On Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 2:43 PM, Jonathan Moules <jonathan-li...@lightpear.com> wrote: >> Once we have a 50% of speakers that are women (even 40%), we can start >> saying that having a full keynoter line of women speakers is no diversity. > > At the risk of asking a question that I know isn't meant to be asked - why > 50%? Or "even 40%"? Surely the % should be around the same as the percentage > of the workforce that engage in the field? This survey indicates it's about > 37% globally so 40% would be reasonable - > https://www.gislounge.com/gender-gis-workforce/ > (Why the rate is 37% globally is an entirely different kettle of fish). >
This is a common mistake. If you aim for the already declining percentage of women, you will not get far. You have to aim for the percentage of population. The fact that only 37% of our industry is female is itself a problem we have to address. The lack of role models (speakers? women in the mailing lists? women in developer leading roles?) and specially the lack of a friendly environment for women at work is a problem in most tech related industries: https://code.likeagirl.io/women-are-leaving-tech-and-management-is-responsible-a6187a4d5d81 https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/02/28/why-women-leave-the-tech-industry-at-a-45-higher-rate-than-men/ Not my best talk (blame jet lag), but this can give you more perspective: https://vimeo.com/241597584 And this also applies to racial diversity. If the global foss4g is mostly white... we have a problem. But going back to the topic of this thread, until we have half of the developers/speakers/users being woman, we have a problem. And the longer we ignore it, the worse it gets. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss