will not work.
Oh, but my opinion doesn’t count because I am a white male.
Thank you for writing such an honest and thought-provoking article, Sara. I’m thrilled to see this conversation happening here on A List Apart. This is not an easy conversation to have, so I commend you for sticking your neck out. And while I agree with some comments and disagree with others, I respect everyone’s opinion and am again glad that this issue has been raised.
As a woman in this field, and as an emerging public speaker, this article hits close to home. I can certainly empathize with Sara’s perspective. The vast majority of interactions I’ve had with men throughout my career have been overwhelmingly positive, productive, and professional. But while it hasn’t necessarily happened at conferences, in my 8 or so years working as a designer, I’ve been blatantly hit on by (married) male superiors, bullied into doing unpaid freelance work for a superior’s cronies, ridiculed for carrying what was perceived as a “just in case I end up at some dude’s house tonight” overnight bag to work, and asked if I “like porn” by men I barely know at happy hours. At larger conferences such as SXSW, I see “booth babes” and ads objectifying the female body to promote the latest and greatest technology. There’s a pervasive and alienating brogrammer culture that still exists in our field, and we’ve got some work to do, both at conferences (and beyond) to move on from it.
The good news is that we have come a long way. Tolerance for sexist or otherwise offensive behavior is dwindling. And there’s been a huge push to make the field more welcoming to those who are not white men. At conferences, anyone at the lectern is perceived as an expert or a leader, so it’s been wonderful to see more female speakers, speakers of color, and non-US speakers as each year progresses. Diversifying the speaker roster is not easy, but it can be done. At this year’s JSConf EU, planned efforts to recruit more female speakers “paid off in a roster of 25% female speakers”:http://2012.jsconf.eu/2012/09/17/beating-the-odds-how-we-got-25-percent-women-speakers.html . This is fantastic for everyone, not just women in our field.
In addition, every employer I’ve worked for has had an explicit anti-sexual harassment policy. It was very clear to me who I could go to should I encounter such a problem. I’m glad to see this idea carried over to the conference space. We need to work together to prevent the conditions that make anyone feel excluded or mistreated, but we also need to implement a course of action to deal with it when it does happen.
Copy & paste the code below to embed this comment.
Don_U
So you are saying that within a subgroup of say white guys that could not be diverse. Since when do I share the same values or ideas than say a white guy in California? The concept that we share the same thing or are the same thing because of like gender or race is, well, bigoted at the very least.
REALDIVERSITY can not be defined by a study are we sure that a 60% make up of a given group insures diversity.
Government can not regulate something that has to happen naturally. I am a liberal, I have tons of friends that are conservative. They come from diverse backgrounds and have diverse ideas. This did not happen because governance told me to be friends it is because I made the effort.
My wife is finishing up her degree. I was talking to her adviser who happens to be African American and the first man to play baseball in a local league. He was featured in the local paper during “Black History Month”. What he said about it was, “I don’t want to be known as a black man who played baseball. I want to be known as a MAN who played baseball”
Any argument you may have has been laid moot by that last bit of insight.
Hello, commenters! I’ve been remiss in not taking part in this conversation over the past few days, but to be honest I’ve been a bit overwhelmed—thankfully, less by the bits of vitriol I’ve seen sprout up, and more by the thoughtfulness nearly all of you have had in your responses, here and around the web. In fact, here are some follow-up pieces, if you missed them:
Margot Bloomstein wrote about “Using Math to Prop Open the Door”: http://appropriateinc.com/ideas/math-to-prop-open-the-door/
Tricia Rosetty wrote “A Response to Universal Design IRL”: http://triciarosetty.com/a-response-to-universal-design-ir/
Squirrel & Moose recorded a podcast called “Do Not Feed the Trolls”: http://3rdaverad.io/shows/squirrel-and-moose/episodes/do-not-feed-the-trolls/
Faruk Ates explained “The Problem with a Slate of White, Male Speakers”: http://farukat.es/journal/2012/11/673-problem-slate-white-male-speakers
Apologies if I’ve missed some here. It’s been a crazy week trying to keep up.
