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How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

lgilchrist.com

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Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#61

Post by nicolethenerd »

papsosouid wrote: post #51
nicolethenerd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Non-programmers?" Where are you getting that from?

From the fact that programmers don't go to "hackathons" that are 8 hours long, have no set purpose, and are run by marketing weasels who say things like "build awesome hacks".

"have no set purpose" - you can't code without somebody else handfeeding you a purpose? God forbid we hold an open-ended event and let the programmers decide what to build!

And I'm sorry I didn't realize there was a minimum time limit for writing code to be considered "programming". Next time I only code for 8 hours, I'll be sure to remind everybody that it didn't really count.

sigh Why do I poke at the trolls?

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#62

Post by tomwalker »

ahelwer wrote: post #41
tomwalker wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that sexist?

I'm curious, how do you believe that is sexist?

In my profession it is becoming predominantly female. If I was to advertise an all male study group, or limit an event to 50 percent fem ale, I would be called exclusionary or sexist I feel.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#63

Post by stcredzero »

kevinpet wrote: post #59
lgilchrist wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entirely accurate. We needed to control the number of attendees to accomodate the venue's space constraints. We set aside 100 tickets, 50 male and 50 female. The male tickets sold out first, then the women's. We then opened up the waitlist in batches as people changed their RSVPs. Eventbrite made this pretty confusing, as you can't waitlist more than 1 type of ticket (e.g. we couldn't waitlist male and fem…

The fact that you gave preference to women makes your whole blog post utter bullshit. You could have written a very good blog post about "our hackathon was better because we ensured it wasn't dominated by men" and it could have been true. But instead you wrote a blog post about these little tricks that might help a little bit, but are likely completely dominated by turning away men.

> But instead you wrote a blog post about these little tricks that might help a little bit, but are likely completely dominated by turning away men.

I don't see the problem with this. If you wish, you can hold your own hackathon without 50/50 male:female enrollment.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#64

Post by bwaldrep »

lbarrow wrote: post #8

It's great to see that the list of changes to make does not include anything enormous, ground-breaking or incredibly difficult. The author is basically proposing a few subtle changes to the tone of the hackathon -- I'm glad to see it had such a huge impact.

There is no evidence that the huge impact was caused by these subtle changes. It is far more likely that the even gender split was obtained by the ticket quotas omitted in the original post. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4282226

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#65

Post by modarts »

ReadEvalPost wrote: post #53
papsosouid wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the fact that programmers don't go to "hackathons" that are 8 hours long, have no set purpose, and are run by marketing weasels who say things like "build awesome hacks".

I wish I were surprised that this sort of hostility is only shown when attracting women is one of the main goals of an event. But I'm not. I'm not.

Granted, the OP is showing an inappropriate level of hostility; but you bring up an interesting point:

Why should having women show up at a hackathon be a goal in its own right? It seems contrived, and doesn't do much to address the disparity of women in technology (in fact it seems to further enforce the notion that such contrived measures are the only way to effectively get women to participate in such an event.)

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#66

Post by ilaksh »

So for me, to be honest, I would be excited to go to this type of event because I hardly ever interact with women. Which is just because my life is sad. LOL.

But anyway, I think that to sell it to men would be pretty easy: tell them "There will actually be lots of women at this hackathon!".

To sell it to the women, you would probably tell them the same thing: "There will actually be lots of women at this hackathon!" The motivation for the women would be to finally get do work in an environment that wasn't completely saturated with men.

Then of course you have to limit the number of men you allow in. The real trick I think is just finding enough women who are in tech, can commit to going to the event, and convincing them that there really will be lots of women there. I think the secret to that is to access to and pull in existing networks of women in technology.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#67

Post by stcredzero »

jaems33 wrote: post #48
ixacto wrote: post #37

Change the genders and you see how fucking ridiculous it is. 'How we got 50 men to go to our [stereotypically female activity]. Have fun with stereotyping yourselves... "Feed People Well: Offer vegetarian-friendly options, salad, fruit, and wine in addition to the usual beer/pizza/redbull. We got at least a dozen thank-you’s specifically for having fruit with breakfast. Everyone likes healthy food – so why not go the…

There are so many other demographics in tech that are also under-represented. African American men. Latinos. Heck, even though Asians are highly represented in engineering/comp-sci at top tech schools in the U.S. very few are in leadership positions in major North American tech companies. Every week on Twitter or HN I see great stories about people trying to advance women's presence in tech. I don't disagree with tha…

> African American men. Latinos. Heck, even though Asians are highly represented in engineering/comp-sci at top tech schools in the U.S. very few are in leadership positions in major North American tech companies.

There is something subtle going on here. Most likely multiple subtle things going on. Unfortunately, they are subtle enough that I have a hard time thinking of ways to gather empirical data concerning these things without breaking the law. For example, I have noticed that Asian men seem to be interrupted more often than white men in restaurants.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#68

Post by MartinCron »

ixacto wrote: post #37

Change the genders and you see how fucking ridiculous it is. 'How we got 50 men to go to our [stereotypically female activity]. Have fun with stereotyping yourselves... "Feed People Well: Offer vegetarian-friendly options, salad, fruit, and wine in addition to the usual beer/pizza/redbull. We got at least a dozen thank-you’s specifically for having fruit with breakfast. Everyone likes healthy food – so why not go the…

I don't see anything ridiculous to a post titled "How we got 50 men to go to our craft fair" or "How we got 50 men to our nursing career fair" or even "How we got 50 men to stop being sexist assholes".

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#69

Post by ahelwer »

ilaksh wrote: post #66

So for me, to be honest, I would be excited to go to this type of event because I hardly ever interact with women. Which is just because my life is sad. LOL. But anyway, I think that to sell it to men would be pretty easy: tell them "There will actually be lots of women at this hackathon!". To sell it to the women, you would probably tell them the same thing: "There will actually be lots of women at this hackathon!"…

Hey ilaksh, some of what you have said is actually a big part of the problem. At professional events, you should refrain from seeing women there as holding the potential for interaction outside of a professional setting. Sexualizing women you meet in such contexts is NOT okay.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#70

Post by FuzzyDunlop »

roguecoder wrote: post #29
cletus wrote: post #19

Is it just me or does all this talk about women in tech and efforts to balance things out (artificially) just devalue what good work women engineers are doing? It's the classic affirmative action problem: if you lower the bar for one group in the eyes of everyone else members of that group are viewed as having less merit regardless of whether or not its true. I'm all for having more good female engineers because I'm…

It is just you: empirical evidence finds that balancing things out artificially increases participation without affecting performance. See, for example, http://www.tirol.gv.at/fileadmin/www.tirol.gv.at/themen/gese... This isn't a quality problem: it is a cultural problem. There are enough high-quality women programmers out there to have 50/50 gender balance (obviously). It does not usually happen because of self-perp…

I think cletus was trying to raise a feminist point. I certainly took it that way, anyway.

Beside that, I can agree that the issue is cultural, but I also feel it's ingrained at such a level that it may be difficult to overcome any time soon, and it's entirely to do with our perception of girls and boys as children.

The whole idea of girly girls and boys being boys needs to change before parents will stop being worried about their kids wanting to do something that doesn't conform with the appropriate gender stereotype.

I don't personally see what a collection of Barbie dolls, doll houses with fake appliances, and pink furniture, for example, does to even remotely empower a little girl. Maybe little boys might find it useful to understand the concept of housework and responsibility at a young age, too?

It would then stand to reason that there would be more women in tech because more children would have the appropriate parental support to learn about that sort of thing sooner.

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