The Grace Hopper Conference has grown to one of the largest in computer science, pushing past 25,000 attendees. Most women in computing, whether a student, faculty or working in industry, are usually in a minority. Grace Hopper gives them the chance to see and be part of a strong community of woman in our field in a safe and comforting environment.
Or so it was supposed to be. At the Expo part of last month's conference, where many companies come to recruit, men made up about 40% of the attendees according to an NPR report. Now Grace Hopper welcomes male allyship but these were no allies. Rather they acted, often aggressively, to reach recruiters and making the experience uncomfortable for the attendees who came for the conference's purpose.
The conference organizers released a statement and a blog post noting they can't legally limit registration based on gender but will work on other approaches to ensure a good conference in the future.
I know there are, in particular, graduating international students desperate to find a job so they can remain in the country. And I've argued that CS needs a full annual meeting, which like Grace Hopper exists to bring people together not to focus on research but to focus on each other. But none of this justifies ruining the experience of those who attend a conference for what it is.
If you don't have respect, don't come to the party.
How do you know these were men? We should not make assumptions. I guess they were gender fluid individuals that identified as women for the purpose of attending the conference.
ReplyDeleteI talked with people who were at the conference. These were people abusing the system, not a part of it.
DeleteIn 21 states in USA you can walk to DMV, state your preferred legal gender and your driver's license will be updated to reflect this. What do you suggest---applying a higher standard to attend a conference?
DeleteIdentifying as a woman does not mean you have to dress like a stereotypical woman or speak using vocal tones of stereotypical women. Like the other anonymous said about higher standards in this context, it feels as if too many people complain about this self-identifying trans issue only when it directly impacts something they care about. Why are you not about to be cancelled in the way JK was?
DeleteA better suggestion to the Grace Hopper conference male problem that is caused by recruiters is to have a special registration for recruiters who will not have access to the rest of the conference unless they pay two registrations. Not perfect since the conference doesn't charge enough to discourage recruiters. NSF provided some funds for the early conferences which were overwhelming women - made me feel like a tiny minority just as the women felt in many of the CS conferences.
ReplyDeleteDo you have equally strong opinions about biological men who complete against biological woman in sports divisions for women?
ReplyDeleteGood. I hope this thing gets forced to become that truly open CS conference you speak of.
ReplyDeleteWhy exactly does this conference need to be women-only, to the point that organizers & the press were whining that "too many" men showed because the law stopped them from explicitly banning them? Is there actually some aspect of CS that only women can do, a computer programming version of childbirth? Is it really that immoral or unreasonable for many men in a 70+% male field to participate in its biggest in-person conference and job fair?
Your whole argument appears to be that it was wrong for men to crash this ladies-only party. My contention is that it was wrong for this party to ever be ladies-only, and in fact it is illegitimate to have such women-only events unless equivalent men-only ones are also available. An even better alternative is to simply hold one big event for everybody and knock off the identity politics BS.
Grace Hopper herself proved that women could do just fine in this field without affirmative action. Her namesake conference should reflect that.
I left the "winners ceremony" of a "no men allowed to compete" hackathon after witnessing two things.
DeleteThing #1: While waiting for the ceremony to start, a cluster of participants started to sing "Anything men can do we can do better" and more and more joined in with them.
Thing #2: After one of the big awards was announced a participant said "and they say women can't win at hackathons" to the approving comments of many around her.