While I may disagree with some of you, one thing I hope we can mostly agree on is that these are complex issues—issues not as simple as saying we need more women or black people or non-Americans in a conference. I embrace that complexity—welcome the gray areas—because it’s those gray areas that force us to think critically about our values and our actions, and to be, above all, empathetic.
That said, there are many ways in which discrimination happens, and also many ways in which diversity happens. White men can be discriminated against for a wide range of reasons (income level, region, language, education, etc. etc. etc.). However, we’re still largely operating within a societal structure designed by and for white men. If we continue to create events that only cater to white men, then we perpetuate that social structure—and we lose out on the ideas and innovation we could be getting from others, if we _actively_—not passively—welcomed them in. This doesn’t help anyone.
Thank you all for reading carefully, discussing passionately, and sharing mostly productive, constructive comments. Carry on.
Great post on how the design and rules of a community will lead to particular behaviours, and how as a designer or organiser one must be mindful in order to combat this!
One thing that keeps coming up again and again I find is the issue of discussion. One only has to look at the comments on YouTube or Facebook or news websites to see some of the filthiest, most vile and horrid human communications. This is accepted without question in the name of “free speech” without any thought about how some of this abusive, libellious, bigoted, offensive content affects the community.
I guess what I mean to say is that I think “Discuss this article. We reserve the right to delete flames, trolls, and wood nymphs.” is the right sort of approach to fostering meaningful and appropriate culture in a community based around a website.
Additionally, I find it very interesting that although there have been many white males who have been on both sides of the “is having mostly white males a problem” discussion on this article, close to 100% of the people who think the problem of “white male privilege” is unimportant or non-existent are white males.
I guess it’s a good example of various psychological biases including fundamental attribution error, status quo bias, defensive attribution hypothesis, egocentric bias, ingroup bias, just-world phenomenon, outgroup homogeneity bias etc.
Essentially, if you’re not being discriminated against or are part of the dominant group, it is harder to see that others are being discriminated against- though not impossible of course, as we see that many of the white males have agreed with Sara. It is also harder to see that exclusion of others might be a problem if you have a different viewpoint and do not belong to the dominant group. In addition, people tend to attribute their own success more to personal strengths, their own failures to outside forces, others’ successes to outside forces and others’ failures to their personal weaknesses.
Certainly the idea that one’s own position in life is not 100% earned by personal strengths and that there may be others who are more deserving but are discriminated against is a difficult one to actively accept and the cognitive dissonance often (though not always) leads to the belief instead that the less powerful groups in society are truly less deserving and that that is why they are not achieving. And that redressing the balance is in some way causing “reverse discrimination” when it is actually redressing a gross imbalance or injustice.
The part about the discrimination against webbies outside the USA definitely resonates with me.
From the statistics which never cover my geo location to the lack of services and apps because it’s not offered in my country, it’s obvious that the web has a long way to go yet.
As for your personal incidents of harassment – they were totally unacceptable but I think after expressing yourself here you’d know how to deal with those in the future.
For any conference organizer who can, a concerted effort to include those outside of your continent will not only move us closer to the ideal of an all inclusive web but in the long term will actually satisfy even your most mundane capitalist needs.
So.. as the world becomes even smaller what is required is a little more consideration, more respect and a wider frame of view – all of which doesn’t require any technological advancements.
Reading through the aggressive comments leaves me feeling cornered, and not as open as I felt immediately after reading the article.
Sara, I appreciate what you wrote. It takes courage to share an observation, as it opens you up to subjective-discussion. And the packaging on your message itself, gets ripped to optimized-shreds.
As a man who minored in women’s studies in graduate school, I found there to be a fine line of discussion about bigotry and sexism that was difficult to have in large groups, and could often only be had one-on-one. Communication, concern, empathy, and understanding of the mutual parties are of paramount importance, in order to not have individuals feel attacked.
It takes guts to share your stories. I’m glad you did. It has me thinking. I hope, if nothing else, it has others thinking, as well. Cheers, Sara.
