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Comment by feralmoan | Hacker News Reader

I could really care less about penises and vaginas when I'm working through a math or engineering problem and I'm absolutely not alone. I've done a tonne of workshops and conferences and the sex of the other students hasn't even popped onto the radar. Either my professional circle is full of Unicorns, or the issue of requiring a dedicated space to foster female solidarity in the face of insufferable male 'intimidation' is one of political invention.

I tend to view intentional partitioning of communities, rather than inclusive interaction, as counter-productive.

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and ~50% of your participants are female? if so, congratulations, you're doing better than most of the tech events I've attended.

My experience has been that (a) women are a minority in almost all computer communities and events, and (b) how large a minority they are correlates strongly to how much effort is made to encourage their participation. Activities like the Boston Python Workshop are effective

I didn't say anything about the ratio, the male/female distribution is irrelevant and would posit that anyone harboring feelings of self doubt or insecurity about their skills will find tech conferences or workshops intimidating, irregardless of their sex. My first GoogleI/O, for instance, was nerve wracking and I barely spoke with anyone on technical matters - even armed with a CS degree and (admittedly miniscule) male genitalia. Feelings are not fact, a little courage and interaction can go a long way.

oh, sure. The under-representation of women is just one, particularly visible, way in which we're losing out on potential talented contributors.

If you can figure out ways to help newcomers participate in conferences despite feeling intimidated, that's also a great way to deepen the talent pool.

The simple fact that these workshops fill up so quickly with women who are excited by the structure is evidence that they are good for the overall programming community, and therefore, productive.

I suspect if you run a workshop for men only, even the men would wonder why. This is evidence that men don't need men-only workshops.

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