I was looking at <http://2012.djangocon.eu/schedule/> again with excited anticipation, and reading through the talk summaries.
<http://2012.djangocon.eu/schedule/involving-women-in-the-community/> - and then I had a closer look at the names of this year's speakers. There are *two* women out of the 24 or so speakers listed, and only one is doing a solo talk. This is absolutely not a comment about or criticism of the organisers; apart from anything, I know that they're aware of and concerned about the issues. They can only select proposals they've been given, or have attendees who sign up. At last year's DjangoCon Europe, there were few women attending. At PyCon UK last year, there was a similar dearth. Someone remarked to me then that a Microsoft event there would be a much more equal distribution. So where are the women? Does open source put women off? Is it something in the open source community, or the personalities you find in it? The nature of these conferences? It's true that some open software communities, and the people in them, are pretty unwelcoming to newcomers, or seem to delight in expressing agressive and macho attitudes, but Python and Django are clearly not like that (quite the opposite in fact). The conferences I've attended have been relaxed, warm and friendly. The worst you could say is that they are a little bit nerdy, which as a complaint would be like saying that medical conferences tend to be a little bit doctory. The last thing I want is for a woman to read this (there won't be that many reading in any case, I suppose) and decide not to go because she doesn't like the thought of finding herself one person in ten; but from what I understand she's one in ten in the workplace and in the industry anyway. I assume that most people agree this is a problem and worth addressing, but perhaps I'm wrong. If women are not part of the community, or not coming forward to do things like give talks at - or even simply attend - its conferences, what if anything should be done about it? Daniele -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en.