Thank you, Sara. It takes courage to bring these things up, and it is so much easier to just let it go.
In any public conversation about gender or racial inclusiveness, it seems there are always a few white men who get quite angry and defensive, vitriolic at worst, but usually employing cold logic to prove their point, and usually poor logic. These are men who are taking the conversation personally. I think it’s reasonable to want to defend oneself when one feels attacked, but I would love to find a way to get these men to stop, breathe, an open themselves to the larger conversation.. I think most of them would agree, if they felt safe, that diversity is a positive thing, and that we all have a role to play in supporting it.
Thanks for sharing Sara, it is great to hear another woman in the web design industry share her experiences. Good on you for championing diversity, creativity and originality.
43 Reader Comments
Back to the ArticleJonathan Kahn
A colleague suggested that I post here to share my perspective as someone who’s had some success organizing inclusive conferences. Disclosure: the author of this article is [another] friend and colleague of mine.
When I read the fallout from Sara’s article, the main area of disagreement seems to be whether an all-white-male lineup demonstrates a [de facto] discriminatory organizer policy (it does, even though the organizers are probably not misogynists). If you are genuinely interested in this question, and like @sformisano above it throws up issues of “tokenism” and affirmative-action-type dilemmas for you, I recommend you read everything “Faruk Ate?”:http://farukat.es/ has written on this topic. If he can’t convince you, I suspect you’re not listening.
Here’s what I’ve learnt about organizing inclusive conferences:
So far I’ve organized one conference (with Destry Wion and Randall Snare): Content Strategy Forum 2011, and I’m working with my colleagues at Brain Traffic on a second conference, Confab London coming up in March 2013.
For CS Forum, we made inclusion an explicit aim of the conference, and worked hard at it. The formula is simple:
“Here’s the lineup we ended up with”:http://2011.csforum.eu/speakers
A good mix of genders, some non-white faces. I’m sure I can do better in the future, of course—e.g. more diverse ethnicity, including disabled people, different educational backgrounds, etc. etc.
When I worked with Brain Traffic to bring Confab (the Content Strategy Conference based in Minneapolis) to London, we used a similar strategy, and we got a lot of love (on twitter at least) for “the inclusiveness of our lineup”:http://confabevents.com/events/london-2013/speakers/
Yes it’s hard work, but in the medium term it’s also good for business. Just one example. Imagine you are a female German web professional, and you look at the “Confab London 2013”:http://confabevents.com/events/london-2013/speakers/ lineup. Wow, there’s an awesome German woman presenting! People like me! Now contrast that to an all white, all male, all English-speaking line-up. Less attractive, and you’d have immediate concerns about whether you’d be welcome there.
cobber
I know we as “people” are infatuated with pretty things, but if I see another website with grey background and grey text I will throw up in my mouth.
Something as simple as adequate ensuring adequate levels of contrast goes a long way to ensuring people can consume your content.
Matt Fitzgerald
I agree with Andy Rutledge. All white men are not the same. I could cry over being discriminated against because I am short (5’7” 130lb). I could fill the page with stories of how I was assumed to be fragile, weak or otherwise less able than my taller and larger peers. I could tell you how I was given less chances to make mistakes (because one mistake up was sufficient evidence of my lack of ability); or, how I had to prove myself worthy in order to be included.
I could have let those experiences turn me away from pursuing what I loved. I could have complained and probably been made fun of, ultimately to not be included anyway. But you know what I did? I worked extra hard. I made less mistakes. I held myself to a higher standard. And I earned the respect I deserved for my ability.
It would be nice if we could all live by the Golden Rule: Treat others as you have them treat you. Maybe someday. Trying to force people to do it will not work.
Oh, but my opinion doesn’t count because I am a white male.
Jessica Ivins
Thank you for writing such an honest and thought-provoking article, Sara. I’m thrilled to see this conversation happening here on A List Apart. This is not an easy conversation to have, so I commend you for sticking your neck out. And while I agree with some comments and disagree with others, I respect everyone’s opinion and am again glad that this issue has been raised.
