Credit: Max Pixel This is a follow up to last week’s post about lists. Because if lists don’t change anything… what does? The short answer: hard work. The long answer: A common piece of advice is to broaden your network. But… see all these people as human beings. I’m not on Twitter as a woman […]
I have mixed feelings about lists of women. Well I say mixed: my feelings on lists are, broadly, negative. I understand the appeal — either people genuinely believe that people not being aware of women is a problem. Or they think that with a list this can really, finally, be refuted. It seems unlikely that either of […]
I put together this talk as part of Design+Exclusion. It’s about the ways in which women get told to be quiet, and some of the thought behind our approach to inclusivity with Technically Speaking. Watch it here. This was a challenging talk to put together because part of it involved looking up some of the […]
We’ve been relatively public with Technically Speaking about our commitment to inclusivity. We only include conferences with a Code of Conduct, and we heavily weight whether travel costs are covered in our consideration. There is something we haven’t talked about (although I touched on it a little in this podcast). A Code of Conduct is […]
My friend Duretti asked for tips on being a mentor, and here was mine: figure out how they learn and help them surface that info (buy books). Look for opportunities to SPONSOR not just mentor. — cate, a human being (@catehstn) March 20, 2017 That seemed like impossible advice. But! some of it is just […]
Since that article on Uber dropped, I’ve been watching people’s reaction. There was the shock from people who should know better, and the lack of surprise from many women but there was also something that I can only describe as a PTSD reaction from many technical women I know. I saw it on Twitter. I […]
We’re all outraged at Uber – again. Because it turns out that the company that tolerates sexual harassment from their drivers, and in the government they work with, also tolerates and enables it… amongst their own employees. And yeah, this was really bad, but it’s not like this is just Uber. I’ve heard similar stories from […]
So I hear that a conference gave away Playboy magazine as part of the event swag. The internet expressed their outrage, and there was an apology. I haven’t read it. I hear it wasn’t stupid, but… meh. Here’s the thing. There are some classes of problem in conference inclusivity. Someone at our event behaved inappropriately. […]
For a while now I’ve been using the phrase “diversity as performance art”. It’s a comment on the shallowness of most “diversity” initiatives. How superficial they are, and how they ignore the harder, day to day, work of inclusion. The pipeline – the PR around the “problem” of the pipeline – is a performance. Inclusion […]
On the list of “things that come up a lot in Feminist Cabal meetings”, pretty high is a complaint that HR have taken ownership of “inclusion” and are being ineffective. This is not surprising when you think about it. Regardless of discussion about “employee happiness” etc, the main function of HR is to ensure that […]