Women in the digital co-op sector
Harry "Outlandish" Robbins PublicSeen by 397The tech/digital sector continues to be dominated by men. It would be good for that not to be the case in the co-op digital sector but it's not an easy problem to address. Let's put down some ideas for addressing the likely gender imbalance at the megazord meetup as well as more general ideas about the issue in the sector.
Maybe have a look at what Founders and Coders are doing - they run a fortnightly 'women in tech' meetup group to try and introduce people to tech in a non-intimidating environment, then if people get interested they try to make sure that all of their class intakes are at least 50/50 split and indeed they've had a lot more women go through their training than a more conventional boot camp.
I guess also reach out to networks like http://www.womenhackfornonprofits.com/ and https://www.womenwhocode.com/ and http://railsgirls.com/ and http://www.meetup.com/topics/witi/ etc etc
Great, I've got in touch with women hack for non profits and women who code. We've been talking to a members of rails girls about a potential collaboration, she knows about this but I'll mention it again.
... and also Py-Ladies and Django Girls
http://www.pyladies.com/
https://djangogirls.org/
There's something else we can do when running events that cost to attend: give tickets away free to women. They're doing this at Collision next year - http://wit.collisionconf.com/
Could even be more inclusive and offer the same to non-binary identifying people in tech.
Regarding how to get more diversity at the event : Someone I know suggested that we offer organisations an extra free place for every female they send. I find this a questionable strategy and don't know how realistically feasible it is, but raises the question of who co-ops encourage to be their front-person/delegate at external events.
+1 for broadening it out to the whole spectrum of genders.
A big +1 on getting Founders and Coders and their related orgs involved:
They are a good and diverse bunch and finding their feet as a coop. How does one go about inviting people to the loomio / megazord? Does being on here qualify me to invite others?
Founders and Coder and Dwyl are already invited but I need to chase them up and see what they're up to.
Invites are currently limited to people who work for tech/digital worker co-ops or things closely approximating worker co-ops.
Basically, companies that are not democratically controlled by their workers are excluded, and people need to have some sort of relationship to co-ops.
If in doubt, ask on the https://www.loomio.org/d/2OCqtdpg/whether-to-invite-consumer-and-consortium-co-ops but if you're pretty confident they fit the bill then invite away.
Hey everyone,
I just wanted to draw attention to something I've noticed, which is backed up by some stats I just gathered from this Loomio group - namely:
1: 14 / 49 of the group appear to have female names (29%)
2: 24 / 195 posts have been made by those with apparently female names (14%)
3: 1 / 16 of the threads in this group have been started by those people (6%)
I'm really keen to understand the reasons for 2 & 3, and based on some discussion, whether there is something we need to, or can do differently in this group, and by extension in the lead-up and planning of the event in November.
(I want to point out that non-participation is not a female phenomenon - plenty of apparent males have also not posted here either, and the intention of this post is not to point at people for not participating. Instead I want to explore the issue of under-participation in general, but particularly in relation to gender.)
Quick focus group with 2 female cooperators (both members of Loomio groups):
Loomio is good for men who haven't got anything better to do
Women who haven't got anything better do do play with their cat
It's a venue for man/peoplesplainers, puts women off
Women therefore prefer to observe silently
95% of women don't participate and neither do 80% of men
The Loomio tech isn't inherently patriarchal
Being the modern man I am, I'm presently playing with my cat AND contributing to loomio threads :P
Interesting - any other views on this out there?
I think @sionwhellens comment hits the nail more or less on the head!
It might also be related to the initial activity. I mentioned to Seeds for Change that Loomio had been really active and it was almost putting me off participating because I felt a bit overwhelmed- there was just too much to follow and I couldn't keep up with it. Rebecca (SFC) said that was quite typical, and that a core group of people would emerge with some others becoming observers/occasional commenters, and others who just don't look at it because there appears to be too much.
(For me, there are a few usability issues that Loomio hasn't quite got to grips with, and sometimes that prevents me from using it).
Having said all of the above, I do find the question interesting but @harryrobbins had to give me a nudge to reply...!
Busted for vicarious mansplaining.
I'm loving the stats from @matthewparsons and qualitative input from @sionwhellens
We're doing some engagement with http://fossbox.org.uk/ who are a largely female run tech CIC with a strong background in improving diversity in tech. They're not a co-op but they are democratic and asset locked so I'll invite them if they're interested.
We're also looking at sponsoring some subsidies for experienced female programmers who want to start working for co-ops. We considered other roles too but felt it's the pointy tech stuff where the gender balance is most unequal.
Great 2 invite Fossbox, I was going to suggest.
We've got 6 women out of 26 members (5 as coders and one admin) but it is a massive struggle. The problem, I think, is more to do with the numbers studying programming - at least when I went to uni in the cough mid 90s there was only one female student in our entire year!
We've got a partnership with a local girls secondary school where we take girls for tours and to talk to some of our female coders and we help them with work placements. It is changing I think but it will take a while to come through so we can have a truly balanced workforce.
Having said all of that we've got 4 men coming to the event :-(
A women who is learning to code with http://www.codefirstgirls.org.uk/ just followed me on twitter so sharing link here in the hope that this thread ends up mapping all relevant efforts (especially in the UK)
Would anyone be interested in running/attending an intersectionality session at the megazord?
@matthewparsons would love to participate if it's happening on the 16th Nov
And a couple of other networks to post out to:
Have people seen this: When Women Stopped Coding. I came across it a few months ago and have been meaning to post it hear for a while. There's a short summary, but I recommend listening to the podcast. It was very interesting.
Amazing little article and shows both the dangers of received wisdom and the underlying misunderstandings and how much work there is to be done to reverse the imbalance....
To our shame (and despite our best intentions) outlandish has more men called Matt than it has women. To be fair, we have a bizarrely high number of men called Matt (Matt Kendon, Matt Crow, Matt Bosquet, Matt Shearer and Matt Parsons) but we'd like to do something about it. Any ideas for the event or our employment practices gratefully accepted.