As a woman in this field, and as an emerging public speaker, this article hits close to home. I can certainly empathize with Sara’s perspective. The vast majority of interactions I’ve had with men throughout my career have been overwhelmingly positive, productive, and professional. But while it hasn’t necessarily happened at conferences, in my 8 or so years working as a designer, I’ve been blatantly hit on by (married) male superiors, bullied into doing unpaid freelance work for a superior’s cronies, ridiculed for carrying what was perceived as a “just in case I end up at some dude’s house tonight” overnight bag to work, and asked if I “like porn” by men I barely know at happy hours. At larger conferences such as SXSW, I see “booth babes” and ads objectifying the female body to promote the latest and greatest technology. There’s a pervasive and alienating brogrammer culture that still exists in our field, and we’ve got some work to do, both at conferences (and beyond) to move on from it.
The good news is that we have come a long way. Tolerance for sexist or otherwise offensive behavior is dwindling. And there’s been a huge push to make the field more welcoming to those who are not white men. At conferences, anyone at the lectern is perceived as an expert or a leader, so it’s been wonderful to see more female speakers, speakers of color, and non-US speakers as each year progresses. Diversifying the speaker roster is not easy, but it can be done. At this year’s JSConf EU, planned efforts to recruit more female speakers “paid off in a roster of 25% female speakers”:http://2012.jsconf.eu/2012/09/17/beating-the-odds-how-we-got-25-percent-women-speakers.html . This is fantastic for everyone, not just women in our field.
In addition, every employer I’ve worked for has had an explicit anti-sexual harassment policy. It was very clear to me who I could go to should I encounter such a problem. I’m glad to see this idea carried over to the conference space. We need to work together to prevent the conditions that make anyone feel excluded or mistreated, but we also need to implement a course of action to deal with it when it does happen.
Don_U
So you are saying that within a subgroup of say white guys that could not be diverse. Since when do I share the same values or ideas than say a white guy in California? The concept that we share the same thing or are the same thing because of like gender or race is, well, bigoted at the very least.
REAL DIVERSITY can not be defined by a study are we sure that a 60% make up of a given group insures diversity.
Government can not regulate something that has to happen naturally. I am a liberal, I have tons of friends that are conservative. They come from diverse backgrounds and have diverse ideas. This did not happen because governance told me to be friends it is because I made the effort.
My wife is finishing up her degree. I was talking to her adviser who happens to be African American and the first man to play baseball in a local league. He was featured in the local paper during “Black History Month”. What he said about it was, “I don’t want to be known as a black man who played baseball. I want to be known as a MAN who played baseball”
Any argument you may have has been laid moot by that last bit of insight.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher
Hello, commenters! I’ve been remiss in not taking part in this conversation over the past few days, but to be honest I’ve been a bit overwhelmed—thankfully, less by the bits of vitriol I’ve seen sprout up, and more by the thoughtfulness nearly all of you have had in your responses, here and around the web. In fact, here are some follow-up pieces, if you missed them:
Apologies if I’ve missed some here. It’s been a crazy week trying to keep up.
While I may disagree with some of you, one thing I hope we can mostly agree on is that these are complex issues—issues not as simple as saying we need more women or black people or non-Americans in a conference. I embrace that complexity—welcome the gray areas—because it’s those gray areas that force us to think critically about our values and our actions, and to be, above all, empathetic.
That said, there are many ways in which discrimination happens, and also many ways in which diversity happens. White men can be discriminated against for a wide range of reasons (income level, region, language, education, etc. etc. etc.). However, we’re still largely operating within a societal structure designed by and for white men. If we continue to create events that only cater to white men, then we perpetuate that social structure—and we lose out on the ideas and innovation we could be getting from others, if we _actively_—not passively—welcomed them in. This doesn’t help anyone.
Thank you all for reading carefully, discussing passionately, and sharing mostly productive, constructive comments. Carry on.
snipergirl
Great post on how the design and rules of a community will lead to particular behaviours, and how as a designer or organiser one must be mindful in order to combat this!
One thing that keeps coming up again and again I find is the issue of discussion. One only has to look at the comments on YouTube or Facebook or news websites to see some of the filthiest, most vile and horrid human communications. This is accepted without question in the name of “free speech” without any thought about how some of this abusive, libellious, bigoted, offensive content affects the community.
I guess what I mean to say is that I think “Discuss this article. We reserve the right to delete flames, trolls, and wood nymphs.” is the right sort of approach to fostering meaningful and appropriate culture in a community based around a website.
snipergirl
Additionally, I find it very interesting that although there have been many white males who have been on both sides of the “is having mostly white males a problem” discussion on this article, close to 100% of the people who think the problem of “white male privilege” is unimportant or non-existent are white males.
I guess it’s a good example of various psychological biases including fundamental attribution error, status quo bias, defensive attribution hypothesis, egocentric bias, ingroup bias, just-world phenomenon, outgroup homogeneity bias etc.
Essentially, if you’re not being discriminated against or are part of the dominant group, it is harder to see that others are being discriminated against- though not impossible of course, as we see that many of the white males have agreed with Sara. It is also harder to see that exclusion of others might be a problem if you have a different viewpoint and do not belong to the dominant group. In addition, people tend to attribute their own success more to personal strengths, their own failures to outside forces, others’ successes to outside forces and others’ failures to their personal weaknesses.
Certainly the idea that one’s own position in life is not 100% earned by personal strengths and that there may be others who are more deserving but are discriminated against is a difficult one to actively accept and the cognitive dissonance often (though not always) leads to the belief instead that the less powerful groups in society are truly less deserving and that that is why they are not achieving. And that redressing the balance is in some way causing “reverse discrimination” when it is actually redressing a gross imbalance or injustice.
WebLove
The part about the discrimination against webbies outside the USA definitely resonates with me.
From the statistics which never cover my geo location to the lack of services and apps because it’s not offered in my country, it’s obvious that the web has a long way to go yet.
As for your personal incidents of harassment – they were totally unacceptable but I think after expressing yourself here you’d know how to deal with those in the future.
For any conference organizer who can, a concerted effort to include those outside of your continent will not only move us closer to the ideal of an all inclusive web but in the long term will actually satisfy even your most mundane capitalist needs.
So.. as the world becomes even smaller what is required is a little more consideration, more respect and a wider frame of view – all of which doesn’t require any technological advancements.
unconventure
Reading through the aggressive comments leaves me feeling cornered, and not as open as I felt immediately after reading the article.
Sara, I appreciate what you wrote. It takes courage to share an observation, as it opens you up to subjective-discussion. And the packaging on your message itself, gets ripped to optimized-shreds.
As a man who minored in women’s studies in graduate school, I found there to be a fine line of discussion about bigotry and sexism that was difficult to have in large groups, and could often only be had one-on-one. Communication, concern, empathy, and understanding of the mutual parties are of paramount importance, in order to not have individuals feel attacked.
It takes guts to share your stories. I’m glad you did. It has me thinking. I hope, if nothing else, it has others thinking, as well. Cheers, Sara.
taran
Thank you, Sara. It takes courage to bring these things up, and it is so much easier to just let it go.
In any public conversation about gender or racial inclusiveness, it seems there are always a few white men who get quite angry and defensive, vitriolic at worst, but usually employing cold logic to prove their point, and usually poor logic. These are men who are taking the conversation personally. I think it’s reasonable to want to defend oneself when one feels attacked, but I would love to find a way to get these men to stop, breathe, an open themselves to the larger conversation.. I think most of them would agree, if they felt safe, that diversity is a positive thing, and that we all have a role to play in supporting it.
Design Junction
Thanks for sharing Sara, it is great to hear another woman in the web design industry share her experiences. Good on you for championing diversity, creativity and originality.
jeandorosh
Useful one. I have to translate this for the ru-net ))
G+1 from me.